The Social Causes of Crime - Overview
By Elliott Barker, M.D.
My work with criminally insane psychopaths in Ontario's maximum
security mental hospital led two colleagues and myself to establish the Canadian
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1975, in order
to increase public awareness of the long-term consequences of emotional
abuse in the earliest years.
Our forensic experience made it clear that individuals who commit
crimes can do so in large part because they lack the capacity to be
affected by how their victims feel. They know how they feel, but that
knowledge (cognitive awareness) does not affect them in the same way it
affects normal people.
The capacity to be affected by how others feel is developed in the
earliest years - before the age of about three. What is more significant
is that this capacity cannot be learned or taught or put into a person
after that age with any known method of treatment.
This capacity to be affected by how others feel is developed most
strongly when infants and toddlers are empathically cared for by the
same few people all the time - people who are willing and able to meet
the child's emotional needs.
Until this century, the emphasis in child rearing has been to
socialize children in the sense of teaching them how to behave properly;
to know (cognitive awareness) right from wrong. It has not been
understood until recent years that socialization is ineffective when a
person has not developed the capacity to be affected by how others feel.
How do we ensure that this capacity is developed? Raising the status
of empathic parenting of children under three, increasing support
services for parents with children under three, increasing the emphasis
on trust, empathy and affection in the adult world, and vastly improving
preparation for parenting for boys and girls - before they are
physically able to conceive children.
All of this seems straightforward and achievable, but there is a
catch. Adults who themselves suffered from unempathic care when they
were very young, and this is almost everyone (most so those who deny
it), must keep the pain of that experience out of conscious awareness.
They do this by various psychological tricks or defense mechanisms such
as rationalization ("let him cry, he has to learn it's a tough
world"), role reversal or displacement ("that baby is
deliberately trying to control me"), and idealization ("my
parents were tough on me and it was good for me").
Whatever mechanisms are used, the unfortunate result is the same.
These adult victims strongly believe and insist that unempathic care of
children is not harmful, but quite the opposite - virtuous and
responsible childcare. This dynamic greatly complicates recognition of
the need for, and implementation of, those steps necessary to ensure
that the next generation of children do not suffer the same damage.
The solution to this dilemma is to increase public awareness of this
unconscious intergenerational cycle, and to work as steadily and quickly
as politically feasible toward the goal of raising every member of the
next generation with a well-developed capacity to be affected by the way
others feel.
