Defining and understanding the therapeutic community.

The term "therapeutic community" has been used to describe a vast array of milieu therapy techniques; thus the term has come to mean different things to different people. The author defines the therapeutic community through an examination of its historical roots in the British military hospitals of World War II and the development of the treatment concept as an ideology. He classifies therapeutic communities as left, right, or center in their therapeutic ideology. It is in the communities of the center, the least dogmatic and most flexible typology, that the author finds hope for the most effective type of therapy.