The Instructions (49 page)

2. L.R., a selectively mute African-American boy (I only mention his racio-ethnicity because, apart from Gurion—who, as we’ve seen, denies the affiliation—L.R. is the sole African-American student at Aptakisic).

3. V.P., a short-tempered and often violent boy who has been, unlike Gurion (see below, under Diagnoses) correctly diagnosed with Conduct Disorder.

4. J.R., a girl who, apart from a tendency to become overexcited when she is interested in the subject matter at hand, along with a kind of verbal ferocity when placed in competitive situations or situations wherein an authority figure seems vulnerable, as well as a tendency to bite people who stand “too close” to her, is a quiet, attentive, and, if I may be permitted to say so in an academic essay such as this one, very sweet girl.

5. J.M., a girl who has been diagnosed with Pica, OCD, and ADHD

(again, accurately), who often engages in physical confrontations with other students—mostly boys—and who, curiously enough, all but refuses to participate in one-on-one conversations, but becomes quite loud and communicative when faced with a peer-group of 2+. (J.M., like Gurion and all the others listed, with the exception of B.N. [description forthcoming], is in the open therapy group I lead, and I have noticed that she only enters conversations that are in progress.)

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6. Sixthly, finally, B.N., a very—for lack of better terms—troubled and angr
y
boy; the son of an alcoholic single mother who neglects and (we suspect [he refuses to speak against her]) physically abuses him, and who has already been (B.N, I mean) through the juvenile justice system for having committed arson on a local residence at the age of ten; fights incessantly (is recognized by many of his peers as the “toughest” boy at Aptakisic); has been diagnosed with ADHD

(once more, accurately, I believe); who would, were it not for the efforts of Bonnie Wilkes, PsyD (who meets in Indiv. session with him [B.N.] regularly), have long since been permanently expelled from Aptakisic; and who Gurion sees as his only intellectual and masculine equal, and even (in certain senses that Gurion will go to great lengths to qualify) as his superior—Gurion looks up to B.N.

Prior to Gurion’s arrival at Aptakisic, certain members of the Macabeean Collective were already socially involved—specifically S.M. with B.N., V.P. with B.N., L.R. with V.P., J.R. with J.M., and B.N. with L.R.—but otherwise they held themselves aloof from one another. Since Gurion’s arrival, however, it is hard to find any one of them without another at his or her elbow or, at the very least, within arm’s reach.

Unfortunately for Gurion, the close relationships he has formed at school do not have extracurricular counterparts. Because he lives in Chicago, it is hard for him to spend time with his Aptakisic friends (all of whom live in Deerbrook Park) when not in school. I only know of one occurrence of Gurion’s engaging socially with an Aptakisic friend outside of school—About a week ago, B.N. had dinner at Gurion’s house. (By all indications, it went well.) 450

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Furthermore, the client claims to have no social interaction with others in his age group—not even his
relative
age group—outside of school. According to Gurion, as well as to his parents and his teachers, he was quite popular at Schechter and Northside, many of whose students live walking-distance from Gurion. However, the parents of his old friends, owing to gossip about Gurion’s recent scholasto-behavioral history and the wide dissemination of a mysteriously leaked e-mail (see
FWD: IMPORTANT
, attached) from Northside’s Headmaster Rabbi Kalisch, have forbidden these friends from spending any time with Gurion and have, furthermore, shunned his parents, who (again, according to Gurion), owing to his father’s secularity and his occupation as a civil rights lawyer known to handle (and win) court-appeals for racist political groups on the political fringe, as well as their interracial marriage (Gurion’s parents’), were already (Gurion’s parents were already) closer to the bottom of the community’s social hierarchy than desirable.

When asked how he felt about his mostly asocial extracurricular lifestyle, Gurion said, “It gives me time to write. And plus I have Flowers.”
Writing
,
from what I can gather, refers to Gurion’s diary.

How I’ve gathered that is deductively: Gurion refuses to explain to me the subject matter of his writing, often calling it, comically (I think), “[his] autobiography” or (just once) “[his] scripture” when pressed. And what kind of writing is private, I ask myself, if not the kind that goes in a diary? None that I know of. As for Flowers, Gurion won’t talk about him either, other than to say that “he is a badass Hoodooman who teaches [Gurion] at the Frontier [the motel near the bus-stop at which the schoolbus picks Gurion up and drops him off –S.B.],” which, by means of deduction similar to those applied 451

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to
writing
, I have concluded to mean an imaginary friend—Flowers, that is. I have concluded that Flowers is Gurion’s imaginary friend.

RECENT ACTS OF VIOLENCE AND UNDERMINING BEHAVIOR

From his first day at Aptakisic, Gurion has been placed in after-school detention nearly every day, and in-school suspension twice. For the most part, his offenses against the STEP System (Aptakisic’s disciplinary rubric) have been non-violent (e.g. standing on his chair and shouting [e.g., “What we have here is a failure to communicate!”;

“My mouth is open wide against my antagonists!”] at the top [tops?]

of his lungs; removing the wingnuts that affix the whiteboard to the wall of the Cage and refusing to return them [Gurion told Monitor Botha that he was willing to “pay 1.5 times the fair-market price for the wingnuts, and re-bracket the carrel walls to the desk with hexnuts {he} would bring to school along with {his} father’s 5-in-1

ratchet if {we} would just let {him}” but that “the wingnuts {were}

no less {his [Gurion’s]} than the power to open wide {his [Gurion’s]}

mouth against {his} antagonists,” at which point, presumably for the purpose of demonstration, he shouted, “You are a robot!” and Monitor Botha gave Gurion a detention]), but he has also engaged in at least two physical confrontations (i.e. in the cafeteria, during his second week at school, he mashed and pounded the face of a rather large seventh-grader against a lunch-table for reasons he has since refused to elaborate other than to say they were “good”; more recently, in the hallway, just after school and just prior to detention, after an eighth-grade boy I’ll call K.M. made a derogotory comment to S.M., Gurion, who was standing nearby, took hold of the hanging-loop at the top of K.M.’s backpack, kicked the back of 452

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K.M.’s knees so that K.M.’s feet were swept from under him, and, still holding K.M. up by the backpack loop, used his own (Gurion’s own) knees to repeatedly strike K.M. in the lower back until K.M.

fainted, at which point Gurion dropped him, stood atop his chest and, before being taken to the office by one of the school security guards, stated to the crowd of students who had gathered around him: “This boy underfoot trifled with my main man S.M. My main man is not to be trifled with.”).

Diagnoses

Over the past six months, Gurion has been diagnosed by four separate mental health professionals with the following disorders, in various combinations: Conduct Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Intermittent Explosive Disorder. It is my opinion that all but one of these diagnoses—Oppositional Defiant Disorder—

are, to varying degrees, inappropriate. My reasons appear below.

CONDUCT DISORDER

Although Gurion does meet the criteria required for this diagnosis, he meets more of the criteria for Oppositional Defiant Disorder and, because the two cannot be applied to the same individual, I gravi-tate away from the former and toward the latter.

INTERMITTENT EXPLOSIVE DISORDER

Regardless of how much he would like to (despite my protests to the contrary, Gurion, who thoroughly enjoys using the word “explo-453

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sion” to describe the internal phenomenon which occurs prior to and during his violent outbursts, insists he has IED), Gurion does not meet the criteria for Intermittent Explosive Disorder. Though he has been in a few exceptionally violent fistfights and destroyed some public property, he does not report having had the sense of being overtaken by violent/destructive impulses prior to or during these instances, nor has he ever expressed regret for the pain and destruction that any of his actions have brought about. I.e., no matter how inappropriate his reasons, Gurion always
has
reasons; he is always able to explain why, in a given situation, he has acted violently/destructively, and, furthermore, after the fact, he consistently feels that his actions were justified and proportionate. Thus, when he says, “I exploded,” he does not mean, “I lost control,”

but rather, “I joyfully and violently
took
control.” When he says,

“I got explosive,” he does not mean, “I was overtaken by violent impulses,” but rather, “I realized (gratefully) that I was willing and able to bring the violence/destruction I believed—and still believe—the situation at hand called for.”

ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER

It is spiteful, if not just shy of criminal, to diagnose Gurion with Antisocial Personality Disorder. In any case, it is ignorant.
DSM IV

makes it abundantly clear that one must be at least eighteen years old to be diagnosed with any personality disorder.

ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

I take cautious exception to the ADHD diagnosis. Like Conduct Disorder, ADHD is another disorder for which Gurion meets the 454

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criteria (as well as one which, like IED, he would, owing to the verbal idiosyncrasies it permits him [e.g., “My A got D’d by {Monitor}

Botha’s mouth-breathing.”], prefer to keep). However, as with Conduct Disorder, I do not believe it is an appropriate diagnosis.

Gurion’s claims of easy distractability, his visible motor agitation (e.g., tapping feet, manual flux in the form of wild expressive gesturing and the drumming of tabletops and thighs while sitting, the pocketing and un-pocketing and re-pocketing of hands in sweatshirt pockets [accompanied by balling and un-balling of fists] while standing, constant pulling on the drawstrings of his hood, occasional chest-drumming and self-embraces that rapidly alternate with the dropping of hands to the sides), and his near-constant attempts to communicate with other students in the Cage (where total silence is the first rule) seem to be (all of these symptoms do) functional outside of the Cage.

To put it inversely: these behaviors are only dysfunctional inso-much as they are causes for disciplinary action
inside
the Cage, where the authority–subject dynamic is far different than that of a regular classroom, let alone a “real world” situation. Gurion’s high level of motor activity, for example, does not disturb or distract me in session, nor does it seem to disturb or distract the group in Group session. When I interviewed Gurion’s former Jewish-American School teachers (before enrolling at MLKJH, Gurion had never been in a Cage program), not one of them even mentioned his high level of motor activity, much less complained about its effect on their students. When I probed further, drawing examples (such as those mentioned above, parenthetically), one of the teachers commented,

“He
did
bring a lot of passion to the bimah,”
and another stated, 455

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“His excitement about his studies was surely palpable: his contributions to classroom discussion were unmatched and very inspiring to the other children.” Because of the nature of the situations in which the aforementioned behaviors cause him trouble (again: situations in the Cage, where an atypically high level of authority is ever-present and exercised regularly [and, I sometimes think,
excessively
]), I believe that the symptoms of ADHD that the client manifests can be accounted for by his Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Finally, as demonstrated by his uses and misuses of clinical terminology (as shown under the present sub-rubric, as well as under the sub-rubric Intermittent Explosive Disorder), Gurion takes his diagnoses to heart, and, I believe, he does so to his detriment—affectionately embracing one’s symptoms is unlikely to aid in the cause of overcoming one’s disorder(s)—such that, although diagnosing him with ADHD would be “safe” from the C.Y.A. P.O.V., it would not be all too therapeutic.

Codeswitching

The “voice” in which this paper is written is not the voice I would use at dinner at my ma’s in Bridgeport. Nor is the “voice” you use when lecturing the class the same as the one you use in individual conferences. If you and I were to “get together over a beverage” some time, Professor Lakey, we would be unlikely to use any of the aforementioned “voices” while doing so. And if the beverage we decided to

“get together over” were coffee, the “voices” we’d use would be different from those that we’d use were we to decide instead on beer. And if,
while
“having coffee,” we decided to “make it a girls’ night out”

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and “get beers,” the decision would likely have to do with the kinds of “voices” we found ourselves using while “having coffee.” These are all examples of codeswitching, and anyone can understand what I’m getting at when I use these examples, even if they’re unfamiliar with the term “codeswitching.” The reason anyone can understand codeswitching (which, btw, is usually explained by linguists as an outcome of assimilation, and by evolutionary psychologists as a sort of speakerly camouflage) is that everyone
engages
in codeswitching.*