Synanon: The Tunnel Back

by Lewis Yablonsky

Book by Yablonsky, Lewis

408 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 1967

Reviews

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

6 stars - game changing and all that jazz. I’ve read Plato's republic, Moore’s Utopia, Butler’s Erewhon and Skinner’s Walden Two to (show-off:) / mention a few names and while this is no vision for a utopian society it does give you a brilliant blue print for one of the fundamental tenets of any society – the ability to talk openly to one another. Never needed more desperately than now by our American friends across the pond. (HWNDU etc etc). In fact this NGO created a mechanism which centred around something called “synanons” which is what delancey street (a similar type of organisation created as an offshoot of Synanon) called “games”. Synanon (capital S) is an organisation which essentially operates as a halfway house between dope fiends, dregs of society (inter alia) and society. If you lock a dog up in a cage for 5 years and let it out into society it will probably bite at the first chance it gets. Chuck Dederich created this NGO out of his proverbial bedroom with zero government aid in the face of huge pressure from the very society he was looking to support, in west Coast USA. Ex-cons and dope fiends would enter this pseudo prison and have to adhere to a strict set of rules and regulations which were robustly foisted onto them or they were asked to leave. The difference was that this place wasn’t run by do goody wannabe philanthropists, it was run by ex-cons and ex dope fiends themselves that had seen the (Synanon) light. The organisation had an incredible success rate and a large majority of individuals who entered the place stayed on and became a part of the fabric - drug free. The mitochondria of the place were the games / synanon sessions.

So what are they? One of the rules of the place was a zero bullshit and zero violence and swearing policy. Chuck the founder realised that that was an untenable scenario when it came to ex-gang members, murders, rapists and the whole shebang so he created essentially super cathartic vitriol explosion sessions which allowed these individuals to let of a lot of steam and a lot more. They were essentially psychotherapy sessions in which individuals would not only bring the elephant into the room but dissect it to pieces before your very eyes. In the sessions you were encouraged to be violently open (without reverting to physical contact) with one another. Chuck quickly realised the benefit that this bought to the organisation and to the individuals. For the first time in their lives they were being asked to drop the tough guy act and be REALLY real. A lot of them found this very hard but the benefits and the proof is in the pudding. The organisation had a huge success rate and counted a large number of individuals who had remained clean for a considerable period of time – zero drugs. It was a miracle. The organisation became a bit religious- fundamentalist and violent and eventually shut down for various other controversial reasons which you can look up on Wikipedia ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanon) but its pseudo-step son, Delancey Street, which I have written about in another review, goes on even today in the same vein. I’m at a management consultancy and I’ve taken a sliver of the vitriolic games / synanon sessions and looked to see how I can apply it in my own workplace. Having open safe conversations which are real and bullshit free could be game changing for the organisation and for how we talk with one another as human beans. Best bit from the book were:
• “The criminal addict when he is acting out his plight tends toward anarchy. He lives outside the law most of the time, he even rejects the confines of a coherent ego; for to accept self is in some measure to accept society’s norms and recognize boundaries for behaviour.”
• “We encourage people as much as possible to make their own recreation. I like to use the worked in its basic sense. It literally means recreating or renewing oneself. We are aware of the dangers of people sucking up entertainment, movies, TV, or even some reading, where you are just kind of a big mouth ingesting it all.”
• “As an ex-corporation executive myself I can look back and see how it might have been most effective. Who knows if there had been Synanon in the corporation I worked for lots of guys including myself operating at a low efficiency for various reasons might have bene reached and mode more productive. It would have had a hell of an effect on the whole organisation if executives and others could communicate person to person, Synanon style."
• “We are in effect discussing a broader problem characteristic of American society. Bureaucracy has produced an increasing problem of family disorganisation, partly as a result of work patterns which has dehumanized the worker. As a cog in the large industrial machine the active use of his primary group faculties is increasingly diminished and lies fallow. At home there is usually another type of secondary relationship situation. Here the machine (e.g. TV, electrical gadgets and so on) also dominates interpersonal relationships. The result is limited primary group communication. People living this way seldom exercise their primary human mechanisms for relating to another person. Imagine the possibility of parents, wives, sons, daughters and husbands putting aside their roles and openly talking to each other person to person?"
• “There is nothing more charming, nothing more satisfying to me than watching people throw away their blinders and begin to live”.