5 Feb 2023

157

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook

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Academic level: College

Paper type: Essay (Any Type)

Words: 853

Pages: 3

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Frank and his brother Leon have things in common as well as differences in their personality fueled by the different childhood experiences they have undergone. The childhood experiences have an impact on how people behave towards the others and themselves in their lives later on. Frank had autism while Leon was a sociopath. Both Leon and Frank had affected interpersonal skills and world mostly keep to themselves. Both would no find the need to communicate with the other people. For Frank, he could not realize that people don't know what he already knows. The lack of the cognizance of the difference kept him from communicating. For Leon, some hatred came up in him and thus he could not talk to others. 

Frank and Leon have some differences too. Frank, being autistic, tends to be against violence despite his low interpersonal skills and fails to interact with the other people frequently. Frank may hurt other people's feelings, but this is unintentional as he may do it out of the failure to recognize that the other people feel damaged due to his actions. For Leon, hurting people and being involved in quarrels and violence is something worth enjoying while doing. He may hurt other people's feelings while being fully aware that they are feeling hurt, but he does not care about them. 

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Based on the theory of mind, the sociopaths such as Leon have it twisted. They disband all the claims of the existence of genuine love. They think that the other people are out there to take advantage of them and hurt them, disguised in loving them. Furthermore, sociopaths have an egoistic approach towards love. On the other hand, people suffering from Asperger's such as frank have the idea that since they know something, the other people know it too. Hence they don't find the need to communicate most of the things to different people. 

There is hope for Leon's sociopathic condition. To begin with, the researchers have come up with a way to link the sociopathic traits to the hormonal and chemical balances in the body. For instance, the scientists have established that sociopaths have more of hormone cortisol measured through their saliva. Sociopaths such as Leon have more of the stress hormone than the other people. Their abnormal cortisol levels have been as a result of the early childhood traumatic experiences as well as genetic vulnerabilities that have turned them into antisocial beings. The fact that scientists have been able to link sociopathy to hormonal and chemical levels in the body is a green light to the therapeutic efforts that can be done on individuals such as Leon to help them recover from sociopathy. 

The first intervention to Leon's condition is rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is meant for and focused on gradually changing an individual's behavior to more positive and socially acceptable behavior. Leon has committed a murder and did not feel anything about his actions. At some point, he wonders why the victims' family is crying in the court, and he is the one going to prison. The act shows that he does not care about the consequences of his actions. Therefore, the best remedy to Leon's condition is not imprisonment but rehabilitation. 

The other intervention to Leon's sociopathy is therapeutic efforts of counteracting the condition. Therapy to sociopathy has to be conducted by competent professionals since it is a complicated process that requires constant follow-up on the patients undergoing it. Treatment targets the brain of the victim and slowly introduces change into the way of thinking of the sociopath. With time, the patient under therapy has acquired a different approach towards life. If Leon were to undergo treatment, his uncaring attitude would gradually turn into the caring manner he ought to have to himself and the other human beings around him. 

Justin was another boy whose early life was abnormal. He was born of a fifteen-year-old mother who left him with her mother, Justin's grandmother, at a tender age of only two months old. Unfortunately, Justin's grandmother was hospitalized and passed on when the boy was eleven months old. Arthur, the grandmother's boyfriend was left in custody of Justin. He worked like a dog breeder, and so he put Justin in a dog's cage, after the child protection services failed to place Justin elsewhere, such as another family. At two, Justin was diagnosed with severe brain damage. He was unlikely to get better. 

In treatment, Dr. Perry and the other clinicians took the following steps in Justin's case. The first step was Dr. Perry's familiarization with Justin. He walked over to the crib he was in and took off the lab coat and the tie. The actions were to reduce the possibilities of the doctor threatening Justin since the boy was not conversant with the jackets and the neckties. The second step towards Justin's therapy was to move him to a private room to the hospital where a given number of clinicians would attend to him. The relocation was meant to assure the boy of no harm during the healing process. 

The third step was the physical, occupational and language therapy. The therapy followed Justin's relocation to a private room and the limit to the number of clinicians attending to him. Staff members kept teaching Justin some words he had missed during childhood and the human actions such as reduction and eventual decline of the habit to sniff food and to lick people. The therapy targeted the limbic part of the brain concerning Justin being taught how to walk and control his pace. The treatment also focused on the cortical part of the brain regarding Justin being shown how to attach himself to others and relate to them usually. Eventually, Justin finds a foster family, and he lives his life usually. 

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StudyBounty. (2023, September 15). The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook .
https://studybounty.com/the-boy-who-was-raised-as-a-dog-and-other-stories-from-a-child-psychiatrists-notebook-essay

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