Turning Lives Around

About the Book

The Fort Knox Story: Wartime Therapy of Army Offenders is an account of a remarkable experiment during World War II that gives us a blueprint for an effective correctional community in the Twenty First Century. On the rolling hills of Kentucky, not far from the Fort Knox Gold Depositary, Col. George L. Miller led an intrepid band of Army reservists and mental health professionals in a seminal fight for the hearts and minds of thousands of general prisoners, returning a significant number to combat duty.

The Fort Knox Story tells us what went on in this battle - in its patched-together shacks, training halls, and combat fields – that presages those to come when we campaign to win back our prisons. Basic to both is a prison, a secure place of containment, but also of recovery from alienation, personal and social. There, as we wrest control of the cliques and gangs - through group therapy, media, education, and recreation - we collaborate in creation of a “normal” culture,  that by its very nature results in positive change.

The American Army accepted, even welcomed Fort Knox’s graduates, their success evidence of ongoing support and guidance. In The Fort Knox Story we envision that the future correctional community will be a “university within walls,” training ground of a range of professions, and backup to an extramural system of support and guidance for its graduates. With many campuses, it will amount to a school for living, as well as institute for research in the causes and treatment of crime and deviance.

About the Author

Ft. Knox was an epiphany for Dr. Abrahams. Sensing America to be in danger from Hitler and Hirohito, he had volunteered for service prior to World War II. His desire for combat action was frustrated by the ambiguities of a rapidly expanding Army. However, he became fully engaged in a daily and sometimes dangerous fight in heartland America for the minds and hearts of soldiers lost to the Armed Forces by reason of psychopathy.

In that combat he found a way to reach alienated individuals through their groups, and has been since learning from that success in a long career as psychoanalyst. This has led to pioneering in work specializing in the severe disorders - in prison, clinic, maximum security hospital, and private practice.

Born in Dallas, Texas in 1916, he was educated in New York City, attended City College of New York and Emory University (M.D. in 1939). He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and Member of both the San Diego and Washington Psychoanalytic Societies. He is Co-author, with Edith Varon, of Maternal Dependency and Schizophrenia: Mothers and Daughters in an Analytic Group, International Universities Press, 1953.