Who is fritz redl?

Answer 1

Fritz Redl was a pioneer in residential treatment as well as psychoeducational interventions with children and youth . Austrian born Redl was a teacher who worked with August Aichhorn for a time. He obtained his PhD in psychology and qualified as a psychoanalyst at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society where he did training with Anna Freud. Like many others he immigrated to the United States prior to World War Two and in 1944 he and his student David Wineman founded Pioneer House on behalf of the Detroit Group Project, as a home for boys aged eight to twelve with behavior problems (Redl and Morse 1991, 5). Redl and Wineman developed small group treatment based on caring, realistic, and sophisticated interventions for working with troubled youth and children (Redl and Morse 1991, 5). Their approach was based on specific functions of the ego, leaning towards Ego Psychology. One of their best known techniques was the Life Space Interview (LSI), a menu of twelve different ego support strategies for helping the individual reflect upon and learn from important interactions and crises (Redl and Morse 1991). Redl believed that residential settings for troubled youth should be therapeutic environments staffed with skilled and supportive personnel and abhorred placing children in institutions of detention. He advocated giving love and affection with no strings attached, as well as providing the child with gratifying life situations irrespective of their deservedness.