Hi Lawrence,
Perhaps there are various questions to ask about this behavior,
before, or at least in addition to--the question of an underlying,
systemic "core sentence" comes up. To make an extreme example, a
child who is starving may well steal food, or one who is chronically
deprived while other siblings are favored may take things to make up
for the lack. It's not clear to me, anyway, that either of these
would necessarily have some systemic origin.
Who is the child stealing from? What patterns appear in the acts?
What is the state and status of the child relative to those stolen
from??
I'm suggesting once again, here, that we keep in mind how much context
influences the interior meanings of external acts, gestures, or words.
I can remember a month or two when I was around 11 when, a few times,
I either stole some change at home to get an ice cream bar at a store,
or took an ice cream bar from the store without paying. Then I was
caught in the store, sent home to get money to pay for the bar--which
I did, along with telling Mom and getting punished. Things were
getting pretty hard at our house in those days, and, as the oldest, I
was carrying a lot of weight without getting much attention myself.
My take on the situation now is that I wanted some attention, and that
this behavior made my Mother take a look at what was happening to me,
at what I was feeling. Getting punished was the first touch of that
attention. So in an odd way, it was welcome. Ice cream, by the way,
was the main comfort food in my family after disruptions. But I have
yet to see anything systemic in my ancestry that relates to stealing--
and the behavior itself came and went.
If there are interesting patterns in the situation you are working
with, it would make your systemic question easier to get hold of.
There might well be such deeper energies at work, but then again, it's
not clear to me anyway that there would have to be.
Best,
Michael
Michael Reddy, PhD, CPC, ELI-MP
michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.reddyworks.com
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On Aug 23, 2011, at 5:07 PM, lavincisa@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Dear All, May I have some input from you about :
When an adolescent child takes stuff from other people that does not
belong to the child, without prior permission to make it its
own.......(stealing,theft) what is the child attempting to say,
*a* What is the underlying message, language behind the behaviour/
shadow that the child is putting across to me, perhaps related to
shame?
*b* What is the unspoken family message [knowing full well that
perhaps only listening to the Knowing Field is more 'helpful'?]
Many Thanks
Lawrence Ngorora
PhD Candidate
Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa Research Group
Faculty of Humanities
Department of Sociology
University of Cape Town
cell: 0724219329
Keep a green tree in your heart & a singing bird will come
