Frank C. Sacco

An Innovative Psychodynamically Influenced Approach to Reduce School Violence

Child and adolescent psychiatrists who consult to school systems are likely to be confronted with the problem of violence. Feeling unsafe not only alters the quality of life for children in schools, but also influences their academic performance. Unfortunately, individual treatment of disturbed children does not help schools deal with more far-reaching problems that affect the school climate because many children who influence that climate may not have identifiable illnesses. This psychodynamic model suggests that in all schools experiencing violence, a covert power dynamic (PD) is present. This PD refers to a conscious or unconscious coercive pattern in which an individual or group controls the thoughts and actions of others. At times, this dynamic may be subtle and unconsciously motivated, but usually the school climate reveals this PD through high levels of disciplinary referrals and poor academic achievement (Twemlow et al., 1996, in press-a). In this PD model, a bully is described as a child, teacher, or other staff member of the school who abusively coerces others repeatedly through humiliation and mockery. Bullying usually involves a stronger, more dominant personality coercing a weaker, more submissive personality in what is rarely significant physical injury. Instead, the major injury is emotional humiliation. The victim of this power dynamic is a child, or any other school member, who feels dominated or abused by this bullying. The bystanding audience has been shown to be significant in supporting bully–victim relationships. There are a variety of bystanding roles that can be adopted by individual students. We found through our study of more than 10,000 children in an East Coast city that 10% to 20% of children from third through ninth grades experienced a vicarious thrill when watching others being bullied. Such bully bystander children may act as “puppet masters” to set up victims to commit crimes for which they do not wish to be blamed. A number of recent school shootings have clearly demonstrated this dynamic. For example, in Pearl, Mississippi, a 16-year-old boy who killed his mother and two students was “coached” by six other boys who were later charged with conspiracy to commit murder. A similar dynamic operated in the shooting at the school dance in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, where a 14-year-old boy shot and killed a teacher and injured several others after a school dance. The “puppet master” bystander turned up to watch the outcome of his plan. Victim bystanding, from children who are too frightened to resist the recruiting bully, is usually present but to a lesser degree. Avoidant bystanding is often present in school personnel who, often for political reasons, deny the existence of problems in their school. Ambivalent bystanders, being uncommitted to roles that facilitate PDs, have the potential to help others resist the pathological roles. The school consultant can assist counselors and teachers to appeal to children in this less disruptive role, perhaps using the programmatic approach to be described. Our experience has been that if all children learn the language and skills to handle PDs, they will help each other shift out of the pathological roles into more productive relationships. Without a passively supportive bystanding audience, the actors have little motivation to continue reenacting the bully–victim roles. It should be noted that the bully, victim, and bystander roles are interchangeable, with children adopting a kaleidoscopic array of roles at different times. It is when these roles become fixed that serious violence can be imminent. An example is the tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where available evidence suggests that both student shooters were in fixed enraged retaliatory victim roles for about a year before the incident, after a considerable prior period of bullying back and forth with groups of school athletes (Twemlow, 2000). The deeply regressive, shame-based, severe narcissistic wounding of the “victims” resulted in a loss of reality testing and insight that led to homicide (retaliation/revenge), followed by suicide (submission/despair) of these “victims.”

Premeditated mass shootings in schools: threat assessment

Premeditated mass shootings by students in suburban and rural secondary schools have surprised and even terrified our country. Although school violence overall has decreased measurably since 1993 (U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, 1999), multiple-victim homicides and woundings highlight an emerging problem for schools previously thought to be safe from acts of extreme violence. In the past 5 years, premeditated mass shootings in schools all occurred in rural or suburban communities. The assailant was not the stereotypical angry, poor, minority teen abusing drugs and failing academically. The schools were not overtly violent with gangs in control; Columbine High School prided itself in 82% college placement and 95% daily attendance rates. Psychiatrists are often asked to help after there has been a tragedy, when school shootings create a pressing need for trauma interventions and long-term follow-up. However, child and adolescent psychiatrists can be helpful in preventing such tragedies as well, by dealing realistically with the inexactness of all available techniques for assessing children who threaten homicide in schools, and by careful psychiatric assessment of individual children, family dynamics, the school climate, and factors in the social milieu that have an impact on the child’s development. Part of this work might include helping schools develop school threat assessment procedures and select suitable antiviolence programs (Twemlow et al., 2001).

Feeling safe in school

Abstract This paper advances the hypothesis that for a child to feel safe and to learn at school certain psychological conditions must be met. These conditions are described using concepts derived from psychoanalytic research and include; a background of SAFETY and a feeling of WELL BEING derived from a healthy ego with perceptual skills appropriate to the task, a HOLDING environment of adults who can respond appropriately to the childs developmental needs, an environment that provides CONTAINMENT and helps children process negativity in relationships, processes that help children regulate affect, value relationships, and leam to mentalise, in a SECURE ATTACHMENT experience, and finally, supports that encourage children to function as responsible members of a community organized as an OPEN SOCIAL SYSTEM.

Peacekeeping and peacemaking: the conceptual foundations of a plan to reduce violence and improve the quality of life in a midsized community in Jamaica

Thomas Jefferson noted that social ills breed economic ills and vice versa. An endless regress can occur with violence and mayhem as a chorus: Every community in the world has its own thresholds and patterns of violence, and communities experience varied levels of deterioration of safety with a reciprocal increase in violence. The United States, having undergone 200 years of social evolution as an independent nation, has a spiraling problem with violence. Jamaica, with only recent independence from British sovereignty, is an ideal crucible for the study of evolution of violence in a very young democracy and, hopefully, to identify problems and provide some solutions. Having gained independence from British rule in 1962, Jamaica immediately demonstrated a facile experimentation with forms of government that differed dramatically from what had been previously experienced under the rather rigid, autocratic British administration. In its 33 years of independence, this country has gone through some extraordinary shifts. An initial courtship with Communist theory led to a destructive liaison with Fidel Castros version of Marxism. During this brief interlude, the intellectual ideals of equality and peace came into direct contrast with facts of a failing Communist regime. During this period, there was a steady exodus of wealthy Jamaican families for whom heavy taxation threatened financial ruin. The prime minister, the Honorable Michael Manley, a highly sophisticated left-wing intellectual liberal, soon realized the political cost of the alliance with his Caribbean neighbor, Fidel Castro, who was then and is now dedicated to old-fashioned, state-controlled Communism. He attempted to return to a free-market democracy with financial foundations that were, by then, very shaky. To succeed in a project to reduce violence and improve the quality of life, the entire community needs to be involved. From our work in countries where community projects were primarily financed by federal and state agencies, we were aware that the participation of private citizens in projects was essential for success. Commitment has an added intensity when personal time and funding is involved. Prime Minister Manley enthusiastically embraced and inspired this project, believing that it embodied the fundamental principles of democratic involvement to which he was committed. When the authors personally presented their plan to him, he accepted it immediately and with an obvious personal sense of urgency. Illness led him to resign the post of Prime Minister in 1993, but his successor, Mr. P.J. Patterson, has continued in the same committed, democratic mode.

Assessing Adolescents Who Threaten Homicide in Schools

Psychoanalytic and psychiatric perspectives on children who threaten to kill others are reviewed in the context of the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the problem. Converging technologies derived from a Psychoanalytically informed social systems model are compared to law enforcement approaches, Psychoanalytic understanding of the individual dynamics of the child, and empirical research a conduct disordered adolescents. The interdisciplinary orientation of a broadly trained community psychoanalyst allows a unique contribution when trying to distinguish adolescents who make a threat from those who pose a threat. Case vignettes are used to illustrate the hypotheses.

Secure Attachment to Family and Community

ABSTRACT Disproportionately large numbers of high risk clients from Multiple Problem Families (MPFs) utilize a disproportionately large percentage of Medicaid, Health and Human Services. Clients from these families are involved in domestic violence, addiction, child abuse and neglect. They are over represented on the caseloads of state protective service agencies. The approach outlined in this paper is based on social attachment theory models. It stresses the use of long-term, home-based therapy, and community support agencies to establish and maintain safe secure attachment for these fragile families. The therapeutic goals are to foster attachments that lead to increased mentalisation, and to decrease the crisis-driven behavior that often results in high cost utilization of state services. A placement prevention model, outlined as an alternative “mentalising social system” approach, is proposed for treating disruptive MPF children. Family oriented, in-home, community-based treatment is found to be more cost effective and therapeutically helpful for these children than costly inpatient psychiatric admission followed by residential care.

Modifying social aggression in schools

The paper identifies aspects of subtle social aggression in the school environment that can make children and staff feel quite miserable and unsafe, and which will thus likely impair a childs capacity to learn, and a teachers capacity to teach. Unaddressed power dynamics created by the interaction and attitudes of those in the social context are defined, and the interpersonal dynamics of the abdicating bystander described. A randomized controlled trial of an intervention for elementary schools is described briefly, which attempts to modify social aggression.

Threat Assessment in Schools: A Critique of an Ongoing Intervention

This paper critiques an attempt to apply the FBI threat assessment protocol to an incident involving a homicidal threat by a vocational high school student against the districts superintendent. The student who made the threat was treated in psychotherapy, and the school underwent a threat assessment process that highlighted many operational pitfalls common in assessing homicidal intent in adolescents. Psychotherapy was successful, the student returned to the vocational school, and eventually graduated. Recommendations based on mistakes and successes in performing an FBI-style, profiling approach to threat assessment are made.

An Experimental Case Study Series Showing Induced Altruism’s Efficacy in Severely Disturbed Inner-City Children

ABSTRACT Using descriptions of inner-city adolescents being seen at a community-based mental health clinic, the authors demonstrate how the use of altruism enabled the adolescents to alter their inner lives and their behavior. The trajectory of development toward relatedness, creativity, and fulfillment was reestablished.