Psychosocial intervention experience in a penitentiary center

“Culture is the truth, the people must know, never to lose their love for freedom”(Gabriel Celaya)

At the present time and for some years now, a increased attention in prisons what is called prison treatment, understood as all those activities, spaces, occupational workshops, courses, forms of relationship, system evaluation and intervention aimed at generating some change, learning or future expectations in the interns. At PsychologyOnline, we have decided to abort a Psychosocial intervention experience in a prison.

The objectives set When preparing the Social Skills Intervention Program, in the Drug Dependent Attention Group and in the Socio-Labor Orientation courses they have as a general purpose provide tools that allow to face in a more effective way the personal, social, work, family adaptation of the inmate in the penitentiary environment and abroad; and improve self-control in conflict situations that may involve maladaptive behaviors such as drug use and violent and intolerant behaviors.

Index

1. About the methodology
2. Theoretical principles for this intervention proposal
3. Co-therapy-based intervention
4. Conclution
5. Annexed

From our point of view and with four years of work experience as psychologists hired in various Penitentiary Centers of Spain, we consider that in order to achieve this adaptation to the environment, and ultimately, the named, reinsertion of the subject, it is necessary not only the integration of new skills, that is, the acquisition of basic social competencies, but also that there is a job for these people aimed at understanding and accepting the internal conflicts that have taken place in his life, from his childhood to the present, and which are the engine of consumer and criminal.

It is at this point where we consider the word "know" in the phrase that started the article in all its magnitude, know as information, as culture, such as the ability to read and write, know as communication and social interaction skills, and know as one's awareness same.

It is from the intervention that has been carried out in different periods during these last years and, advancing from the experience and comparison with the results year after year, where the intervention approach that we propose here arises.

We will briefly describe how the work has developed over the months and how the evolution of the methodology to this new intervention proposal occurs:

The initial intervention was carried out by the different modules of the Penitentiary Center. The activity to be developed is offered, consisting of a Drug Dependent Help Group (GAD) and a Social Skills Course, it is encouraged to participate in both activities if appropriate; They are invited to enroll in the group and after conducting an interview and passing a selection process, the working groups are formed taking into account their homogeneity and the final list of participants and the reserve list are drawn up to cover possible vacancies.

Criteria for selection:

• Adequate interest and motivation.
• Stay at the center during the months that the Program lasts.
• Literacy level.
• Knowledge of Spanish (medium level of comprehension and expression that allows the
  active participation in the group)
• Real need for improvement in social skills and attention to drug addiction problems.
• Acceptance of the following standards:
  1. Compulsory attendance and punctuality.
  2. Assistance in adequate physical and mental conditions that allow them to integrate and participate actively so that learning is consolidated.
  3. Respect for the other members of the group, the professionals, the environment and the material used for the activity.
  4. Active participation and performance of tasks to fulfill the objectives of the Program.

Program exclusion criteria:

• No use.
• Any expression of verbal or physical violence.
• Attending under the influence of any psychoactive substance that hinders performance.
• Manifest repeated demotivation or attitudes and behaviors that hinder the work of the group.

During the sessions the contents are worked on, the participants adapt, over time developing skills and attitudes such such as better listening, greater respect for other positions, an increase in trust, responsibility and acceptance of the rules in the group.

Throughout the development of the Program, the exposed modular activity (Intervention in HHSS and GAD) was complemented with a series of joint intermodular activities, that is, creating a group outside the module, made up of people from different modules, as long as there is no incompatibility between two people due to problems previous. For these common activities, two workshops were held: Gender Workshop and Interculturality Workshop, since they have been identified as issues where it is necessary to work attitudes and behaviors aimed at greater openness, tolerance and I respect.

The objectives of these groups have been:

• Facilitate a space for reflection on human values
• Favor the freedom of expression of each member of the group
• Promote respect for the opinions and beliefs of others
• Identify prejudices, cultural stereotypes, irrational ideas and any other thought or attitude that represents a barrier to interpersonal relationships.

As complementary data, it should be noted that from the beginning of the Program it was considered important that the participants also carry out a sporting activity, therefore that throughout the period we have worked in collaboration with the sports monitor of the Center, who developed a daily activity lasting one hour aimed at promoting healthy habits, to learn the importance of teamwork and the cooperation and effort necessary to achieve a good performance. For many of the participants it has provided the opportunity to perform physical exercise for the first time in a long time, with improvements in their state of mind. general health, reducing anxiety levels and recovering the rhythm of sleep, also for many it has been their first contact with sport in team. This activity was maintained once the Program was over as the inmates insisted on it since they were highly motivated.

It is from the start-up and evolution of these activities and workshops that we begin to work with a new methodology that we call, indirect resourcesThis means using techniques that seem far removed from the reality of each one, as a way to facilitate personal and group work. It is thus possible to eliminate the resistances that arise in the group and in each of the participants, generating a climate of freedom where no one feels forced to talk about himself, but the result shows that the activity leads to it. Through ideas, emotions and sensations produced by these indirect resources, people will express themselves, opening up to the group and deepening their reality.

When we speak of indirect resources we refer specifically to working with chosen texts, with videos, with films, with books, with newspapers, dealing with issues of social reality, generating debates and in this way, so simple and complex at the same time, the internal conflicts of the members of the group.

A fundamental principle of every psychotherapeutic process is that the patient always has resistance to treatment; We refer both to those who come motivated to start a process of change, and those who only come thinking about achieve other types of benefits (secondary benefit - for example in a Penitentiary Center what are called benefits penitentiaries, improvements associated with participating in an activity of the Center, credits, meritorious sheet, permits, sentence reduction according to old code, etc). These people, in a high percentage, are also susceptible to treatment.

In this concrete experience that we are sharing, it should be noted that the inmates did not obtain any specific prison benefits, since it is considered that the direct benefit of the activity is the maximum possible benefit and that they should begin to be aware of this and also value the therapeutic space that was being created and what they obtained with their effort and involvement, I was trying of avoid the so frequent welfare in these contexts of "do something - give me something". In any case, it should be noted that at the end of the group - sadly sooner than we all would have wished and necessary - it had been so good the level of work, participation and attitude of the members of the group that was requested, and obtained, from the Treatment Board a meritorious note for almost all members of the group, equivalent to three credits, according to the current evaluation system, which was an important source of motivation for all they.

Continuing with the theoretical aspects, it must be said that, to a large extent, it is the therapist's job to help eliminate apparent resistance to reach unconscious resistance; the one that emerges from the intrapsychic conflicts that generated the symptom: criminal behavior, drug addiction, phobias, sleep disorders... All these symptoms, so different from each other, are only the tip of an iceberg of the disorder that caused them, less noticeable in appearance but what psychotherapy is dedicated to. It is necessary to look away from the most conspicuous to discover the fundamental. It is necessary to observe the symptom to arrive at the conflict and work on it.

Indirect techniques they allow the patient to deal carefully and not aggressively with all his problems. Based on the chosen content, he associates aspects of his life that would not come to the fore in a direct way. surface What is sought in a treatment are the psychic enigmas by which the subject sick. Discovering these psychic conflicts is a painful task. It requires confronting the conflicts that the symptom tried to disguise.

Symptoms work masking the conflict that needs to be thought about. The subject suffers from his symptom, but at the same time he needs it to hide the conflict that he cannot elaborate. It is a denial of the conflict, which is only disguised, in no case eliminated. We could say that it is a trap. The subject suffers without knowing why. It is not difficult to put yourself in the place of the initiator of a treatment. If this conflict has been avoided for so long, dealing with it by choosing health over the symptom requires severe pain that will have to be redirect with great care and for as long as the patient himself, or rather his work-ups or resistance lifting, pointing out. In the case of our group, the symptoms are extremely serious for them and for society, so the treatment is makes it essential and the methodology to carry it out must be very careful, adequate and focused on the here and now (Rubio, 1994).

Continuing with our experience in the Penitentiary Center, at this point where the need arises to work in a deeper and more complex way, evolving from "training groups" to psychotherapeutic groups; since it is in this process where the subject begins to discover conflicts that until that moment were covered up by misfit and criminal attitudes and behaviors.

The work is going to consist of get to know and accept these internal conflicts underlying factors to favor behavior change and relationship with the environment, that is, to achieve greater personal balance and greater adaptation to the environment.

The word therapy comes from the Greek word therapeutic which means assistant or one who cares for another. Therefore, psychotherapy will mean caring for or assisting the spirit, heart or being of another person (Kleinke, 1995)

The Group Psychotherapy methodology allows group members to build an individual project by having new coping strategies that were unknown to them before treatment through the similarity of conflicts, the identification with each other, mutual listening to internal problems, the contradictions observed in other members of the group, the multitude of possible choice alternatives to resolve conflicts, the different expression of the affectivity of each member of the group and the different forms of manifestation of the behavior transgressive

Obviously indirect resources are used and selected with a criterion determined by the psychologists responsible for the group. Materials are chosen that help in the group process, it does not consist of moving from one topic to another, since the Conflict is very great, it is something that must be controlled a lot to open and close issues and the consequent conflicts.

It's very important the work of the psychologist, guiding the group, favoring that resources are well used to obtain advantage of them, rescuing and reflecting all the experiential expressions, from the emotion, facilitating the making of contact with oneself and with the rest. It is a very serious process and one that supposes a strong wear and tear due to, as has already been said previously, the level of conflict. so high, the difficulty of working in this environment due to, among other things, the precariousness of means, time and space. That is why in this new form of intervention we propose the colotherapy as a work tool that will be useful for the group and for professionals, favoring a greater integration of the different factors of the personality of each individual:

1. Because therapists are better able to observe conflict internal of each subject since the way of intervening must be different for each one.
2. Therapists redirect the content of conflicts that emerge during the session; the starting point always emerges with an irrational idea that must be redirected during the intervention favoring the process of change.
3. In our experience, all three therapists have performed a different and complementary role within the group to achieve the common goal. These three roles have been: normative role, emotional role and rational role. What the subject projects on the outside towards these three roles will help to integrate them within his personality as occurs in the socialization process from childhood.
4. Therapists reinforce reflections or behaviors aimed at adaptability and to non-transgression, so that the rest of the members of the group capture in other colleagues adaptive or less symptomatic mechanisms and that through closer models the acceptance process is higher.
5. To observe the tensions that build up in the group and that are projected onto the therapists, so that the effect produced in them is to release that tension and not to accumulate the herself.

As we said, the discovery of psychic enigmas is a costly, hard and above all painful task. Anyone who faces treatment will discover unknown areas that until now did not surface due to the impossibility of tolerating them. The subject becomes ill - physically or socially - for trying to avoid the pain that the knowledge of his conflict would suppose. He puts in place defense mechanisms that hide the reality of what he feels. But trying to avoid it does not solve the conflict, but it appears disfigured through symptoms and does so with more and more power.

This group process in an institution such as prison is of greater intensity than in other contexts. This is a population of transgressors, to which it is necessary to be able to transmit the relationship with the law.

The relationship with the law is something that does not exist in their minds and that therefore you have to build. It has to establish a subjective relationship with the law where they can internalize guidelines, norms and rules. In the evolution of an individual this internalization takes place in early childhood. These subjects, for the most part, have never acquired them since they have not had formative patterns of adaptability but rather dysfunctional relationships that are conducive to pathogenic symptoms. Furthermore, we believe that parental role models have been conducive to transgression.

In order to have a relationship with institutional and social law, it is necessary to build it first within your psychic organization. This is our task: to ensure that in the future insertion project they have their own tool, that they have built an internal framework that they have lacked since childhood.

In this way they will be able to keep a job, accept a boss's law, tolerate frustration; to be able to accept the external ones from internal guidelines: this is the internal mechanism that regulates behavior and therefore non-transgression.

Within the studies of sociology and social psychology, the concept of social deviance has been extensively treated. One of the fundamental approaches is that of Merton who identified anomie, absence of norms, with social deviation, as the conflict suffered by the individual before the contradiction that arises between the aims or goals that has been proposed and the existing means, depending on the place he occupies in the stratification Social. The central hypothesis proposed by Merton is this: anomalous behavior can be considered as a symptom of dissociation between the culturally prescribed aspirations, and the socially structural pathways to achieve these aspirations.

A culture may be such that it induces individuals to focus their emotional convictions on the complex of culturally proclaimed ends, with much less emotional support for prescribed methods of achieving those purposes. Such is the situation that we are interested in analyzing here, that is, cultures where the important thing is to achieve certain ends, regardless of by what means. The most efficient procedure from the technical point of view is thus chosen, whether legitimate or not, becoming the preferred method. If this process continues, society becomes unstable and what Durkheim called "anomia" (or lack of norm).

Thus, culture imposes the acceptance of three cultural axioms: first, everyone should strive toward the same lofty goals, since they are available to everyone; second, the apparent failure of the moment is but a station on the road to ultimate success; and third, the real failure lies in reducing or giving up ambition. There is a deviation of criticism from the social structure towards oneself.

We must now ask ourselves what are the possible adaptive reactions of the people of a culture that, like the one described, gives great importance goals-success and has increasingly moved away from an equivalent importance of institutionalized procedures to achieve those goals. goals.

The social structure examined produces a tendency towards anomie and divergent behavior. When cultural importance shifts from the satisfactions derived from the competence itself to an interest almost exclusively due to the result, the resulting tendency favors the destruction of the structure regulatory. Excessive interest in a pecuniary goal forces us to seek alternative means, institutionalized norms are broken, and anomie is given way.

Family is the main chain of transmission for the diffusion of cultural norms to the new generations. However, it transmits to a large extent only what is accessible to the parents' social stratum. Not infrequently, on the other hand, children are capable of discovering and assimilating cultural uniformities even when they are implicit and have not been taught as rules.

The child is also laboriously engaged in discovering and acting according to the paradigms of cultural valuation, hierarchy of people and things, and conception of objectives estimable. The projection of the parents' ambitions on the child is also of fundamental importance.

When there are high aspirations but few real opportunities to fulfill them, divergent behaviors are favored. Anomia means difficulty in predicting social relationships, since there are no rules, or they were destroyed.

From this point of view, it is therefore necessary that the inmates establish goals from their reality and that the necessary means or resources are provided to achieve such ends, not assistance resources, but their own, that arise of the liberation of their psychic conflicts, of a greater confidence in themselves and in the ability to know and express their emotions.

We have briefly exposed some theoretical concepts to introduce as from the social sciences, psychology clinical, social psychology and sociology, have dealt with deviant behaviors trying to know them and alleviate them.

Any professional who works in contexts of social exclusion knows the complex roots of the problem, which is related to the marginalized person, with their closest environment, and often with structural deficiencies in the social system. For this reason, it is more necessary for us to share our experience in an attempt to combine intervention efforts, from a real and possible experience. Raising the need to work on the individual, on the environment and on his perception of himself and therefore on his perception of his environment. The institutional environment is difficult to modify but we have been able to test an intervention that favors self-knowledge, generating greater adaptability to the environment.

One of the most ingrained desires of the human being is to want complete and quick solutions to resolve conflicts. This also happens with psychotherapeutic treatments. There are methods that seem to be magical but after a certain time, the fringes that were loose again emerge. It is difficult to tolerate that we cannot solve everything or that we cannot do everything we would like to do, that we have limitations, shortcomings. Setting yourself too high a goal aggravates the conflict, makes it more solid. We see this in those people who work until they are exhausted, in those who are excessively meticulous with order and cleanliness, in those who do not they enjoy any activity that they propose, or in those who have definitively broken with social norms because they feel that they cannot adapt, to join the external demands, the inmates in a penitentiary, maintain very positive expectations of their future life, they need believe in it, but it is also important that they build that idea from the reality of their possibilities, from their fears and shortcomings, building an option solid internal.

There is always a better life that they have not chosen and for which they suffer. It would be to stop living for not being able to live it all. And instead, you have to build the option of living valuing yourself, your freedom, and respecting the inevitable limits and frustrations.

The conflict we seek appears in the imbalance between what the subject does and what he actually wants to do and detecting what the patterns are - always repetitive - who are keeping this distance, this is going to be the goal of the psychotherapy. The criminals, the people who fill the prisons, for the most part, are clear examples of the setting in motion of a pattern that prevents living what one really wants.

We therefore consider that the evolution of the Program has been satisfactory allowing the introduction of more complete treatment elements from which more stable and lasting changes can be obtained.

The complexity of the psychotherapeutic intervention, the high number of people who remained participating in the groups and the greater number of hours of intervention aimed at the psychotherapeutic treatment of the inmates' pathology, suppose a treatment progress within the prison environment that would be interesting to consider when planning future intervention programs and resource management in the face of current prison treatment and in the future.

We dare to believe and propose from our experience and training the need for riskier and more innovative interventions within prisons, always by qualified professionals, who allow work from a global psychological perspective, emotions, cognitions, behaviors, as well as body work that allows inmates to become aware of their emotions, releasing the whole chronic muscular tensions of the body, which act as armor protecting the individual from painful emotional experiences and threatening.

Obviously we are convinced of the need to work from global interventions, No limit specified in advance of time, as well as the importance of evaluating the interventions, to be able to learn and continue to improve and that the work is not parceled, but can be shared by the different professionals interested in improving and advancing with enthusiasm and with effort in the intervention within the environment penitentiary.

WORKING EXAMPLE: Brief sample of how indirect resources have worked in therapeutic work.
Below we collect a terrifying fragment of Letter to Kafka's father and we will point out some brief notes from the sessions following its reading in the group:

<< (...) I can directly remember a single event from my early years; maybe you remember it too. One night, at the same time that I was whimpering, I was asking for water incessantly; certainly not so much out of thirst, but probably a little to annoy and a little to entertain me. Since no violent threat was successful, you pulled me out of bed, carried me to the balcony, and left me there alone in my nightgown, standing before the closed door. I don't mean to say that this was wrong; perhaps otherwise they would not have been able to really rest all night, but with this I want to characterize your educational methods and the effect they had on me. It is clear that this time I became obedient, but at the cost of some internal trauma. Years later, I was still haunted by the tormenting vision of that gigantic man, my father, who ultimately For instance, almost without cause I could come one night and transport myself from the bed to the balcony: to such an extent I was a nullity for him >>.

One of the feelings that can be more clearly appreciated in people in prison is anger, misguided aggressiveness, therefore, one of our objectives was to allow create a careful and controlled space where to express aggressiveness and channel it towards the object of pain and allow after the expression of anger, the expression of sadness and pain hidden. This fragment, as an indirect resource, allowed many of the participants to tell someone for the first time, relationships that would have caused them profound pain, childhood memories, fears, feeling that nothing was happening if others knew about this, realizing that other people had also been through things The similarities and the controlled dramatization of that emotion allowed some members of the group to heighten their awareness and have a reassuring experience.

Some accounts of participants in the group

"My mother would hang me from the shower bar and leave me there for hours and beat me while I was hanging there" (curiously while he tells it he laughs and seems to be very carefree, the anger comes out when he thinks that someone could do that to his child. He doesn't matter that much, but his son does. - We work on all of it)
"I started looking for the drug for my mother and she gave it to me to try, when I was well and unhooked she would put me on so that she was she is happy with her, to be with her, that's why I can't see her, if I see her I'll get hooked ”(We work the shame that others know that the mother is drug addict. Mothers are a certain kind of "myth" in prison symbology and we have observed that on very few occasions they have been able to speak about them, except in a positive way. For this person it was a very hard but at the same time reassuring experience)
“Everyone laughed at my father, he was a pring, I don't want to be a pring” (We work: what does he do to not be a "Pringado"?, we reflect to him how his aggressiveness is a way to protect himself from this fear of being similar to his dad.

We try to recover part of his identity, what is he like?)
The film "American Beauty" and the subsequent work carried out from it, was the only possible way to approach the subject of the mother, the image of the mother and being able to speak freely about what the relationship or experience with her. The triggering element was the character of the extravagant boy's passive mother, feelings of Anger and grief for the passive mother, although she compromises, accepts herself, it is difficult for her to express negative feelings.

AUTHORS 'NOTE: We want to dedicate this work to some prison officials who called us “those of the neighborhood cinema” because we became stronger to value our work methodology. And to all the inmates we have known in this time, without condemning or justifying them, only from the proximity of having shared a very intense personal and professional experience, and with the solidarity of knowing that they suffer and that perhaps they did not have opportunities.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Psychosocial intervention experience in a penitentiary center, we recommend that you enter our category of Legal psychology.

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• Some indirect resources used: Texts from Letter to Kafka's father, The little prince, Videos: American Beauty, Family, A day of rage, Idiots.