Lifetrap

From Child Victim to Adult Victimizer

Linda Nauth

• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781642984576
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Trastorno de estrés postraumático (TEPT)

For twenty-eight years as a prison psychologist, Linda Nauth evaluated and provided treatment for men incarcerated for crimes of domestic violence. In this book, the offender's life stories are integrated with research and theories from neuropsychology, child development, and trauma studies. The goal is to enter the mind of the offender and interpret the partner violence in terms of the perpetrators' needs, fears, beliefs, and intentions.Based on the ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) study, a strong causal link between childhood trauma and later adult violence is explored, which explains (not justifies or excuses) how these adult victims of childhood trauma learn to use intimate aggression as a major coping strategy. Jeff Young's life trap model of personality development illustrates the self-defeating and destructive life patterns of the abused child as he becomes an adult abuser and repeats the pain of his childhood. The author offers personal reflection of working with violent offenders, a nonshaming treatment approach, and attempts to remind society to its responsibility for all of its children.

Chapter 1

Michael and C-PTSD

Michael hated everyone. He was a forty-seven-year-old three-time felon in prison for assault offenses: two battery charges on two different wives and then taking a hatchet to a stranger in the street. He never sought help from psychological services. Michael believed therapy was a waste of time. He thought anyone who sought therapy was “weak” and he did not trust anyone anyway.

Michael saw himself as independent, self-reliant, needing no one. Michael spent his free time pacing in his small cell. He stopped going to the library and chapel services. While he had been never been violent in the prison setting, he was irritable and defensive. Verbal confrontations with staff and other inmates became a common occurrence. Frequently at night, Michael awoke screaming, shaking, and trembling in his flimsy bunk bed, haunted by violent nightmares. His cellmate finally told him, “Dude, you need help.”

The year was 2010. I had been at Fox Lake Correctional Institution (FLCI) for fifteen years as a clinical psychologist. Fox Lake was a small medium-security prison run by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. It was constructed in the middle of cornfields, outside the Town of Fox Lake, population 1,519. The compound was fifteen flat acres of cottages and administration buildings, enclosed by two razor-wired and electrified fences.

The inmate population then was 1,100. Psychological services at FLCI had only three clinicians. Part of our being understaffed was due to severely mentally ill and aggressive inmates being sent to FLCI because of overcrowding elsewhere in the state. Further, for the first time in seven years, I was getting a supervisor. The prison’s human resources staff and the warden had finally found a PhD to fill the vacant position.

I was used to performing my duties without much direction. The other medium-security prisons, like Oshkosh CI or Kettle Moraine CI, each had a supervisor who met a few times a year at the department’s central office in Madison to discuss important issues and new policies. Each month seemed to bring new restrictions, more paperwork, and added expectations from central office. I was used to doing my own thing. And now I was going to have a supervisor who would make sure I followed every last policy and procedure, regardless if it worked against my relationships with inmates.

Michael finally wrote a request for an interview with psychological services, and I was assigned to his case. I called him up to my office in the administration building to interview him, assess his clinical issues, set up a treatment plan, and write a report with recommendations.

The atmosphere at FLCI was much more relaxed than a typical penal institution. Inmates were allowed to walk unescorted from their cottage housing to school or chapel on sidewalks surrounded by carefully manicured lawns. There were areas outside of the units with basketball hoops and picnic benches where the inmates could relax in nice weather.

My office was as inviting as I could make it under the conditions. The building was built in 1968, had paper-thin walls, and the antiquated heating made some of the offices feel like saunas and others like walk-in freezers. Luckily, for the summer heat, I did have my own air conditioner, which was maintained by the inmate students in the HVAC Vocational program. Posters, pictures, and a dried flower wreath decorated the walls. A handmade quilt was thrown over the extra client chair.

FLCI was called a “responsible living” prison. Residents had demonstrated an ability to adjust with fewer restrictions than a maximum-security prison. However, policies and procedures still controlled the inmates’ movements. Inmates signed in and out of their school or work assignments and were identified by security staff as usually conforming or potentially violent.

There were two inmates in each 12 by 8 foot cell. Each inmate slept on a bunk bed embedded into the concrete wall and had use of half of a desk and a locked box. The prison added two barracks due to overcrowding, where prisoners had even less privacy.

There were rules for foot traffic, for eating in the unit chow hall and almost every other situation. If there was an infraction, the inmate received a conduct report. If minor, the punishment was a loss of recreation or room confinement; if major, the inmate might be placed in the segregation building with even more rules.

Michael entered my office for the first time, not happy about having to talk to a shrink. His hostility crackled like electricity, and he stared at me with an angry look. His left leg jittered up and down, and his eyes darted around the office searching for signs of threat. His reluctance to talk to me was very clear. Michael jerked at every sound and was distracted by others walking in the hallway outside my door.

An initial diagnosis seemed fairly clear: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Michael showed the hypervigilance, anxiety, and physiological arousal common to victims of trauma. He also complained of difficulties sleeping, panic attacks when in crowded spaces, and his mood was always irritable.

Speaking in a low, monotone voice, his affect flat but insistent, Michael decided, after some minutes of getting to know me, to tell me a story.

During his junior year in high school, Michael was walking with a friend on a New York City street to the local McDonald’s when a car pulled up. Shots were fired, and his friend collapsed, a bullet in the head. After the horrific event, Michael reported violent nightmares and flashback images of his friend’s brain splattered across the sidewalk.

A knot in his stomach relayed the message of danger, as his brain informed his body to get ready for “fight/flight.” Heart rate increases, breathing becomes shallow, blood is transferred from the brain to the large muscles to prepare the individual to respond quickly.

After a trauma, the human body continues in this survival mode long after the danger has passed. The brain becomes trained to not miss any signs of potential danger, so the high arousal state dominates. The individual’s mood is colored by this negative energy.

Each week at FLCI, the clinical psychologists met with a state-hired psychiatrist who came to the institution to prescribe medications and monitor inmates. Fortunately, our assigned psychiatrist was smart, funny, and interested in our non-psychiatric opinion of the inmates and our recommendations for treatment.

I presented Michael’s case in a conference, noting his PTSD symptoms after the street violence he experienced. I asked the psychiatrist whether medication should be discussed to lower Michael’s arousal level and to help him get to sleep at night. This way, during the day, he would feel less like jumping out of his skin. Our psychiatrist had mentioned previously a new drug helping combat veterans with nightmares.

I asked if Michael should have a psychiatric referral.

“But don’t forget that Michael is an antisocial personality,” Dr. Black, my new supervisor, said.

Dr. Black was an overweight older psychologist who had recently transferred from a high security institution. He tended to see the inmates as more criminal than mentally ill. He thought most clients were malingering to get social security benefits.

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) was an important diagnosis for Michael. A personality disorder is defined as a mental health condition that exhibits a long-term pattern of behaviors, emotions, and thoughts that are different from the culture’s expectations. These behaviors interfere with the person’s ability to function in relationships, work, and other settings.

Antisocial personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of disregard for or violations of the rights of others. Symptoms of ASPD are mostly behavioral, including a history of crime, legal problems, and failure to be responsible in society or impulsive and aggressive behavior.

I agreed with Dr. Black that Michael’s history met the criteria for ASPD. But I argued with his assumption that antisocial personalities were necessarily trying to lie and manipulate others. Unfortunately, there was an even more pervasive suggestion that the antisocial personality diagnosis meant the person was evil, someone who chose to hurt others in a rational process to serve his or her own self-interest. I know there are offenders with these qualities. I just did not believe Michael was one of them.

I knew Michael was not a pleasant person. When anyone, inmate or staff, annoyed him in any way, he informed me, “I want to take a bat and beat him.” He had no friends. He was prickly with other inmates. His defensiveness was like quills on a porcupine, ready to aggressively protect itself at any moment.

Even the most understanding staff person had a limit to the patience that could be shown to inmates. I admit that I often became annoyed with Michael due to his constant complaining. If I didn’t redirect him, he spent our therapy sessions accusing security officers of malicious intent or disparaging his fellow inmates. He summarized his inability to get along with others in a simple slogan: “I don’t do stupid.”

As a result, when Michael described a conflict he experienced in the unit or at school, everyone else was always to blame. He regularly expected others to manipulate, humiliate, or betray him. At times, I reminded Michael of others he had known, like a previous female teacher who had, by his own words, shown him some kindness.

Michael rejected his own memory by pessimistically saying, “She just hasn’t had the chance to hurt me.”

There was no argument that Michael’s scornful behavior made him an outcast at the institution. No one tried to suggest he was a likeable personality. But I just chafed at the assumption that he was to be written off as a person with little value t...