The Place that is the Self

I'm writing now during the weekend after, catching up on NYTimes articles from the week before, and came across this one, which had some real resonances from Kim's presentation: How Can You Distinguish a Budding Pedophile From a Kid With Real Boundary Problems?

It says, in part:

The last part of the brain to develop is the frontal lobe, which is responsible for impulse control, moral reasoning and regulating emotions — the things that adolescents lack when they decide, if they make a conscious decision, to molest a younger kid. So, instead of being compulsive like pedophiles, adolescents tend to be impulsive....It’s not that juveniles can’t distinguish right from wrong; it’s that they don’t perceive risks and consequences the way adults do — as parents of teenagers know all too well. “I’ve been arguing for a classification called ‘puberty in the first degree,’ ” said Timothy Kahn, a Seattle therapist ...

The article also talks about a treatment called

psychodrama. During these exercises, a teenager stands in front of an audience of peers, parents and other relatives who attend the group therapy. Then, the teenager describes the victim — hair color, personality, age — and what the offender did.

This seems like a way of re-vising what Kim's called adolescent's "personal dramas," a way of working productively with their sense that they are on stage--though it's controversial, because it can

reinforce their self-image as “sex offenders” with bad, deviant traits rather than as kids needing lessons in setting boundaries and creating better relationships. Critics complain, too, that intensive monitoring of adolescents may have similar consequences.