In this issue
Features
‘Where lunatics prosper’
Is there a connection between young male aggression and age-inappropriate sexual behaviour and the amount of time young boys spend on certain computer games?
Into the labyrinth
How a bout of labyrinthitis forced one practitioner to reflect on the way her clinical work was impacting on her life and close relationships.
Reaching the poor in rural India
How two BACP members found themselves putting on counselling skills workshops for trainee teachers in Southern India.
Privacy law and therapy: the final frontier?
How does the concept of privacy differ from that of confidentiality and how might it impact therapy?
Regulars
Questionnaire
Jeannie Wright
From the chair
Dr Lynne Gabriel: A whirlwind three years
Fiction
The Wednesday Group
Day in the life
Anna Hamilton
Dilemmas
Funding cuts and sudden endings
Articles from this issue are not yet available online. Members and subscribers can download the pdf from the Therapy Today archive.
Editorial
About a year ago my then 11-year-old son started pestering me to buy him a game called Call of Duty (CoD) – Black Ops for his XBox. I looked at the game and pointed out that it was an ‘18’ which stated on the cover that it contained ‘strong, bloody violence and strong language’. I explained that I couldn’t possibly buy it as he was only 11.
He started a campaign which lasted three months: he got friends’ parents to talk to me about how their sons had it and it wasn’t all that bad; he insisted he was the only boy in his year who didn’t have CoD; he played it at friends’ houses anyway and because he didn’t have it, none of his friends wanted to come to our house after school; his tennis teacher even explained to me that in fact it was no worse than the cowboys and Indians films we used to watch as children. Against my better judgment I bought the wretched thing. He tells me now that he didn’t get addicted to it like most people do because I didn’t let him have ‘XBox live’ whereby he could have played online with people all over the world.
Apparently Black Ops sold more than seven million copies within 24 hours of going on sale. This doesn’t surprise me as I have yet to meet a teenage boy who doesn’t own the game. In her excellent article ‘Where lunatics prosper’, Jeanine Connor describes the increasing number of pre-pubescent violent and aggressive boys she sees for therapy who are referred with a diagnosis of ADHD or ASD. These are often children whose lives consist of real and virtual violence and very little else. In her opinion it is no surprise that children are presenting as chaotic, at risk and uncontrollable, as in many cases early ‘care’ is being provided by a screen portraying sex and violence. I completely agree with her that adults who allow this are guilty of ‘urban neglect through technology’.
Sarah Browne
Editor