Causes of Crime: the Neglected Factor, Stress on the Mother/Infant Bond.Wed 29thNov.
The sentencing of the two teenagers who knifed a young lawyer for a mobile phone and Oyster card has provoked much discussion.Listening to radio 5 this morning I have heard much that ties in with what I have written before but as usual no mention of the foundational year and early impressions.Both perpetrators came from broken homes so one can guess that both were born into stressful circumstances and might have experienced the sort of handling from a distressed mother that led to the knife fantasies that have been illustrated in my own and my clients' imagery (see Headline: Knife Culture 12th Nov 2005, Chapter 1, and Chapter 4)
I listened to the two young men brought up on two very similar deprived housing estates, one of whom had committed crimes (but turned away from it), and one who had not talking of what had led to their decisions and their experience of deprivation in relation to the two jailed teenagers and others like them.There was no one to say we are listening to two stronger or healthier egos able to be self reflective and somewhat empathic in a way that I imagine the jailed pair could not be.That health or strength comes in the first year from good enough mothering, which in turn is dependent on the mothering the mother received.All the other factors discussed in this program and in the news, such as bad housing, overcrowded conditions etc, are just as important as people think but dealing with them is not going to remove the fundamental problem.The young man who had turned away from crime talked of the anger that could be provoked by so many factors in a young person; that is because there is a pool of anger built in to the psyche in that first year just waiting to be tapped.Draining that pool in me and my clients has been a major part of my work as a psychotherapist.The only answer is for society to stop splitting the Dyad and to start supporting Mother and Baby as an indivisible unit.
