[When does the therapeutic community for drug addicts become ill-treatment?]

In this text, the author tries to answer the following question: When is the therapeutic community for drug addicts becoming the maltreating? To do so, she relies on her own experience as intermediate during 4 (four) years at "The Portage". She explains, in a first place, the philosophy of treatment in this environment and the major psychological reasons that make it an adequate approach for that clientele. Then she comments on the ethical problems of that directing approach, being the attitude and the power of the intermediates. It is in the ethical area that the limits of the intervention lay to the point that if they are slightly exceeded, the intermediates can become the maltreating.