Enrico Suardi, MD

 recently hosted the first of 2  workshops on 

Leaders and Terrorists: Psychological Perspectives on National  Security

The well-attended symposium drew upon the growing interest in exploring and utilizing all the elements  of national power, including so-called “soft power”-the ability to attract and  persuade others in order to influence their behavior and obtain desired  outcomes. A high-level panel highlighted the role of psychological insights in promoting national security and peace, and how  understanding human behavior is key to preventing and mitigating the  consequences of the worst human behavior.

In his opening remarks, the Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission, Minister  Luca Franchetti-Pardo, emphasized the close collaboration of Italy and the US  in the complex scenarios of global and domestic security.

The impact of personal and group dynamics in the decision-making process  of terror groups and the U.S. Government in the era of the “War on Terror” was  the subject of the keynote speech given by the Hon. Richard Danzig, PhD, JD,  Secretary of the Navy under President Clinton, presently Chairman of the Center  for a New American Security, a member of the Department of Defense Policy Board  and of President Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

Psychological profiles of Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Asad, and the North  Korean Kim dynasty rulers were provided by Jerrold Post, MD, Professor of  Psychiatry and International Relations at George Washington University,  previously the founding director of the CIA Center for the Analysis of  Personality and Political Behavior, in his talk on 

Tailored  Deterrence: The Requirement for Nuanced Leader Profiles in the Post Cold-War  Era

The Role of Behavioral Science in  Understanding Threats to National Security, 

offering a sobering review of the  strengths and limitations of the field. He is the Director of the Law and Psychiatry  Service at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Psychiatry  at Harvard Medical School, a member of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Biological  Sciences Expert Group.

Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis: Navigating  National Security through the Straits of Critical Incident Analysis

, Gregory Saathoff,  MD, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Public Health at the  University of Virginia Medical School, Executive Director of the Critical  Incident Analysis Group, a consultant to the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, underscored the importance of team  work and interagency coordination.

Reporting  on the outcomes of programs aimed at terrorist reeducation and rehabilitation Arie Kruglanski, PhD, presented 

The Quest for Significance as the Underlying  Motivation for Terrorism

.  Dr Kruglanski is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and co-principal  investigator at the National Center for the Study of Terrorism and the Response  to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.

The Grey Zone: Aiding and Abetting Terrorism.

A Comparative Analysis on Behaviours and  Legislations

,  The  Hon. Judge Giannicola Sinisi, Attach for Legal Affairs at the Embassy of Italy  and a former Member of the Italian Parliament, utilized his philosophical and  legal knowledge to address the fundamental issue of balancing liberty and  security.

In conclusion, Mr Guido Olimpio, author and journalist, senior  international correspondent from Washington, DC, for the Italian newspaper 

 shared observations  and perspectives based on over 30 years of experience in the field around the  world.

The authors of this article organized the  symposium.

Articles

The Embassy of Italy in Washington, DC recently hosted the first of 2 workshops on “Leaders and Terrorists: Psychological Perspectives on National Security.”

Symposium on Psychology and National Security at the Italian Embassy

A boy is  abandoned in a psychiatric ward by his mother. He is described as violent and  depressed. The hospital likens him to a “trespasser” and social services need  time to 

 Although there are no  available statistics to track the numbers of child abandonment cases, those in  the health care and social services trenches know they are not rare.

  As a result of the public uproar, laws were passed permitting the anonymous  relinquishment of unharmed babies in designated safe places, such as hospitals  and fire stations, without risk of prosecution.

Another epidemic  of abandoned children occurred in Nebraska in 2008. One of the last states to  pass the safe haven law, Nebraska did not specify age (most state safe haven  laws applied only to newborns and infants). As a result, 

, some dropped off by relatives in Nebraska after long trips from  out of state.

Although the  child welfare system, private adoption agencies, families, schools, health care  providers, and churches all provide opportunities for safely relinquishing  children, tragedies continue to occur.


 Child  abandonment, mostly in the form of exposing newborn babies, is an ancient and  pervasive theme in myths, folktales, and 

  Moses was found by the Pharaoh’s daughter and rose to lead the Jewish people.  His was an astounding outcome for a child left in a basket on the Nile (he  would have otherwise been killed by the Egyptians) and perhaps a comforting  story for parents who were constrained to abandon their children.

Two foundlings,  the twins Romulus and Remus, are the legendary founders of Rome. The statue of  the Capitoline Wolf suckling the children-and similar images on coins, altars,  mosaics-may have conveyed the powerful message that abandoned children should  be taken care of and that there can be greatness in their future.

A leap forward  of millennia brings us to Superman, a hero of our times, who is another  foundling. His parents shipped him off on a spacecraft from his native planet  Krypton because of an impending catastrophe,. He landed in rural America, where  he was adopted by the Kents, who taught him to use his 

Similar stories  have been reported from non-Western societies. The Yaudapu Enga of New Guinea,  for instance, have a narrative in which supernatural beings take abandoned  children and raise them to live privileged lives.


 The existence of  such narratives across cultures and times suggests that there may even be  something appealing about not being raised by the family of origin. Freud named  the estrangement from the parents and the fantasy of being an adopted child  raised by people of higher social standing “family romance.” Freud noted that  the effort of replacing real parents with superior ones is an expression of the  child’s longing for his or her own idealized parents.

Not all child  abandonment tales cast a positive light, however. Oedipus should have been left  to die as an infant. Instead he was given to a shepherd and was eventually  adopted by royals. Yet, his life was doomed and he unwittingly fulfilled his  tragic fate by killing his father and committing incest with his mother.

In Orson  Welles’s masterpiece, Citizen Kane is a happy child as he plays in the snow  outside the family home. Even though his parents are poor, peace and security  preside. When he is removed and is given financial affluence elsewhere, he is  unhappy. As an adult, he uses the money and power that he amasses to buy love  or cause others to feel equally miserable.


 One wonders  whether in the old days deserted children were actually rescued, as the tales  suggest, and what happened to them. How prevalent was child abandonment, and  what were its causes? Last names frequently given to 

 are  among the most common to this day and hint at the prevalence of child  abandonment in the past: 

Going back in  time, historian  John Boswell estimates that urban Romans abandoned 20% to 40% of their children  in imperial times.

 Most of the children were rescued. Since there  was no institutional arrangement for abandoned children, the children survived  thanks to 

 or the “kindness of strangers,” an  expression used in Latin legal texts to indicate the motivation of the persons  who took in abandoned children and raised them, a generosity admired in the public consciousness.

Without  a doubt some of these children became slaves, but most were apparently granted  the status of foster children. Children  were abandoned in great numbers throughout Europe. Several theologians of the  early Christian church argued that men should not use prostitutes because they  might unwittingly commit incest with a child they had abandoned, which suggests  that child abandonment was quite prevalent and that its outcomes were not  necessarily positive.

Parents may have  abandoned their offspring in desperation because they were not able to support  them; in shame because of their physical conditions, unwelcome gender, ominous  auspices, or because they were illegitimate or the product of incest; in the  interest of the household if inheritance would be compromised; in the hope that  someone of greater means might raise them in better circumstances; or in  callousness because they just did not want to be parents-the children ended up  being sold for profit.

Early Christian  authors treated child abandonment as infanticide. However, disapproval was  later replaced by sympathy toward the misfortunate birth parents. Much of the concern revolved around the  issue of baptism because unbaptized infants could not go to heaven. Whereas  infanticide and abortion were condemned, abandonment was not. A similarly  tolerant attitude prevailed in medieval Muslim society.

In  the thirteenth century, at a time when child abandonment was on the rise due to  demographic growth and adverse economic circumstances, foundling homes were  established in Italian cities as part of an attempt by civic institutions, both  religious and secular, to handle social problems. One of the features of these foundling  homes (probably originated at the hospital of the Holy Spirit in Rome) was the  “ruota,” a revolving door in a niche in the wall that allowed a parent or a  servant to deposit a child safely without being observed. It was a turning  point: the private “kindness of strangers” was superseded by public  intervention.

Some  parents who had abandoned their children eventually reclaimed them. Ironically,  the chances of finding them alive were not great, since more than half of the  foundlings did not survive the first year of life. Children could disappear quietly through  the revolving doors of foundling homes, out of sight and mind, into oblivion or  death.


 There are no  studies that have specifically looked at the health outcomes of abandoned  children. An “

” has been proposed that would include  psychological and physiological symptoms extending into adulthood, such as  alienation from others, guilt, fear and uncertainty, sleep and eating  disordered patterns, fatigue, lack of energy and creativity.

 The  long-term negative impact of child maltreatment, on the other hand, is  

well-established in the medical and psychiatric literature

 as a nonspecific  risk factor for a wide range of psychopathology and functional impairment in  adolescence and adulthood, including behavioral, social, and academic domains.

Are the outcomes  better for abandoned children in institutional or foster care? According to the  results from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, the first randomized,  controlled trial of foster care as an intervention for institutionalized  children, children removed from institutions and placed in foster families  display better attachment patterns, improved measures of affect, and reduced  prevalence of internalizing disorders.

 or the kindness of strangers, is by  itself no substitute for public intervention, but it should inform public  intervention, from legislation to funding, planning, implementing, and  monitoring programs. Tales from different cultures and epochs subtly remind us  that abandoned children who are adequately nurtured may rise to the top of  society. Even more importantly, our public consciousness tells us that  abandoned children deserve their fair chance in life, and that we should keep  an eye on the revolving doors that public intervention may create.

Dr Suardi is  an adult, pediatric, and forensic psychiatrist in Washington, DC. He reports no  conflicts of interest concerning the subject matter of this article.

White J, Castaneda R. 10-year-old boy with psychiatric problems is stranded in Children’s Hospital. The Washington Post. 2011. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/10-year-old-boy-with-psychiatric-problems-is-stranded-in-childrens-hospital/2011/10/26/gIQAQajKKM_story.html

Yardley J. A flurry of baby abandonment leaves Houston wondering why. New York Times. 1999. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/26/us/a-flurry-of-baby-abandonment-leaves-houston-wondering-why.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.  Accessed January 10, 2012.


  Ball K. The abandoned children of Nebraska. 

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1859405,00.html

  Pollock K, Hittle L. Baby abandonment: the role of child welfare systems. 2003.  http://www.cwla.org/programs/baby/babymonographintro.pdf. Accessed January 10,  2012.


http://www.faqs.org/childhood/A-Ar/Abandonment.html

The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological  Works of Sigmund Freud

, Vol 9 (1906-1908). New York: Vintage Books USA;  1909; 235-242


http://familyhistory.byu.edu/Downloads/Italian_Extraction_Guide/Italian_Extraction_Guide-Section_C_Part_2.pdf

. Chicago, IL: The University of  Chicago Press; 1988.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandoned_child_syndrome

Child Welfare Information Gateway. Long-Term Consequences of Child Abuse and  Neglect, April 2008.  

http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/long_term_consequences.pdf

 Bos K, Zeanah C, Fox NA, Drury SS, et al. Psychiatric outcomes in young  children with a history of institutionalization. 

Although the child welfare system, private adoption agencies, families, schools, health care providers, and churches all provide opportunities for safely relinquishing children, tragedies continue to occur.

Author | Enrico Suardi, MD

Articles

Symposium on Psychology and National Security at the Italian Embassy

The Kindness of Strangers In the Face of Child Abandonment