Let me assert my firm belief
that the only thing we have to fear
is fear itself.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt
§
Nothing is to be feared.
It is only to be understood.
—Marie Curie
Crime is something we have always been afraid of. If there is anything that we want to defend ourselves against, surely it is crime. We see evidence of this in the billions of dollars we spend annually on security alarms, surveillance systems, guns, police forces, and huge jails. Yet every once in a while it dawns on me that if we are to deal with crime in an even remotely effective manner, we must make every effort to get as close to it as possible—and to not steadfastly distance ourselves from it. I believe that by distancing ourselves from crime—in other words, by building our psychological defences against it—we sabotage any hope of devising creative solutions to deal with it. In our perpetual confusion (perhaps even ignorance) about the causes of crime, we end up reverting to short-term solutions that allay our immediate fears, but which do nothing to address the root causes of criminality. As long as the root causes remain a mystery to us, there will always be something to fear.
So how might we try to minimise our distance from deviance and crime? In answering this question, I would like to draw attention to the view that the justice system is, fundamentally, a human affair. In their overview of the Canadian criminal justice system, Griffiths and Cunningham (2000) suggest the importance of remembering that the system is "first and foremost a human enterprise. . .There is much that remains to be understood about the causes of criminal behaviour and the most effective responses to it. As well, offenders often struggle to understand and correct their behaviour" (p. 4). Those who think of the justice system in terms of human enterprise usually think about relationships between people. And this, of course, makes sense, given that we must live with one another on a daily basis. However, I think there is another way of considering the term "human enterprise"—one that is just as important as is the concern for personal relationships. It involves appreciating one of the fundamental qualities of being human—the innate ability to make sense of the world around us. Although some of us appear more able, likely, or willing than other people to exercise this ability, its importance in the appreciation of crime cannot be overstated. In my opinion, those who are able to strip their psychological defences against deviance and crime are in the best position to appreciate its causes, and, therefore, in the best position to work with others to manage it.
Before discussing criminal justice, it is necessary to take a moment and explain where this concern for individual awareness comes from. It stems from the work of Carl Rogers, a pioneering psychologist who believed in seeing his distressed clients in a fundamentally humanistic fashion (Rogers, 1946, 1947, 1980). He stressed that the cause of emotional distress—be it anxiety, depression, psychosis—lies not so much in "problems" or "disorders" per se, but in the defences that people build up to protect themselves against thoughts, emotions, and behaviours that for whatever reason are uncomfortable to them. In Rogers' formulation, the key to alleviating this emotional distress is in giving the client a safe and open environment in which to freely and honestly express his true feelings—without the need for active defences. In doing so, the client should be able to bring his painful thoughts or feelings into awareness and, eventually, be able to integrate them into his personality. The result should be a client who is no longer upset with being "divided"—between true feelings and those that other people consider appropriate. Consequently, the depression, anxiety, and neurosis caused by the divided self should diminish.
What I see happening in the criminal justice system—and in the community at large—is similar to what Rogers saw in his distressed clients. We are terrified of the idea of crime and deviance, and our primary defences against any thought of crime is to suppress it, ignore it, or run away from it. Yet these defences seem to create a fundamental division within each one of us. On the one hand, we want to control and manage crime and deviance, but on the other hand we become so terrified of it that we actively expel it from our minds. We engage in this endless defensiveness on a daily basis, perpetuating a social and justice system that only superficially and temporarily suppresses crime. We then wonder why crime cannot be managed, only to make ourselves more fearful and anxious. This fear and anxiety merely perpetuates itself as we re-enter the cycle of fear, avoidance, and more crime. Yet this cycle must be broken. Much as the depressed patient must become aware of his defences in order to be freed from his debilitating symptoms, everyone involved in the criminal justice system—including individuals like you and me—must become aware of their own defences in order to free themselves from the unfortunate effects of crime.
I do not mean to suggest that fear and the defences we use against it are of no value to us. Indeed, they are of tremendous value. Fear is a natural response that warns us of potentially dangerous situations. It has certainly had an evolutionary significance. When we lived in the jungle and on the savannah, fear kept us from being eaten alive by lions and coyotes. If we spotted a life-threatening animal, we would flee. Indeed, we could claim our own safe space and everything would be fine. But we no longer live in the jungle or on the savannah. In modern times, the ancient jungle is now the modern city, where we live in close proximity to and must constantly interact with one another—not jungle animals. When we fear one another, fleeing for safety is not always a possibility, because there are only so many places left where we can stake our private territory and live without contact with other beings. Yet instead of confronting the cause of our fear, we invoke other defences—we suppress, ignore, minimise, trivialise, exaggerate, or catastrophise crime. Although these defences help keep our fears at bay, they do nothing to solve fundamental problems. They just postpone action.
Every day, we see endless examples of fear and how it perverts attempts to see reality for what it is—to appreciate the true causes of crime and the hard choices we must make to deal with it. In the first half of this essay I would like to discuss some of these examples. In the second half, I would like to suggest some possible solutions to deal with this fear.
The documentary Monsters Among Us is a fascinating exploration of the causes and consequences of pedophilia and sexual offences. In this documentary, psychologists, criminal justice experts, and even offenders themselves offer opinions and insights into the nature of these horrendous crimes. Yet I cannot help but sense the sensationalistic quality of this documentary. It seems to play on one of our fundamental fears: fear of the unknown. Could, indeed, anyone turn out to be a child molester? Could our next door neighbour be one? Are there pedophiles stalking our school grounds? How can we ever predict who will commit these crimes, especially when we cannot always find causes of such behaviours in the histories of offenders? Scary stuff indeed.
Yet at the same time that this documentary stirs these powerful emotions in us, it distances us from the reality of sexual offences. While the documentary suggests that these crimes can happen anywhere, there is a powerful counterpoint—most of the footage takes place in correctional facilities or in the offices of psychiatrists and other mental health experts. The result is that viewers develop the belief that pedophiles and other sex offenders are of some other planet; that they are "crazy" and "disordered"; that we can lock them up and not have to think about the fundamental causes of their behaviour, and, ultimately, how to protect our children. Indeed, the more the details of each sex offence appear to be inexplicable to us, the more likely we are to expel them from our consciousness.
Even amongst psychology students and clinicians, conversation about psychopaths seems to be tainted by defensive posturing. In these cases, the posturing is directed against fears that crime often hides behind even the most innocent facade. When we consider the possibility that many criminals are very intelligent and sociable, we relish in using the term "psychopath" to describe them. The idea that any individual in our neighbourhood or classroom could be a bona fide psychopath is indeed frightening to some of us. It is very disturbing to think that many criminals look and act very normal—if not charming!—but can easily "fool" or manipulate any of us.
Two years ago, I met with Jonathan, an ex-offender who came to one of my classes to discuss his life of crime. For all intents and purposes, Jonathan presented as a kind, sociable, well-spoken gentleman who during his youth had somehow gotten caught up in criminal activities. Nearly two hours of conversation had gone by before my class learned that Jonathan had killed two men. The silence of some of the students was very telling. Surely this personable man could not have actually killed people. But indeed, he had. It seemed to me that only a few students were able to integrate these two possibilities: "It's great that he's a born-again Christian and everything, but I still can't forget that he killed someone. I don't know."
When people cannot understand the reason behind an offender's actions, they often attribute them to the "immaturity" or sheer "stupidity" of the offender. This is illustrated in the documentary Parole Dance, which follows the parole deliberations of three offenders inside a medium-security penitentiary in Ontario. Other than appearing dishevelled, the offenders do not seem to exhibit any serious "abnormalities" or psychological disorders. The parole board members are thus at a loss to understand why seemingly "normal" people would engage in seemingly inane criminal acts. The solution is to label the offenders as being of substandard intelligence. I would suggest that the actions of the parole board are actually defences against fear—fear that even "normal" people can commit crimes. Instead of probing more deeply to uncover the true motivations, the parole board members make snide remarks and insults that clearly make the offenders uncomfortable and even further unable to convey the reasons for their offences. Eventually, the offenders come to accept the apparent "stupidity" and illogical nature of their actions, which only confirms the initial suspicions of the board members. Yet stupidity and irrationality are usually not satisfactory explanations of crime. Regardless of the inexplicable nature of a given crime, people do indeed do things for a reason—even if those reasons only make sense to them. Yet in labelling the offenders as being of substandard intelligence, the board members preclude any effort to understand these reasons.
Many of us—including myself—are also afraid of what lurks inside our own heads. We are scared of what we might be capable of doing to others. Whether or not we wish to admit it, we have all experienced sadistic thoughts—of harming that nasty co-worker, the meddlesome neighbour, or the incorrigible relative. Many of us have also experienced masochistic impulses—the desire to harm ourselves. As strange as it may sound, these impulses are perfectly natural phenomenon—and they do not pose a threat to anybody so long as we are able to channel them in healthy, productive directions and not harm anyone. Yet for various reasons, some of us are terrified of these impulses. Thus, when we encounter someone who carries out these impulses, we invoke powerful defences. We refuse to acknowledge our own latent criminality—especially when we look in the mirror of a criminal's life.
While walking around Vancouver's drug- and crime-infested downtown east side one afternoon, I noticed that many of my peers refused to look at some of the vagrants and prostitutes. The thought that under the right circumstances any one of us could fall into a life of drugs and crime was too disturbing. The thought that we could end up walking up and down the streets talking to ourselves and masturbating was simply unacceptable. Yet the results were powerful. Some of us automatically dismissed these residents as "druggies", as "sick", or as "lost". (I use the word "automatically" because because I do not think that many of us are even remotely aware of these defensive stances). Yet such labels probably do little in directing our attention to the root causes of these circumstances. In dismissing such people as completely different from "us", we distance ourselves from their situations. We can no longer empathise with their circumstances. We can no longer hear them and understand why they are where they are.
I do not, of course, lay "blame" on anyone for doing this. Even highly trained mental health professionals and students feel threatened by lives of crime. If we ever stop to think that there is little that separates us from drug dealers and prostitutes, we lose the sense of comfort that derives from thinking we are somehow "better adjusted" than criminals. We refuse to acknowledge in others what we know is in our own selves. And when we lose this comfort zone, we feel we are unable to counsel and minister to them. One seasoned therapist working with schizophrenics writes the following:
...the schizophrenic person's tendency to externalise conflict can create problems in alliance formation. From the viewpoint of the therapist's countertransference, the alliance is most likely to suffer when the therapist limits his empathic involvement with this patient so as to protect himself from making contact with aspects of himself that are ego—alien. Unfortunately, the more primitive the patient, the more the patient threatens to make the therapist aware of forbidden aspects of his own self. To prevent this from happening, the therapist may choose to view the patient as incomprehensible so as to put a barrier both between himself and the patient, and between the reasonable and primitive aspects within himself (Selzer & Grimaldi, 1993, p. 376).
My meeting with Gloria, a counsellor who works with people from the downtown east side, offered another example of this. While Gloria is clearly a talented, compassionate, and dedicated individual, I could not help but feel that she experiences some sense of safety in labelling some of her clients as "mentally disordered". As a psychology student, I frequently do the same. I am not happy to admit it, but I do get some solace in realising that this is a normal response in dealing with people who seem "different" to us. Fortunately, these feelings eventually subside and we slowly come to appreciate people as people. This is when we start being able to truly understand the causes of what appear to be "disordered" and "criminal" behaviours. As Allen (1935, cited in Ryerson, 1978) writes, "The mental patient [is] discovered to be a human being whose sickness [is] not bizarre and mysterious but [has] an order and purpose and was related to phenomenon observed in so-called normal people" (p. 119). Appreciating this "order and purpose" is critical if we are to understand criminality.
Relinquishing our defensive posturing is the key in helping us uncover the true causes of deviance. Rogers (1947) had a solution for his distressed clients:
Briefly it may be put that the observed phenomena of changes seem most adequately explained by the hypothesis that given certain psychological conditions, the individual has the capacity to reorganize his field of perception, including the way he perceives himself, and that a concomitant or a resultant of this perceptual reorganization is an appropriate alteration of behavior.
The "psychological conditions" Rogers referred to were:
According to Rogers, if these qualities are present in the therapeutic alliance, defences can be shed and the client can fully experience those situations which are fearful, anxiety-provoking, etc. I suggest that the same can be applied to criminal justice. Much like the Rogerian therapist, if each of us exhibits the above qualities, we can approach what scares us—crime and criminals—and give offenders and others the opportunity to express the true reasons and motivations underlying deviance. More specifically, I might suggest the following:
Rogers (1947) wrote extensively about the benefits of integrating the good with the bad. For instance:
It would appear that when all of the ways in which the individual perceives himself—all perceptions of the qualities, abilities, impulses, and attitudes of the person, and all perceptions of himself in relation to others—are accepted into the organized conscious concept of the self, then this achievement is accompanied by feelings of comfort and freedom from tension which are experienced as psychological adjustment.
Rogers' sentiments echo the ideas of the Gestalt psychologists, who focussed on the value of seeing people as "wholes" and not as mere conglomerations of individual qualities (e.g., Lewin, 1935). The concept of restorative justice also seems to draw on the idea of "gestalt". The focus in restorative justice is not on retribution for a criminal act, but, rather, on the healing of the community that has been affected by the crime. The "community" is seen to include both offender and non—offenders. "Circle sentencing" is one type of restorative justice approach in which the offender, a judge, and members of the community decide together on the appropriate disposition of the case at hand. In this form of sentencing, everyone faces one another in a circle, each taking turns to discuss how the crime has affected their lives. At the end, the group as a whole reaches a consensus on how the case will be dealt with—i.e., how the community will be healed, or "restored" to its previous equilibrium.
This approach sees crime not as an isolated event, but as something that affects an entire community—a living organism, or "gestalt". Each person and each act affects another person and some other act in the community. The offender is seen as affecting the community, but the community is also seen as affecting the offender. The two cannot be separated. Thus, to make an analogy with Rogers' philosophy, the community can have no divided sense of "self". It is a gestalt that is in harmony with itself. Both the "good" and the "bad" (the community and the crime) are integrated into one whole. The community does not merely dispose of the crime by shifting responsibility to an anonymous court system.
In essence, the circle offers a way to shed the community's defensiveness against crime and deviance. Because both offender and community are placed together in a secure environment in which they can be fully honest with one another, inherent defences are broken down. But this approach has one major prerequisite. Both offender and community must believe that each has the ability to shed defences and heal within this circle. Everyone must believe in their human capacity to integrate the good and bad into a peaceful whole.
Again, the parallels with Rogers are obvious:
The client—centered therapist stands at an opposite pole, both theoretically and practically. He has learned that the constructive forces in the individual can be trusted. and that the more deeply they are relied upon, the more deeply they are released. He has come to build his procedures upon these hypotheses, which are rapidly becoming established as facts; that the client knows the areas of concern which he is ready to explore; that the client is the best judge as to the most desirable frequency of interviews; that the client can lead the way more efficiently than the therapist into deeper concerns; that the client will protect himself from panic by ceasing to explore an area which is becoming too painful; that the client can and will uncover all the repressed elements which it is necessary to uncover in order to build a comfortable adjustment; that the client can achieve for himself far truer and more sensitive and accurate insights than can possibly be given to him; that the client is capable of translating these insights into constructive behavior which weigh his own needs and desires realistically against the demands of society; that the client knows when therapy is completed and he is ready to cope with life independently. Only one condition is necessary for all these forces to be released, and that is the proper psychological atmosphere between client and therapist (Rogers, 1946).
I realise that what I have written in this paper will strike many people as being based on "psychobabble" and "hokey-pokey" theorising. Indeed, much of popular psychology has drawn from the works of Carl Rogers and other humanistic psychologists. Unfortunately, the result has often been nothing short of vulgar. I initially resisted using Rogers as a platform for my views on criminal justice, because I feared I would be contributing to such vulgarity. However, I have realised that such hesitations are representative of my own defences against the reality of our lives. In keeping with Rogers, I have chosen to put my own biases and defences on the table. This has meant some harsh criticisms—if not some arrogant statements—about how we look at crime. But if we are to get a hold on crime and minimise it, whatever we can do to further our understanding of it must be seen as worthwhile.
[Remaining paragraphs to be edited].
[1]Correctional officers also do the same (although perhaps to a lesser extent). In
their case, they gain control over their environment by making efforts to be civil with
the inmates under their charge. Sometimes, however, control of one's environment must come
from within one's own self. This was certainly the case with Billie R. Upon entering his
first adult correctional facility, Billie wrested control of his environment by making a
conscious effort to hide all outward appearances of his fear. This paid off well, as it
probably reduced the likelihood that other offenders might attack him. In both of these
cases, exhibiting fear of other offenders could have been life-threatening.
Griffiths, C.T., & Cunningham, A. (2000). Canadian Criminal Justice: A Primer [2nd ed.]. Toronto: ITP Nelson Publishers.
Lewin, K. (1935). A dynamic theory of personality. New York, McGraw-Hill.
Rogers, C.R. (1946). Significant aspects of client-centered therapy. American Psychologist,1, 415-422 [Online]. Available: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Rogers/therapy.htm
Rogers, C.R. (1947). Some observations on the organization of personality. American Psychologist, 2, 358-368 [Online]. Available: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Rogers/personality.htm [Rogers' APA Presidential Address.]
Rogers, C.R. (1980). A way of being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Ryerson, E. (1978). The best-laid plans: America's juvenile court experiment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Selzer, M.A., & Grimaldi, J.A. (1993). The use of countertransference in intensive psychotherapy with patients with schizophrenia. In W.H. Sledge & A. Tasman (Eds.), Clinical challenges in psychiatry. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
Copyright © 2002, by Eddy M. Elmer
Permanent URL: http://www.eddyelmer.com/articles/holsfu.htm