2: Timeline

After collecting my PDF timeline of events in Adventure Therapy I went on to conquer the World Wide Web’s version of a timeline for Psychotherapy and Psychology.  To my surprise the connection between Psychology, Psychotherapy and Adventure Therapy was much more fluid than I had imagined.

For the purposes of my intellectual journey I began in 1892, which was the year that The American Psychological Association was founded along with the first camp for girls, Camp Arey in New York.  Secondly I discovered in 1918 a compulsory school began with the result of mass learning of individuals from diverse backgrounds.  Some students showed up to school in good health while some tended to learn slower than peers resulting in physical and mental examinations in schools.  Four years later (1922) Camp Ramapo in New York was founded with the specific purpose to work with delinquent and problem children in a summer camp setting.  Three years after Camp Ramapo (1925), marked the first year that school psychology training programs were offered at New York University at an undergraduate and graduate level.  Following these events other camps such as Camp Wawokiye in Ohio, founded in 1936, would follow Camp Ramapo in its footsteps. 

The 40’s marked a further progression in the AT, Psychology and Psychotherapy relationship.  In 1945 the Journal of Clinical Psychology was founded and a year later a foundation camp was started the Dallas Salesman Club Camp.  The Dallas Salesman Club Camp had the explicit goal of treating boys with emotional problems and serves as the current model for many year-around therapeutic camps in existence today.  Some of theses well-known organizations are the Eckerd Youth Alternatives, Three Springs, Wilderness Road Camping Association and the National Association of Therapeutic Wilderness Camps. 

In 1963 Lawrence Kolberg introduced the idea for the sequence of morality development.  These stages of self-focused, other focused and higher focused moralities provide a better understanding of how morality is held throughout one’s life.  In The same year the idea of observational learning was introduced in the development of personality. Preceding this event one of the most well known organizations Outward Bound was came to the United States in 1932 and focused on character development in youth.  These psychological developments no doubt had influence on the furthered development of Outward Bound practices.

The 70s and forward really proved to be a time in which youth with disabilities and behavioral issues came to be further recognized in the public eye.  In 1973, VisionQuest formed as one of he first private for-profit organizations that integrated the outdoors for rehabilitation of adjudicated and behaviorally challenged youth.  Two years later, The All Handicapped Children Act was passed requiring all public schools to serve students with a broad range of disabilities, which triggered an enormous growth in the number of school psychologist practitioners.   In the 1980s the Therapeutic Adventure Professional Group (TAPG) was committed to the development of adventure-based programming in a therapeutic setting.  In the 1980’s psychological developments were also occurring as well Howard Gardner introduced his theory of multiple intelligence (1983) and the American Psychological Society establishment in 1988. 

When going through and attempting to shift through the dates, there are broader and more direct lines that can be drawn between the concepts.  Moving forward it will be interesting to see how AT, psychology and psychotherapy influence one another.

Citations:  

Heffner Media Group, I. (2003, August 10) . History of Psychology (387 BC to Present). Retrieved from http://allpsych.com/timeline.html

New York Association of School Psychologists (1990) . History of School Psychology Timeline [data file] . Retrieved from http://www.nyasp.org/pdf/sp_timeline.pdf

Gass, Michael A., Lee Gillis, and Keith C. Russell. (2012).  Adventure Therapy: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Routledge.