“Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore, / Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, / To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, / and laughingly dash with your hair.” — Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (1855)

The relationship between people and water is not merely a mechanical one for the purpose of hydration, rather it is an affective draw for people towards the aquatic. We relate strongly to our personal and collective imaginations of water and oceanic space. Losing the ability to freely access water from this perspective then relates to problems of properly connecting to this relationship, whether that be water as a means of expression, composure, or relaxation. This connection appears in instances such as feeling water through swimming and showering; or even hearing the rain and simply seeing the ocean. After all, “meditation and water are wedded forever.”

In an interview centering the blue humanities in her book, Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (2006), Maia Szalavitz and I discuss how experiencing oppressive controls over one’s interactions with water is intrinsically punitive due to these experiences that regularly bring water into our lives. These controls are even frequently used specifically as punishment in the Troubled-Teen Industry (TTI), which is the topic of Szalavitz’s research. The term “Troubled-Teen Industry” is one used by individuals critical of a certain type of behavioral modification program and is designed to highlight their uniformity rather than their appearance as isolated programs. Emphasizing the role of water in human expression through this industry pronounces the very foundation of the blue humanities as a means to appreciate this connection of an individual person, and people more broadly, to water.

Szalavitz in Help At Any Cost covers her seminal research into the TTI, which is a multi-billion dollar network of facilities in the United States which pathologizes teenage behavior and parental fears thereof for profit by promising solutions under the guise of therapy. The reality is however much more brutal.

Allegations and lawsuits of abuse are so regular, that the industry is designed to close and reopen locations quickly to evade culpability, even exchanging staff from other programs during the transition. Individuals report inadequate medical attention, physical and verbal abuse, and denial of vital resources among other punitive acts. In her book, Szalavitz elaborates on the history of these programs involved in the TTI, especially its roots in the ostensible addiction “cure” organization Synanon in 1958. This apparent method of curing soon spread into numerous other organizations, which Szalavitz covers, who celebrate the miracle cure of “tough love” that was espoused by Synanon: Straight Incorporated, the North Star wilderness boot camp, the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs (WWASP), and the KIDS program. Tough love follows the idea that “today’s teens are so out-of-control and so morally compromised that only extremely harsh, perhaps even brutal tactics can keep them in line.” Each of these organizations signify the expansiveness of the TTI over the past 30-40 years, following the same or remarkably similar practices that convince parents to send their children to programs or risk losing their child to violence and addiction. Szalavitz tells the stories of several individuals who were forced into these programs, explaining the cult-like nature of these places along with the sorts of punishments inflicted upon the individuals.

After reading Szalavitz’s book and discussing the blue humanities perspective with her, there are connections with water that Help At Any Cost caters to. In the TTI, for instance, nature and hydration are brandished as “natural consequences,” romantic terminology through water covers the egregiousness of the programs, transformative experiences become opportunities for strict fashioning rather than free development, and preventing community building contradicts the tendency of aquatic spaces to force people to work together to survive.

“Natural consequences” pertains to the notion that individuals in these programs will succeed and fail on their own volition. It is however a misuse of the term because the individuals are set up to fail intentionally by their program. Programs often use water as a means to employ this method, such as having people sleep in the rain or not allowing them to drink enough water. This is especially practiced in wilderness programs, whose secluded setting in mountains and riversides marks an easy application of this method.

The romantic terminology likewise plays off perceptions of water as relaxing and soothing to comfort parents and disarm individuals first entering their program. Wilderness programs ostensibly encourage a reconnection with nature in the form of camping, and other indoor programs present water as fun rather than as punishment.

The emphasis on transformation in these programs is significant, and it relates to theories in the blue humanities which focus on change and fluidity. In this case however, transformation is heavily modeled and molded rather than freely permissible, indicating that these programs push individual further away from their connection to water by forcing them into conformity.

And lastly, the blue humanities shows the connection between community and water. Being in oceanic space is a matter of survival, which can be seen in shipwreck narratives. It is a position of vulnerability, and its necessity in nourishment and movement pulls people into working together, which Marcus Rediker explores in Freedom Ship (2025). Szalavitz and I expand on each of these aspects of the human relationship to water through the TTI in our conversation.

Our interactions with water as a species is one of both need and avoidance. Weaponizing these interactions becomes a common tactic in the TTI, subverting one’s relationship with water from one of comfort to one of stress. “They present [restrictions of vital resources in wilderness programs] as natural consequences, but basically this is the consequence of not being given appropriate gear and not being appropriately trained to deal with an environment that you’re thrown into… They are deliberately creating environments where people will be hungry and tired and scared by using nature and not providing the gear that a typical hiker or camper would have. And so you know it is very much using nature as a punishment and not using it as, you know, a source of awe or something that we are learning about together. It is being imposed on you… Water is frequently withheld… This has actually led to dozens of deaths from dehydration and heat exhaustion.”

Despite their soft and inviting names, the programs assume much more intense realities. This trust in the names speaks to our cultural connections to water as spaces of vacation, healing, and recovery. Water therefore draws people in. “They sound like resorts. Like Tranquility Bay, which was the one in Jamaica, or Casa by the Sea or, you know, they have these very innocuous, gentle sounding names that sound like they could be a spa or an ocean resort, or, you know, somewhere you’d actually want to go. And in reality, they are harsh centers of discipline and are not at all a resort. Sometimes they are actually situated on places that may have once been a resort.”

Later, Szalavitz talks about how the individuals who are taken to these places react to the advertising compared to the reality. “[The people of the TTI] set kids up to think, oh, I’m going to the beach and I’m going to, you know, be able to commune with nature and, you know, be by the water and, you know, all of that stuff that implies and then, you know, imprison them in a dark hole where you can’t even hear the ocean let alone swim in or ride a jet ski or have any kind of surfing or whatever.”

The TTI is designed to be a transformative experience, and the blue humanities accepts this type of change over rigidity. In the case of the TTI, however, this transformation is more of a calculated molding than a fluid becoming. “The transformation that they are creating is one of conformity and infantilization, not one of growth and actually, you know, becoming the person you are meant to be because they want you to be the person that your parents want you to be, or the person that they think society wants you to be. And it is generally the kids who are sent who are not fitting in in some way, and this is going to sand the rough edges off.”

Furthering this conformity, sexuality and gender identity are frequent targets for those whose behavior is pathologized and condemned to practices seeking modification. “A lot of these places really emphasize like heterosexuality, sexuality and traditional gender roles, and they try to change children who might be trans or, you know, gay or queer in any way, basically, and make them straight. And that sort of fluidity is also very terrifying to the sort of conformist ethos of these places.”

Preventing community and togetherness, as the TTI does, in turn restricts a common theme in the blue humanities. Aquatic space pulls people together because of factors including a shared external stress such as rain, or an inability to act independently of others such as occupying oceanic space. It’s also important to note that they really undermine solidarity between the kids. Because in order to advance in the program, you have to betray each other and you have to find each other’s weak spots… And so that means that it’s very difficult to build genuine community and solidarity the way people would tend to do in a shared [space]… Part of the way military boot camp works is that… it unites you against the people higher in rank and so like you build this bond with your buddy.

Each Re/View shows how bringing water to the center of research changes how we engage with that research. From this perspective, Szalavitz addresses the blue humanities in how we as people respond to our environments as fluid beings.

A: Have you considered what it looks like when you bring water, and blue humanities thinking in a general sense, to your research?

M: It’s a very unusual perspective and I think, I mean, one of the things that certainly occurred to me was that water is often, and oceans and just bodies of water, are often used as barriers in order to keep people in these places and to prevent them from escaping. And so that’s one kind of obvious way that you might think about it. Another sort of more less obvious way is that, you know, water is fluid and changing and complex, and these places want things to be black and white and to sort of conform to a narrative that is kind of inhumane.