The Process of Change

Dr Maxwell Jones, known worldwide as one of the founders of the therapeutic community movement, recounts his seven years at Dingleton Hospital in The Process of Change (originally published in 1982) in an autobiographical style. He describes how a mental hospital, which began with a traditional hierarchical authority structure, was transformed into a democratic social system. He believes that his experience constitutes a model relevant to other organizations, as diverse as schools, businesses, churches, industry, local government, and prisons. The special value of the book lies in its presentation of both the theory of the process of change and an illustrative account of putting that theory into practice. Maxwell Jones argues that most educational systems fail to develop the potential present in everyone and that it is possible to evolve a democratic system that supports the process of change, fostering growth and creativity. A social structure such as the one introduced at Dingleton Hospital—built on principles of frequent interpersonal and group interaction, listening and learning as a social process, and two-way communication of content and feeling at all levels of the hierarchy—inevitably leads to change in motivated individuals. Dr Jones demonstrates how this transformation involves information sharing, shared decision-making, interaction, and growth. He suggests that, if this model were adopted in educational systems, it could profoundly influence future generations by helping them avoid prejudice, work through crises in ways that promote learning, recognize the limitations of reductive ‘scientific’ thinking, and question the power of technology to solve global problems.