Sanctuary for the Abused
Wednesday, April 19, 2023
Narcissistic Mothers' Characteristics
1. Everything she does is deniable.
There is always a facile excuse or an explanation. Cruelties are couched in loving terms. Aggressive and hostile acts are paraded as thoughtfulness. Selfish manipulations are presented as gifts. Criticism and slander is slyly disguised as concern. She only wants what is best for you. She only wants to "help" you.
She rarely says right out that she thinks you’re inadequate. Instead, any time that you tell her you’ve done something good, she counters with something your sibling did that was better or she simply ignores you or she hears you out without saying anything, then in a short time does something cruel to you so you understand not to get above yourself. She will carefully separate cause (your joy in your accomplishment) from effect (refusing to let you borrow the car to go to the awards ceremony) by enough time that someone who didn’t live through her abuse would never believe the connection.
Many of her putdowns are simply by comparison. She’ll talk about how wonderful someone else is or what a wonderful job they did on something you’ve also done or how highly she thinks of them. The contrast is left up to you. She has let you know that you’re no good without saying a word. She’ll spoil your pleasure in something by simply congratulating you for it in an angry, envious voice that conveys how unhappy she is, again, completely deniably. It is impossible to confront someone over their tone of voice, their demeanor or they way they look at you, but once your narcissistic mother has you trained, she can promise terrible punishment without a word. As a result, you’re always afraid, always in the wrong, and can never exactly put your finger on why.
Because her abusiveness is part of a lifelong campaign of control and because she is careful to rationalize her abuse, it is extremely difficult to explain to other people what is so bad about her. She’s also careful about when and how she engages in her abuses. She’s very secretive, a characteristic of almost all abusers (“Don’t wash our dirty laundry in public!”) and will punish you for telling anyone else what she’s done. The times and locations of her worst abuses are carefully chosen so that no one who might intervene will hear or see her bad behavior, and she will seem like a completely different person in public. She’ll slam you to other people, but will always embed her devaluing nuggets of snide gossip in protestations of concern, love and understanding (“I feel so sorry for poor Cynthia. She always seems to have such a hard time, but I just don’t know what I can do for her!”)
As a consequence the children of narcissists universally report that no one believes them (“I have to tell you that she always talks about YOU in the most caring way!"). Unfortunately therapists, given the deniable actions of the narcissist and eager to defend a fellow parent, will often jump to the narcissist’s defense as well, reinforcing your sense of isolation and helplessness (“I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that!”)
2. She violates your boundaries.
You feel like an extension of her. Your property is given away without your consent, sometimes in front of you. Your food is eaten off your plate or given to others off your plate. Your property may be repossessed and no reason given other than that it was never yours. Your time is committed without consulting you, and opinions purported to be yours are expressed for you. (She LOVES going to the fair! He would never want anything like that. She wouldn’t like kumquats.) You are discussed in your presence as though you are not there.
She keeps tabs on your bodily functions and humiliates you by divulging the information she gleans, especially when it can be used to demonstrate her devotion and highlight her martyrdom to your needs (“Mike had that problem with frequent urination too, only his was much worse. I was so worried about him!”) You have never known what it is like to have privacy in the bathroom or in your bedroom, and she goes through your things regularly. She asks nosy questions, snoops into your email/letters/diary/conversations. She will want to dig into your feelings, particularly painful ones and is always looking for negative information on you which can be used against you. She does things against your expressed wishes frequently. All of this is done without seeming embarrassment or thought.
Any attempt at autonomy on your part is strongly resisted. Normal rites of passage (learning to shave, wearing makeup, dating) are grudgingly allowed only if you insist, and you’re punished for your insistence (“Since you’re old enough to date, I think you’re old enough to pay for your own clothes!”) If you demand age-appropriate clothing, grooming, control over your own life, or rights, you are difficult and she ridicules your “independence.”
3. She favoritizes.
Narcissistic mothers commonly choose one (sometimes more) child to be the golden child and one (sometimes more) to be the scapegoat. The narcissist identifies with the golden child and provides privileges to him or her as long as the golden child does just as she wants. The golden child has to be cared for assiduously by everyone in the family. The scapegoat has no needs and instead gets to do the caring. The golden child can do nothing wrong. The scapegoat is always at fault. This creates divisions between the children, one of whom has a large investment in the mother being wise and wonderful, and the other(s) who hate her. That division will be fostered by the narcissist with lies and with blatantly unfair and favoritizing behavior. The golden child will defend the mother and indirectly perpetuate the abuse by finding reasons to blame the scapegoat for the mother’s actions. The golden child may also directly take on the narcissistic mother’s tasks by physically abusing the scapegoat so the narcissistic mother doesn’t have to do that herself.
4. She undermines.
Your accomplishments are acknowledged only to the extent that she can take credit for them. Any success or accomplishment for which she cannot take credit is ignored or diminished. Any time you are to be center stage and there is no opportunity for her to be the center of attention, she will try to prevent the occasion altogether, or she doesn’t come, or she leaves early, or she acts like it’s no big deal, or she steals the spotlight or she slips in little wounding comments about how much better someone else did or how what you did wasn’t as much as you could have done or as you think it is. She undermines you by picking fights with you or being especially unpleasant just before you have to make a major effort. She acts put out if she has to do anything to support your opportunities or will outright refuse to do even small things in support of you. She will be nasty to you about things that are peripherally connected with your successes so that you find your joy in what you’ve done is tarnished, without her ever saying anything directly about it. No matter what your success, she has to take you down a peg about it.
5. She demeans, criticizes and denigrates.
She lets you know in all sorts of little ways that she thinks less of you than she does of your siblings or of other people in general. If you complain about mistreatment by someone else, she will take that person’s side even if she doesn’t know them at all. She doesn’t care about those people or the justice of your complaints. She just wants to let you know that you’re never right.
She will deliver generalized barbs that are almost impossible to rebut (always in a loving, caring tone): “You were always difficult” “You can be very difficult to love” “You never seemed to be able to finish anything” “You were very hard to live with” “You’re always causing trouble” “No one could put up with the things you do.”
She will deliver slams in a sidelong way - for example she’ll complain about how “no one” loves her, does anything f1or her, or cares about her, or she’ll complain that “everyone” is so selfish, when you’re the only person in the room. As always, this combines criticism with deniability.
She will slip little comments into conversation that she really enjoyed something she did with someone else - something she did with you too, but didn’t like as much. She’ll let you know that her relationship with some other person you both know is wonderful in a way your relationship with her isn’t - the carefully unspoken message being that you don’t matter much to her.
She minimizes, discounts or ignores your opinions and experiences. Your insights are met with condescension, denials and accusations (“I think you read too much!”) and she will brush off your information even on subjects on which you are an acknowledged expert. Whatever you say is met with smirks and amused sounding or exaggerated exclamations (“Uh hunh!” “You don’t say!” “Really!”). She’ll then make it clear that she didn’t listen to a word you said.
6. She makes you look crazy.
If you try to confront her about something she’s done, she’ll tell you that you have “a very vivid imagination” or that you "made it all up" (this is a phrase commonly used by abusers of all sorts to invalidate your experience of their abuse) that you don’t know what you’re talking about, or that she has no idea what you’re talking about. She will claim not to remember even very memorable events, flatly denying they ever happened, nor will she ever acknowledge any possibility that she might have forgotten.
This is an extremely aggressive and exceptionally infuriating tactic called “gaslighting,” common to abusers of all kinds. Your perceptions of reality are continually undermined so that you end up without any confidence in your intuition, your memory or your powers of reasoning. This makes you a much better victim for the abuser.
Narcissists gaslight routinely. The narcissist will either insinuate or will tell you and others outright that you’re unstable, otherwise you wouldn’t believe such ridiculous things or be so uncooperative.
You’re oversensitive.
You’re imagining things.
You’re hysterical.
You’re completely unreasonable.
You’re over-reacting, like you always do.
She’ll talk to you when you’ve calmed down and aren’t so irrational.
She may even characterize you as being neurotic or psychotic.
Once she’s constructed these fantasies of your emotional pathologies, she’ll tell others about them, as always, presenting her smears as expressions of concern and declaring her own helpless victimhood.
She didn’t do anything.
She has no idea why you’re so irrationally angry with her.
You’ve hurt her terribly.
She thinks you may need psychotherapy.
She loves you very much and would do anything to make you happy, but she just doesn’t know what to do.
You keep pushing her away when all she wants to do is help you.
She has simultaneously absolved herself of any responsibility for your obvious antipathy towards her, implied that it’s something fundamentally wrong with you that makes you angry with her, and undermined your credibility with her listeners. She plays the role of the doting mother so perfectly that no one will believe you.
7. She’s envious.
Any time you get something nice she’s angry and envious and her envy will be apparent when she admires whatever it is. She’ll try to get it from you, spoil it for you, or get the same or better for herself. She’s always working on ways to get what other people have. The envy of narcissistic mothers often includes competing sexually with their daughters or daughters-in-law. They’ll attempt to forbid their daughters to wear makeup, to groom themselves in an age-appropriate way or to date. They will criticize the appearance of their daughters and daughters-in-law. This envy extends to relationships. Narcissistic mothers infamously attempt to damage their children’s marriages and interfere in the upbringing of their grandchildren.
8. She’s a liar in too many ways to count.
Any time she talks about something that has emotional significance for her, it’s a fair bet that she’s lying. Lying is one way that she creates conflict in the relationships and lives of those around her - she’ll lie to them about what other people have said, what they’ve done, or how they feel. She’ll lie about her relationship with them, about your behavior or about your situation in order to inflate herself and to undermine your credibility.
The narcissist is very careful about how she lies. To outsiders she’ll lie thoughtfully and deliberately, always in a way that can be covered up if she’s confronted with her lie. She spins what you said rather than makes something up wholesale. She puts dishonest interpretations on things you actually did. If she’s recently done something particularly egregious she may engage in preventative lying: she lies in advance to discount what you might say before you even say it. Then when you talk to anyone about what she did you’ll be cut off with “I already know all about it…your mother told me… (self-justifications and lies).” Because she is so careful about her deniability, it may be very hard to catch her in her lies and the more gullible of her friends may never realize how dishonest she is.
To you, she’ll lie blatantly. She will claim to be unable to remember bad things she has done, even if she did one of them recently and even if it was something very memorable. Of course, if you try to jog her memory by recounting the circumstances “You have a very vivid imagination” or “That was so long ago. Why do you have to dredge up your old grudges?” Your conversations with her are full of casual brush-offs and diversionary lies and she doesn’t respect you enough to bother making it sound good. For example she’ll start with a self-serving lie: “If I don’t take you as a dependent on my taxes I’ll lose three thousand dollars!” You refute her lie with an obvious truth: “No, three thousand dollars is the amount of the dependent exemption. You’ll only lose about eight hundred dollars.” Her response: “Isn’t that what I said?” You are now in a game with only one rule: You can’t win.
On the rare occasions she is forced to acknowledge some bad behavior, she will couch the admission deniably. She “guesses” that “maybe” she “might have” done something wrong. The wrongdoing is always heavily spun and trimmed to make it sound better. The words “I guess,” “maybe,” and “might have” are in and of themselves lies because she knows exactly what she did - no guessing, no might haves, no maybes.
9. She has to be the center of attention all the time.
This need is a defining trait of narcissists and particularly of narcissistic mothers for whom their children exist to be sources of attention and adoration. Narcissistic mothers love to be waited on and often pepper their children with little requests. “While you’re up…” or its equivalent is one of their favorite phrases. You couldn’t just be assigned a chore at the beginning of the week or of the day, instead, you had to do it on demand, preferably at a time that was inconvenient for you, or you had to “help” her do it, fetching and carrying for her while she made up to herself for the menial work she had to do as your mother by glorying in your attentions.
A narcissistic mother may create odd occasions at which she can be the center of attention, such as memorials for someone close to her who died long ago, or major celebrations of small personal milestones. She may love to entertain so she can be the life of her own party. She will try to steal the spotlight or will try to spoil any occasion where someone else is the center of attention, particularly the child she has cast as the scapegoat. She often invites herself along where she isn’t welcome. If she visits you or you visit her, you are required to spend all your time with her. Entertaining herself is unthinkable. She has always pouted, manipulated or raged if you tried to do anything without her, didn’t want to entertain her, refused to wait on her, stymied her plans for a drama or otherwise deprived her of attention.
Older narcissistic mothers often use the natural limitations of aging to manipulate dramas, often by neglecting their health or by doing things they know will make them ill. This gives them the opportunity to cash in on the investment they made when they trained you to wait on them as a child. Then they call you (or better still, get the neighbor or the nursing home administrator to call you) demanding your immediate attendance. You are to rush to her side, pat her hand, weep over her pain and listen sympathetically to her unending complaints about how hard and awful it is. (“Never get old!”) It’s almost never the case that you can actually do anything useful, and the causes of her disability may have been completely avoidable, but you’ve been put in an extremely difficult position. If you don’t provide the audience and attention she’s manipulating to get, you look extremely bad to everyone else and may even have legal culpability. (Narcissistic behaviors commonly accompany Alzheimer’s disease, so this behavior may also occur in perfectly normal mothers as they age.)
10. She manipulates your emotions in order to feed on your pain.
This exceptionally sick and bizarre behavior is so common among narcissistic mothers that their children often call them “emotional vampires.” Some of this emotional feeding comes in the form of pure sadism. She does and says things just to be wounding or she engages in tormenting teasing or she needles you about things you’re sensitive about, all the while a smile plays over her lips. She may have taken you to scary movies or told you horrifying stories, then mocked you for being a baby when you cried, She will slip a wounding comment into conversation and smile delightedly into your hurt face. You can hear the laughter in her voice as she pressures you or says distressing things to you. Later she’ll gloat over how much she upset you, gaily telling other people that you’re so much fun to tease, and recruiting others to share in her amusement. . She enjoys her cruelties and makes no effort to disguise that. She wants you to know that your pain entertains her. She may bring up subjects that are painful for you and probe you about them, all the while watching you carefully. This is emotional vampirism in its purest form. She’s feeding emotionally off your pain.
A peculiar form of this emotional vampirism combines attention-seeking behavior with a demand that the audience suffer. Since narcissistic mothers often play the martyr this may take the form of wrenching, self-pitying dramas which she carefully produces, and in which she is the star performer. She sobs and wails that no one loves her and everyone is so selfish, and she doesn’t want to live, she wants to die! She wants to die! She will not seem to care how much the manipulation of their emotions and the self-pity repels other people. One weird behavior that is very common to narcissists: her dramas may also center around the tragedies of other people, often relating how much she suffered by association and trying to distress her listeners, as she cries over the horrible murder of someone she wouldn’t recognize if they had passed her on the street.
11. She’s selfish and willful.
She always makes sure she has the best of everything. She insists on having her own way all the time and she will ruthlessly, manipulatively pursue it, even if what she wants isn’t worth all the effort she’s putting into it and even if that effort goes far beyond normal behavior. She will make a huge effort to get something you denied her, even if it was entirely your right to do so and even if her demand was selfish and unreasonable. If you tell her she cannot bring her friends to your party she will show up with them anyway, and she will have told them that they were invited so that you either have to give in, or be the bad guy to these poor dupes on your doorstep. If you tell her she can’t come over to your house tonight she’ll call your spouse and try get him or her to agree that she can, and to not say anything to you about it because it’s a “surprise.” She has to show you that you can’t tell her “no.”
One near-universal characteristic of narcissists: because they are so selfish and self-centered, they are very bad gift givers. They’ll give you hand-me-downs or market things for themselves as gifts for you (“I thought I’d give you my old bicycle and buy myself a new one!” “I know how much you love Italian food, so I’m going to take you to my favorite restaurant for your birthday!”) New gifts are often obviously cheap and are usually things that don’t suit you or that you can’t use or are a quid pro quo: if you buy her the gift she wants, she will buy you an item of your choice. She’ll make it clear that it pains her to give you anything. She may buy you a gift and get the identical item for herself, or take you shopping for a gift and get herself something nice at the same time to make herself feel better.
12. She’s self-absorbed. Her feelings, needs and wants are very important; yours are insignificant to the point that her least whim takes precedence over your most basic needs.
Her problems deserve your immediate and full attention; yours are brushed aside. Her wishes always take precedence; if she does something for you, she reminds you constantly of her munificence in doing so and will often try to extract some sort of payment. She will complain constantly, even though your situation may be much worse than hers. If you point that out, she will effortlessly, thoughtlessly brush it aside as of no importance ("It’s easy for you…/It’s different for you…/You aren't as sick as I am").
13. She is insanely defensive and is extremely sensitive to any criticism.
If you criticize her or defy her she will explode with fury, threaten, storm, rage, destroy and may become violent, beating, confining, putting her child outdoors in bad weather or otherwise engaging in classic physical abuse.
14. She terrorized. For all abusers, fear is a powerful means of control of the victim, and your narcissistic mother used it ruthlessly to train you.
Narcissists teach you to beware their wrath even when they aren’t present. The only alternative is constant placation. If you give her everything she wants all the time, you might be spared. If you don’t, the punishments will come. Even adult children of narcissists still feel that carefully inculcated fear. Your narcissistic mother can turn it on with a silence or a look that tells the child in you she’s thinking about how she’s going to get even.
Not all narcissists abuse physically, but most do, often in subtle, deniable ways. It allows them to vent their rage at your failure to be the solution to their internal havoc and simultaneously to teach you to fear them. You may not have been beaten, but you were almost certainly left to endure physical pain when a normal mother would have made an effort to relieve your misery. This deniable form of battery allows her to store up her rage and dole out the punishment at a later time when she’s worked out an airtight rationale for her abuse, so she never risks exposure.
You were left hungry because “you eat too much.” (Someone asked her if she was pregnant. She isn’t).
You always went to school with stomach flu because “you don’t have a fever. You’re just trying to get out of school.” (She resents having to take care of you. You have a lot of nerve getting sick and adding to her burdens.)
She refuses to look at your bloody heels and instead the shoes that wore those blisters on your heels are put back on your feet and you’re sent to the store in them because “You wanted those shoes. Now you can wear them.” (You said the ones she wanted to get you were ugly. She liked them because they were just like what she wore 30 years ago).
The dentist was told not to give you Novocaine when he drilled your tooth because “he has to learn to take better care of his teeth.” (She has to pay for a filling and she’s furious at having to spend money on you.)
Narcissistic mothers also abuse by loosing others on you or by failing to protect you when a normal mother would have. Sometimes the narcissist’s golden child will be encouraged to abuse the scapegoat. Narcissists also abuse by exposing you to violence. If one of your siblings got beaten, she made sure you saw. She effortlessly put the fear of Mom into you, without raising a hand.
15. She’s infantile and petty.
Narcissistic mothers are often simply childish. If you refuse to let her manipulate you into doing something, she will cry that you don’t love her because if you loved her you would do as she wanted. If you hurt her feelings she will aggressively whine to you that you’ll be sorry when she’s dead that you didn’t treat her better. These babyish complaints and responses may sound laughable, but the narcissist is dead serious about them. When you were a child, if you ask her to stop some bad behavior, she would justify it by pointing out something that you did that she feels is comparable, as though the childish behavior of a child is justification for the childish behavior of an adult. “Getting even” is a large part of her dealings with you. Anytime you fail to give her the deference, attention or service she feels she deserves, or you thwart her wishes, she has to show you.
16. She’s aggressive and shameless. She doesn’t ask. She demands.
She makes outrageous requests and she’ll take anything she wants if she thinks she can get away with it. Her demands of her children are posed in a very aggressive way, as are her criticisms. She won’t take no for an answer, pushing and arm-twisting and manipulating to get you to give in.
17. She “parentifies.”
She shed her responsibilities to you as soon as she was able, leaving you to take care of yourself as best you could (i.e. covert incest). She denied you medical care, necessary transportation or basic comforts that she would never have considered giving up for herself. She never gave you a birthday party or let you have sleepovers. Your friends were never welcome in her house. She didn’t like to drive you anywhere, so you turned down invitations because you had no way to get there. She wouldn’t buy your school pictures even if she could easily have afforded it. As soon as you got a job, every request for school supplies, clothing or toiletries was met with “Now that you’re making money, why don’t you pay for that yourself?” You worked three jobs to pay for that cheap college and when you finally got mononucleosis she chirped at you that she was “so happy you could take care of yourself.”
She also gave you tasks that were rightfully hers and should not have been placed on a child. You may have been a primary caregiver for young siblings or an incapacitated parent. You may have had responsibility for excessive household tasks. Above all, you were always her emotional caregiver which is one reason any defection from that role caused such enormous eruptions of rage. You were never allowed to be needy or have bad feelings or problems. Those experiences were only for her, and you were responsible for making it right for her. From the time you were very young she would randomly lash out at you any time she was stressed or angry with your father or felt that life was unfair to her, because it made her feel better to hurt you. You were often punished out of the blue, for manufactured offenses. As you got older she directly placed responsibility for her welfare and her emotions on you, weeping on your shoulder and unloading on you any time something went awry for her.
18. She’s exploitative.
She will manipulate to get work, money, or objects she envies out of other people for nothing. This includes her children, of course. If she set up a bank account for you, she was trustee on the account with the right to withdraw money. As you put money into it, she took it out. She may have stolen your identity. She took you as a dependent on her income taxes so you couldn’t file independently without exposing her to criminal penalties. If she made an agreement with you, it was violated the minute it no longer served her needs. If you brought it up demanding she adhere to the agreement, she brushed you off and later punished you so you would know not to defy her again.
Sometimes the narcissist will exploit a child to absorb punishment that would have been hers from an abusive partner. The husband comes home in a drunken rage, and the mother immediately complains about the child’s bad behavior so the rage is vented on to the child. Sometimes the narcissistic mother simply uses the child to keep a sick marriage intact because the alternative is being divorced or having to go to work. The child is sexually molested but the mother never notices, or worse, calls the child a liar when she tells the mother about the molestation.
19. She projects.
This sounds a little like psycho-babble, but it is something that narcissists all do. Projection means that she will put her own bad behavior, character and traits on you so she can deny them in herself and punish you. This can be very difficult to see if you have traits that she can project on to.
An eating-disordered woman who obsesses over her daughter’s weight is projecting. The daughter may not realize it because she has probably internalized an absurdly thin vision of women’s weight and so accepts her mother’s projection. When the narcissist tells the daughter that she eats too much, needs to exercise more, or has to wear extra-large size clothes, the daughter believes it, even if it isn’t true.
However, she will sometimes project even though it makes no sense at all. This happens when she feels shamed and needs to put it on her scapegoat child and the projection therefore comes across as being an attack out of the blue. For example: She makes an outrageous request, and you casually refuse to let her have her way. She’s enraged by your refusal and snarls at you that you’ll talk about it when you’ve calmed down and are no longer hysterical.
You aren’t hysterical at all; she is, but your refusal has made her feel the shame that should have stopped her from making shameless demands in the first place. That’s intolerable. She can transfer that shame to you and rationalize away your response: you only refused her because you’re so unreasonable. Having done that she can reassert her shamelessness and indulge her childish willfulness by turning an unequivocal refusal into a subject for further discussion. You’ll talk about it again “later” - probably when she’s worn you down with histrionics, pouting and the silent treatment so you’re more inclined to do what she wants.
20. She is never wrong about anything. No matter what she’s done, she won’t ever genuinely apologize for anything.
Instead, any time she feels she is being made to apologize she will sulk and pout, issue an insulting apology or negate the apology she has just made with justifications, qualifications or self pity: “I’m sorry you felt that I humiliated you” “I’m sorry if I made you feel bad” “If I did that it was wrong” “I’m sorry, but I there’s nothing I can do about it” “I’m sorry I made you feel clumsy, stupid and disgusting” “I’m sorry but it was just a joke. You’re so over-sensitive” “I’m sorry that my own child feels she has to upset me and make me feel bad.” The last insulting apology is also an example of projection.
21. She seems to have no awareness that other people even have feelings.
She’ll occasionally slip and say something jaw-droppingly callous because of this lack of empathy. It isn’t that she doesn’t care at all about other people’s feelings, though she doesn’t. It would simply never occur to her to think about their feelings.
An absence of empathy is the defining trait of a narcissist and underlies most of the other traits I have described. Unlike psychopaths, narcissists do understand right, wrong, and consequences, so they are not ordinarily criminal.
She beat you, but not to the point where you went to the hospital.
She left you standing out in the cold until you were miserable, but not until you had hypothermia.
She put you in the basement in the dark with no clothes on, but she only left you there for two hours.
22. She blames. She’ll blame you for everything that isn’t right in her life or for what other people do or for whatever has happened.
Always, she’ll blame you for her abuse. You made her do it. If only you weren’t so difficult. You upset her so much that she can’t think straight. Things were hard for her and your backtalk pushed her over the brink. This blaming is often so subtle that all you know is that you thought you were wronged and now you feel guilty.
Your brother beats you and her response is to bemoan how uncivilized children are.
Your boyfriend dumped you, but she can understand - after all, she herself has seen how difficult you are to love.
She’ll do something egregiously exploitative to you, and when confronted will screech at you that she can’t believe you were so selfish as to upset her over such a trivial thing.
She’ll also blame you for your reaction to her selfish, cruel and exploitative behavior. She can’t believe you are so petty, so small, and so childish as to object to her giving your favorite dress to her friend. She thought you would be happy to let her do something nice for someone else.
Narcissists are masters of multitasking as this example shows. Simultaneously your narcissistic mother is:
1) Lying. She knows what she did was wrong and she knows your reaction is reasonable.
2) Manipulating. She’s making you look like the bad guy for objecting to her cruelties.
3) Being selfish. She doesn’t mind making you feel horrible as long as she gets her own way.
4) Blaming. She did something wrong, but it’s all your fault.
5) Projecting. Her petty, small and childish behavior has become yours.
6) Putting on a self-pitying drama. She’s a martyr who believed the best of you, and you’ve let her down.
7) Parentifying. You’re responsible for her feelings, she has no responsibility for yours.
23. She destroys your relationships.
Narcissistic mothers are like tornadoes: wherever they touch down families are torn apart and wounds are inflicted. Unless the father has control over the narcissist and holds the family together, adult siblings in families with narcissistic mothers characteristically have painful relationships. Typically all communication between siblings is superficial and driven by duty, or they may never talk to each other at all. In part, these women foster dissension between their children because they enjoy the control it gives them. If those children don’t communicate except through the mother, she can decide what everyone hears. Narcissists also love the excitement and drama they create by interfering in their children’s lives. Watching people’s lives explode is better than soap operas, especially when you don’t have any empathy for their misery.
The narcissist nurtures anger, contempt and envy - the most corrosive emotions - to drive her children apart. While her children are still living at home, any child who stands up to the narcissist guarantees punishment for the rest. In her zest for revenge, the narcissist purposefully turns the siblings’ anger on the dissenter by including everyone in her retaliation. (“I can see that nobody here loves me! Well I’ll just take these Christmas presents back to the store. None of you would want anything I got you anyway!”) The other children, long trained by the narcissist to give in, are furious with the troublemaking child, instead of with the narcissist who actually deserves their anger.
The narcissist also uses favoritism and gossip to poison her childrens’ relationships. The scapegoat sees the mother as a creature of caprice and cruelty. As is typical of the privileged, the other children don’t see her unfairness and they excuse her abuses. Indeed, they are often recruited by the narcissist to adopt her contemptuous and entitled attitude towards the scapegoat and with her tacit or explicit permission, will inflict further abuse. The scapegoat predictably responds with fury and equal contempt. After her children move on with adult lives, the narcissist makes sure to keep each apprised of the doings of the others, passing on the most discreditable and juicy gossip (as always, disguised as “concern”) about the other children, again, in a way that engenders contempt rather than compassion.
Having been raised by a narcissist, her children are predisposed to be envious, and she takes full advantage of the opportunity that presents. While she may never praise you to your face, she will likely crow about your victories to the very sibling who is not doing well. She’ll tell you about the generosity she displayed towards that child, leaving you wondering why you got left out and irrationally angry at the favored child rather than at the narcissist who told you about it.
The end result is a family in which almost all communication is triangular. The narcissist, the spider in the middle of the family web, sensitively monitors all the children for information she can use to retain her unchallenged control over the family. She then passes that on to the others, creating the resentments that prevent them from communicating directly and freely with each other. The result is that the only communication between the children is through the narcissist, exactly the way she wants it.
24. As a last resort she goes pathetic.
When she’s confronted with unavoidable consequences for her own bad behavior, including your anger, she will melt into a soggy puddle of weepy helplessness. It’s all her fault. She can’t do anything right. She feels so bad. What she doesn’t do: own the responsibility for her bad conduct and make it right. Instead, as always, it’s all about her, and her helpless self-pitying weepiness dumps the responsibility for her consequences AND for her unhappiness about it on you.
As so often with narcissists, it is also a manipulative behavior. If you fail to excuse her bad behavior and make her feel better, YOU are the bad person for being cold, heartless and unfeeling when your poor mother feels so awful.
ORIGINAL POST
FACEBOOK GROUP FOR DAUGHTERS OF NARCISSISTIC MOTHERS: DoNM FREEDOM! (closed group - you must apply to join via Facebook and be 100% No Contact)
Labels: adult children of narcissists, control freak, difficult, emotionally abusive mothers, lies, manipulation, maternal narcissism, narcissistic parent, never good enough
Thursday, January 12, 2023
Emotional Rape
However, in the case of emotional rape the lack of consent is contained in what the perpetrator doesn't say... his or her hidden agenda. Emotional rape can happen to both men and women. Both forms of rape can be very devastating and require specialized programs for recovery.
Several major obstacles are encountered in recovery from emotional rape. The first is that the victim knows that something bad happened, but doesn't know what or why. And as in date rape, a big issue is that of trust. Victims often feel that they will never be able to love or trust anyone again. Other obstacles to recovery, again similar to date rape, are the re-victimization of the victim by friends, family, and society and the subsequent tendencies toward self-blame and silence about what happened.
It Could Happen to Anyone
Shara, who died after jumping from a freeway overpass into rush hour traffic, was exploited by a rapist who could accurately be described as armed and dangerous; an accomplished deceiver who had raped before.
Without exception, victims describe two predominant characteristics of their rapists:
1. They are charismatic, ostensibly attractive personalities, likely to be widely admired, but with a naturally manipulative nature.
2. They can completely conceal their true selves.
These two observations draw attention to one of the central features of such behavior:
Emotional rape can happen to anyone. The widely varying backgrounds and personalities of those who have already become victims demonstrate the danger in thinking otherwise; in believing "It could never happen to me."
It is sometimes difficult to believe that no moral responsibility rests with the victim - because he or she was weak, naive, or otherwise "to blame" - but that it lies with the rapist, whose ability to conceal his or her true self is such that almost anyone could be deceived.
The focus here is mainly on the rapist, examining what it is that makes an individual capable of this form of psychological aggression.
Colliding Emotions
It is no exaggeration to describe emotional rape as the most underrated trauma of our age; the effects are powerful and potentially destructive.
Victims are forced to cope with a tangle of conflicting emotions, experiencing all the traumatic after effects of both rape and loss.
This confused pattern of emotional responses is very similar to that experienced by victims of sexual rape.
It's a pattern commonly identified as post-traumatic rape syndrome, although victims of emotional rape will be unaware that this is what is happening to them.
These colliding emotions become so entangled that it is extremely difficult - and would be a serious misrepresentation - to attempt to categorize them individually. They are inseparable.
However, it is possible to identify certain generalized feelings which characterize the emotional aftermath. Principally, these are:
- Denial
- Isolation
- Feeling 'Had' or 'Used'
- Loneliness
- Rage and Obsession
- Inability to Love or Trust
- Loss of Self-Esteem
- Confusion
- Erratic Behavior
- Hidden and Delayed Reactions
- Fear and Anxiety
Each of these is considered in detail in this book, as are the typical physical and material after effects, so victims will understand that what they are going through is normal, that they are not alone, and that they are not insane.
LEARN MORE - CLICK HERE
Labels: betrayal, emotional rape, fraud, liar, lies, love, seduction
Sunday, January 01, 2023
IS YOUR NARCISSIST/ PSYCHOPATH/ ABUSER PLAYING YOU?
"you are my soul mate" or "this is fate" (came up over 50 times on this poll)
"I'm sorry that you feel that way" (because I'm not taking responsibility for this)
"End of conversation!!!", (when it is your turn to speak)
"I did (whatever BS) because of the medication I'm taking/ forgot to take"
"I'm always supportive of you and your education/career" (but when you're not around, and take the focus off of me, I have to find supply elsewhere, baby)
Cute nicknames: Baby, you are my honey, my sweetie, babe, dear... etc (good for when you have more than one woman on the go; in case you forget her name!)
"You/they made me do (whatever BS). It wasn't my fault. You drove me to it."
"I'm a good husband / father and other women are envious and want to ruin that."
"Don't listen to her (when they get caught by someone) she's in love with me/ obsessed with me/ making it up/ lying/ psycho..."
" I can't control how you feel "
"I'm very literal"
"why do you interpret everything I say"
"I don't feel anything" ( means he doesn't care and truly can NOT 'feel')
"I don't express my emotions well"
"I never said that," (when you repeat something from a prior conversation -- sometimes just an hour ago.)
"that never happened" (even when the proof is right there)
"Not my fault" (projection)
"Explain that to me, I'm thick" or "I don't get it"
"I told you that" or "that's what I told you"
"I would never lie to you"
"Listen to my words" (as he played his word games)
"I swear on my life/to God..."
"if you really think it's necessary."
"up to you"
"I will do anything to make you happy" (except be honest)
"if that's what you want"
"I am a good man"
"It's not what you think"
"just do me one favor...."
"I/ you never...."
"I/ you always...."
For more click here: YOU ARE A TARGET
These were written the 'male', your abuser may well be female!
Labels: abuser, come ons, lies, lures, narcissist, pathological, quotes, stock phrases
Saturday, April 02, 2022
Emotional Manipulator -- Skilled Controller
by Cassandra
Abusers can be masters of disguise and covert operations. He or She hones their skills to expert precision, lest people see through the mask to the ruthless ambition and envy beneath.
Above all, the abuser seeks to keep that mask firmly in place so as not to lose the support of those who’ve been fooled by the outer facade.
This list of characteristics describes abusers and gives an awareness of the techniques used by * Chameleons * who may be male or female.
1. Charming in public – exuding warmth and charm, an abuser smiles and tells jokes, praises and flatters you, outwardly supports you with a show of approval and reassurance, makes you feel valuable and appears to be attentive to your needs.
2. Rumor-monger in private – criticizing you behind your back, he may suggest that you have personal or emotional problems, carefully building a case against you via calculated misinformation passed on to others behind the scenes. He manipulates others into criticizing you and then rewards them for their participation in his plot to undermine your image in every way.
3. Two-faced – He pretends to support you while planning to destroy you; then when you challenge him, he suddenly transforms from supportive to bullying. His soft-spoken manner hides his destructive intentions, his flattering words hide his desire to control you, and his seemingly warm personality hides his take-no-prisoners attitude.
4. Distorts truth and reality – He misleads people by omitting key facts. He’s extremely concerned to preserve an appearance of integrity, all the while withholding significant information. He misleads people by omitting key facts, he quotes hearsay as important and authoritative, then, justifies his opinion by falsely claiming others think the same way.
Master of the half-truth, he miss-states and belittles your viewpoint, asks questions that demean you, then interrupts before you can fully respond, he changes the subject before you can correct his miss-statements, then he adds new false accusations faster than you can respond to the old ones.
5. Hypocritical – His spoken philosophy and behavior don’t match, his words creating a positive image which does not match his actions. He describes his mistakes as minor, but your mistakes as serious, or ignores his own mistakes while always highliting yours. – He calmly demeans you, but is angry because you don’t respect him. Not respecting him = pointing out the inconguities and inconsistencies between who he claims to be and what he actually does and says.
6. Evasive – He acts confused by any complaint about his behavior and always shifts the focus to others. He acts like he is the one who is being victimized. He tries to make you feel guilty for hurting him, accusing you of behavior that was far worse than his and asserting that you are the cause of his bad behavior (if he ever does admit to behaving badly).
7. Pompous – He acts like a know-it-all and never apologizes, unless to prove how rarely he makes a mistake. He’s a prima donna … condescending in words, tone of voice and mannerisms. Every issue which effects him is high drama and he’ll try to demolish the opposition in every discussion to keep the focus on himself.
8. Self-righteous – In order to disguise his corrupt character, he always claims the moral and ethical high ground. He brags about the goodness of his own character while suggesting that others have dubious motives. He frequently talks of his superior ethical standards, implying that others don’t have his high standards and using distorted examples to prove that others are not nearly as superior as he.
9. Obsessed with image – He believes that his image is more important than reality, so he disguises his true emotions and desires. When you see beneath his persona, he will suggest that your actions have hurt his image. Alternatively, he says that your proposed actions (i.e., exposing him) will hurt your own image.
10. Passive-aggressive behaviour: (Anger Expressed Inappropriately)
* Put-downs
* Sarcasm
* Insults
* Rudeness
* Sabotage
* Intimidation
* Belittling Remarks
11. Pretends to care – While pretending to care about others, he is at his most manipulative and dangerous. Most people are taken in by his apparently positive energy, enthusiasm and charisma, but in reality, they are naively being fooled by an attractive personality which hides a morally and ethically corrupt abuser who is coldly and ruthlessly pursuing his own selfish ends.
His expression of affection is tainted with possessiveness and he compliments you only because it serves his purpose. He has a look of concern, but he doesn’t truly respect you.
He pretends to be your friend while tearing you down, destroying your reputation, weakening your position, and exaggerating the importance of your mistakes.
12. Plays the victim – He exaggerates his pain and suffering, trying to make you feel guilty for causing his pain and claiming that you don’t appreciate him.
He becomes angry and indignant when you try to reason with him, then says he is tired of doing all the compromising.
The above list of characteristics describes abusers and gives an awareness of the techniques used by * Chameleons * who may be male or female.
Labels: belittle, chameleons, doubting yourself, dr jekyll, gaslighting, lies, manipulator, misstatement, mr hyde, shock. smear campaign
Saturday, January 29, 2022
PERSUASIVE COERCION
A Chapter from THE PERFECT VICTIM shows some of the methods. If you read this, you will see how some of these things can be done to an abuse victim psychologically, emotionally, verbally or morally to use mind-control and 'hold the victim' in the relationship by abusers. It does not necessarily have to be physical torture. WARNING: POSSIBLY TRIGGERING
THE MACHINERY
Instead, she would have to base her questions on a hypothetical situation. She asked the doctor to assume certain facts, then meticulously outlined the elements of Colleen Stan's first six months of captivity: the kidnap, hanging, whipping, imprisonment in a box, deprivation of food and light, lack of hygiene, dunking, burns, and so on.
"Now, Doctor," she concluded, "assuming those facts, based on your experience, training and education, do you have an opinion as to whether those facts are sufficient to coerce a person?"
Papendick promptly objected to the hypothetical. He was overruled.
Dr. Hatcher said the facts "would be sufficient to coerce the majority of individuals into a desired behavior pattern and to give up any overt resistance."
McGuire then asked: "To ‘break’ a person is that the same thing as coercing a person?"
Hatcher said the term, accepted within psychological literature, usually referred to "techniques initially developed by the Soviets and Chinese to establish coercion [to, a degree that] you are able to extract a behavior or a confession, to the point at which a person essentially gives up their overt resistance and will do what you ask them to do."
"Is that what we're talking about here, given those sets of facts?"
"That's correct."
McGuire then asked the doctor if there were specific steps, which could be followed to break a person. Dr. Hatcher began an explanation so closely related to Hooker's treatment of Colleen Stan; everyone in the courtroom seemed to lean forward to listen. The first step, he said, is a sudden, unexpected abduction, followed by isolation as soon as possible. "Refuse to answer questions, place them in a cell-like environment; remove their clothes, and begin humiliation and degradation."
1. Later, it was clarified that these were more accurately "techniques" rather than "steps." Dr. Hatcher pointed out that not all the techniques need be applied, and they needn't be applied in any particular order. "The degree and intensity" of application of these techniques is "so variable that you could take three or four of them and, with particular individuals, achieve the result," he said.
Asked to apply this first step to the hypothetical example, Dr. Hatcher said: "We have an individual who is initially in a situation in which the average person would feel somewhat comforted, in that it is a family in a car with a small child. The captor then not only displays the knife, the first point of danger, but rapidly puts a device upon the head which is beyond the realm of most people's experience or ability to comprehend, so the degree of isolation imposed would be greater than, for example, a kidnapping in which someone puts a bag over their head or pushes them down in the seat and says, 'Don't look up. Don't ask me any questions.'
Dr. Hatcher went on to explain that a cell-like environment stimulates a feeling that one's worst fears are being realized, raising the level of fear and anxiety. Removal of clothes magnifies the feeling of vulnerability.
The second step in breaking someone, the doctor continued, is to physically or sexually abuse the person, to expose the captive's vulnerability and shock her or him. "In other words, not only has the victim been stripped of their clothes and placed in a physically vulnerable position, but you are going to whip or abuse in some other way, specifically with sexual manipulation, to illustrate just how exposed and vulnerable they really are."
Applying this to the hypothetical, Dr. Hatcher cited the sexual manipulation, and the exposure in terms of hanging and whippings, in which there is no perceived way of escape.
"The third step is extremely important," he said, "and that's to remove normal daylight patterns. All of us, both biologically and psychologically, are used to a certain day and night kind of sequence, and this has been well-documented in various types of scientific literature." Removing this, either by placing someone in a constantly lit or constantly dark environment, "is very disorienting, and is a rather standard part of the techniques employed."
The blindfold and boxes of the hypothetical, of course, accomplished this purpose excellently.
The fourth step, Dr. Hatcher explained, is "to control urination, defecation, menstruation, and to be present when these activities are performed. Basically, what you want to do here is destroy a person's sense of privacy."
He also pointed out that "if a person soils himself, and isn't able to clean that up, the sense of shame 'in sitting or lying in their own waste product is really quite extraordinary, and individuals become very motivated to do what they can to get permission to clean themselves up. Most people have not had the experience since being a small infant, of sitting or lying in their waste product over a period of time. It takes you back to a period of vulnerability."
The fifth step is to control and reduce food and water. Hatcher stated the obvious: "If you don't get that food and water, you are going to die. So, on the one hand, they may be torturing you and preventing you from leaving, but on the other hand, they are bringing food and water." This helps make the captive dependent upon the captor.
The sixth step is to punish for no apparent rhyme or reason. Initially, the captive tries to figure out some rationale to the intermittent beatings but, finding none, eventually has to simply accept that punishment will occur with no reason.
The seventh step is to "require the victim to constantly ask permission for anything or any behavior. This would involve asking permission to be able to speak to someone, permission to take a tray of food. It is a type of training procedure."
The eighth step is to establish a pattern of sexual and physical abuse. This "indicates to the person that this is what their new life is now going to be like." It's a way of "getting the person to realize things have changed in a permanent sense."
The ninth step is to "continue to isolate the person. The captor has now become the source of food, water, human contact, as well. That's important information, as well as pain. All of us are information hungry people. If you put us in a restricted environment without newspapers or magazines or television, that's real nice for a while, but if it happens [that] you are totally cut off and weeks pass, all of us get a little hungry to find out what's going on.
"Cut that off and tie it to one person. Being a source of information is extremely important. As well as human contact the captor has a tremendous amount of power because he's the human being that you see, he is that only point of contact."
During his explanation, Dr. Hatcher spoke clearly, usually addressing himself to the jury. He wasn't a man of few words, yet no one yawned.
McGuire next asked how someone might learn the steps of breaking a person.
Dr. Hatcher listed three sources: the study of psychology; the law enforcement and military forces of "countries who have a rather low regard for human rights"; or, the most common, sadomasochistic and bondage and discipline literature.
"How are people initially attracted to this S/M and B and D literature?" McGuire asked.
Hatcher's answer must have been more interesting to Cameron Hooker than to anyone else in the room. He'd surely never heard himself explained so clearly.
"The consistency is rather interesting," Hatcher said. About the time of puberty, a boy finds himself stimulated by images of people being tied up or tortured. "It's initially extraordinarily disturbing to them. They tend to feel there's something wrong with them." And so this is suppressed; they don't talk about it.
Instead, they eventually find S/M and B&D literature, which also isn't talked about. "But the impulse and stimulation of this after a while just becomes more than they can keep to themselves," so, at an older age, the boy perhaps approaches girls, showing a picture and saying, "Would you like to try something like this?"
"The literature provides the stimulation, which doesn't cause the behavior, there's no mistake about that," but it also shows "how you can hang someone up, how you can put them in certain types of positions of torture, how it's been done before."
Now McGuire wished to introduce some of Cameron Hooker's S/M and B&D literature. Papendick objected, and again, the jury was excused while the two counsels argued about the relevance of Hooker's collection of hard-core pornography.
Judge Knight finally ruled that "any literature that either has instructions or rules or suggestions on captivity and any literature that contains ideas that were communicated by the defendant to the victim is admissible."
With the jury ushered back in and Dr. Hatcher again on the stand, McGuire introduced another of her impressive exhibits: an enlarged reproduction of the graphics for an article in the June, 1976 edition of Oui magazine, entitled: "Brainwashing: How to Fold, Spindle and Mutilate the Human Mind in Five Easy Steps."
If the jury had thought McGuire a prude, taking umbrage at Hooker's prurient interests, the colorful illustrations before them now presented an interest less in sex than in control. While provocative and lurid, the drawings depicted the "five easy steps," which McGuire asked Dr. Hatcher to review. (LLG was very interested in control.)
As Hatcher pointed out, it wasn't necessary to read the article, written by the Harvard-trained psychologist, Dr. Timothy Leary,' to understand the "five easy steps." The pictures were sufficient:
Step one: "Seize the victim and spirit her away."
Step two: "Isolate the victim and make her totally dependent on you for survival."
Step three: "Dominate the victim and encourage her to seek your recognition and approval."
Step four: "Instruct the victim and re-educate her to think and act in terms of your ideology."
Step five: "Seduce the victim and provide her with a new sexual (or moral) value system."
The scene in the courtroom was now a weird tableau: the thoroughly dignified Dr. Hatcher, in his somber, dark suit, surrounded by poster-size pictures of the slavery contract, of the basement, of the rack, of the Oui illustrations, and of Colleen, stripped and hung. And still, the heavy bed and box occupied much of the courtroom floor.
(It doubtless required great restraint on the part of the jurors to be confronted with such images and information day after day, yet never discuss it. Every time court was adjourned, the judge asked that they please remember the "admonition of the court" and refrain from reading about, talking about, or viewing programs about the case. They bottled it up and took it home, without disclosing what they'd learned even to their spouses.)
Some of Dr. Hatcher's testimony, while phrased in academic language, was explicit-shocking. For instance, he said that places where, a customer can rent sado-masochistic paraphernalia and perform various acts on a prostitute, which Colleen had described as, Rent-a-Dungeon," actually exist in cities such as New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. And he briefly analyzed a selection of articles from Hooker's library, including such literary gems as "Captive Maid...... Sex Slaves for Sale," and "Actual Case Histories of Sexual Slavery."
McGuire asked Hatcher if, in addition to the nine he'd already outlined, there were other coercive techniques.
There were, and the psychologist related these now.
The tenth technique, he said, is to "present a goal or a model... of future behavior, a model of how to please the captor."
The eleventh is to threaten family and relatives with a similar fate.
The twelfth is to threaten to sell the captive to an even worse master.
The thirteenth is to continue to beat and torture the captive at irregular intervals.
The fourteenth, called "irrelevant leniency," is to allow small privileges for no reason, making the captive more confused and more pliant.
The fifteenth is to obtain further confessions and signed documents, having the captive give over more and more control in writing.
And the sixteenth and final technique is to incorporate new behavior goals. Dr. Hatcher pointed out: "It's enormously time consuming to carry out a successful coercion. It takes a lot of time, a lot of thought, a lot of energy, and people have difficulty doing that over a period of time. They have to attend to other processes of life, and I'm speaking of the captor. So, you need to establish some type of pattern where you won't have to be constantly physically monitoring this person." Some ways to do that are to allow the captive to tend to personal hygiene, allow clothes, some privacy. And, Hatcher explained, it's important to permit the captive some degree of freedom, without the captor's constant presence, and then suddenly appear, giving the captive a feeling the- captor is omnipresent.
Dr. Hatcher added, "There are many historical examples where slaves not only outnumbered their masters in terms of manpower but also had the opportunity to attempt an escape, and yet that's done in only a very small percentage of cases." The significance of this surely wasn't lost on the two black members of the jury.
With these sixteen coercive techniques understood, and with Hooker's research into coercion presented, McGuire returned to her nearly forgotten hypothetical.
Again, she asked the psychologist to assume certain facts, then outlined the conditions under which Colleen was kept during certain periods-the next six months, the next year, then each subsequent year. At the conclusion of each period, the doctor enumerated which of the coercive techniques had been applied during that time, giving special attention to important aspects, such as the slavery contract and the story of the Company.
Dr. Hatcher shed illumination on Colleen Stan's darkest hours. He took the components of her captivity-the workshop, the "attention drills," the slave name, the slave collar; the box and distilled them into elements of power and control.
Even the freedoms that Colleen was later allowed-to brush her teeth, shower, wear clothes-the doctor explained as giving the person some remnants of self-esteem, with the reminder. "If you displease me, I can remove any shred of personal privacy or personal identity, with the exception of what I have chosen as your slave designation."
As the prosecutor continued with her hypothetical situation, Papendick fidgeted. He objected to each stage of her hypothetical, but the judge consistently overruled his objections.
Commenting on the captive's being allowed to do new activities in new settings where other people are present, the psychologist said, "the fact that these situations do not result in discovery" or in anyone interfering, "begins to reinforce, in the majority of captives' minds, that this is the way life is, and they are going to have to accept that."
Dr. Hatcher also commented on the gift of the Bible: "Part of Christianity emphasizes that you are going to suffer and that God will provide, that no matter what type of disaster or terrible situation may befall you, if you maintain your faith in God, God will get you out of it. Some captors use a religious tract, they want to assist the captive along the pathway of believing they should have faith in God, and that God is really part of all this, that this is not alien from Christianity. It incorporates [the captivity] within the framework of what's normal and serves often to make the person more religious. The sad part is that it does make the captive easier to control."
It seemed a shame that Colleen Stan couldn't hear this. Instead, Cameron Hooker, along with the rest of the court, was treated to an educated view of what made him tick.
Addressing himself to periods of greater freedom allowed the captive, Dr. Hatcher undertook an explanation of the captor's motivations: "The main thing here is that the captor is not necessarily an individual of extraordinary intelligence. He doesn't necessarily have to have a comprehensive kind of knowledge as; for example, Dr. Leary might have in constructing the article we talked about before. What comes across consistently, however, is that the person, to some extent, has a feeling that is like a hunter. Think of the person in your acquaintance who is the best hunter. It usually isn't the chief executive officer of the bank, a person who has a very high degree of status. It's a kind of sense or skill that makes them a particularly good deer hunter or duck hunter a certain amount of patience.
"The analogy drawn for me by the individuals I have interviewed is that they see themselves in a similar way as a hunter.
Initially, they are concerned with the stalking and the capture. Then, rather than killing the prey, they see how far they can train this person.
"After a while, curiosity sets in to see just how far he can let this person go and still have control. There is a certain risk or gamble there, but [this is outweighed by] the value or degree of enjoyment and satisfaction, the sense of being able to hunt with higher stakes. The gratification from being able to allow the person contacts with outside people and still know that you have enough coercion and pressure upon them, that's an extraordinary reinforcement and overcomes some of the other concerns about apprehension."
One couldn't help but wonder what Hooker thought of this.
Dr. Hatcher's direct examination took nearly two days.
He seemed to sort through every aspect of Colleen's captivity and place it in context: The "love letters," he pointed out, were consistent with types of statements in S/M literature, and it was common to have the captive echo the captor's belief system. He reviewed the letters, citing Colleen's repeated references to her position as a slave.
Still posing a hypothetical situation, McGuire asked if the doctor could account for the calls and letters to the captor and his wife.
"There is a great deal of dependency upon the wife in the situation you've described," Dr. Hatcher explained. "It's not as if there was a relatively rapid, clean escape without having the possibility [the captor might come after her]."
By talking with the captor, yet experiencing that this doesn't result in being put back in the box, "the person gradually begins to feel they have a greater degree of control, that they have reestablished themselves somewhat."
Further, the psychologist said, it's common that captives, once free, express the idea "that they want to let God or someone else take charge of retribution or punishment," and he quoted sections of Colleen's letters to Cameron and Jan saying, for example:
"I don't want to play God and I forgive you and Cameron for all things." Additionally, Hatcher said, victims are often averse to pressing charges because criminal proceedings would force them to relive the experience.
Hatcher made comparisons with several other cases in which the victims were "mentally restrained," fearful of attempting escape, and then, once free, reluctant to go to police. These cases shared many elements in common with Colleen Stan's, but by the time the psychologist concluded his remarks it seemed clear that Hooker's coercion of Colleen had been uncommonly intense.
Dr. Hatcher said as much: "The circumstances as you have described them to me, with the possible exception of issues that go farther back in time (such as black slavery in America), would be unique in recorded literature. There would not be a similar situation in which this degree of captivity and of sado-masochistic torture of a human being had existed in a previous case."
After nearly twelve hours of eliciting expert testimony-an outpouring of information-the prosecutor at last came to the end of her questions, took her seat, and handed Dr. Hatcher over for cross-examination.
Defense Attorney Papendick opened by trying to belittle psychologists as opposed to psychiatrists (since the expert witness for the defense, Dr. Lunde, was a psychiatrist), but Dr. Hatcher's answer was so complete it seemed only to emphasize his competence.
Papendick persisted: "You are not a licensed physician, are you?"
"No, I am not."
"You are not an expert on the physical effects of diet control, are you?"
"No, I am not."
"Or the physical effects of lack of sleep?"
"I would have a degree of expertise in the physical effects of lack of sleep, but as it pertains to captivity."
McGuire was astonished that Papendick had retained Dr. Donald Lunde, the Stanford psychiatrist she had interviewed for the prosecution months before.
From here Papendick launched an extensive examination of Dr. Hatcher's experience in related cases, such as the Parnell case and the People's Temple and Jonestown. Though Hatcher's accounts of these were informative, they served more to showcase his experience than to discredit it and seemed far from the matter at hand. It was difficult to understand what Papendick was trying to get at. Judge Knight finally stepped in: "I fail to see the materiality of this rather detailed questioning about Jonestown. What are we getting to?"
Still, Papendick continued his questions about tangentially related cases, such as Patty Hearst and Korean prisoners of war. Since it was late in the day, McGuire privately wondered if he were simply trying to kill time so he could prepare overnight for the beginning of his case tomorrow.
At length, Papendick referred to the spectrum Dr. Hatcher had described: from persuasion, to coercion, to brainwashing. Specifically, he wanted to know at which point persuasion ended and coercion began.
The doctor naturally said there's a gray area here, and that, for example, some people would call a military draft persuasion, and some, coercion. But, he added, "A person in a captive situation against their will is in a coercive situation."
"In your opinion," Papendick asked, "can a person involved in a captive situation be subjected to persuasion?"
"Yes."
This was the answer Papendick wanted to hear. He brought up the example of a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp having relations with a guard or officer. "Is that an example of persuading the person as opposed to coercing the person into a sexual type of relationship?"
Hatcher wouldn't grant those kinds of liberties with the term. He pointed out that, while there may not have been a specific beating or incident preceding the development of a relationship, the guard or officer was nonetheless perceived as a person in authority who had the power to protect the prisoner from torture or death.
Here the defense attorney asked Dr. Hatcher if he were familiar with the term "coercive persuasion."
The psychologist said the term had arisen in the 1950s, but had fallen from use and was no longer a common psychological term.
"Does coercive persuasion have a generally accepted definition in your field?"
"No, it does not." Dr. Hatcher explained that it had never gained general acceptance, and that it wasn't listed in the index of the American Psychological Association Psychological Abstract, or the Index Medicus.
Overall, Papendick seemed unable to take control of this witness. He unwittingly gave Dr. Hatcher the opportunity to further assist the prosecution when he asked: "What are the effects that one would expect to see in a coercive situation?"
"There are several," the psychologist said. "The most interesting one is a numbness of affect. You may, for example, ask someone to describe something related to their captivity, and they will describe something that is, by most objective standards, truly appalling, yet it is not expressed with a great deal of emotion. There is a flatness or blunting of affect."
The meaning of Colleen Stan's indifferent manner instantly clicked into place.
Hatcher explained another effect might be "intrusive images," something like nightmares in the daytime. McGuire hadn't asked if Colleen experienced this, but it seemed a reasonable guess.
A third characteristic, Hatcher said, "is that they want to try and get their lives back to normal. Before they can begin to deal with the images and impact of this, they have to put a great deal of effort into creating what is almost a veneer of a normal life. To have a job, to have some friends, to have some activities, is almost like a kind of teddy bear. It's a security, and they will work to do that before they start to go back and, in depth, deal with the problems they have had in their captivity."
To McGuire's mind, this fit Colleen perfectly. She wondered if the jury perceived this.
Papendick then switched to another line of questioning, and here he made headway. He asked Dr. Hatcher whether, in order to judge a person in a coercive situation, it would be important to know the person's background.
Hatcher said, "It would be contributory."
"What do you mean by 'contributory'?"
"Helpful, useful."
"Would that include social history?"
"All history."
"Social, family, marital, medical, sexual?"
"It would be useful."
McGuire's hackles went up. After having successfully countered Papendick's motion to admit the victim's prior sexual conduct, she was alarmed that Papendick might work it in. She only hoped it wasn't as glaringly apparent to the jury as it was to her that Papendick had uncovered some evidence about Colleen's past which he believed would help the defense.
But Papendick miscalculated when he handed a magazine to Hatcher and asked him to tell the court which of the sixteen coercive techniques it covered. He apparently remained unconvinced that Hooker's pornography collection could be used as instruction for coercion.
The psychologist promptly responded: "Page thirty-two in Captive Maid, we have sudden unexpected abduction."
"Which technique is that?"
"That's number one. Sudden, unexpected abduction. The isolation is begun as soon as possible. You begin the humiliation, degradation, sensory isolation. You remove the clothes."
"That's number one?"
"That's all number one. Fairly clearly, I think, both illustrated and in text. I can quote from the text if you like."
"No I just want to know what number techniques are included."
Dr. Hatcher then mentioned number six, creating an atmosphere of dependency.
"How is that illustrated in that article?" Papendick protested.
"Well, it's illustrated by saying whipping and degradation are always accompanied with sex."
"How is that dependency? Didn't you talk about that before as dependent for food and water?"
"You are also dependent upon the individual whether or not they are going to beat you anymore."
This clearly wasn't developing as Papendick had hoped. He snatched the magazine away and, to McGuire's amazement, continued with this line of questioning. He handed the doctor an article, which was, essentially, a pornographic movie advertisement, surely believing this illustrated no coercive techniques whatsoever.
The doctor appraised the article and listed techniques eight, nine, ten, and thirteen.
Still, Papendick didn't abandon this line of questioning. He handed Dr. Hatcher the article that accompanied the slavery contract. This was a mistake.
He'd given the prosecution's expert full rein, and Dr. Hatcher made excellent use of it. He listed techniques ten, sixteen, eight, and six, giving detailed explanations of how these were illustrated in the article.
Papendick seemed to realize his error in trying to fight Dr. Hatcher on his own territory and concluded this line of questioning by turning it to his advantage: "Are any of those sixteen techniques used by, say, the Marine Corps in boot camp training?"
Dr. Hatcher admitted that "some of the behaviors" were.
Completing his cross-examination, Papendick asked, "Do you know Dr. Donald T. Lunde?"
"Yes, I do."
"Would you consider him an expert in forensic psychiatry?"
"Yes, I would."
And with that, the psychologist was excused.
from: The Perfect Victim by - by Christine McGuire, Carla Norton
2. Dr. Timothy Leary expressed astonishment upon learning that his article had been introduced as evidence in the Hooker trial.
He said that, following the Patty Hearst case, he wrote the article "to warn people" how easily they could be brainwashed.
Though he said he had "nothing against things being sexy," he disavowed any responsibility for "those horrible illustrations," which he called, "disgusting."
Labels: abuse, battering, brainwashing, coercion, entrapment, lies, narcissist, programming, psychopath, seduction, sociopath
