The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog A Book Review

Book Review: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Psychiatrist’s Notebook

When a newborn enters this world, he is unaware that what he experienced inside his mother’s womb would be totally in contrast to his experiences in the outside world. The book “The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Psychiatrist’s Notebook” accounts for traumatic children who have undergone miserable conditions that shaped their physical and mental development during their early years. This paper reviews the said book to understand human development for the common readers and early childhood educators.

About the Book

The selected book “The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Psychiatrist’s Notebook” is authored by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz. The psychiatrist’s own written account of the experiences that he had when working with emotionally stunted children who have no full understanding of the world themselves. His writing style provides vivid illustrations of the most stressful and violence-inflicted life circumstances that have deeply and negatively affected the children’s brain mechanisms. The presentation of the images and facts is intensely exhibited related to violence, sexual abuse, or even neglect. The authors’ overall objective is to give the readers knowledge into the child’s world and how adult behavior shapes their small world that lingers on in their later life developmental stages. He seeks to give facilitation for the recovery of these children who were powerless and felt the loss of control under such a state. A brief overview of the traumatic experiences would be explored in the following sections, and what therapeutic precautions the author took when treating those children would also be discussed.

Summary

The author has presented various arguments in this book. The first and foremost is about the child’s brain’s neuroscience and how his exposure to harsh environments adversely impacts the child’s early development. Whether they are from their close ones or anyone in the outside world, there is no doubt that the child needs care and protection during his critical early years since the experiences during these years create a solid mark on his physical and mental upbringing for the rest of his life. He believes that although the child’s brain is naïve, these violent experiences are imprinted within his mind in the form of crystallized pieces of information, such as images that are detailed and do not bear any confusion. The child knows what happened to him and how he felt as the cruelty might have been repetitive, such as sexual abuse. For example, in chapter 8, “The Raven,” the doctor had presented details of how the brain works when it is under stress and feels the same pain when it was in a real trauma condition. The chapter talks about a girl who the mother’s partner repeatedly abused for several years. Although the girl is 17 years old and the sexual abuse happened years ago, the author mentioned significant implications of the self-inflicted indications even when the victim has been abused in the past. The author noted many ‘cutters’ on her forearm that were perfectly parallel; their location, depth, and patterns were symmetrical. They were the indications of the patients “who have a history of trauma.” The author then details the brain’s working of such people “when they mutilate themselves; they can induce dissociative state, similar to the adaptive response they had had during the original trauma.” He further explains the discernment in such situations since the patients do it for their disconnection from real life. They want to break free from the emotional and physical pain they felt in a real traumatic situation in their past and want to indulge themselves in the self-inflicted pain as natural opioids are released in the brain that yields a comforting sense of remoteness from one’s miseries.

The above argument or theme is related to the next theme discussed extensively in the book, which is the defense mechanism of traumatic children. Taking the same example of Chapter 8’s Amber, the child had developed a certain self-defense system that allowed her to escape from her miserable memories of her sexual abuse pats as she caused pain upon her herself. This pain released her from the past pain that was more horrible than the real pain she experienced when she cut her arms. As described by the writer, such self-imposed pain allowed her brain to respond in a way where endorphins and enkephalins were released that served discontinuation from reality to provide the physical pain numbness to the body. The brain’s stress response system has been working as a shield for the child victim so that she could be able to handle her physical, mental, and emotional pain in her unique way.

Further explanations have been provided by the writer when he learned that the victim was defensive in the beginning when he talked to her the next day after she was admitted to the hospital; she showed as if she needed no help. Still, when the author pointed out her cuts on the arm, he asked her whether she was sure. She quickly knew that the author knows her situation when he started talking about her relief when her body signaled her to cut. She felt an uncontrolled desire when she was in the school to sneak into the bathroom and give a small cut to herself. Although she was not taking drugs, where the substance abusers find calm after taking the illegal drugs and their soothing effects on the brain, they release from the real world miserable experiences. Here, Amber used self-inflicted and self-devised mechanisms for releasing herself from her pain from the past.

Moreover, when the psychiatrist’s session with Amber, she told him about her fantasies during sexual abuse. She imagined herself as a free bird, Raven or Black Death. Her brain would play video games in which she would escape by role-playing. Again, her self-defense mechanism helped her regain her confidence and improve her failing grades in school. She was unaware of what happened to her body as her devils and creatures so indulged her. The encapsulation of the trauma enabled her to cope with the situation and function accordingly.

As the writer highlights the victims’ mental working, it is interesting to notice that his themes and arguments are interlinked. The reason for saying so is that the next theme is about therapeutic interventions that he used with his patients and even their caregivers. For instance, for further elucidation on the same chapter, when Amber was unconscious in the hospital and tests were being run to diagnose her physical condition, he started to talk to her mother. He spoke about the simple technique that he had learned to help the people relax before giving them any disturbing news or beginning of hypnosis. The writer realizes that it is the first step for knowing the patient so that his close one could reveal something important about her past. He took clues from her mother by starting with normal conversation such as where she was born and recall her birth time which is a happy time in any mother’s life. This is the intervention where the information disclosure feels relaxed and feels comfortable sharing the most private parts of the facts. However, he noticed that her mother stuck to the topics that provided neutral or positive information only. At this stage, he could not extract any negative incidents that could have negatively affected her till the time he noticed her forearm’s cuts. The same intervention technique he used over Amber when she was reluctant to expose her private details but as soon as the doctor mentioned her cuts and why she did them to herself, she was willing to talk by giving her consent in the form of a handshake. After the sessions started, he allowed her to open her naturally, which the writer found was soon enough. He realized that the important moment was when she starts revealing details about the abuse and began crying. He found it an important development in his sessions since he was getting deeper insights from the victimized child’s brain working. Though the abuse started at the age of seven and ended when she was nine, the repercussions were evident after several years. This showed that early childhood traumas linger on with their negative impacts in the later stages of life, and if not treated on time, which her mother did not, then they keep on hurting the victim with their dreadful outcomes for the rest of their lives.

Conclusion

The author has been open about his patients and how their physical and mental functioning shaped their behaviors throughout their lives. He used different techniques and approaches for his different patients, where he used neurosequential treatment for some victims. It depended on the type of trauma his patients had experienced so that the kind of adversity their brain experience could be scrutinized. In certain instances, he created timelines for prompting their brain to develop the damaged parts so that only those parts of the brain could be targeted for the treatment. His writing style is well-understood that he has originated a strong connection between the brain’s development and the person’s life traumatic experiences that have a direct consequence on their personalities. To provide such child victims an everlasting curative effect, their psychology and emotional developments are essentially studied.

The book has changed the way I think since we have learned and observed that the child needs care and protection; however, what the child needs when undergoing traumatic circumstances and whether his protection needs increase are unknown to many of us. Through this book, it also dawned upon me that in such situations, the child develops his protection shield around himself since he does not want to disclose his embarrassing emotions to any adult who might be of help to him. His brain has not developed enough to think rationally at such an early stage and cannot reason or trust to open up about his distressing feelings. This book opened my eyes that how fragile a child could be if his outcry for help is not heard. Only one moment in his life when he is not helped could lead him to struggle with his mental well-being for his remaining life span.