There are qualitative differences between the contact rebuses of latently motivated children and youths and latently motivated adults. Adults display more concealed and complex contact rebuses than young people because the adult psyche is fully developed and has more life experience, meaning that it contains a larger register of behavior types and their subtleties.
Latently motivated adults can add more dimensions to their contact rebuses while those of children and teenagers are more open and obvious, making it easier to see their cry for help. If an adult has become latently motivated as a child, a long experience of negative feedback can make the cry for help all the more complicated (Motivational Work, Part 1: Values and Theory, pages 322 – 325).
Case Study 1
A male and female social worker pay a visit to a married couple in their home. Both clients are known to have a history of abuse. The 38-year-old husband, Ebbe is also known to be violent and has spent time in jail for GBH. Both clients are obviously intoxicated when the social workers arrive, which causes them to urge the couple to stop their drinking. As the social workers are about to leave, the 32-year-old wife, Pia, turns to the female social worker in a private moment while her male colleague is talking to Pia’s husband.
Pia shows the social worker strangulation marks on her neck, claiming it is the work of her husband. The social worker is not brave enough to take Ebbe to task about this immediately for fear of his aggression, but she suggests that Pia leave the apartment with her, which Pia refuses to do.
Instead, they arrange a time for her to visit social services and the two social workers leave. During her meeting with social services the next day, Pia makes light of the assault she has been subjected to and wishes neither to report her husband to the police nor to move to sheltered accommodation.
Case Study 2
Agnes, aged 17, has been admitted to a juvenile care institution because she has been subjected to incest and can no longer live at home. Agnes has developed a special attachment to her social worker, who is also one of the female staff at the institution. One evening, Agnes disappears. The social worker finds out from the other girls at the institution that Agnes is at a hotel in the city with a man she met over the Internet.
This angers and distresses Agnes’s social worker a great deal so she goes over to the hotel finds out which room Agnes is in and breaks open the door. Inside, Agnes is lying half-naked on a bed with a man in his thirties. Agnes’s social worker insists that Agnes immediately leave with her; the girl obeys without hesitation and the man does nothing to stop her. Instead, he seems to be terrified that he could be in trouble himself. After this incident, the social worker feels Agnes has bonded much more closely to her.
Both Pia and Agnes transmit a victim contact rebus with which they have put themselves in a destructive situation with an aggressor. However, the differences between the adult and the teenager can be clearly seen. In Agnes’s case, there is a direct re-enactment of the incest to which she was subjected and she is hoping that someone will positively affirm her by stopping the assault.
In her contact rebus, she does not directly relate where she has gone, rather her test requires that the social worker responds actively and independently to find out. Agnes has left an indirect clue in telling the other girls at the institution where she has gone. When the social worker finally comes to the hotel room, Agnes immediately leaves with her, clearly indicating that the transmutation in her contact rebus has decreased and her bond with her social worker has strengthened.
Discussion
While Agnes makes it clear that she wants someone to come and save her, and responds immediately when this happens, Pia is more indirect in her cry for help. Although she shows her social worker the strangulation marks, her response is more transmuted than that of Agnes. Pia does not wish to leave the apartment when she is given the opportunity to do so, but the social worker is given indirect affirmation because Pia agrees to meet her at the social services office. However, Pia rejects open co-operation and declines help, thus demonstrating that her reaction is more transmuted than that of Agnes.
The destructive variable is also stronger in Pia. Her aggressor is more destructive towards her and more of a danger to the motivational worker. In the case of Agnes, the social worker does not hesitate to intervene in the situation and set boundaries, whereas, in the case of Pia’s husband, the social worker feels it is too great a risk to confront a man with such a violent reputation, as he is someone who could attack visitors. Moreover, the fact that he is drunk means that he has reduced control over his impulses. In contrast, Agnes’s aggressor does not pose the same degree of danger. In fact, he is terrified by the actions of the social worker.
Pia’s victim contact rebus is more indirect than that of Agnes and the social workers are not confronted directly with a situation involving assault. Instead, just prior to their leaving, Pia gives an indirect indication that she has suffered great violence. With Agnes, the assault is direct and the social worker is able to put a stop to it. Both women employ a contact rebus that involves spending time with the aggressor.
However, since Pia only mentions her assault as the social worker is leaving, it is more difficult to judge her predicament than in the case of Agnes, where information is made available at the outset and the social worker has more time to prepare her course of action.
Another difference is that Pia has lived with her aggressor for a long time and developed a relationship with him, unlike Agnes, who has just met her aggressor. Putting a man between themselves and their motivational workers is a common feature of both clients’ tests, but Pia’s test is more destructive and transmuted than Agnes’s.
In review, we can say that Agnes’s cry for help is less ambiguous than Pia’s and her response is less transmuted. The older woman has lived longer and acquired more life experience which has led to her becoming more disillusioned and having a greater sense of hopelessness than Agnes because she has accumulated more negative feedback. For this reason, Pia’s testing is more transmuted in terms of the destructive variable and the neutral principles of transmutation.
