From: elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green)
Date: 3 Oct 92 11:20:00 CDT
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Treating an abused child by further abuse???
Distribution: world
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <BvEpMG.77y@unx.sas.com>, by saswss@unx.sas.com (Warren Sarle):
> Last night on CBS TV there was a movie called _Child of Rage_. I saw
> only the last hour, but it seemed to be "based on a true story", as
> they say. It was about a little girl who had been sexually abused by
> her father and developed homicidal tendencies. She is adopted by a
> well-meaning, loving couple who put her into a very expensive
> treatment program called "holding therapy". In holding therapy, the
> parents and therapist physically restrain the child while provoking
> her to rage by verbal and physical assault. This supposedly encourages
> the child to get in touch with her feelings and develop empathy.


> This holding therapy seems to me to be totally contrary to most
> current ideas about treating abused children and other trauma victims

If you're talking about plain abused children, you're correct. Ordinary
abused children do not need so-called "holding therapy". Any child who has
had at least one loving parent at an early enough age to gain normal
attachment probably would be harmed rather than helped by such "therapy".
     However, if the child was abused at such an early age that he/she
never gained ability to "attach" (empathize with another person) and is
homocidal and dangerous besides, traditional therapy may not be effective.
If traditional therapy has failed, then you have to do SOMETHING.
    I've seen "holding therapy" in real life used as a fancy term for
old-fashioned pain compliance training. It doesn't have to be used that
way, though. With a kid who cannot abide being touched, who is afraid of
getting close, less-intrusive variants may get the same results. There was
an article in the Houston Chronicle recently about someone using such a
variant, where the child was held close (despite the child's struggles
against such closeness) and talked to gently and lovingly about what a
great kid he was.

> that the screaming little girl was told "We love you" while her
> parents bodily dragged her to "therapy"; in other words, love=abuse.

Unfortunately, these kids are highly resistant even to being held close and
told "we love you". Last Wednesday I was holding a kid in a safe
non-painful way, reassuring him in a calm voice that it was okay, I wasn't
going to hurt him, he was a great kid, etc. (he'd attacked another student
and I had to hold him to keep him from going back at it again), and he was
struggling and screaming as if I was beating him. To this kid, love DOES
equal abuse. He doesn't really know what it's like to be loved. If you give
him love, he screams and fights to get away from it.

I think this particular kid is going to be okay. He DOES care for his
little baby sister, a lot, and when a kid has gotten to the point where he
can care for another person, then you have a chance. But I've met another
kid where none of this has worked. Therapy hasn't worked. The kid has been
in therapy for the past five years, and nothing has happened. The kid is a
totally sociopathic personality who cares for nobody and cares about
nothing. Ordinary behavioral training has been unable to cope with his
desire to torment other human beings -- they simply haven't been able to
find a reinforcer more powerful than the joy he gets from hurting others.
Even negative reinforcement hasn't worked. He laughs at it, even at
physical pain. What do we do with this kid?

Answer: we try whatever we have to try, and hope.

> Does anybody have any information on holding therapy from a more
> reputable source than a TV movie?

There hasn't been a whole lot of information, unfortunately. It's a
controversial topic, and mostly what there has been is flames from both
sides of the controversy. The Texas Health Department doesn't allow holding
therapy in institutions that it regulates because it views the method as
abusive. Detractors point out that holding therapy is only used with kids
who are violent, sociopathic, and on whom all traditional therapies have
failed, and that outlawing holding therapy means we're just going to have
to build more jails for these kids because they're not getting better by
themselves. In other words, abuse them now via holding therapy, or abuse
them later by keeping them in jail or giving them the death sentence
(because we're talking future murderers here). The difference being that
holding therapy occurs BEFORE the kid grows up and kills somebody.

I don't know, myself. I know that I myself could not do intrusive holding
therapy. In person I am a very calm and reassuring person and the idea of
yelling obscenities at a child or causing a child pain is repugnant to my
very being. On the other hand, what do we do? What do we do when everything
else has failed?

--
 Eric Lee Green  elg@buster.TX.US         Dodson Elementary
 (713) 437-6908                             Houston, TX
Newsgroups: sci.psychology