I'd argue that torturing bugs that people hate isn't so bad as an outlet. They may feel pain, but they're not really sentient in the same way that less-acceptable animals would be.
Same with watching gore. If indulging in fantasy is bad, then violent video games really would contribute to juvenile violence. (Which we know it doesn't.)
Outlet or no though, he definitely needs therapy.
I'd argue that torturing bugs that people hate isn't so bad as an outlet. They may feel pain, but th
Maybe for Simon's case it's more of the fact it encourages his harmful behavior 🤔 He already has sadistic tendencies, so him freely torturing bugs would snowball to larger and more satisfying creatures or something... Idk, I'm not a mental health professional haha
Maybe for Simon's case it's more of the fact it encourages his harmful behavior 🤔 He already has sa
It would only encourage his harmful behavior insofar that he doesn't-have or otherwise isn't-given a compelling distinction in his mind between "non-saptience and sapience" or "hurt and harm". Clearly he has a compulsion to hurt, but that's not the same thing as a compulsion to harm. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that if you talk to anyone in the BDSM community, they will tell you that there is a difference between those two things.
Assuming his problem is that he lacks one or more of these mental lines that distinguish the acceptable from the harmful, one of the things a good therapist could do would be to figure out which line(s) he lacks and helps him build it from scratch. Even psychopaths and sociopaths can have reasons to exist in the world without causing harm. And there are ways to exist with potentially-harmful compulsions that can mitigate the risks to people of said-compulsions. This is true even if Simon were also only thinking of his own self-interest. It's entirely possible to reach a position of altruism using purely selfish logic. His restraint in this very comic shows that he is already invested in not violating the limits of social acceptability to some extent for some reason. Investigating that would be a good place to start.
He has reason to care. Whether or not he does for its own sake or only does out of self-preservation is irrelevant. There are ways he could get what he needs while doing minimal harm. That being said, it is also true that those ways are potentially hindered by a lack of patience and understanding in his environment. No amount of work he does on his own can fully compensate for a world that makes a point to not make room for him in it. A bad therapist (and they do exist) or even just the wrong therapist can reinforce the feeling of having no options; forcing him to resort to increasingly forceful compromises between his needs and the social contract until eventually something breaks.
It would only encourage his harmful behavior insofar that he doesn't-have or otherwise isn't-given a
Simon's bad luck; The day before Simon decided to cut up his bonsai tree, a new law took affect classifying bonsai trees as protected. Simon got caught cutting up his bonsai tree a day after that new law took affect, and now a police SWAT team was sent to raid his house.
Simon's bad luck; The day before Simon decided to cut up his bonsai tree, a new law took affect clas
