The Psychology Of Adolescent Criminality. Episode 4 corrected version

Transcript

From Shame To Defiance

Belonging Through Deviant Identity

Therapy That Separates Child From Act

Predicting Risk And Preventing Identity Hardening

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Hello and welcome back. This is Kim Lee from the Children's Consultancy, and this is episode four in the series entitled The Psychology of Adolescent Criminality. In this episode, I want to look at the subject of shame, identity, and what we might call the criminal self. Now there's a moment that occurs after the act, whatever that act may be. Not the one when the police arrive, and not when one when the consequences begin to unfold, but later. And it's when the child or young person is alone and something begins to take shape. And it goes something like the person asking, what does this say about me? What is going to happen? And from that question, something far more powerful than behavior can emerge. This has to do with identity. In the last episode, we explored how behavior can emerge from unmet relational experience, but today we move into something even more delicate. Because what happens after behavior can shape who a child believes they are. At the beginning, he's very quiet, quite avoidant and anxious, and unsurprisingly, because he has uh had several interviews with police, social services, and he says very little, but his his body speaks, his shoulders are lowered, his eyes are down, he's really quite subdued. And there is a sense of here is someone who is experiencing considerable shame. But interestingly, over time he becomes more defiant, dismissive, and less engaged. And eventually he says, I just don't care. But this isn't indifference, it's almost like a protection, almost like he can't care because if he did, he'd be overwhelmed. When we return to what happened, he says they deserved it. So the narrative has changed and it's changed from his sense of uncertainty to justification. And then something else. He begins to describe himself differently. I'm just like that. And what we're witnessing is a shift from the behavior to something about his sense of his identity. Shame that can't be processed doesn't disappear, it transforms into defiance and aggression, or identifying with the role itself. Similarly, a sixteen-year-old girl involved in group-based offending describes her peer group as they're the ones who get me. They're the ones who understand me. Within that group, risk is rewarded and fear is hidden and reputation matters. And she says, if you act soft, you're done. You get done. Now, this means that the belonging and structure and identity is something that the group provides, but at a significant cost. Adopting a deviant identity that can protect against feeling small, feeling ashamed, feeling rejected. It offers power, some form of clarity and a sense of position. These are not functional as we know, but for the young adolescent mind, they're meaningful. But the danger isn't just about the behavior. It's the moment that the child begins to believe this is who I am. Now, when we work therapeutically with children, the task isn't about correcting or arguing with the behavior. It's endeavoring to separate the child from that identity and reintroduce complexity, rebuild a sense of self that isn't defined by the act. So our language matters. We move from you are this to this is something that has happened. It's a very significant shift. We're not defined by what we do. And children and young people don't understand this. So therefore, what they do becomes a description in their minds of who they are. Children do not begin as criminals, they become organized around experiences. And if those experiences are damaging and not understood, it hardens into identity. Sometimes the most dangerous moment isn't when a child breaks the law, it's later when they stop asking what they did that was wrong, and they begin to believe that they themselves are. It's concerning. Yet I would say and often say that many things where child development is concerned, many things are predictable. And when we can predict things that are concerning, then the question is how do we prevent them? What is it that we need to do? What can we see happening? I will be back with episode five shortly. Thank you for listening.