The question you raised about the adolescent boy in a group home facility is complicated and raises many issues about treating adolescents as well as understanding CM theory. I'll try to respond to the main question of what you should do? and in so doing talk a little about how CM theory helps to think about this clinical challenge.
You describe this boy (I don't know his age) as a difficult adolescent who seems angry and impossible to reach. He appears disrespectful and dismissive of staff, as well as uncaring and manipulative of peers. The biggest fact about this kid that you've repeated several times is that no one has any effect on him.
I would assume that what you are getting is a picture that he is presenting of himself which may or may not be true. (It's not uncommon for kids to act as though they don't care what adults are saying or doing when they really do.) He presents himself as someone who can't be affected.
I would wonder why he presents himself that way. 1) Defensive: Is he defending against getting hurt by adults? (You said he had a difficult history). Does he have to act like he's above it all because his negative transferences tell him that people at the group home will be as abusive/ neglectful as they were at home? 2) Compliance: He may view himself as a self-centered, hostile, unlikeable person who treats people like dirt (which may have been the way he was defined at home) and he may be acting out that role at the group home to see if everyone believes that this behavior truly defines him. 3) Passive-into-active: He may have been treated this way at home, that is with hostility, with no respect, manipulated, used, disregarded, and rejected, and he may be acting that way towards others as a way of dealing with the trauma, identifying with the aggressor (Anna Freud) or turning passive into active (Sigmund Freud). In this case by doing to the staff what was done to him, he would be actively and unconsciously repeating the drama for all to see and help him with.
There may be other ways to understand his behavior but my assumption is that he is not as two-dimensional and BAD as he presents himself. I would be tempted not to believe anything about him yet, and specifically not believe the thing he most invites you to believe, that is that he can't be reached or affected. As his child care worker, I would keep doing what you're trying to do, which is to try to connect to him. If he rejects you or acts hostilely towards you, I'd stay with him and try to understand what he feels. If he acts like you're meaningless, I'd internally fight the spell he casts and talk to him anyway. I'd try to find something to like about this kid and connect with him any way you can, not just by talking about his feelings, his behavior, or his history. Does he like sports, music, girls?, does he hate politicians, wrong headed authority, people who don't understand him? I would just focus on connecting with him, then if he lets you, deal with things later on another level.
My guess is that much of the rejecting, obnoxious behavior is a passive into active rendition of how he was rejected, and a transference test whether you will reject him and think he's as despicable as he does. Although he may be angry, I don't think this behavior is solely an expression of rage or even of rebellion. Rather than rebelling against the people who mistreated him at home, he is more likely complying with their belief that he is a soulless character who deserves the rejection he has already received. He's only testing out these beliefs in the new setting of the group home, his new "family".
Unfortunately, adolescents usually engage in therapies of action rather than of talk. They "act out". He may eventually be able to talk about what's going on now or what went on in his family before. But first, he is testing to see whether you'll buy his presentation of himself as the kind of person who can't be connected with. If he gets you to buy that, then there's nothing else to be said. I'd be curious to hear any follow up on this case. Thanks for presenting it.
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