The 'Socially Acceptable Violence' Project: Further Notes on Erosion (Section 3d.4) ©2003 John Latter (jorolat@msn.com)

[All drafts will be expanded upon once the basic framework has been established] 

Direct entry to this page? This is sub-section 3d.4 of "Socially Acceptable Violence" and should be
read in conjunction with the rest of section 3 ("Trauma - A Simple Internal Model") or
as part of the overall project ("The 'Socially Acceptable Violence' Project").

[Visit the "Socially Acceptable Violence" Discussion Egroups associated with the project at Yahoo and Msn] 

Contents of Section 3d.4 "Further notes on Erosion":

3) Trauma - A Simple Internal Model

  3d) The Model Revisited

     3d.1) Further notes on Pre-trauma
     3d.2) Further notes on Trauma    
     3d.3) Further notes on Compounding a Trauma
     3d.4) Further notes on Erosion

          3d.4a)"Hardly Worth Mentioning"
          3d.4b) Basic Interaction between Abuser and Victim
          3d.4c) To be decided

     3d.5) Further notes on The Professional Abuser
     3d.6) Further notes on 'Mental Illness'

3d.4) Further notes on Erosion [Back to Top]

3d.4a) "Hardly Worth Mentioning"   

   At the time of writing, 6th of September 2003, it is now nearly two weeks since Alan Cooperman and Rob Stein of the Washington Post wrote the following article:

Pedophile Ex-Priest Is Killed in Prison (may require free registration)

"John J. Geoghan, the former priest whose alleged molestation of nearly 150 children sparked a nationwide scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, was killed yesterday by a fellow inmate at a Massachusetts prison.

Geoghan, 68, who was being held in protective custody at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Mass., apparently was strangled, Worcester County District Attorney John J. Conte said last night. Geoghan was attacked around noon by inmate Joseph L. Druce, 37, and died at 1:17 p.m. after being taken to Leominster Hospital, Conte said."

  As is usual, the initial media attention focussing on the event itself then diffused to consider some of the wider issues involved. In an editorial entitled "Predator Becomes Prey"(28th of Aug.) the Washington Post said:

"WHO WOULD have expected that a person whose serial sexual abuse of vulnerable children led to the wounding of a powerful religious institution would himself fall victim to a predator, one impelled by hatreds so strong that they would drive him to stalk and strangle a weak old man? Saturday's prison murder of John J. Geoghan, a defrocked and convicted molester of little boys, laid bare flaws of yet another powerful institution -- a prison system. Mr. Geoghan's murder in a Massachusetts prison was allegedly at the hands of Joseph L. Druce, a fellow inmate known for anti-Semitism, racism and hatred of homosexuals. As with the facilitation of Mr. Geoghan's child molestation, it is being said that Mr. Druce could not have carried out his deeds without the indulgence or gross negligence of the larger institution."

   In the same week, Colorado's Boulder Daily Camera published "Cruel and not unusual"  (27th Aug.) in which they stated:

"Too many, like Geoghan, suffer and die in prison" and "...They [who believe that Geoghan got "what he deserved"] are also willing to endorse, probably without thinking about it, a cynical view of the criminal-justice system as a two-headed beast. There's a formal system of justice, in which we put defendants on trial, convict them and sentence them to a specific punishment for a specific number of years. There's also an informal system, in which we accept, with a nod and a shrug, a second layer of punishment: We place inmates at the mercy of other inmates who may beat, torture and even kill them. To the extent that the system allows this two-track version of justice to flourish, there is no justice."

   And from combined despatches the Washington Times article "Attorney says client wanted to avenge victims of Geoghan" (28th of Aug.) reported:

"Defense attorney John LaChance .. is expected to explore an insanity defense for Joseph Druce" and "Mr. LaChance met with Druce, 37, for the first time yesterday. During the meeting, Druce said he was upset with Geoghan for his abusing children and wanted it to stop.

"The impression that I got from him was that his beef with Geoghan was based on his serial mistreatment of little kids," Mr. LaChance told the Associated Press."

(Click here for a 13 minute PBS audio recording in which Ray Suarez discusses the murder of John Geoghan with Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney representing many of John Geoghan’s alleged victims, and Stephen Pope, chairman of the Theology Department at Boston College.)

   If a list were made of the attributes most popularly associated with the label of "Priest" then its contents would almost certainly differ from any compiled for that of "Prisoner". Similarly, one would not expect any psychological hierarchy existing within a religious organization (catholic or otherwise) to be related to any equivalent structure found within a penal institution.

   From the perspective of investigating a common underlying psychology that can ultimately account for Mr Geoghan's pedophilia, Mr Druce's homicidal tendencies, and the respective psychological hierarchies within which they were able to operate, it can be useful to temporarily forego analyzing 'emotive issues', of which the above are only representative, and begin by examining incidents, that by comparison, appear to be Hardly Worth Mentioning.

 
   At first glance it might be argued that the above is too vague to determine with any degree of certainty whether or not any reversal of erosion took place. When viewed in the light of real-life events such as "Saying Hello" and "Monkey See, Monkey Do" (not yet uploaded), where substantial reversals undoubtably did happen, then their 'points of equivalence' with "Pinball Wizard" indicate a high probability that Jan did indeed effect a small change [Note 1].

   Even without this assumption one of the most important factors highlighted by "Pinball Wizard" is how Jan might have stood there, perhaps for 20 minutes or so, in a state where she had effectively stopped responding to the life around her. Jan would not have got those 20 minutes back, which is not an insignificant point to ponder, and which itself leads on to the further question of how many other "20 minutes" had she already lost?

   The description of Jan's 'block' gives every indication of it being a fear which had been laid down upon earlier fears. While particularly specific to playing pinball, such a block would have tended to come to the fore in any subsequent social situation where any similar 'learning' might have been involved. Underlying this is the fact that formation of the block would have slightly lessened Jan's natural capacity for life and thereby affected everything, not just the learning of games, that she had done in the interim.

   If one assumes that Jeremy's speculation was correct, in that 'ridicule' by person or persons unknown had brought the block into being, then exactly what kind of 'behaviour' could do this? If tone of voice is included then "Body Language" might be considered as an apt enough everyday phrase to describe the manner of her one-time tormentors. The problem with "Body Language", however, is that it doesn't distinguish between natural and psychological behaviours, and nor does it account for 'how' and 'why' such blocks are formed. For this, and despite its limitations [Note 2], the Simple Internal Model of Trauma is required.

   The actions of people like John Geoghan and Joseph Druce understandably grab the headlines, and obviously nothing can be more final in an act of psychological violence than an ensuing death. In less lethal circumstances, however, "Pinball Wizard" demonstates how the conventional emphasis placed upon "degree of harm done" ought to be broadened to include "accumulative time lost" and "degree of reduction". They are, after all, aspects of a single continuum.

[Note 1]: Another important aspect of "Pinball Wizard" is how Jeremy's intuitive, if not instinctive, provision of a safe environment enabled Jan to 'fight a war on a single (and internal) front' for those few moments during which she resolved some small degree of her acquired psychological history - echoing the argument put forward in "Establish Therapeutic Environment" [Return to text]

[Note 2]:  A more accurate internal model could be developed using the 'Kaliedoscope Effect'. "Saying Hello" depicts events which occurred in a social environment over a decade ago and centers around a 6 year-old girl called "Mary". At the moment in Mary's 'rehabilitation' that the account describes she was exhibiting behaviour patterns within a continous range, a function of her compounded trauma, while being repeatedly stimulated to produce a single instinctive response.

   As an analogy, the approach taken began by equating Mary's initial trauma with the 'basic number' of coloured pieces of glass in a kaliedoscope. This basic number was then 'added to/fused with' further pieces of glass (to represent the child's unknown post-trauma experiences) until interaction with this accumulative mass of glass could precisely account for the range of behaviours being externally observed. A quite specific and substantial block was identified by using this technique which then enabled it to be removed.

   This more complex model, however, will take more time to develop than is currently available. [Return to text]

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