Johnson Model Intervention

Vernon Johnson, the founder of the Johnson Institute associated with the Minnesota model of treatment, described the process of intervention that has been widely used in motivating alcoholics-addicts to seek treatment in his books I'll Quit Tomorrow and Intervention: How to Help Someone Who Doesn't Want Help. The Johnson intervention is based on the disease model of addiction. There is a need to forcefully motivate the alcoholic to enter treatment because the alternatives are dire. The Johnson intervention is seen as a dynamic, emotionally charged, confrontation by significant persons in the alcoholic's-addict's life.

The major reason for the need for forcefulness in the Johnson intervention model is the impenetrable denial systems developed by alcoholics-addicts. These denial systems are often used to explain the difficulty of motivating ...