SMALL BOY/BIG BOY

I have this running sequence going about two women therapists discussing their cases, what they should do, and what the client dilemmas do to them.  It's more entertaining that just describing theories.  Recently I invented a conversation about a movie they had seen that involved a small boy being molested by a bigger boy he idolized.  There was a four year gap.  These women are clinicians and so they were concerned about diagnosis as well as the effects of the situation on the boy.  

My background is a little bit clinical/philosophical/moral, but my earliest context was theatre.  This saved me from the incessant narcissism of self-examination because the point was inhabiting someone else, becoming them.  Becoming a kindergarten-aged boy via imagination is a bit of a challenge, but an interesting one.  Let's look at the options.

The molester is admired unconditionally and is very intense and persuasive about what he does to "me" which is both wonderful and a bit confusing to my undeveloped body.  Imagine that "I" have a father who tends to blame me for everything that goes wrong and whose discipline is always a whipping.  This big boy relationship fools dad.  That would explain the older boy making so many cautions about the absolute necessity of secrecy.  And besides, "I" am not hurt, just stimulated in a way that is overwhelming, even at my age.  Not so much sexual as engulfing.  A little like the father's fondness for rough-housing at bedtime, which turns into tickling, and then, in bed with lights out and Mom gone, something a little more intimate.

So "I" can accept this with the big boy as welcome, possibly a relief under the circumstances (diluting the impact of the father), and a reason for satisfaction to get so much attention from an admired person.  It might have been worrisome to have attention from female adults: too much demand to be special, to be a genius, to be a little escort.  A molesting adult man might also be traumatic, but a familiar fellow boy is okay.

Another strategy that I (real life me) read as a quasi-clinician is a theory about triangular "love" affairs which may translate into three-party sex.  Somewhat similar, the suggestion is that in the case of children the child gets drawn into a troubled and conflicted marriage, becoming a referee and conduit.  This three way set of relationships can persist in adulthood, so that two lovers dilute the pressure of one demanding person.

"Triangulation is a manipulation tactic where one person will not communicate directly with another person, instead using a third person to relay communication to the second, thus forming a triangle. It is also a form of splitting in which one person manipulates a relationship between two parties by controlling communication between them."  (Wikipedia)

A secondary result of a child learning how to triangulate as a defence is an accumulation of defences involving evasion, deflection, and not-quite-lying.  Living with an alcoholic or receiving unreal expectations can make these strategies deep, almost automatic.  It will encourage "theory of mind," which is the expectation of what the encountered person is thinking but without empathy, which means never any confirmation of the actual point of view of the person.  If the manipulator is wrong, he may think it is the result of strategy on the part of the other person, which is really a projection of his own way of acting.  Or in a difficult marriage, the third party may feel like a "hole card" that will win the war game if necessary, or at least be another role in which to take refuge.

In the end the boy will be left hollow, lonely, distrusting of real intimacy and doubting his own achievements.  With four years of difference, which means that this boy will be entering high school just as the older boy leaves for college, there is likely to come a point when the older boy is no longer interested and sheds his little buddy, which will devastate the latter, leaving him unstable and vulnerable.