This morning on the World Service news I heard that some eminent academic had said that for a child to spend more than a week in an orphanage was likely to result in physiological and mental abnormalities, and that such institutions should be closed! Of course that will not happen, and it is not really a surprising result since much previous research has given findings that tends in that direction. It was Anna Freud during the Second World War who discovered the necessity for children being looked after away from their mothers to have what is now called a key worker, an adult who was a permanency in their life with whom they could build a secure relationship.
and two further items have come up: pain inflicted on teenage offenders in privately run high security institutions, and the ban on kissing in school plays. I didn't hear the details of that but it led to a powerful phone-in discussion on radio five on the issue of touch, appropriate and inappropriate, and the difficulties now surrounding this. All these tie in to my main theme, the mother/infant bond. It gives me the sense that our society, our understanding, is circulating or spiralling around the issue, but cannot bring itself to see it, or admit it. It is known how many young people come out of institutional care to end up in prison, and still child offenders are put into institutions as if these could somehow have a different effect.
(20th Feb) once again this blasted machine has held up proceedings! I will try to sum up briefly! I've lost the knack, if I ever had it, of brevity, but must try to acquire it.
Connections in the brain form and grow well through experience. Deprivation of experience is damaging. Essential experience in the first year of life for a healthy brain is lots of loving physical care, and the need for positive physical contact, though in gradually decreasing quantity, continues throughout development. Children in care are unlikely to get enough, ditto in corrective institutions, and the same goes for dysfunctional families like, for example, mine. I remember when on the training course I mentioned in chapter 1, feeling as if I was being attacked when I was hugged for the first time! I do not think my parents ever hugged me. I know, once I had learnt to hug, that my mother reacted in the same way, as if under attack, when I tried to hug her. The man who spoke so passionately on radio five of children who do not understand about inappropriate touching because they have never experienced positive touch, hit the nail on the head. But there is a further point: such children may so strongly desire physical contact that they seem to invite abuse, though all they want is the cuddling they've never had.
The children who gave their opinion about kissing in school plays showed good sense, pupils should kiss if they felt okay about it but not be forced, but the fact is that a properly trained teacher might be able to spot a child with problems by their reactions to such situations during drama lessons. Like physical education lessons, drama should be a way of helping children to learn to interact physically in appropriate ways, and be at ease and confident in their bodies
The people discussing the infliction of pain on teenagers in corrective institutions pointed out how abuse survivors might provoke painful constraint because it replayed their previous experiences. For a full discussion of this behaviour see chapter 6 on Judge Daniel Paul Schreber and the continuation in chapter 8.
So much for summing up! I have wandered onto issues that are being dealt with in my Update on Grooming. I suppose what it all points to is the difficulty we have, as a fundamentally schizoid society, in putting the evidence together that comes from different areas to reach a useful conclusion, because that would probably necessitate action, that is Change, which always seems more painful than maintaining the splits.
(23rd Feb) yet again the gremlin has struck, when the computer works something else must fail! It's the drain on my energy and health in coping with the problem that makes each one serious. I gave myself three years usable life when I started this project but I doubt if I'll get that. This reads so drearily but I'll post it anyway.
