Synanonn.
/ˈsɪnənɒn/ The name of a U.S. foundation concerned chiefly with the rehabilitation of drug addicts through group therapy; also (with lower-case initial) the method of psychotherapy practised in its centres (see also quot. 1963). Frequently attributive.
ΚΠ
1961 Time 7 Apr. 33/1 Synanon offers more than a few cures.
1961 Time 7 Apr. 33/1 The Synanon system cannot work until the addict really decides..to kick the habit.
1963 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 69 135/1 The free, unrestricted interaction in small groups called ‘synanons’.
1965 L. Yablonsky Tunnel Back p. viii Synanon is a community of former addicts and criminals.
1965 L. Yablonsky Tunnel Back p. viii The word ‘synanon’ originated with a newly arrived addict... In his attempt to say two ‘foreign’ words, ‘symposium’ and ‘seminar’ in the same breath, he blurted out ‘synanon’.
1965 L. Yablonsky Tunnel Back vi. 137 The small-‘s’ synanon is the group psychotherapy of the total Synanon social structure.
1969 Guardian 16 Aug. 7/3 Synanon's communities are not unlike Socialist communes... Everything is free, everyone ‘mucks in’.
1969 Guardian 21 Aug. 8/4 Spinrad's latest novel..examines the process by which psychotherapy has become a religious experience, spawning synthetic cults like scientology..and the Synanon game.
1976 J. Rowan Ordinary Ecstasy iv. 44 The essence of the Synanon approach is direct aggressive confrontation of the one group member by one or more other members.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1986; most recently modified version published online September 2018).
<
n.1961