A good example of the bias I'm referring to can be found in Andrew Solomon's book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. Aspects of Solomon's discussion are sensitive, nuanced, and useful, but he has really rankled me by citing the likes of Alice Miller in his bibliography, while refusing to grapple seriously with her chief contention: every single emotional and behavioral symptom has a cause in a sufferer's life, generally buried in childhood. To treat symptoms effectively is to unearth their origin.

Mood and behavior are complex. I find those who denounce the use of all psychotropic medication, including Alice Miller zealots, a generally screechy and unpleasant lot. But to laud, as Solomon does in his book, the supposed dawning of an age when there are no "undesirable" natural emotions left, only chemically induced ones, is simply craven.

Whose interests does it serve, this lack of curiosity about the ubiquity of psychotropic medication? Those of drug-makers and the medical-industrial complex, without question. I believe the lack of will to examine causes of pharmacologically treated mental disorders--besides "bad brain chemistry," of course--serves the same social timidity and conservatism as "tough-on-crime" policies for a supposedly "incorrigible" violent element in society. The two trendy contemporary explanations, for psychiatric symptoms and for violence, on the face of it, could not be more different from each other. Biopsychiatric-absolutist theories of "mental illness" appeal mostly to the need of educated, affluent people to solve personal problems. Tough-on-crime political talk appeals to the baser instincts of the hoi polloi, who want public resources directed towards punishment of criminals--not thrown at their "rehabilitation." Each stream of popular lore, the elucidation of "mental illness," and of violent crime, spares society ever really having to examine anything that might threaten its cherished assumptions about human nature.

Three times during the last year I've sprung for hardcover books by unknown authors whose premises excited me. The writers seemed willing to buck the current popular assumption that life's experience was much less important than "brain chemistry," or supposed "moral depravity," in causing mental illness. The first two books were so poorly written they're best forgotten.

It gives me great pleasure to recommend my third hardcover purchase this year, which I read on the plane the other day, called Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth, by John Hubner. Hubner happens to be regional editor for the Bay Area's own San Jose Mercury News. Covering criminal justice issues, he kept hearing about a very successful program for young offenders in Texas, founded in the 70s, called the Giddings State School. Thence this book.

Last Chance concerns aberrations of mood and behavior, in the form of criminality, and an approach to treatment that Alice Miller would endorse--all in the heart of "red" Texas.

In giving the history of the institution, Hubner explains the paradox of a model treatment program for youth, a part of the Texas Youth Commission, operating in this conservative state: "...it becomes clear that the same frontier spirit that produced the harshest prison system in America also produced TYC. The same cowboy who was deadly with a Walker Colt prided himself on being a gentleman around women, loving and playful around children, and a neighbor always willing to lend a hand. At its best, the cowboy myth is an expression of the idea that the strongest man is also the kindest. That ethic lives on at TYC, where Butch Held, the State School superintendent, at times sounds more like an elementary school teacher than a warden..."

The juveniles sent to Giddings are guilty of the ugliest offenses you can imagine. As a condition for getting out of long prison terms, they must spend several years at the facility, under tight discipline. During the early phase of their incarceration, they learn day-to-day skills for getting along with others and with authority figures. Eventually, the young felons take part in group therapy where they narrate their miserable early lives, allowing whatever feelings to surface. After the childhood narration, each young criminal re-enacts his or her awful crime, taking responsibility for actions, developing empathy for victims.

The whole objective of the program is the development of empathy, which the Giddings staff believes cannot be faked. Most kids eventually graduate, but from time to time, young inmates who seem particularly hardened and remorseless "flunk" and are sent on to prison.

The treatment is grueling. Hubner's description of it flies in the face of the conservative trope that compassion towards offenders is "soft."

It strikes a counselor in group therapy that a girl who has brutalized and almost killed a defenseless older woman as she and her friends rob an antiques store, hasn't taken adequate responsibility for her behavior.

"Elena, hitting an old lady is about as chickenshit as it gets!" she explodes at the teen.

Eventually, through playing the part of her own victim as the group re-enacts Elena's crime, the girl drops her defenses and starts to mourn the devastation she's caused.

The book isn't perfect. Some of the case histories wax a bit long, and there are a few loose ends in the discussion. Still, it's an original, daring work, and highly recommended.
1:08:16 PM    comment []