Who's Down with ODD?

Julian Sanchez | June 19, 2003

My father and I had plenty of political disagreements when I was a teenager. He was a social democrat who fled Franco in the 60s; I became a libertarian, more or less, sometime in high school. Fortunately, we managed to agree to disagree. Apparently, he could've decided that my bad ideas constituted a psychological disorder:

Alex Asch probably never thought he would be forced by police, private security, his parents, and the weight of the law to leave his choice of studies for a Mormon boot camp -- but on August 10, 2002 that's exactly what happened[....]

Alex was officially diagnosed with "Oppositional Defiance Disorder," which is defined as a disorder including symptoms such as often losing one's temper, arguing with adults, actively defying or refusing to comply with adults' requests, deliberately annoying people, blaming others for mistakes, being touchy or easily annoyed, and often being spiteful, vindictive, or angry.

Comments

|6.19.03 @ 1:19AM|#

On the rare occasions when I "presented" symptoms of ODD to my parents oh those many years ago, my dad usually brought me back to balanced mental health with a simple, "Stop being an asshole", a prescription I use on my pre-teens today.

Then again, being called an asshole is assuredly damaging to a teen's self-esteem, and most likely will put them on a shrink's couch or behind bars in a few years.

Madog|6.19.03 @ 1:45AM|#

Maybe I was some sort of prodigy but I figured out pretty early that you just need to tell adults what they want to hear, give in immediately whenever confronted, and then just go ahead and do whatever you want anyway.

When I did get grounded or whatever, I was usually so well behaved and polite that they'd forgive me in a few days and lift the punishment.

It taught me the important lesson that when dealing with an Authority, appearences are what matter.

|6.19.03 @ 1:52AM|#

A day is coming soon when calling your kid an asshole will get YOU thrown in jail. Don't doubt that at all.

I got the paddle for throwing a paper airplane in a Lutheran elementary school (1st grade in 1976 or 77). Who'da thunk it would be the pricipal getting in trouble 25 years later?

Russ|6.19.03 @ 2:00AM|#

I always considered "asshole" a term of endearment myself. Has a nice ring to it compared to "nice little boy".

voice of reason|6.19.03 @ 2:06AM|#

If we could just have a return to corporal punishment, we could dispense with all this mad fuss over words, medical designations, and the like.

Then we could get back to that place where the strong-muscled, more thoughtful, better educated and more experienced taught the small, mush-headed youth of today.

In short, we could return to the natural order of things.

md|6.19.03 @ 2:14AM|#

I would have spent all my teen years in boot camp had this been an actual disorder back then. I think we all would have. The symptoms have calmed down since them, but I still have flare-ups. Aside from "blaming others for mistakes" I think I exhibit at least one of these symptoms once a day. I do the blame thing much more sporadically these days.

Madog|6.19.03 @ 2:15AM|#

I dunno, corporal punishment never really worked for me. It would just make me mad and I'd scream and throw stuff (when I was little). Scolding me in front of friends would work though :) - humans are social animals after all, and most of us are wired to be strongly affected by the disaproval of those we respect or care about.

Jay D|6.19.03 @ 3:04AM|#

As a 'gun-toting economist on drugs', I have no problem with kids who resist authority, it's Wiretap's anti-capitalist agenda that irks me (see the site's banner: "RESISTANCE IS RISING!...").

rufus|6.19.03 @ 3:29AM|#

I can't resist pointing out the site that this story has come from. As an example, the little text box above the article has the caption:

"RESISTANCE IS RISING! June 20-25, take to the streets of Sacramento, CA for a five-day festival of resistance to biotech, bioimperialism, and the Bush Admin's corporate agenda of �free trade� with non-violent direct action, marches, rallies, teach-ins, an alternative expo, and more."

Not to be overly cynical or anything, but I can't help but wonder if people here would be so universally sympathetic to the source if it weren't saying something you wanted to hear.

dhex|6.19.03 @ 4:09AM|#

whenever i pass a nursing home i always wonder how many parents are in there because they were a little too quick with the fist and someone never quite forgot.

not to mention it doesn't teach anyone anything except to wait until the fucker has their back turned before hitting them back. not that discipline is actually about anything other than punishment - "learning your lesson" being shorthand for "shut the fuck up and do what you're told"

Kevin Carson|6.19.03 @ 4:34AM|#

Right on, Todd. ODD is another example of the same phenomenon as ADHD, only much worse. What it boils down to is that the publick skools and public health nazis have taken a cluser of personality traits they don't like, and classified it as a psychiatric disorder. And since these institutions employ authoritarian social engineers whose job is to create docile servants of the State, NATURALLY they view resistance to authority as a problem.

I'm glad I was in school back before the salad days of psycho-pharmaceutical behavior control, because I'd have been on Ritalin as soon as I hit first grade.

Rufus and Jay D:
Please note the "resistance" refers to "free trade," and not to free trade. What neoliberal corporate mercantilists like Tom Friedman call "free trade" has about as much to do with free trade as the Ministry of Truth has to do with truth.

Julian|6.19.03 @ 4:47AM|#

Not entirely sure what the upshot of the bit about being "sympathetic to the source" is supposed to be. I'm not "sympathetic to," say, The Nation or IndyMedia as a general rule, if by "sympathetic" you mean "in agreement with." But surely that doesn't mean I can't like a particular article in either place, does it?

|6.19.03 @ 6:51AM|#

For the most part the article was pretty scary, but I cracked up when I read the phrase "He also was helping to build a democratic economy by working with Ever Reviled Records, a worker-owned label releasing progressive and radical music."

A. Solzhenitsyn|6.19.03 @ 6:58AM|#

Amazing! We had the same "disorder" in my cuntry.

It was defined as "a disorder including symptoms such as often losing one's temper, arguing with authority, actively defying or refusing to comply with authority's requests, deliberately annoying authority, pointing out authority's mistakes, being touchy or easily annoyed, and often being spiteful, vindictive, or angry."

Many people were found guilty of this "disorder." They usually wound up in mental hospitals for "a cure." And the really incorrigible ones were sent to much colder places.

|6.19.03 @ 7:18AM|#

I hereby declare that "juvenile rehabilitation centers" be refered to as The Ministry Of Love.

Jesus Christ, this is scary not because of what was said, but because of how close it was to the most terrifying and horrific elements of Communist China, the USSR, Nazi Germany, and as in the novel 1984 - not to mention The Inquisition, The Burning Times, and various other bits and pieces of human history.

A people who do not learn from history really ARE doomed to repeat it, aren't they?


As to being "sympathetic" - no shit, of course I am. The whole point is that people should be free to be as full of shit as they damn well please, because people who are not free to think and believe and act (in ways that do not violate other people's rights) as they please have no hope - the society can never improve, wrongs can never be dispatched, and learning and knowledge are inevitably stamped out and destroyed. I may think these people are totally and utterly full of shit, but my key value is not "Being Right", but freedom, learning, knowledge, and ongoing improvement. I also just happen to remember that I too use to be as utterly full of shit as they were, and I may very well be as utterly full of shit now as they are, but if I am not free to be as I please, I am not free to change, and if I am not free to change, I am not free to better myself or others. In short, I am simply not free.

|6.19.03 @ 7:49AM|#

My first day of subbing at our local high school, I was given a detailed list of infractions for which students were to be sent to the assistant principal's office for discipline. They ranged from having a knife or firearm in class ("Put that Uzi down right now and report to Mr. Dither's office!") to saying "fuck" to sitting with your legs in the aisle. Not once during the whole school year did I send a kid out; a simple "Knock it off, please," did the trick every time.

Sometimes I wonder if the folks who come up with this shit ever had kids of their own. The first time your kid says "fuck", shows a room full of guests his first boner, or pisses in the fish bowl, the worst thing you can do is overreact. Kids, regardless of their age, want that overreaction. At age 38 I got my ear pierced, just to see if it would piss off my dad. Yep, still works.

|6.19.03 @ 9:01AM|#

"Kids, regardless of their age, want that overreaction."

Except, of course, for when they really do want help, guidance, or assistance - which is yet another situation when overreaction is the worst possible thing you can do. I remember plenty of times in childhood when I simply didn't tell my parents, especially my mother about something - still that way, really - because...well, she would either overreact, or just simply "do something" which I'd much prefer she didn't.

All instances where it really is important to keep your wits about you and put a time-delay on emotional, visceral reactions.

Similar to what you said, I recall out of all the times I was chastised for something, or otherwise simply 'corrected' - which really wasn't very often, so far as I can recall - it was done without so much as the raising of the voice, but a more directed, deliberate, somber sort of plain statement, as-in, well, "knock it off". Any other result had the distinct effect of just making me seek to hide something or otherwise keep them from reacting that way...not to actually internalise the direction or value, and actually act that way out of my own volition.

And, of course, sometimes your children are just going to piss you off and do what you don't want them to do. Boo fucking hoo, that children are human, not mindless servant droids.

bardp|6.19.03 @ 12:07PM|#

That explains a lot for me. People have always said that I was odd, but I didn't know they mean't I was O.D.D.

bardp|6.19.03 @ 12:08PM|#

oops with the '

Ron Bailey|6.19.03 @ 12:11PM|#

Thank goodness we have a diagnosis for you. Now we can get you some help. Cheers, Ron

|6.19.03 @ 12:16PM|#

Any moment now we should be hearing from the "poor us, they're pickin' on us Christians/Mormons/Catholics/Baptists/etc"
crowd.

That oughtta be good for a few laughs...

|6.19.03 @ 12:16PM|#

"defined as a disorder including symptoms such as often losing one's temper, arguing with adults, actively defying or refusing to comply with adults' requests, deliberately annoying people, blaming others for mistakes, being touchy or easily annoyed, and often being spiteful, vindictive, or angry."

Sweet Jesus. That's the working definition of a teenager.

Know who I blame for this crap? Boomers. The most pain in the ass generation grows up to have teenagers who are themselves pains in the ass. But instead of taking a deep breath, counting to seven or eight years, and reminding themselves that this stage, too, shall pass - as parents have done over the millennia - boomers call the psychiatrists and lock up the kids.

No, I don't know if Alex's parents are boomers. But it's still the boomers' fault.

Boomer|6.19.03 @ 12:27PM|#

Yeah, it's our fault for not shooting folks like you into the sheets instead of your momma.

Todd Fletcher|6.19.03 @ 12:39PM|#

From "a chicken in every pot" to a "syndrome for every behavior". That's progress!

david f|6.19.03 @ 12:41PM|#

... and then a pill for said behavior... no need to do actual work to overcome any disorder. just take a pill and forget...

drf

|6.19.03 @ 12:46PM|#

assimilation is imminent... resistance is futile

rufus|6.20.03 @ 4:01AM|#

Julian,

my comment wasn't directed at you for posting the article, but rather to the subset of the commentariat (sp?) that tends towards the "Evilll Liberals!!!" mode of argument.

A number of these types of comments were present in the "Nanophobia" thread that I'd read just before clicking on your link, so it struck me when suddenly all these "morons" and "eurolefties" were suddenly considered dead on about something else. I was guessing a lot of people simply didn't even read the link.

Just a snarky comment aimed at our more conservative commenters here really. Guess it missed. Oh well.


As to the article itself, you'll get no argument from me about ODD being a pretty good poster-child for the overmedicalization of unpleasant behaviors, but I'm not sure the story has much to say about that fact. Given that the kid was under 18, the diagnosis would not have been necessary for him to be removed against his will.

And I'm left to wonder what kind of parents, under what set of circumstances, send their kid to a "radically inclined insitution of higher education" on Monday, and then some extreme conservative Mormon rehabilitation camp on Thursday.


The story reads to me as if his "diagnosis" was actually most likely amongst the least relevant reasons for the mess he's currently in.

Anthony|6.20.03 @ 5:01AM|#

what Rufus said - who was paying for the kid to be in those radical-lefty schools?

MS|6.20.03 @ 6:45AM|#

So Julian you are of Spanish origin. Were you born in the US or in Spain?

|6.20.03 @ 9:18AM|#

MS, I was born in the US, but my grandfather was from Spain. My grandfather came to the US while fleeing the Franco dictatorship.

Why do you ask?

|7.14.03 @ 10:10AM|#

Hmm, I don't think I posted the bit above... or if I did, I must've been half asleep. It'd be correct if it said "father" rather than "grandfather."

Concern|7.22.03 @ 8:22AM|#

Blame all this on RAP MUSIC...err, I mean cRAP MUSIC.
If it wasn't for that trash, life would be much nicer.