I learned something about our brains today. I learned that while high-level, long-term stress may not make a person stupid, it does literally shrink part of your brain. The good news that the same shrunken brain will return to its normal size once the stress is reduced. Reminds me of the time I went to Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum as a kid, and the one item that captivated my morbid, pre-teen curiosity more than anything else (amidst thousands of equally strange and bizarre items) were the shrunken heads from the Amazon jungle. I would imagine these tiny little people with tiny little heads running around the jungle, squeaking in their tiny shrunken-head voices. Seriously though, I've always wondered how they got those heads to be so small, especially in the Amazon where they don't have the latest head-shrinking technology. Weird.
So where did I learn this fascinating fact about the brain shrinking under stress (or at least one organ in the brain)? All this week I am taking part in a training to become certified as a hostage negotiator through the International Association of Hostage Negotiators. I find it kind of funny to be sitting in a room with 75 cops and military personnel... and me. At least my name card says "Storm Guides International" and not "Pastor Jim". There are five different instructors this week, each representing a different area of expertise. Yesterday's instructor is a clinical psychologist and former New York cop who works as a consultant to the NYPD and Scotland Yard in the area of hostage negotiation and kidnap for ransom. Kidnap for Ransom Insurance is big business today, as you can imagine, and this man travels the world to negotiate the terms of ransom and release on behalf of these insurance companies. He showed a photo of the suitcase he packs for these negotiation trips, including three different passports, $1000 and 1000 pounds Sterling as escape money, and a rubber chicken (haven't figured that one out yet). He spoke on Psychological Crisis Intervention which covered stress, suicide, and a plethora of mental disorders including schizophrenia, depression, mania, and personality disorders. As he explained the characteristics of the various personality disorders I found myself mentally placing the name of a person above each disorder. I know, it sounds terrible, but I couldn't help myself. I'm probably suffering from the personality disorder called "compulsion to add names above each disorder" syndrome. He even said which movies describe various personality disorders, like Fatal Attraction for Borderline Disorder, and Dog Day Afternoon for Avoidant Disorder. That helped me to understand what he was talking about, because I'll never forget Glenn Close playing the psycho jilted lover in Fatal Attraction. Every man in the movie theater ran home to tell his wife how much he loves her after watching that film.
The reason why I'm seeking this certification is to be able to assist any of Storm Guide's clients who may end up in a hostage situation. On my way home from the training yesterday I was thinking about the vast resources that the Denver Police (for example) have at their disposal in the event of a hostage-taking: a 7 person negotiation team, high-tech hostage negotiation equipment, and a SWAT team armed to the teeth in case the negotiations go bad. Somehow I feel pitifully prepared should I ever need to use this training.
One final thought: the instructor showed a clip of a series of interviews that were done with Richard Kuklinski, who is arguably the "greatest" mass murderer of all time. He estimates that he killed somewhere in the range of 200 people during his career as a deranged serial killer and then a mafia hitman. His nickname is "Iceman", and you'll understand why when you watch the calm indifference on his face as he describes many of the murders he committed. You can look them up on You Tube under "Dark Secrets: Inside the Mind of a Mafia Hit man". The instructor's point was simply this: there are some personality disorders that are simply untreatable and impossible to reform. A person like Kuklinski becomes a monster as a result of both genetics and environment. Perhaps the most fascinating idea of the whole day was that two people with the same genetic pre-disposition for fearlessness can end up as either a murderer or as a hero (test pilot, Navy Seal or firefighter) and a great deal depends upon being raised in an abusive or a loving home. I don't believe that we're simply victims of our genes or our environment, but it was still fascinating to see the elements that contribute to how we develop into adults.
No comments:
Post a Comment