The Poster Score

When I was still wet behind the ears, back in 1983, I saw a patient, a kid that I really liked, maybe she was 20. Right, I was maybe 10 years older.

We were talking about the way her family treated her, how it was common for them (not just the parents, but the kids, too) to pick on every possible insecurity, any obvious open wound.

Maybe I told her that one of the reasons some people shy away from intimacy, why they don't self-disclose to just anyone, is that they've learned from experience not to show any weakness. They either fear exposure, being "found out," or they fear rejection or abandonment.

Maybe we talked about how when people who experience this kind of maltreatment in childhood they're a little on the sensitive side. Having been bullied, some become bullies, too. Bullies can be thin-skinned as well, but they're less overtly sensitive. They've figured it out that if they're aggressive then people will be less likely to insult them.

The best defense is a good offence? Something like that.

On with the story.

So anyway, she came to see me regularly. One day she brought out a brown paper bag from her knapsack and told me it was a present for me. Immediately I said, No, no, we don't do that here. Can't take presents. Unprofessional.

She said that it was too late to return it and opened the bag. Inside was a poster rolled up with a rubber band, an unusually sized poster. She was an artist so I thought it was a drawing perhaps, but it wasn't.

That year an anti-child abuse organization had been running a poster campaign on the Chicago busses and trains. The poster showed a really cute little blond-headed boy, about 4-5 years old, with the saddest expression on his face and a big tear rolling down his cheek.

It was in black and white. She gave me it to me.
The caption read, "Words hit as hard as a fist. Watch what you say."
She had ripped it off one of the busses and brought it to me as a present.

I felt guilty keeping it, honestly, but I LOVED it and I just couldn't bring myself to turn it in. I know, I know, I'm in trouble. But they only ran the campaign a short while, then probably ran out of money, so the posters might have ended up in the garbage any way.

And think about it. This one has been in my various offices, has survived every one of my moves since 1983.

It's stapled to the wall, and on occasion captures the attention of a certain type of individual who will wait for exactly the right moment in therapy to point up to the kid and say, in so many different ways, "That's so true."

Packs a different kind of wallop, right?

Copyright 2006, TherapyDoc