The Titanic was built to withstand water in four of its forward water-tight compartments. Once water went beyond it was inevitable that the ship would sink. The water would win, no matter what efforts were made to stop it.
Well, folks, I told you so. We have reached the cultural fifth compartment. The FDA has now banned ASDs. Those are shock devices – in lovely anklet form – for controlling things like self-harm. Meaning people who gouge their own eyes out and things like that.
Why is this the equivalent of flooding the fifth compartment? Because humans are the most dangerous creatures on the planet. We are designed to viciously kill things. Punishment inhibits those behaviors by creating discriminations – we kill to defend ourselves, our families, our tribes. We kill to get food and protect food. A child who wantonly kills small animals is a hero – 10,000 years ago. Not so much, today. If you don’t want your child doing that you apply contingent punishment and the behavior is checked. A discrimination limits the behavior to specific contexts. “You may only kill small animals if you intend to eat them.” and “You may not torture them.” If society sticks to that type of rule, the water never gets to the fifth compartment.
Now imagine that your brain is different from other people. It fires off electrical impulses in a way that yours doesn’t. You are helpless to control a constant impulse to fling yourself at walls to break your nose. Perhaps because the pain of the broken nose overpowers the urge to break your own nose. If that sounds illogical, it is. However, it is no different than a society who says that normal humans may not inflict lesser pain to stop broken noses.
I spoke at an ABAI regional conference in Toronto a few years ago. The majority of the people in attendance work with autism. The title of my presentation was ‘Punish or Perish”. I was not being hyperbolic. A few months after the conference, I got this email from an attendee. This is a perfect summation of the problem.
“Here in my current position, I often struggle with years and years of ‘reinforcement’ procedures that still have my students breaking their own noses and requiring 2-person holds – often on a daily basis, and an absolute resistance to even discussing the possibility of using a punishment procedure.”
The water has lapped above the fifth bulkhead. The poor wretches condemned to breaking their own noses are now left to man the life-boats of their sinking ship. In the process, they will harm others who are charged with stopping them from self-injury. Anyone who suggests the use of contingent punishment to stop the injury will be punished professionally for speaking their minds.
And now we see what ‘modern’ psychology gives use. A return to rubber rooms, restraint chairs, big, brawny attendants who slam patients to the ground like deputy sheriffs in a bar brawl that never ends. Oops. I forgot the mind-killing drugs.
Ironically, the ban on ASDs displays the cruel indifference of cowardly minds. Not willing to defend what is so obviously required to reduce suffering, they ban a device that can manage the destruction – while having no solution to the problem.
Get ready for the water to flood the fifth compartment and all that implies. Once ethical behavior is vilified, the boat is going to sink. There is nothing you can do to stop it, it’s just a matter of how long the water will take to get to your deck chair.
I was not aware that the shock devices were banned. That’s sad. What you’ve written here almost exactly describes what happened to me several years ago while working with a person with intense self-injury and violence against others. I saw photo evidence of what his teeth and fists could do, blood pouring down his mother’s arm, bruises all over his father, and welts on his own face. I saw him dive over a couch, tackling his dad from behind. He pinched me and drew blood, tried to bite me, slapped me, pushed me, grabbed me in his arms and tried to crush me. I watched him chew up and swallow his own feces a couple of times. I implemented the ABA reinforcement procedures like I was supposed to, but it didn’t work in those intense moments when it’d really would’ve been nice for it to work. Well, one day I watched him grab his mom’s hand and bite her fingers so hard that she started bleeding – she shouted at him and yelled for him to stop and go to his room. He immediately complied – her shouting and intense posture made him jerk back and stop attacking her. Upon seeing this, and after reading about Dr. Iwata’s and Dr. Lovaas’ shocking device research and the Judge Rottenberg center cases, I decided to suggest that we look into it. I was met with such resistance you would have thought I had suggested that we murder him! Well, then one day he grabbed me and tried to bite my throat, and I knew that would be the end of me after I saw what he did to arms and hands, so I struggled to push him away from me, and in the tussle he head butted me, and I got a mild concussion. I laid in bed for a day or two, and then went back and spoke with the stakeholders, and I said that if we did not earnestly pursue contingent punishment procedures, I could not continue work. I was yelled at by my supervisor, yelled at by the mother, and told by the father that if I continued seeking contingent punishment in this field, I would forever be hitting my head against a brick wall.
Everything you wrote, I’ve witnessed. The mind-numbing drugs, the restraints, and the refusal of anyone to be both compassionate, patient, and courageous enough to use contingent punishment in a measured, kind way. Everyone is so afraid of being sued, penalized, or shamed, that they don’t do anything but pass the buck. The most courageous and loving people I’ve met are the parents who say, “Ah, we just him with the fly swatter when he gets violent. It’s saved our home, our lives, and his!” Social Services would love to slander and penalize such parents, but the irony is that they actually love their child, while DSS is indifferent and even hateful toward their child.
Jesus, help us! : )