Using Your Brain —for a CHANGE

One family came in to see me and the husband was really nasty. He pointed to his wife and snarled, "She thinks a 14–year–old girl should stay out until 9:30 at night!"

I looked him straight in the eye and said, "And you think that a 14–year–old girl should learn that men yell and scream at their wives, and make them feel bad!"

It's an awful thing to get lost.

Often a family will bring in a teenage daughter because there is something wrong with her; she enjoys sex and they can't get her to stop doing it. Talk about an idealistic, overwhelming, outrageous task: to get somebody to go back to being a virgin! The parents want you to convince their daughter that sex is not really pleasant, and that it is dangerous, and that if she enjoys it, it's going to influence her in a way that will make her feel bad for the rest of her life! Some therapists actually attempt that task, . . . and some even succeed.

One father literally dragged his daughter in to me with her arm twisted up behind her back, shoved her into a chair, and growled "Siddown!"

"Is anything wrong?" I asked.

"The girl's a little whore!"

"I don't need a whore; what did you bring her here for?" That's an interruption if ever there was one! Those first lines are my favorites; you can really fry someone's brains with a line like that. Ask him one question after that, and he'll never be able to get back to where he was.

"No, no! That's not what I'm talking about — "

"Who is this girl?" "My daughter."

"You made your daughter into a whore!!!"

"No, no! You don't understand — "

"And you brought her here to me\ How disgusting!"

"No, no, no! You've got it all wrong."

This man who came in snarling and yelling, is now pleading with me to understand him. He has totally switched from attacking his daughter to defending himself. Meanwhile, his daughter has been quietly cracking up. She thought that was wonderful.

"Well, explain it to me then."

"I just think all these terrible things are going to happen to her."

"Well, if you teach her that profession, you're damn right!" "No, no, you see it's — "

"Well, what is it you want me to do? What is it that you want?"

Then he started describing all the things he wanted. When he finished, I said, "You brought her in here with her arm twisted up behind her back and threw her around. That's how prostitutes are treated; that's what you're training her to do."

"Well, I want to force her to — "

"Oh, 'force'—teach her that men control women by throwing them around, ordering them around, twisting their arms behind their back, forcing them to do things against their will. That's what pimps do. Then the only thing left to do is to charge money for it."

"No, that's not what I'm doing. She's been sleeping with her boyfriend."

"Did she charge him?"

"No."

"Does she love him?"

"She's too young to love."

"Didn't she love you when she was a little girl?" . . . The image floats up from when she was a small child, sitting on daddy's knee. You can almost always get grumpy old men with that picture.

"Let me ask you something. Look at your daughter. . . . Don't you want her to be able to feel love, and to enjoy sexual behavior? The morals of the world have changed, and you don't have to like that. But how would you like it if the only way she learned to interact with men was the way you brought her in that door a few minutes ago? And she waited until she was twenty–five and married somebody who beat her up, threw her around, abused her, and forced her to do things against her will."

"But she may make a mistake, and it will hurt her."

"That's possible. Two years from now that guy may drop her like a hot rock and go away. And when she feels bad and lonely . . . she'll have no one to go to, because she'll hate your guts. If she came to you, you'd just say, 'I told you so.' "

"Even if she manages on her own in that time to go out and find somebody else and make a real relationship, when she has children of her own — your grandchildren — she'll never come and show them to you. Because she'll remember what you did, and she won't want her children to learn that. ... "

Right now the father doesn't know what to think, so this is how you get him. You look him straight in the eye and say, "Isn't it more important that she learn to have loving relationships? . . . or should she learn to have the morals of any man that can force her around? That's what pimps do."

Try to get out of that one. There's no way out. There's no way his brain could go back now and do what he did before. He couldn't act like a pimp. It doesn't matter if you force somebody to not do something or to do something, or if you force her to do something "good" or something "bad." The way in which you force her teaches her to be controlled in that way.