The Man in the Monster by Martha Elliott Page B

since Dr. Borden explained his diagnosis to me, and some psychological experts would now disagree with Dr. Borden’s characterization of hyperactivity as being attributed to a depressive rage.
    There were aspects of his play that were possibly more relevant. By the time he was ten years old, Michael had developed an active fantasy life. In it, he was a Superman-like character, disguised as Clark Kent, who would rescue damsels in distress and then take them to his harem (a barn on the farm). There in his private lair, all the women would surrender to him and worship him. Michael said “there was nothing overtly sexual” in the fantasies he had as a young boy. “I don’t know when it changed—probably around puberty when I started to masturbate.”
    Dr. Cegalis said that from this early age, Michael had an aberrant fusion of aggression and sexuality. The result was violence. He said this stemmed from his need for approval and love from his mother. Rejection by his mother or a girlfriend “precipitated enough rage, enough anger for Mr. Ross to act out those impulses.”
    At twelve, he began undressing and fondling young neighborhood girls. Teresa Cross (not her real name), who was six years younger than Michael, lived near his grandparents’ house. “I would lure her into the woods between my house and my grandparents’.” Once out of sight, he would get her to take off her clothes and “I would undress and rub my penis against her, but I never attempted to penetrate her or anything.” Teresa eventually told her mother, who confronted Pat Ross with the crime. Mortified and angry, Pat and Dan marched Michael over to the Cross house and offered him up for a beating, but Teresa’s parents didn’t want to take part in the punishment. Instead, Michael was sent to the woodpile to find a stick so that Dan could carry out the sentence. “I got the tar whipped out of me.” Perhaps more painful to Michael than the beating was that he was also forbidden to go near the Cross house or his grandfather’s coops, because his parents felt he could not be trusted anywhere near the little girl. That was the end of his job minding the flock at his grandfather’s farm; he began working on the main farm, where his father could keep an eye on him. “That job meant a lot to me, then, because I was responsible for taking care of the chickens. I was downgraded to flunky, and I had to rework my way up. I think it was taking away the responsibility that hurt the most.”
    Resentful toward Teresa and her family, he “snuck over to their house after dark and cut their clotheslines. . . . I know it don’t make any sense. They didn’t do anything, but in my mind, they deserved to be punished too.” At twelve years old, he didn’t think what he had done was wrong, but his embarrassment about both his molestation ofTeresa and his revenge on her parents was apparent when he recounted the story.
    Pat took Michael to the family doctor, who suggested that his hyperactivity was a large part of the problem. Michael had often been in trouble for “impulsively blurting out inappropriate (often angry or lewd) statements and jokes.” In elementary school, he had a reputation for being disruptive and unruly. He recalled that his fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Post, met him at the bus on the first day of school and marched him down to the classroom, where he was shown his assigned seat and told what was expected of him in terms of classroom decorum. “I was a big troublemaker in school until I started taking Ritalin. I had a short attention span and was a smart aleck, not a bad dude. . . . I got into very few fights because I’d get in trouble at home. As punishment, I split a lot of wood, and I got my bottom tanned a lot.”
    The doctor assured Michael’s parents that they shouldn’t be concerned about the fondling, because