" My mother told me that 'horses have instincts' ". That was meant to tell me that if I acted on my instincts, then I was acting in the fashion of an animal and not like a human being who functions at another level. More than that, it meant that if Julie had instincts, then she could repress them or deny them or choose to act in other higher, more rational ways.
At one level, I also learnt not to trust my instincts whilst working with the children and young persons. If I acted on them, without stopping somehow to think them through, then my behaviour became 'primitive' and impulsive ... and usually wrong professionally.
But then again, I learnt later that to know and to feel my instincts was always useful
It maybe that Julie's mother hoped that Julie wouldn't have instincts at all !. But that isn't possible. All that we know informs us that instincts and therefor instinctual behaviour is "substantially emotional" and "behaviour that is a manifestation on what may be seen to hinge on genetically transmitted physiological factors" (1)..... Oh dear, Julie got her instincts from her mother... and from her species.
In the PART Course ( Professional Response Training Course) it is suggested that in the face of threat, we have triggered in us an unlearned, instinctive impulse to fight or to flight... and I add.or to manipulate. In other writings I learnt of avoidance, but I suppose that is a type of flight. The biological and chemical effects of these two triggered reactions is completely different in us, our thinking perception and our bodies. In horse terms it will either rear up and strike out, or it will run away. There isn't much choice.. What Julie's mother was saying is that we humans can choose something else - and usually should.
From what I can make out, instinctive reaction as have to do with survival of the individual and in this way the survival of its progeny, whether it is a reflex action, like the sucking of a baby, or the desire to hurt others because they hurt us or to reproduce.
It is very useful for us as professionals to be aware of what is happening at this level in both ourselves and in the children that we are helping .After all, my instincts appear to be there for me ... not them.
Let's face it, Julie's mother was worried about matters sexual.She was worried that some male behaviour would trigger reactions in Julie over which she had no control.She wanted Julie to deal rationally with the instinctive "urge to merge".Its not that it doesn't happen in us, we all know that but that Julie must find another way of expressing sexual arousal or to avoid it.
In children and in the intellectually challenged , inhibition may be reduced so we may get a window here on what goes on in us.
Rosa was about eighteen years old at the time, and diagnosed as mildly mongoloid ( I wonder if there is such a diagnosis) Rosa was limited, but functioned sufficiently yo study catering at the Technical College.
One of the boys sneaked some soft porn gay magazines in to the group home and whist ostensibly watching TV the mixed group poured over these. In one was a series of pictures showing sensual massage so they tried this out, somewhat clumsily on each other..The situation reached a point of arousal which we nick-named "pounding ovaries" and "cold shower time".
Rosa left the group, went to her bedroom to masturbate and ripped strips of wallpaper off the wall in the process.
It was the tattered.wallpaper that started the child and youth care worker to enquire into what happened. Rosa had no problem in relating the incident. It was just something that happened Actually, afternoon soapies on TV were enough to get Rosa going like that.
In a moment of being unsupervised, an episode occurred in a group of younger children whilst watching hamsters . As the hamsters mated in rapid copulatory thrusts , so the excitement level rose and escalated to a point where they just openly stimulated each others genital. It was interrupted by the arrival and intervention of the child care worker.
We can be sure that bio-chemical/neurological/ instinct influences behaviour .It sits deep in the layers of our selves and in the children that we work with. In Bronfenbrenner's metaphor of a set of Russian dolls, it could well be at the level of that tiny little solid one in the very core of the nesting set.
Sure, horses have instincts, but then so do we, even as the professional child and youth care workers that we are.
And so do the children
Its the most difficult profession in the world
(1) Encyclopeadia Britttanica Vol 9, p628, 15th Edition
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