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Archway he had three years of formal therapy with the psychiatrist Leon
Redler but says nothing about the interpretive aspect of their interactions and
instead emphasizes the performative techniques that evolved there (Burns
2002, 14-15):
We obviously had to find ways of coping with . . . extreme and distressing be-
haviors that did not contradict our philosophy of not interfering violently with
what might be valuable inner experience. We learned the hard way, perhaps the
only way. At Kingsley Hall, when a resident had screamed for forty-eight hours
continually and we were trying to have dinner, someone briefly sat on him with
his hand over his mouth. For a moment we had calm and silence but of course
it could not last. He soon started screaming and running about again. This did
not work.
Compassion, understanding, acceptance, all these were important and nec-
essary. But they were not sufficient. Eventually we found a way to contain and
lovingly control the behavior of a person under stress. We needed to do this
for the sake of our own peace of mind and also because of the problems that
occurred when a person took their screaming or nakedness into the outside
world. . . . One resident at Archway . . . behaved in such distressing ways that
we had to give her total attention. She would fight, kick, scream, pick up a
knife, urinate in the kitchen or walk out the door, down our street and into the
street of shops completely naked. She was nevertheless beloved by many of us.
She was the first person to receive twenty-four-hour attention. To control her
violence and keep her from going outside naked we had to keep her in the com-
mon space and make sure someone was always with her. We found this painful
at first, but over months the twenty-four-hour attention became an institution
of its own, and a major way of restoring order to community life.
“Twenty-four-hour attention” was a technique sui generis at Archway. In this
passage it appears to have a purely negative function, but it quickly developed
a positive valence, too (15-16): “Usually a group will gather and there will
be something of a party or learning atmosphere. Change will occur not only
in the person in crisis but in others who are there. . . . A resident may wish
to attempt some project, exploring his inner world, overcoming his loneli-
ness, his fear or his sadness, or coming off medications, drugs and alcohol. If
the support group is large and strong enough a resident may request similar
twenty-four-hour attention; or he may be encouraged to accept twenty-four-
hour care, for example to come off phenothiazines or other substances.” Other
techniques were introduced to Archway from the outside, largely, it seems, by
