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September 9, 2024 - 4:30pm
Last week, the UK was shaken by the horrifying news that two 12-year-olds were involved in the death of an 80-year-old man, Bhim Kohli, with a 14-year-old now charged with murder. This is exactly the kind of crime that leads many to believe that all hope is lost, as if it signals the end of days.
But are children and teenagers actually becoming more violent, or are we simply more exposed to shocking acts of brutality among younger individuals?
The Youth Endowment Fund tells us that “in 2022/23, there were 14,298 proven violent offences by 10–17-year-olds, nearly half the number from 2012/13.” However, the situation is made more complicated by the fact that the downward trend has started to plateau, with a slight increase in arrests for violent offences in recent years. More worryingly, knife-related violence is on the rise, particularly among 13-19-year-olds, and especially in certain deprived areas.
Psychologists point to a cocktail of factors that may drive young people to extreme acts of violence, such as early childhood trauma, desensitisation from exposure to violent media, and disaffection born from dysfunctional systems within society. Yet lots of children who suffer don’t behave like this: there are evidently other forces at play. Carl Jung’s “shadow” theory — which suggests that the “shadow” represents the unconscious and repressed aspects of our personality, often including undesirable traits or impulses — may offer greater insight. These hidden aspects in our psyche influence behaviour and must be acknowledged and integrated for personal growth, otherwise they may manifest destructively in our lives.
Shadow theory may explain the dark spirit that led 14-year-old Graham Young to poison his stepmother, father, and sister in 1961. He later became a serial killer who died in prison. In 1968, 10-year-old Mary Bell strangled two boys and was later diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorder. In 1992, Sharon Carr — aged 12, and also later described as psychopathic — randomly chose to stab Katie Rackliff 32 times in the ribs, the heart, the vagina and the anus. The cruelty of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson’s murder of two-year-old James Bulger in 1993 remains infamous. In 2011, two brothers, aged 10 and 11 at the time, abducted and sadistically tortured two other little boys in Edlington in South Yorkshire. Now, with a 14-year-old charged in the Kohli’s murder, we may be adding another name to this grim list of unfathomably barbaric acts in childhood.
Child murderers go against the natural order of things as we instinctively view children as symbols of innocence and goodness. While most embody these traits, a tragic few reveal a capacity for savagery that challenges our deepest beliefs about childhood. It is very difficult for most people to confront cases such as those listed above.
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SubscribeThe shadow exits in all people. Few professionals are dedicated to studying it. It’s not sexy.
Only a psychotherapist would write a story like this.
What the hell do you mean… story? It’s a description of events.
No, it is the also idiotic claim Carl Jung successfully has the relevance he intended, as a matter of the worth of his mysticism.
In fact, he was nuttier than squirrel droppings.
And it seems you are thicker than squirrel droppings. Can you write in coherent Enlish or is gibberish your default. Sorry, foolish question.
Okay, it’s a description of events. Feel better now?
It’s an expository essay, not a story.
My mistake; only a psychotherapist would write an expository essay like this.
This deserves so much more attention, not least from the perspective of “It is very difficult for most people to confront cases such as those…”
A good many (though not all) young teenagers who seek out a transgender identity may be using it as an escape route for the kind of thoughts they’re unable to deal with. These thoughts are either acknowledged and integrated or left to cause untold psychological problems. They exist within all of us. They don’t make us bad, but we do need to recognise that our sophisticated so-called civilisation is built upon the foundations of ourselves as human animals. Our greater brain capacity only makes our proclivity for violence more dangerous.
The author implores us to try to understand ourselves better. It’s something i’ve done – repeatedly – on these pages and every time felt it’d be falling upon deaf ears, and closed minds.
“Our greater brain capacity only makes our proclivity for violence more dangerous.”
That’s quite a claim. Why does it make our proclivity for violence more dangerous? I’d have thought, considering the number of people living together in close proximity, the opposite would be true.
Here in the United States, we have children shooting other children (and teachers) at school. Our latest was in Georgia. A 14-year-old shot and killed four with the AR-15, semi-automatic, military grade gun his father gave him last Christmas. This was the same child who begged his father to get him help for his many problems—nasty divorce, a mother who uses drugs and is violent, bullied at school. So far there have been 390 mass shootings ( four or more deaths) in this country, where there are far more guns than people. Count yourself lucky Britain.
The modern concept of childhood is an amalgam of 1950’s Hollywood and the ravings of Child and Adolescent Practitioners who see five patients a week. Anyone over the age of 12 should be subject to adult courts and the consequent punishment.
“Child murderers go against the natural order of things as we instinctively view children as symbols of innocence and goodness”
It is a naive view. Have you watched them in the school yard? Have you seen how they treat other children, who, for some reason or another, they decide are `different’? Most children are neither innocent nor good, any best they are a shade of grey. They are little bundles of Id; selfish, self-centred with little impulse control or compassion. Parents, good parents, teach them to be considerate of others and not to be feral humans or at the very least to wear a mask.
There is nature and there is nurture. A person is born with inherited personality traits that are then exposed to environment. Occasionally is it an unhappy mix.
We are all perfectly capable of evil. The question is what unleashes the evil within. It’s estimated that 2% of the population are psychopaths indicating a lack of empathy which makes violence more likely. There is then external stimuli – parenting (constructive or destructive), wider familial connections (“holding” networks vs more isolated environment), content which can desensitise the young against violence and recalibrate “normal”, by early teenage years peer group influence is key, and so on. I suspect we bury our heads around child murderers, because it forces to encounter our own shadow, and that’s extremely hard to do. Easier to be an ostrich.