Critical voices concerning the concept of the therapeutic community hardly bear upon the rich development of Dutch therapeutic communities during the past ten years.
The therapeutic community proper as distinct from the therapeutic community movement, offers a rich opportunity for practical applications of concepts, originating in a vast field of theories and therapies. Some developmental lines are:
—No more the theory prevails that rehabilitation is the main target.
The therapeutic community as such is therapeutic: it offers genuine therapy through interpersonal experience and real personal growth.
—The working principles of Jones and Rapoport, supplemented by Bierenbroodspot in Holland, are important but not basic; a therapeutic community is a consequent and logically ordered way of constructing patterns of cooperation between patients and staff, based on a fundamental philosophy for that particular community (Jongerius). This change in view is accompanied by a change in mental attitude; instead of the slogan 'we are all patients here' a new slogan arises: 'we are all therapists here'.
—Many possibilities of conflicts are signalized, which threaten the therapeutic community in its existence, especially from the inside.