Dr. Stanley Goldstein - Author and Psychologist

This week's "murder most foul" was done by a Los Angeles mother who killed three of her children. Being apparently psychotic, she was unlike romantically fanciful Vicky White, the Alabama prison official who ran off with her imprisoned murderer-lover. Psychotic behavior, no matter how horrible, is easier to understand than the self-defeating act of a clearly sane person. While inmates are manipulative, what could have motivated a woman with a stable, established life to run away with a six-foot nine-inch prisoner for whom disguise is impossible. Instead of the suicide-by-cop which a lawman predicted, Vicky shot herself to avoid arrest.
The same week, in my area, Sean Armstead, a ten-year veteran of New York City's Police Department, tracked his wife to a meeting with her lover, then killed him and himself. Why, for if a marriage goes bust isn't divorce the smarter option?
Yet Vicky's and Sean's behavior have (possible) ready explanations: a hunger for love, and the hurt and wounding of self-esteem when it is denied.
Through evolution, humans have become increasingly conscious and deliberative. But the unconscious is powerful and one should not risk ignoring its power.

By the end of toddlerhood, important human lessons must be learned: that people can be trusted; that warmth from others is possible; that verbalizing feelings leads to greater comfort than behaving impulsively; and that continuity of relationships is the rule and not the exception.

These convictions and such basic ego capacities as the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy, to modulate mood, to control thinking and behavior, and to create an accurate sense of who one is ("sense of self") are critical if a child is to feel confidence and realize joy in living.
This is why the severer psychological disorders which derive from the earliest years are devastating, making many of these sufferers incapable of living an independent adult existence and achieving satisfying relationships. Leading to continuing frustration and despair, and even suicide.

I've read The Godfather, seen its classic movies (Part One and Part Two) several times, and just listened to its audio version for the second time. Being now even more convinced that it is a masterpiece, filled with vivid characters and an unbeatable plot. Sadly, many teenagers have never heard of this historic classic, an example of what seems the prevailing cultural ignorance. I have known teenagers who never heard of the Vietnam War or Winston Churchill and when referring to the renowned play, My Fair Lady, in one of my books, I felt compelled to describe what it was. Yet memory is fleeting so, no longer remembering what I knew as a teenager, perhaps my judgment is too harsh.

Four Advantages of Audio-Video Psychotherapy:
1. Independence of Weather: Appointments need not be missed because of poor driving weather.
2. Ease of Movement: Parents need not bring their young child, one with their own activity in mind, outside their home.
3. East of Scheduling: Clinicians bunch their appointments to leave their office as early as possible. When practice is conducted via audio-video from a home office, they're freer to schedule an appointment at a time when they would be loathe to do if it required traveling to their office. A patient once phoned me as I was leaving my home. "Give me five minutes," I said.
4. Variable Treatment Venue: Sessions can be scheduled during a patient's lunch hour while they're seated in their parked car; a couple's session can be conducted while they're at different locations miles apart.

While it is often believed that holding an incorrect concept of who one is (what psychologists term a "sense of self") is harmful, this is not always true. Being common with emotional disorders, these sufferers do benefit for it grants them hope and protection from deep suicidal despair. Moreover, the fantasy may indicate an embryonic talent which could lead to significant achievement after their healing through treatment. Yet while comforting, holding an unrealistic fantasy with no hope of success can lead to greater despair.

ADHD is an unsophisticated, nonsensical notion though with a long history, it being termed "mental restlessness" in 1700s England, Minimal Brain Dysfunction (MBD) in early 1900s USA (of which a Harvard psychiatrist said that any doctor using this diagnosis had a minimal brain dysfunction), with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) being its newest incarnation. It has symptoms identical to anxiety and depression which can be associated with every psychological and physical disturbance. Though a large profitable industry has grown up around it. Its belief largely reflects public ignorance of early life psychological development, and the attempt to "neurologize" psychological symptoms and life issues. And check online for the prescribed drugs' potential side effects, which are far from small.

To explain what is termed ADHD further: some children with school learning issues and adults with concentration difficulty do have psychological problems, reflecting what has since the 1960s been understood as Elements of A Borderline Psychotic Psychostructural Organization. Which does not mean "psychotic" or "borderline psychotic" but rather weakness of those basic ego capacities which develop in early childhood and include control of thinking and behavior, mood modulation, development of a sense of self, and others. This requires psychotherapy to heal, to replace the deficient ego capacities with more mature one. These weaknesses are not a present or absent diagnosis but a continuam of strengths and weaknesses which must be assessed through interview.

While it is best for a distressed child to receive mental health treatment as soon as possible this is not always done. Babies are not born with instructions and parent guilt is often a factor, they not wanting to accept their role in their child's problems. While parents don't blame themselves for a child's physical illness they often do so with their child's emotional problems. Feeling responsible, and with justification since early life experiences are the bedrock of adequate functioning. But parenting mistakes derive from their own imperfect life experiences so, after gaining treatment for their child, parental guilty feelings are undeserved and counter-productive in helping their child. And though children will readily forgive parental mistakes they never forget having been ignored.

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has gained much of its erroneous though popular knowledge from frightening movies depicting berserk ex-soldiers on killing sprees. Yet PTSD symptoms can develop in anyone including children. It exists because the mind has a limited capacity to cope with stress and, when exceeded, symptoms develop. A symptom is the sign that something is wrong and, with PTSD, can include nightmares, flashbacks of the causative event, psychogenic seizures, over-sensitivity to startling noises, or odd fears and obsessions. These reflect the urgent message from the unconscious that help is needed to avoid damaging the mind or body as great continuing anxiety can do. Thus PTSD symptoms are like the bodily fever that warns of infection, being temporarily uncomfortable but needed since it leads to gaining the required care and regaining health.

Some child interaction guidelines, which have long been followed by both parents and teachers, derive from the popular notion that reward and punishment effect behavior. Thus if a child is punished for misbehaving they are less likely to do so in the future. A belief which sounds reasonable but is not.

As psychologists have long known, behavior modification work with dogs but not cats, with those of severely limited intellect (since it simplifies their environment) but not those of near normal and above intelligence, and for inhabitants of tightly controlled environments such as prisons. It does not work with others since humans are a thinking species.

Moreover, children are reasonable and want to develop into adults. Thus if asked to do something by their parent or teacher they usually will though being less likely to do so if they are hungry or tired or ill or troubled, or unable to do what is asked for a reason which may make sense to their immature mind but not to others.

Thus, apart from emergency situations involving harm or danger, explaining why a child should do something will usually gain their cooperation. If not it will be for one of the above reasons in which case they will be behaving like similarly afflicted adults.

The extraordinary Netflix documentary, "I Am A Killer," evidences several truths: the powerful effect of childhood experience on adult behavior which can later go awry with tragic consequences; the critical importance of having good legal counsel; the destructiveness of alcohol and drug use; and the great power of the unconscious over behavior, particularly when substance abuse affects self-control.
The criminal behavior that sent these interviewed prisoners to Death Row may be said to be as heinous as the childhood ordeals which predetermined their commission.