NCJ Number
176113
Date Published
1998
Length
189 pages
Annotation
The author offers the reader a view of his broad experience as a group psychotherapist with criminal offenders, as he takes the reader on a lengthy group psychotherapeutic journey into the "hearts and minds of prisoners."
Abstract
Under his guidance, inmates are led into confrontation mythology, as he assists them to relive some of their forgotten experiences. The central focus of the therapy sessions consists of stories, narratives, and anecdotes, as well as "stories within the stories," which may call up strong emotions or just the facts of memories. The author uses the messages found in fairy tales, the inmates' reactions to a blank page, or their interpretations of vignettes produced by the inmates themselves in an effort to liberate the inner thoughts and emotions of violent offenders. In addition to including prisoner's "stories," the book also profiles psychological tests, including Toch's Prison Preference Inventory and the author's own Prison Expression Test (PET). The PET was developed in part as a modus operandi of maximizing the milieu of psychological insights obtained from the use of fairy tales. One chapter discusses post-traumatic stress disorder and its link to post growth experience (PGE). The concluding section draws together the purpose and role of psychological services and group therapy in prison. Two examples of inmate completions of the PET are appended, along with one inmate's "fantasy." Author and subject indexes