This paper explores poetry as a phenomenological
access point to the world of the abused child. In so doing, poetry
serves a threefold function: (1) a window into the child's world, (2) a
way to track the abused child's progress along the recovery process, and
(3) a tool for transforming abused children's world, by allowing them to
find their own unique voice. These functions are illustrated through
case vignettes.
Child abuse is a phenomenon that has been explored and examined from many different perspectives. Most notably, this has included studying the signs and symptoms present in children who have been abused, such as, behavioral changes, disturbed sleep, disturbed appetite, fluctuations in academic performance, aggressive acting out, and sexual acting out. The main impetus for much of this research has been the very real need for developing objective criteria in legal proceedings to substantiate allegations of child abuse. Although these can be powerful indicators for us as adults to attempt to determine whether or not abuse has occurred and alert us to the problem, this external perspective does little to deepen our understanding of the experience of the abused child.
In my work with abused children over the past fourteen years, I have come in contact with some fifteen hundred cases of child abuse and neglect, ranging from children who have been physically and emotionally abandoned to serious cases of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. I have found in my work with assessing, treating these children, and testifying in court concerning these children, that the level of understanding of the abused child is neither deep, nor broad. More often than not, the understanding of the abused child is replete with preconceptions, assumptions, and misconceptions made by judge, jury, attorneys, and unfortunately some colleagues.
From the beginning, our adult language perpetuates these assumptions. When one says child abuse, one is employing a label which is some way is supposes to encompass all instances of children who have experienced abusive circumstances, relationships, and conditions. In short, when we say child abuse, we are speaking of a category, as opposed to a specific, individual, unique abused child. Phenomenologically, this is a difference which makes a difference. My phenomenological training helped me immeasurably in affording me the opportunity to listen and attend the child's experiences and their exile from childhood. I did not want to explain, define, or categorize child abuse. I wanted to meet the abused child and begin to understand, to stand under, that is, make contact with and appreciate his/her world.
With younger children their natural language of play is a wonderful point of contact with their world (Oaklander, 1978; Moustakas, 1959; Axline, 1969). However, with teenagers it is very easy to reach an impasse. Not quite children, where play therapy is most appropriate, not adults where talking is the cure, one can easily feel frustrated working with teenagers. Teenagers who have been abused have little trust in adults, emotionally are overwhelmed, and have little patience for talking. Thus enter poetry.
Poetry's richness and depth lends itself to exploring the multiplicity and plurality of the terrain of the child's world. The general therapeutic use of poetry with children and adolescents has begun to emerge in the literature (Gladding & Hanna, 1982; Mazza, 1981; Morrison, 1969). In particular, the world of the abused child is a particular sensitive, vulnerable one that recently has found an unobtrusive approach in the therapeutic use of poetry (Mazza, Magaz, and Scaturro, 1987).
Existentially and phenomenologically, I have found that the abused child has been living a life of oppression and victimization where choice has been ripped from their souls and the only hopes of recovering it are through compulsive, obsessive forms of acting out in hopes of breaking free of the pain and trauma they have endured. Poetry, from the beginning, allows the child's own self direction to explore and be part of the process of creating, which is also a process of choosing. In other words, by being allowed to express himself/herself with no rules or censoring in poetry, they are given the freedom to experience what self determination is like, perhaps for the first time in their lives. Therefore, the atmosphere itself, from the very beginning is therapeutic to the extent that it allows for the child to begin to find a path toward self-determination once again and an ability and will to create in the world. Poetry is a concrete vehicle for them to find a connection with the others, the world and themselves once again. In a very real way it's developing a poetic approach to the therapeutic encounter, where validations, ventilation, and transformation can occur.
Case Examples:
I met Sara for the first time in the psychiatric hospital. She had tried to kill herself. I was the staff psychologist on the adolescent unit. When I first met Sara she was in her room, in her closet. Hands covering her head, as if to stop someone from beating her. Half of her head was shaved, black nail polish, army boots, and fatigues on. She was revealing her world from the first moment, for those who cared enough to listen. I said "Hi". She did not move. I sat on the floor. After a few minutes of silence she lifted her eye, what was left of her hair covering half of it. I asked her: "How goes it?". She gave me the finger. I put some paper, crayons, and a pencil on the floor and left. That night I was working late, finishing some testing on the unit. I was about to leave. As I passed Sara's room she threw a crumpled piece of paper at me. When I reached my car I unraveled it. Sara had written upon it the following poem:
I'm always the bait
always there
as a last resort.
In the back of their minds
to be used in some mind-fucking sport.
A basis for trouble
when no other is able
it feels like an old picture re-run
playing on cable.
Again it happens and again
of getting the cloak of my integrity stripped.
Will this madness ever end.
I'm a suicidal failure.
Can't explain what I knew or felt.
I got suicidal tendencies.
But, I can't kill myself.
She had opened a window to her world. She had begun to allow me to see, hear, and feel her world. There was still sarcasm, defensiveness, but she was sharing and revealing aspects of herself. Not answering questions; not performing on tests; not playing "patient"; not pleasing, opposing, rebelling, selling, or defending. All roles she had played over and over for teachers, friends, enemies, parents, doctors, and psychologists. She had been abused in many ways, at least many times in her short 14 years, but until know she had not talked about it.
Sara's poem brought out the themes that began to form about her life. "Always the bait" being used, not accepted for who she was, but for what she could give or be exchanged for, such as sexual gratification. Not in front of someone's mind, but "in the back of their minds", "as a last resort," that she was always a second thought to people; and when she was thought of, it was to be "used in some mind-fucking sport."
"A basis for trouble," she had been rebellious and oppostional. She called herself a "punk rock agnostic anarchist" she later told me. A minister's daughter, she grew up in a rigid, strict, authoritarian environment. No room for her to feel, express anger, show discontent, to disagree. She carved out her place by being in trouble, a negative identity, anti-hero. "Feels like an old picture re-run playing on cable." She was experiencing depersonalization, de-realization, apathy. Her world was fading away, slipping through her hands, she no longer felt that she mattered. The repetition of betrayal, abuse, through re-enactments of earlier trauma and continued disappointments constituted her world, where her "integrity was stripped". The the last image of grief, feeling a failure even in suicide, unable to carry through even with death, and in the process, "Can't explain what I knew or felt." She was in a fog, dissociated from feeling and thought. Explaination would not do, she needed understanding.
I thanked her for her poem later. "No big deal, nothing major." she said. "Well, thanks anyway. I liked it." "Good for you, I guess that's your job." She was distancing again, fearing someone might get close. Instead of reacting, taking her defensiveness personally, or responding to the defense, I was intrigued with the dance she was playing. "Well, yeah, I guess so. You know I really do like your writing." She said, "Yeah, right." that afternoon she threw me another ball of paper:
Wasted youth
cradles in a tomb
a skull from the doorway of the womb
born into the world
of on-rushing doom
abusing the colors
within life's loom.
Even this act of crumpling up her work and throwing it was expressive. She, in her own way, was telling me she felt like trash, garbage, only good enough to be thrown away. The themes of loss, grieving a tragic youth began to form. Her vivid images were painting scenes of abuse, bordering on death, where her birthplace, "cradles and wombs," the place where she needed support, nurturance, and acceptance, was surrounded by "tombs, skulls, and doom." There was no safety. Her youth which should be colorful, emotional, spontaneous, energetic, "life's loom," had been abused, doomed, wasted. She still hadn't told anyone why she tried to kill herself, what was bound up inside, but she was beginning to find her own unique voice.
These themes I began to discover over and over again in the voices and images of abused children over the years. Sara simply had a very powerful way of expressing them. These themes may not be absolutes, rules for ever and all times, but they have credence in her life and many who have walked through a similar experiential forest of abuse. These are markings on that path, guideposts for their journey.
The Forest
The metaphor of a forest, a deep, dark forbidden forest has become a useful one in my work with children who have suffered abuse. I tell many that we are walking along that road together, and every time I go down it again, I find more and more similar guideposts, markings, and danger signs. Where the "quicksand of guilt" is, "tar pits of shame", the "panther of hatred and rage." For whatever reason, this appears to give them a feeling of security and safety, just as if you find yourself lost and find a forest ranger. I find it interesting, thinking back on it, that when I was a child I wanted to be a forest ranger. I admired how comfortable they felt in the wilderness and had to develop a way of surviving danger, adventure, and the hostility of the wild, and in so doing helping others journeying through the wild. Now I am a forest ranger of experience.
For abused children, the forest contains their memories, dreams, preoccupation's, obsessions; and most importantly, history. For them to find a future, they must walk through this forest and cross the river of understanding, and stand under the waterfall of grief and tears to be cleaned, move forward, and find new lands.
Again, I thanked Sara. She asked, "Hey, Dr. D., what's the deal. Why do you read my poems? I mean, what do they matter to you?" I said, "I just like them, is there a law against that?" It was painfully obvious that she had not had many people hear the degree of isolation and pain she was in. The ones that attempted either reacted to her anger or always tried to get rid of it, explain it, or minimize it. "Nothing can be that bad, don't be so serious, you're just upset over your boyfriend." All kind words, but they were denying her experience, her world. She couldn't understand why I just wanted to sit with her, hear it, and let her know I wasn't scared it would kill me or her. I told her no matter what she wrote, the feelings wouldn't kill her or me. She never learned feelings don't kill (Miller, 1985).
Up until this time Sara never acknowledged her anger directly. She was more passive aggressive. In her silent rebellion wearing punk rock clothes, shaved head, listening to the Dead Kennedy's and the Sex Pistols. But she never said how SHE felt. She wrote another poem. This time, she didn't crumple it up, or throw it at me. Perhaps, she was feeling a little less like garbage:
I hate this world,
I sit here and stare at the wall.
All of these people look at me
Think I'm so weird.
Why can't they see
I'm something but I don't know what.
And I hate this world cuz this world sucks.
And all people care about
Is who's a good fuck.
I want more out of my life than this.
Up until this point the anger/hatred was directed inward against herself. As she began to direct it outward, where it belonged, she did not have to hate herself so desperately. Sara revealed in group therapy that day, she had been abused. She told us she felt no one understood or listened to her. When people did stop to listen it was to use her, manipulate her, check up on her, see if she did her homework, but nobody heard her. They might have heard the words, but they couldn't see the pictures she was painting. I remember during my practicums here at Duquesne we used to talk about allowing the clients, or engendering the client to fill the room with vivid imagery. However, we always used the discourse of the therapeutic talking cure to do this. With children and adolescents there is much more direct access, by asking them to draw or write. Sara was painting me vivid imagery, and as she did, she was freeing herself from her exile.
Tinted Plexiglass
Following the theme of the deep forest, there is the theme of the tinted plexiglass window. Over the years I have had many teenagers describe building walls. I found myself asking them if it was like plexiglass, tinted plexiglass. Whenever I used it, their eyes lit up, and they would say. "Yeah, exactly." They can see out, but they don't let anyone see in. Tinted windows to the soul, so to speak. This barrier is forged by the "I don't care," or the "what the fuck" attitude. Sara:
A blank stare
a slight shrug
that states "I don't care"
all too well.
When really
deep inside
you care too much.
Seems nobody takes the time
to probe beyond the tough-ass fronts
these friends are
more like associates
they only stay
as long as you have
more to give.
Soon all is drained
emotionally strained
thoughts run blank
too many knives
in the back
and when with a slash
or two
all is through
the blood runs wild;
then cold
all to remove pain.
The vivid image Sara was painting was how the walls she created, that abused children create, the tinted plexiglass which was built to not shatter, is simply a defense. I have yet to find an adolescent or child who didn't care. It may be like Sara, that they care about not caring, to shield themselves from "knives in the back" and the "mind-fucking sports", but she by no means was or will be devoid of CARE. Sara was flesh and blood evidence of the importance and fundamental place of care in one's life. Evidence which stirred me, and still does.
A Clearing in the Forest-Transversality
One rainy October day, Sara brought her poems to our inpatient group. She read them, something she always had difficulty doing. She always rather had me read them. Again the distancing. Today she was truly letting others touch her world. She was rolling down the tinted plexiglass window to her soul. The room changed that day; the colors were deeper, people's eyes welled, widened. There was silence, thoughtfulness, dwelling. Up until this point Sara had been reclusive, distant, and aloof. Today, she joined, connected with others. The others responded, cared, were moved. The room was alive: the group breathing with life of its own. The others one by one were moved to share their worlds. A clearing was created in the forest that day, and light filtered through the darkness of their souls. Felix Guattari (1984), the French psychoanalyst, described the degree of openness which exists in any group as transversality. That day, transversality in our group took root and grew, all because a girl who found the courage to share her world.
Over the next week, one by one, we began to discover other members in the group, the terrain, and unique images of fragmentation of each of their own forests/worlds. Steven shared his world this way:
The past is like a polluted storm driven ocean
pounding relentlessly against my mental reef
keeping me from being able to swim.
Slowly eroding, just slowly enough to cause
violence, isolation
but never enough to let me drown under
its crushing weight...
My island is slowly sinking.
Steven, at 15, was abused physically by an alcoholic father; his mother abandoned him at the age of 5. He felt no way out. He turned to drugs and created his tinted plexiglass with pot, alcohol, acid, ecstasy, and crack. At our next group Steven finally let us into his world, and he let us know the plexiglass was built out of terror:
Terror seeps
through to the soul...
laps and coats the mind.
Enveloping the brain in
a non-existent numbness.
The shear fear of losing something
losing everything.
and again:
Swirling mists expand...
dealing death while wasted users, shoot up contraband
walking to street end... stare into space.
See wild animals rend, while you run this human race.
Staring blank as deep, blue tears...trickle down your cheek
One last sigh...as more vacant eyed passengers board on it
There is nothing left to say...
Up until Steven began writing, sharing, opening up, painting vivid images of his world, he was uncontrollable on the unit. Punching walls, breaking mirrors, threatening staff. Suicidal, agitated depression. He also had been delinquent on the outside, stealing to support his habit, skipping school. He was diagnosed on the unit as Conduct Disorder, solitary, aggressive type. A diagnosis which conceals more than it reveals. They were diagnosing his defense, not taking into account what was behind the tinted plexiglass. Seeing behavior, missing his experience, the access and transformation point IS this experimental link. His behavior was saying "fuck you, leave me alone, I don't need you, I don't care about anyone, or anything," but this was the tinted plexiglass, within whose shell lay a very different story. Much as Sara. Sara the punk rocker, who shaved her head, purple dyed dangling braids, crosses, and crossbones for earrings, black clothes, always morning, grieving. Her message was similar. Both Sara and Steven were crying out as they screamed "fuck you," within the plexiglass they were crying out, "I'm hurt, I'm, confused, I need you so much, for someone to care, I'm scared to death. I'm terrified that what I have left of myself, my anger, that if I give that up, I'll be used, abused again. People are unpredictable, I don't know if I'm going to be hit, hugged, or molested." So they forge, their tinted plexiglass. Steven:
Demented and sad,
and socially dead.
Closed to reality.
Janice was the perfectionist, cheerleader, straight A student in our group. Sweet, soft spoken, no outward behavioral, signs of trouble or distress. Then one day, before a school dance, she took 40 of her mother's muscle relaxents. She shared in group this poem, after hearing Sara and Steven:
Outside
alive and warm
laughing, playing, living
white light.
Inside
dark, black
crying, sobbing, dying
dead cold
Inside.
Up until this point her favorite words in group were, "I'm fine; things are O.K.;it doesn't matter; don't worry, be happy!" It took here three more weeks, three groups a week until she allowed herself to cry, but the poem was a transitional phenomenon in her walk through the forest. Until that time, no one knew she was even in the forest.
Then there was Leah. Beautiful, insightful, intelligent, and compulsive. Leah had been sadistically abused sexually and physically. She suffered, as do many of the exiles of childhood, from post traumatic stress disorder. She suffered flashbacks, depersonalization, de-realization, feeling as if they are living a dream, a nightmare, poor boundaries, numbing of responses to the world. Hope drained from their bloodstream's. Leah was also bulimic/anorexic, suicidal, self-destructive in her sexuality, drug involved, craved signs of anarchy on her body. She had been through court. The man who abused her, as a part of a satanic cult when she was only 12 years of age, received 20 years in prison. She recalled her past like data from a computer. Cold, hard facts. She was therapy wise, legal wise, adult wise, 15 going on 30. She didn't need to talk, she was more glib than Ronald Reagan. She needed to re-connect her divided self. She hesitated but began writing for the group:
Alone I sit and look
at the dark walls
closing in around me.
My mind focuses on my life.
Why am I here? Who am I?
Flashbacks from the past,
flash in front of me
as I hear whispers
from the evil side.
They're calling me back
I must leave now.
Black metal doors
burst open and perish in
flames.
As I exit through them
walking alone,
looking for a way
back home.
Then there was Al, Big Al, who had witnessed his mother having a nervous break down. He couldn't talk about it, but one day he came in group and asked to read the following:
Middle-aged woman
working her ass off,
Raising two kids,
and mowing the grass.
Father died six years ago
leaving them alone.
So much trouble in her life.
She thinks she's growing old.
Middle-aged woman
comes home from work,
looks in the mirror
and goes bezerk.
These teenagers were struggling to find their way back home, and in so doing they created a clearing in their lives, no matter how brief it was, it was a clearing. They began to care, openly, and matter to one another, and as a result began to matter to themselves again. They learned the plexiglass was created for a reason, but now instead of putting so much energy into concealing (by stealing, drugs, skipping, running) they could put it into revealing (grieving, crying, feeling). They also learned that to break down the plexiglass, usually takes anger and hatred in order to transform the vulnerability into a symbol of power. It requires a reorientation of the self, where the attribution of responsibility is no longer on the child. The child initially interjects the badness, evil, and hurt because he or she holds onto the hope of changing it. If the badness is out there in the demi-god parents, adults, one feels much more powerless to change (Fairbairn, 1952). Sara began to free herself from this self-imposed exile that the interjected anger/hate/badness had created, by seeing that creation means possibility, and possibility means openness to transformation:
Go away and let me be.
In the mirror is not
all I see.
The thoughts of feeling
reflect on the outside
the experience of hurt dulling my eyes.
You try to block my view,
damn you,
With all your twisted lies
Get out of my way
and let me go.
Sara was struggling with one of the most insidious aspects of the world of abuse children; that what is done to you is for your own good. That if you have a problem with it, it's because you haven't grown up. If you're upset, tearful, in pain, don't understand, or confused, it's because you're still a baby, a child. A central lack in your being, because being a child means to misunderstand, be upset, be confused, so pain and suffering in childhood is explained away (Miller, 1985; 1986). Sara finally began to get angry and directed her rage outward instead of inwardly attacking and destroying herself:
Get ready for the thrash attack
there is no turning back.
Bring the poser to the stage.
He'll be tortured and thrashed and hung on a rack.
Feel the violence in the air.
Each other's blood is what we share.
Cutting through and through,
sharp, like a knife that will take a life
Watch it end in a bloody mess,
hand of thrash are ripping flesh.
Not pretty, but real, powerful, potent, transfomative. This was very different from her earlier poems of depression, suicide, and failure. Sara was fearful of expressing anger, hate, rage, for she didn't know if she would become like those who abused her, or if others could endure it, or if she could endure it. Again, "(she) was never allowed to find out that feelings do not kill: (Miller, 1985). That's why it was so important to look at this lion of rage, in the forest of abuse with Sara. Not run from it as she had, not construct tinted plexiglass to hide it, or hide from it, as she had, but allow her to roll the tinted plexiglass window down and look into her soul, as bloody, ragefull, and horrific as it might be. For her this meant being real, not a "poser", that is, a fake, for even if it means a "thrash attack," its better to have real anger, than a false smile.
As Sara continued over the following weeks, the rage and hate were able to give way to a deeper introspection, not as guarded, not as sarcastic as earlier in in therapy. She was able to begin to recall the memories of the past, not as so much computer data as Leah, with its cold detachment, but embodied, feeling, seeing, and hearing. She was not afraid to give expression to the contradictions that this type of expression entails, the protector, perpetrator dichotomy:
Into myself
I freely fall
Expressing to others
I seem to stall
Always following
the unexamined call
On the dawn
where realization lulls
behind in darkness
the demons of the past snarl
She slowly, but surely was developing a trust in herself to follow her feelings, not to second guess herself, or intellectualize, rationalize, therapize, her experience but rather "follow the unexamined call." She finally began to hear her own unique voice and no longer feared it being rejected, judged, criticized, or abused. Which brings, "the dawn where realization lulls." I have no idea where she came up with this image, but we discussed it later, and she said it was as if realization was not forced, pushed out of her like some therapist she had who pushed her to "think before she acts," or "think with your head not her impulses." All good "advice", but it was advice that did not connect with her experience. She said her real-I-zation, the real-I of Sara came out through the gentle, but powerful, even flowing expression of her contradictions, fears, pains, confusion, abuse, like a body of water flowing to the ocean, that continues to flow over rocks, debris, never questioning simple following its course. A true dawning.
This realization also came "behind" the walls, or tinted plexiglass barriers "of darkness." In other words, one must pass through them, suffer the, walk through the forest of unknowing, not simply talk about it, or reach it before you've experienced it. Only then will one see the "demons of past snarl," or "like a polluted storm driven ocean that pounds relentlessly against the mental reef" of one's self. A little different than asking the client: "Have you been abused?" and the client saying "Yes". Data or experience, that's the question.
Sara, Steven, Leah, and Big Al all left the hospital eventually. I've seen them over the years. Some doing better than others. However, over time all of them still speak of a connection they felt with each other and recall those autumn days reading, writing, sharing poems: sharing themselves. Over a period of roughly 2 months they found a clearing and rolled their windows down to trust again, breathe again, and learn to live again. I've received invitations to their graduations, heard of their accomplishments and failures. Sara sent me one last poem:
I'm becoming myself
Its taken many years and places
I've been dissolved and shaken,
worn other people's faces,
run madly, as if time were
there, terrible, old, crying a warning
"Hurry, you will be dead before your dawn."
Now to stand still, to be here
feel my own weight and density!
As thoughts shape the shaper
all fuses now,
falls into place
from wish to action.
Word to silence
my work, my love, my time, my face
gathered into one
very, very
pleasant
and intense
place.
Thank you Sara, for teaching me so much. For sharing your place, your space, your world, and walking through tat forest that you survived.
REFERENCES
Axline, V. (1969). Play Therapy. (rev. ed.) New York:Ballantine Books
Fairbairn, W. R .D. (1952). Psycho-analytic Studies of Personality. New York:Basic
Gladding, S. T. and Hanna, K. (1982). The use of poetic process in school counseling. School Counselor, 229, 110-114.
Guattari, F. (1984). Molecular revolution:Psychiatry and Politics. New York:Penguin
Mazza, N. (1981). The use of poetry in treating the troubled adolescent. Adolescence, 16 (62), 403-408.
Mazza, N., Magaz, C. & Scaturro, J. (1987). Poetry therapy with abused children. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 14, 85-92.
Miller, A. (1985). For your own good: Hidden cruelty in childrearing and the roots of violence. New York:Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Miller, A. (1986). Thou shalt not be aware: Society's betrayal of the child. New York:New American Library
Morrison, M. R. (1969). Poetry therapy with disturbed adolescents, In J.J. Leedy (Ed.) Poetry therapy: The use of poetry in the treatment of emotional disorders (pp. 83-103), Philadelphia:Lippincott
Moustakas, C. (1959). Psychotherapy with children-the living relationship. New York:Harper
Oaklander, V. (1984). Windows to our children.
Moab, Utah:Real People Press
Dr. DeMaria is a psychologist in private practice in Pensacola, Florida.