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“The Fawns beneath the Gorilla Suits”
By David A. Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP, RPT-S
Andy, a 3rd
grader, is running on the playground and in his excitement he fails to
watch out for others and bumps into another child. The other child was
blindsided and the force of the impact sent both boys hurling to the
ground. Andy immediately lunges at the other boy and takes a swing at
him because he assumes that a deliberate blocking of his path by the
other child could only cause such a collision. There are many
impulsive-reactive aggressive children like Andy who misinterpret the
intentions of others and lash out in anger.
Millie is 14-years-old and is smoking a
cigarette with some friends after school. She sees a girl in her class
walking along the path in her direction. She hates this girl because
this girl snubs her and insults her whenever the opportunity arises,
usually at a moment that is embarrassing, if not humiliating for Millie.
Millie sees this as her chance to settle a score that has caused her
seething rage for more than 2 years. Millie pretends not to notice when
the girl is approaching but as soon as she passes by the group, Millie
charges her, grabs her by the hair, throws her to the ground, and starts
punching her in the face. The school security guard seeing the commotion
runs over to pull Millie, still swinging and enraged, off of the other
girl.
Jeremy and his buddies wait for a 16
year-old to come out of his house while they are waiting in a park
across the road. It is dark and one of Jeremy’s friends has arranged a
meeting with the boy for the purposes of selling him drugs. This is only
a ruse, however, because they want to settle a grudge with this kid for
money that he owes Jeremy. Finally, the 16 year-old came out of his
house and crossed the road to the park. When he enters the park he sees
the friend he was supposed to meet but he doesn’t see Jeremy and the
other guys. When he is about 3 feet away, Jeremy emerges from the
bushes, punches the kid in the stomach, knocks him to the ground, kicks
him in the head and punches him repeatedly. Then Jeremy, with little or
no emotion, calmly walks away with his friends as if they were just
taking a walk in the park.
The above three kids are all aggressive
at times and the last two were violent in their assaults on their
victims. But the nature of the aggression and the aggressor are very
different in these three examples. Violence is ugly and hideous and
can’t be condoned as a solution to problems. The causes of aggression
and violence are complex and multi-determined. Simple, reflexive
responses, usually punitive, will not solve these problems. The
approaches that are effective will not be same for Andy, or Millie, or
Jeremy. Each will benefit from some interventions that apply to the
others as well, but each will also require something different. Andy can
benefit from a skills-based psychoeducational approach that will help
him develop the capacity for more consistent affect regulation. Millie
and Jeremy will require a more complex intervention. There is a
complicated underlying painful emotional process that has to be
addressed in the case of Millie in addition to learning the skills of
affect regulation that Andy would be offered. Jeremy’s hurt goes even
beyond Millie’s because he has reached the stage of “dehumanized loss”
(Kenneth Hardy) and has lost his capacity to feel. He now is a menace to
society because he no longer feels empathy, remorse, or even pain. The
intervention with Jeremy will need to include all that is offered to
Andy and Millie, but still more. The work will require helping him to
recover his lost capacity to feel for himself or others. It will take
longer and involve more steps than with Andy and Millie, but if the
investment is not made we will lose kids like Millie, and Jeremy will
likely end up in the correctional system which will only compound his
deep sense of alienation from other human beings.
We can help youth like Andy, Millie, and
Jeremy. I have referred to them in previous writing as “fawns in gorilla
suits.” It takes courage, it takes resolve, it takes commitment, but it
can be done. We will fail with some, but the rewards of helping an Andy,
a Millie, or a Jeremy turn their life around are the very reason that
most of us entered this incredibly challenging work in the first place.
We do not get rewarded in the way some professions do with lucrative
salaries and perks, but after nearly 38 years of doing this work, I
wouldn’t dream of doing anything else. The rewards we receive are the
immeasurable satisfaction of potentially touching the heart of a
child--that “fawn beneath the gorilla suit.”
 
Copyright © 2007 by David A.
Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP. All rights reserved.
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