Layering on some additional detail. Not to belittle all mental health professionals, but they are not neutral observers and referees. They tend to cram everything into the Oppressor-Victim-Rescuer triad. They also have no skin-in-the-game. They could have 15 patients commit suicide and there would be no push-back. They could have 100 patients decide they have "gender-dysphoria" and mutilate their genitals and the mental health professional would probably be applauded.
Friends go out of their way to convince the miscreant that he is losing and needs to try harder to stay in the tribe. When you are parenting a miscreant, you are also fighting the bench and the referee.
One story: "Friends" told a miscreant to tell "mom" that he had seen dad cheating on her. Miscreant had been convinced by his friends that he would get twice as many Christmas and birthday presents and that on "dad" weekends he would be left unattended and could drink dad's hooch and smoke dad's weed.
Parents, sadly, exist to be manipulated and strip-mined in this model. The reason is because "...there is no other source of resources...so they have to manipulate and strip-mined..."
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Adding an additional layer of detail and letting the ripples spread.
Parents of friends teach kids to tell lies. When a kid goes down the "miscreant" fork in the road, their options for friends becomes severely limited. They are fishing from the bottom of the barrel. Their friend's parents are using them to harvest prescriptions for controlled substances with street-value or for personal consumption. In the worst cases, they are using their kids as bait to sweeten-the-pot for the johns. Honest, I am not making this up.
Universities create novel, "cool" new theories that have no better (and likely have even worse) predictive capability than older theories. For example, Evan could be seen in the light of the Oedipus Complex (1899) where he sees himself in competition with his dad for his mother's attention. Dad is weak. Dad displaced Evan as the baby of the family. Obvious solution that springs from Oedipus diagnosis: Show Evan other ways, healthy and productive ways, he can gain his mother's attention.
In my experience the more highly educated the more 'insulated' the individual us from the real world. A recent experience with my sister reinforced this idea - exact same upbringing for the first 18 years, but since getting her masters and relocating to a blue hive, she's not the same anymore...
ReplyDeleteThe "Change " when all the social services, social media and social child "protection " services runs into burning human flesh and chaos is an awkward period where responsible adults trying to rescue the troubled youth can get into lawfare and even jail.
ReplyDeleteMany posters here seem to assume that "The Child Protection System " is disabled BUT the good police woman CHOSE not to involve CPS in Evan's clear insolence.
The next officer Evan runs into when NOT IF he runs away may not be so wise and "follow the Book " to report suspected Abuse to Child Protection System
Michael
I think your last paragraph lights on something, at least by implication. Implied within the “suspected abuse” paradigm is, generally, the assumption bruised kid —> abused kid. This officer saw through that, but not really because she saw the flaw in the assumption. She simply recognized he was a punk and chose to believe him that he had gotten in a fight with a kid. Evan got himself dropped back off quietly and unceremoniously in part because he was (sullenly) honest. He may decide soon that lying doggedly is more likely to get him what he wants, which is out of Copperhead Cove.
DeleteThis will be a very interesting character arc and subplot.
The problem is psychiatry, psychology, therapy isn't actual science. It's rubber chicken science. A good ass whooping at the correct ages can do far more towards creating a sociable responsible human than all the "therapy" on the planet.
ReplyDeletePsychology is an industry, not a science. Search Tana Dineen for her book detailing the abuses this industry has inflicted on humanity.
DeleteI think most mental health professionals are worse than witch doctors. Some people really need help that only chemicals can provide, but those are just a few out of a hundred.
ReplyDeleteIt's always playing the parents against one another...
ReplyDeleteFor years, our discussions at home were summed up by ‘people are too far away from the farm.’ Too far from real responsibility, real life and death, and truth. I’ve heard echoes of that sentence over the past few years from other people.
ReplyDeleteI’m more convinced Amish or farm types, and some others, are generally saner and healthier.
Southern NH
"They could have 100 patients decide they have "gender-dysphoria" and mutilate their genitals and the mental health professional would probably be applauded." This is the rule rather than the exception now.
ReplyDeleteJust wow.
ReplyDeleteA spark of interest in the wood in spite of himself. Well played. Valerie in NJ
ReplyDeleteThis chapter rings a bell with me. I am 78 now but I became a ward of the state at two years old after my father murdered my mother. I was placed in an orphanage until my father got out of prison when I was nine years old. I lived with him for four years when I again became a ward of the state which placed me with my older sister and her husband. That arrangement lasted a year because I was every bit the sort of problem child EVAN demonstrates. The state placed me in a 'home for troubled boys' to which I would have matriculated had I remained in the orphanage. I graduated high school and joined the Army. I had the experience of dealing with a variety of psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers throughout my childhood. As the commenter Dan said, nothing teache4s like a good ass whipping applied at the proper moment, I had them, they must have worked.
ReplyDelete