- RUDOLPH BROWN/CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
Madden's Funeral Home attendants remove the bodies from a triple murder scene at Newton Square in eastern Kingston.
Hartley Neita, Contributor
The cartoon by Las May on the editorial page of last Monday's Gleaner, showing a woman and child as 'Endangered Species' beside the skeleton of a dinosaur depicted as 'Extinct Species' in a museum, was a sad reflection on what our society has become.
For it depicts the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth of a situation which sadly exists in Jamaica today.
Last week in a column on this subject, the Reverend Marjorie Lewis sought among other things to place these vicious and sometimes senseless sexual crimes in a historical context. Today, Dr. Peter Weller, a clinical psychologist, analyses the motivation which leads some of our men and women to indulge in these crimes.
HE FEELS that any attempt to change these behaviours must be informed by an understanding of the dynamics and interplay of both the external and internal psychosocial processes and the cultural context in which they operate. He began the interview by pointing out that any observed behaviour may be the result of a variety of motivational factors. The same action initiated by a number of people may have totally different motivational dynamics and so require different interventions to change the behaviours of each individual or sub-group.
The point is that many of us try to characterise and 'pigeon hole' people assuming that if they are all doing the same thing then it must be for the same reasons. This makes it easier for us to feel a sense of predictability and control - perhaps safer. It also allows us to see "the others" as "dem" and not "us".
A variety of things can contribute to the observed violent behaviour against the vulnerable. There may be a number of patterns in the actions of these men towards the defenseless and vulnerable. For the purpose of this discussion, we can generalise and separate the men into a number of groups.
Some of the violent behaviour may be acts of passion which are "one off" events, terrible but not necessarily to be repeated. This person may not have a psychotic mental illness or personality disorder, but acts in a fit of emotion, perhaps unable to cope with the situation in any other way. Alcohol use and abuse may contribute to this behaviour in some people.
The violence may be the result of someone who is psychotic, who behaves in this manner when he is out of touch with reality. In such situations, they are not thinking or reasoning rationally, and are what one can describe as 'crazy people'. That kind of craziness may be something someone lives on a day-to-day basis or he may go into periods of this psychotic whirl which may be the result of a variety of interacting factors ranging from genetics or physiology to abuse of drugs.
HEARING VOICES
Dr. Weller feels that this kind of person may be akin to the fellow who says he heard voices and ends up hacking his young cousin. Dr. Weller emphasises that we should be careful not to further stigmatise those with mental illnesses because of our fears of increased violence.
His fear is that society with its social and economic pressures and the crises which flow from these, and the stress on men to still perform as men but not having the resources to do it - can create a kind of environment that can push someone over the edge from "hearing voices". You will therefore have men who might have a psychotic disorder and who have been able to cope either because of medication, family and peer support, or because they have learnt how to hold it in and keep following the social norms.
So, it is not so much that he thinks it is that common, but his fear is that it may become very common. For, more people will be living closer to the edge and although the health system has improved in that there is more medication, they cannot necessarily access it. In addition there is still a lot of stigma about going to health facilitators and facilities for certain types of treatment.
Dr. Weller's greater concern is about those who may be described as the sociopathic personalities. They have no moral or social compass and are not limited by a sense of wrong or right. They do not care very much about any one else, they just do what they feel is necessary in any given situation, and what they feel as necessary may be in response to their own emotions. So they feel no compunction in hurting somebody in order to get something which can be quite tangible, e.g. money or less tangible, e.g. sexual pleasure.
That personality can act individually and on their own, so that some of the acts we are now seeing - the taking away and raping of a girl or a child - might just be that individual doing what he feels like doing for whatever reason.
These personalities which seem to be of greatest concern to Dr. Weller are bad enough when they are by themselves and acting individually, but when you now have that personality operating in the social context of gangs, and when they are subject to organised behaviour , it is even worse.
When these people come under the control of the puppet master who is able to provide the benefits and the context "guidance", he is able to get them to do anything. The result is the kind of viciousness now being seen where women and children are treated as things ... as objects. And as such "you can chop her, f... her, shoot her", with impunity, and as a reward he is getting benefits such as money and free drugs.
Dr. Weller describes the puppet masters as people who have their own agendas. These agenda may be personal or "professional". It may be about power and money. They may want to control the community, to protect residents from outside interference, provide protection for businessmen operating in their sphere, manage the drug business, and make sure that there are no informers.
Behavioural intervention may also target those who are influencing and controlling the perpetrators.
The men who have discovered or decided that in order to survive in their environment, they have to become cold and almost inhuman in order to cope and this allows them to do anything to anybody.
They train themselves by disciplining their minds, taking risks and even escalating their viciousness. They soon believe they can do anything without any feeling of guilt or sorrow, and develop a 'dog-heart' mentality.
The puppet masters know how to dangle these men on their strings so that they will do anything required by their handlers and not feel a thing. And they recruit others too, who may not be as sociopathic as they are, but who are motivated by the access to drugs, of being part of a special in-group, wearing the latest fashions, can profile at the dance, and have limitless girls panting and wanting to be known as their women.
MANHOOD RESEARCH
Dr. Weller is involved in a research programme on manhood, involving groups of men in Jamaica and the Caribbean talking about how they perceive what a man should be, how they look at gender and how they look at relationships. Many of the men who have been interviewed so far are very ambivalent about the question of women achieving equality. A significant number have a feeling they are being pushed aside and that women are taking over what is their God-given role in life.
He recalls that "one participant said that with good educational and economic opportunities, women should aspire to succeed and lead, but they should not expect it. In other words, we men are here at this present level and women must not think we are going to let them believe that the final word is in their hands."
The patriarchal tradition in Jamaica is that men must run things, and one of the common themes coming out of this study is that in the eyes of many men manhood is about control. Man must run things in the house, in relationships, the community and the country. And if they think they are running these things they must not know they are merely being used and manipulated. For not to run things means you are not a real man.
And this challenge to their masculinity and their manhood sometimes leads to the use of aggression which is where you get a lot of the domestic violence. In addition, the gang rapes may also be a way for some men to show women, that yes they can be the teacher, they could be the ones who own the neighbourhood shop and have the money to support the football team, but it is man who run things. Now and always. And forever more.
Dr. Weller also shares an interesting take on the question of masculine sexuality among some sexually violent men. It is thought that for some men who are involved in these gang rapes a homosexual component exists. It may well be, he wonders, that there is a repressed homosexuality which they act out when they are in a group sex situation, where "they are putting it in where the next man has just put his". This is an interesting view, about which there needs to be further study.
Dr. Weller, like Rev. Marjorie Lewis, has much more to say on this topic of violence against our women and children. And I will be returning to more of their views. Next Sunday, however, I will be talking to a playwright, Basil Dawkins, whose plays have touched on this subject.
