" I am guilty and I am ashamed of myself," are the terms of the contract a child must agree to when entering the
rehabilitative institution. Obviously, the girl is pressured into committing herself for fear of
remaining in the clutches of the law.
She does not really have a choice and is made to understand the urgency of her situation, that it is a matter of life and death.
I have seen the petrified stance of the new comers. The programs can only work for those children who can accept their own capitulation, if they are tired of resisting and realize that they need help. During the initial interview, they are required to confess their crimes, to take responsibility for them.
The instilled initial attitude is one of both guilt and gratitude toward the specialists, some sort of well intentioned captors. This is how all the children I spoke to perceive them, although they do not dare say so to their faces for fear of retaliation —even after having spent over a year in the facility and seeming to be progressing well, that is, applying the problem solving techniques they have been taught are to be used to manage their anger or resentment.
When I reported those remarks to the adults, I was met with a look of doubt, discomfort or even anger. They told me that the children feel safe and trusting there, that their discontent is just a sign that they are not yet cured and ready to reintegrate themselves into the real world.
In order to maintain my contact with the kids, I quickly stopped reporting anything which might upset the adults. To expect them to see things the way I do, and especially the way the children do, seems to be a loosing battle. Just like the children, I was developing a secret agenda.
For the staff, to deny the reality of the situation, may be the only way they can perform in this environment and still feel useful, assuming they don’t feed on the children’s resentment (which is always a possibility). It might be interesting to conduct a study about what drives those people who do to opt for this profession.
Of course, I know, these children are guilty of having transgressed the laws of society. They have robbed, destroyed property, disrupted school, verbally and sometimes physically, assaulted others —sexually, too; they have used and abused drugs and alcohol, and have dangerously played with weapons. They are small time gangsters and potentially serious criminals.
No treatment is possible unless they acknowledge that their behavior is harmful to themselves as well as to others. True. But the acknowledgement should come in time and of their own accord, not extracted from them.
Since we know that all these youths have grown in families where violence was the norm, and that in acting as they do they are loyal to this norm, that they are actualizing their own victimization, to make the avowal of their guilt a precondition of the treatment reinforces their original negative self-definition which is responsible for their behavior. To demand a confession of their sins is to ask them to regard themselves as essentially bad, that they not only bear their image but own it. What the institution then sets out to do is change this “bad” image into a “good” one. Of course, in the process, the person, the true self, is excluded.
When we seek to build character on shame and guilt, we turn self-awareness into self-consciousness. The creative energies of the self which arise with the development of awareness imply the dissolution of the self-image whose functions are similar to those of the super-ego: the internalization of someone else’s standards. To become responsible, to mature, is to move from dependence upon environmental support to self support.
But this can only be attained if the functionings of the self are freed, and primarily freed from the image of the self - in this case, a bad, a condemned, image. Simply put: why would a person set out to discover her goodness if she is convinced that she is bad? How can a person grow independent, conscious, aware, if the source of her goodness is external to herself?
These are questions which the people who run the institutions dare not ask because they fear freedom as being potentially an evil force. Because they do not believe in essential goodness, their goal is to instill into those adolescents the tools of control with which they can govern themselves. For them, the incorporation of authoritarian methods of control opens the road to self-control. Actually, all it does is shape authoritarian, disciplining individuals. Here is an example:
Carol is an intelligent, witty and beautiful eighteen year old girl who has been an institutional resident for almost two years. From a badly abused child she turned into an extremely rageful, high-tempered drug and alcohol using, defiant teenager. So unmanageable was she, and so frightening that Social Rehabilitation Services authorities saw fit to chain her to a pole when she was left alone outside to smoke a cigarette.
She is now extremely proud of being able to control herself. Not only does she brag about it but she also sets herself up for the other residents as an example of good behavior. She denounces any infraction and demands that rules be strictly applied against whoever has transgressed them. The slightest sign of inconsistency sends her into a rage. She has become a good “cappo” and a good keeper of the law. She has developed a deep sense of her authority and smiles with infinite sweetness when it is pointed out to her that others are afraid of her. The cult of her image is manifest in her hobby: framing pictures of herself which, on various occasions, she gives as presents. However, she is stricken with fear if she has to take a bus on her own.
At the group home I am discussing, once a student has successfully demonstrated during the four week trial period that “she can benefit from the program,” she moves to Level One. She is then expected to act in such ways which demonstrate that her “behavior is under control,” that she can identify the issues she will be working on, and that she will be a responsible member of the community. The major task for the Level One student is to develop strong group skills and to identify behavioral patterns and underlying emotions. Here are the ten points of focus as they are spelled out in the policy statement:
The adolescents have to learn how 1) to develop positive communication skills, 2) to use confrontations to express their feelings verbally, 3) to receive confrontations and respond to the feelings of others, 4) to resolve interpersonal conflicts and manage behavior and emotions, 5) to participate actively in groups, house projects and activities, 6) to build a climate of trust through self-disclosure and self-awareness, 7) to identify behavioral patterns and underlying emotions in relation to major events in their lives, 8) to develop problem solving techniques for conflict resolution, 9) to become positive, supportive members of the group, 10) to maintain educational needs.
How the girls respond to all these demands in the daily course of their lives in the group home is carefully evaluated by the staff which is responsible for keeping charts. The chart is a disciplinary tool, a means of measuring -in points- performance and obedience and of teaching that the response to action can be only either punishment or reward. Any learning which is monitored by reward and punishment, as it is in schools, teaches that learning has no value in and for itself, that work is not worth doing for its own sake. But if children do not learn, it is because the subject or task is not interesting to them. Nothing can genuinely be done unless it touches our self- interest.
The self-interest which people in power or authority create through the extrinsic motivations of reward and punishment relates to a secondary self, the self which a young person must allow to be created in place of herself if she is to get the approval of people from whom not to get approval is dangerous. As for obedience, it must come from within. Because unforced obedience is a matter of social courtesy, of reciprocity, a child will obey social rules if the adult respects his needs and wishes, too. Adults have no a priori right to the obedience of children. Although the group home child has grown with principles quite antithetical to those of being respected as a person, she has not grown immune to them. She might first be startled and even overwhelmed by acts of adult respect. But she will quickly adapt to this new mode. I’ve seen it. The point system, however, undermines the very thing it tries to accomplish: teaching responsible behavior (behavior, in the words of its adherents, which has “consequences”).
Essentially, grading fosters separation from oneself and hampers the development of a sense of responsibility for one’s actions. A graded act is alien to its actor. The grader owns it, not the performer. Instead of learning how to regulate herself, the child learns to perform in order to gain approval, or out of fear of disapproval. In this instance, love is never free; it is always mingled with hate or, at least, fear.
At ----, the kids develop significant attachments to some staff members, attachments which are encouraged since they are seen as being part of the process of building trust. But because at the same time the children fear those they’ve attached to, the children do not learn that loving is something that one can choose. And how can a person, moreover. who has power over one, who can turn on one, be ever fully trusted? — unless, of course, one identifies with that power, which is what happens for some kids (usually the ones who were at first the most intractable).
Just as once it had been instilled in the abused child, now it is instilled in the youth that love is not based on trust but on fear of and admiration for power and control. The only difference between the abusive parent and the care giver is that the former’s power was unreasonably uncontrolled and the latter’s highly reasonably controlled. To realize the harmful effect of such practices seems particularly important when dealing with children who have been abused by their parents and confused by feeling love where hatred was shown. I see these girls as perfect candidates for joining the ranks of battered women not only because there is always the danger of repeating an ingrained, unconscious pattern, but also because the love-fear continuum of their lives while in rehabilitation reinforces this pattern on just as unconscious a level. Indeed, many of the girls who graduated from the program and whom the staff have later heard about have fallen into exploitative relationships.
The adolescents are graded on all aspects of their lives: on how neatly they keep their rooms, on how well they keep them clean, on personal hygiene, personal grooming, on their health and eating habits, on their use of “appropriate language,” on how they use their free time constructively, on how they do the house chores, on how “respectful” they are to themselves, to others, to authority, to property, to how they perform in school, and on how they participate in group. All is matter for evaluation, constantly. The whole of their behavior is under constant scrutiny. Properly, they belong to the institution. Of course, in lengthy seatings it is explained to them what it means to be respectful to oneself or to others or to authority.
In spite of the minute distinctions, the covert goal is to make them realize that all forms of respect, including self-respect, boil down to obedience to authority. The image of oneself in its relation to itself and to others is carved out of a block which the authoritarian standards represent. Total allegiance to those standards, (which do cover the totality of the kids’ existence) robs the individual of the ability to authorize herself, that is to become the author of her behavior, which is based on the awareness of the interrelation between her feelings, emotions, thoughts and actions. The kids are taught to identify their feelings and emotions. But this is done in service to an external authority, which not only defeats completely the purpose of teaching self-guidance and responsibility but also stamps out the creative spirit. There can, in fact, be no authentically responsible behavior without the participation of the creative component of character which is based on the development of perception and imagination.
The people who run the rehabilitative institutions often argue that a method of education which de-emphasizes behavior and morality and focuses on the development of perception, imagination and, thereby, of analytic thinking (which form the basis of freedom) cannot be applied to reeducation. Delinquents or even just originally mistreated youths, they say, need first and foremost to be repaired, which means disciplined. One can tell that they are restored to normal life when their behavior has become acceptable and fits the overall design of things, when, as I have heard it said almost daily, “they can demonstrate that they can take care of things, or when they have it under control.” This is a ridiculous argument. It implies that these youths are broken machines which must be fixed before they can run again while a brand new child is in working order and could thus be molded according to a broader principle of freedom.
Actually, most of these youths act like hungry and angry infants. They love referring to their bodily functions. (Defecation, burping, playing with their genitals are at the center of all their jokes.) It is thus as infants they should be cared for. For sure, their size and strength make them cumbersome, and when angry they can even be scary. If we remember that the screaming, kicking, swearing tough youth is just a baby expressing his frustration and needs, we will understand that restraining her physically is just as cruel as beating a baby who screams for hunger or affection.
Physical restraint of an “out of control” adolescent is part of the practice in all of the rehabilitative facilities. It is a well developed technique which any worker is required to acquire in order, it is said, to know how to prevent the assaultive youth from hurting others or herself. Now how we define assaultive behavior and how we determine what has triggered the alleged assault is important in assessing the need for restraint. Here I can only speak of what I have witnessed and learned about first hand.
A slender seventeen year old girl was once restrained, tackled and thrown to the ground with her arms locked behind her back and then sat upon until she calmed down or offered no more resistance, because she was verbally aggressive while defiantly refusing to obey, in this instance, refusing to go inside the house, instead lingering in the dusk on the broken front steps, sniffing on a cigarette.
In asserting herself she was creating as big a commotion as she could, in other words nothing very reprehensible or dangerous. She had a big tantrum; that’s all.
The staff worker who performed this feat of restraint is a smart, conscientious, tough young woman who prides herself on her overall efficiency and on the fact that the kids “know they can not fool around with her when it comes to obedience and respect,” and who, on the other hand is very chummy with them, offers hugs, asks for hugs, gives presents, inveigles them into confiding in her and then establishes what she calls “a safe distance” because the kids become too dependent and too demanding. She also practices favoritism and thereby creates rivalry and jealousy where she meant to create emulation.
She saw fit to restrain this particular kid because, she contended, her behavior would contaminate others’ behavior, and because she considered the girl needed to feel the power of a force greater than her own and to understand that if she could not control herself she would have to be controlled. The proof that she was right to restrain the girl, she added, is that the kid came the next day to apologize to her, and she appeared thankful to her for having helped her regain control of herself.
What the worker did not know was how deeply resentful the girl truly was, as it emerged in one of my group sessions a month after the event. We were contrasting the past to the present. I ventured to say that here they probably could trust people.
“Trust?” It was the girl who had been restrained jumping in. “No, impossible.”
“But you seem very close to ——-.” I named the woman who had restrained her.
“She is the biggest jerk!” The girl was unequivocal.
Adolescents have a keen sense of what is expected of them and of what adults want to hear. They buy their peace with the hard currency of dishonesty and resignation which are the ingredients of conformity and obedience.
Using restraint is very seriously damaging. In the course of one of my sessions (which I designed to explore the effects and meaning of punishment and discipline), I asked one of the participants to show me what a restraint was, since the issue had come up and since in order to understand fully what type of experience they were referring to, I needed to experience it too.
A particularly sturdy fourteen year old gleefully volunteered. Since I am not a tough and knew her strength, we contracted that she would not hurt me. With great dexterity and with great speed she tripped me, locked my arms behind my back with one hand and forced me to the ground by thrusting my head down with her other hand. And she sat on my back. Never had I felt as crudely helpless, powerless, crushed as well as humiliated.
The girl encouraged me: “You have to resist me! You have to struggle.” I could not. I felt utterly defeated, terribly small.
She must have known what I was experiencing because she had undergone the ordeal for real many times.
Before I could realize what was happening, she lifted me in both her arms and spun me around the way one does a small child. She was laughing with delight. When she delicately put me down, through my own dizziness I saw a kind of shy radiance on her face, a beauty -her beauty- which I had never seen before.
In this adult child reversal situation, she actualized the wish which must go through every child who is overtaken by raging confusion and misery. It is the urge to be picked up, not pushed down, to feel the wonderful strength of the adult, not his mastery, to be overpowered in playfulness, love and safety, not in vengefulness and hatred, to lose all sense of direction, to be made high with dizziness, not deflated and nailed down and crushed with despair. There is indeed great joy, elation and wonder in abandoning oneself to someone else’s power, given that this power does not enslave us to it but frees us from our own mishappenings and thus restores us to our own balance.
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