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"I hope you tell kids that this really does work and I am an example."

A Short Term Treatment for Incipient Character Disorders

Another Freer research result that we feel confident about, due to the excellence of the research even though the result is quite surprising, is Dr. Jeff Clark's conclusion that Freer's therapy work is the only short term residential program described in the research literature that successfully treats some of the deep-seated character disorders. (No. 8.) (We would probably not be successful with pre-sociopathic issues, and partly for that reason we do not accept clients with those problems.) These problems are normally very difficult to treat, but adolescents are more able than adults to recover from them, Mother Nature provides exactly the kind of emotionally and judgmentally neutral environment these young people need, and our staff provide the right blend of caring and trained therapeutic objectivity to recognize these disorders and to work skillfully with them. In his thesis, Dr. Clark said that "the effect sizes of WT (meaning Freer's Wilderness Treatment) were impressive, particularly considering the short-term nature of the treatment program." Large effects were achieved in too many areas to list here; some were the depression related scales, mentioned above; a few of the others were Eating Dysfunctions, 4.40; Impulsive Propensity, 1.05; Identity Diffusion, 2.34; Body Disapproval, 1.16; Egocentric/Narcissistic, 0.92; Oppositional, 1.28, and Borderline Tendency, 1.59. Jeff closes with two thoughts. "Because the prognosis for treating personality disorders is generally poor, and becomes increasingly so as the individual matures, it is critical that we identify effective treatments and intervene as early as possible;" (p. 76), and "The process of self-discovery is inherently therapeutic in that the self, as the instrument of one's realized and unrealized potential, contains not only the psychic nutrients necessary for healing and growth, 'but the seeds of an individual's growth'" (Samuels, quoted in Clark, pp. 75-6.) This is a particularly tragic problem for adolescents when they fail to deal successfully with incipient character problems in their teens because when the self is shattered or in serious disarray, self realization cannot occur and life becomes ever more difficult and meaningless.

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