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A Psychologist's Thoughts on Clinical Practice, Behavior, and Life

Supping With The Devil/Youth and Social Media

This post was inspired by a Wall Street Journal article ("Stop Panicking Over Teens and Social Media"/Jan. 31, 2025) - The teenage (and younger) obsession with social media is not new, nor is it different from other compulsive behaviors that have long tormented parents. Though not inherently bad, its misuse can have life altering consequences and not for the better. I have known teen sexting activity to cost parents large legal fees, and grave consequences from this for adults too.
Psychologically, compulsive activity is a normal healthy mental mechanism when occasionally used to reduce anxiety. It is beneficial with scientific, creative, academic, or job activity but unproductive when interfering with these as when compulsively playing a video game instead of doing homework. An obsession is a repetitive thought (for example, the fear of not having locked the door) and a compulsion is the physical act of doing so (checking the door is locked).
Thus when a youth engages with social media obsessively it is because they are overly anxious, and the reason for this is what the parents should investigate, to remedy their child's distress with or without professional aid.
But education is important too since youth, being immature, do not grasp its potential harm or understand that what is posted today will publicly exist forever. Yet momentary impulsivity can cause adults to lose their way too. To think twice before posting is a good rule. And all, whether religious or not, should follow the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not remove thy clothing in front of a camera!

 

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Mental Health Ignorance Causes Three Girls' Murder

In 2019 a 13-year-old British boy called a child welfare hotline and asked "What should I do if I want to kill somebody?" This year the 18-year-old did, murdering three girls at a dance class and trying to kill eight others and two adults who hoped to protect them. The police later found 164,000 documents and images on his digital devices, including images and videos of dead bodies, torture and beheadings, indicating his long obsession with killing. He downloaded an Al Qaeda training manual which included knife attack methods, and had made ricin, a biological toxin, that he kept in a lunchbox under his bed.

Teachers concerned about his interest in violence had reported him to authorities three times, when he was 13 and 14, without intervention since he was considered by them to be only crazed and not ideologically motivated. Diagnosed with autism at 14, he became increasingly reclusive, anxious, and aggressive in the years before the attack. He received mental health treatment for four years but "stopped engaging" with clinicians in 2023. His defense lawyer was reported to have said, in a statement which borders farce, that there was "no psychiatric evidence which could suggest that a mental disorder contributed" to his actions. With professional judgments like these, snails will soon take over the Earth.

Such killings are not rare, having occurred in Colorado Springs, Raleigh, Buffalo, Texas, Illinois, Serbia, Prague, Georgia, Wisconsin and most recently Nashville, I explaining the underlying motives in a previous article, "Understanding the Newtown Shooter," which is posted on my website (https://www.drstanleygoldstein.com/bio.htm). Sadly, knowledge of child psychological development is minimal among doctors, school personnel, and the general public, as is knowledge of developmental psychopathology, a term coined by my doctoral advisor decades ago. Nuff said.

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Admission Into Selective High Schools (And My Thanks To Madonna)

A March 11, 2023 article in The Wall Street Journal ("Parents Challenge Lottery Systems Used to Diversify Elite High Schools") aroused reader comment, virtually all opposing the ending of admission testing and underlying premise that all are equally talented. As one reader humorously wrote, "Ya know that NBA team is over represented by talented and tall men. We need to achieve equity so hence forth we open the NBA to tryouts by lottery."
The reality is that student achievement derives both from innate ability and having experienced a "good-enough" early life parenting during which psychodynamics develop and the basic ego capacities form including control of thinking and behavior, modulation of mood, and others. Poor parenting is the ever-present "Elephant in the Room" that politicians fear to confront, preferring to raise the false hot-button argument of "discrimination.".

Having attended a test-selective high school I don't believe that I learned more than I could at most high schools except that here there were no fights or other disturbances, no bullying, and few parties (to which I was never invited). Nor do I remember there being any school athletic teams. It's almost embarrassing to see how many leaders of industry and founders of startups will be celebrated at the school's upcoming anniversary celebration to which I received an invitation. And no, I'm not one of them.

To elaborate on my high school failings, I share the following. There was a boy in my grade that I envied since he seemed to have it all: preppy dress, many friends, even a girl-friend. As he once approached me, I fantasized he wanted to be my friend and that, through him, I would become popular too and maybe even get a girl-friend. This was not to be. He asked to borrow money which I lent him. He didn't pay me back and never spoke to me again. I felt humiliated, developed the deep hatred that an insulted teenager can, and his name (Eric) is the only student's name that I remembered. Decades later I read in the school newsletter that he died and compared my life to his. He too gained a doctorate though in a different field and I wrote more books that him. I also achieved something that he likely never did. Once, while driven in a limousine to a TV interview, the driver stopped at a red light, turned to me and said, "The last person who sat where you're sitting was Madonna." Eric, you bastard, I beat you, I childishly thought. Thank you, Madonna!

 

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Why Some Youth Can Benefit From Psychotherapy and Others Can't

Critical psychological development is gained early in life. Later, this may not happen even if the patient is provided the most talented of psychotherapist.

Change is difficult and some cannot tolerate the inherent dependency of this type of treatment. A teenager or young adult may need a firmer path in life before they can accept this childhood-like experience that they struggled to escape though there are great differences between the two. Unlike during childhood, a therapist does not make demands, even that of being liked. Their goal is merely that their patient's goals be achieved, so long as they are healthy and some  of which they may be unaware.
Yet for some youth the completion of education through college or graduate school or technical training comes first. They must try to ignore their anxiety and depression until the better day when they feel confident that they can--independently--survive financially in the adult world.

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Employer Practice, Worker Motivation, and My Encounter with a Genius

In addition to private clinical practice and writing, I’ve worked at hospitals, clinics, and a Community Mental Health Center, where I had both service and administrative responsibilities. While the clinical work was mostly enjoyable, the working atmosphere varied. At some settings, the co-workers were a boon; at others, the atmosphere could be accurately labeled as being “ Read More 
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