Sanctuary for the Abused

Sunday, October 14, 2018

REVICTIMIZATION




© 2009 Pandora's Project
by: Louise

I am a survivor of sexual and other abuse in my childhood, as well as domestic violence and partner rape. As I began to heal, it occurred to me that many of the things I had felt in the abusive relationship were things I had felt much earlier as an abused child.

While it is important not to subscribe to stereotypes that a certain "type" of person is repeatedly raped or experiences domestic violence, it is known that the risk of revictimization by sexual assault is approximately doubled for survivors of child sexual abuse (1). For example, in Diana Russell's study of women who had experienced incestuous abuse as children, two thirds were subsequently raped (2).

This article discusses revictimization drawing on literature together with my understanding of how it worked for me. It should not be seen as a generalization that only child abuse survivors experience repeated rape or domestic violence - or that survivors of child sexual abuse are sitting ducks for further abuse. Sometimes, even people from stable, loving families are subject to the dynamics of later domestic violence. And it cannot be stated strongly enough that any person can be subject to sexual assault. Nevertheless, child sexual and other abuse can leave us with vulnerabilities that abusers may be quick to exploit. It's important that we see repeated victimization not as a reason to hate ourselves, but as stemming from wounds incurred through no fault of our own and for which we deserve our own compassion.

Read through, and if this fits for you, please know that there is help available.

CHILD SEXUAL / OTHER ABUSE AND REVICTIMIZATION
 
Were you sexually, physically or emotionally abused as a child? Did you experience more of the same when you got older? Have you been in a relationship where you were beaten, raped or otherwise abused? If the answer is yes, you may feel, as many survivors of repeated abuse do, that you have a “sign on your back”, that you “attract” abusers or even that you were born to be the recipient of other people’s abuse. One of the saddest legacies of repeated abuse is that survivors often feel that if it’s happened so often, they must somehow deserve it. Unfortunately, we live in a society that agrees. Judith Herman writes:

The phenomenon of repeated victimization, indisputably real, calls for great care in interpretation. For too long, psychiatric opinion has simply reflected the crude social judgment that survivors “ask for abuse." The earlier concepts of masochism and the more recent formulations of addiction to trauma imply that victims seek and derive gratification for repeated abuse. This is rarely true (3)

So, why does revictimization happen? Before we go on to look at just some of the reasons, a reminder: This is not an exercise in how to blame ourselves more. Even if there`are factors that make some of vulnerable to further abuse, perpetrators alone are responsible for the abuse they commit.

WHY REVICTIMIZATION HAPPENS - SOME OF THE REASONS

Personalities forged in an environment of early abuse : Children who are abused by people they are close to learn to equate love with violence and sexual exploitation. They have not learned to create safe and appropriate boundaries with people, and they grow up unable to see themselves as having any right to choice. Their self-image is so damaged that they may see nothing wrong with even extremely abusive treatment of them by others. It is seen as unavoidable and the ultimate cost of love. Some women sexually abused as children may believe that their sexuality is all they have of any worth. (4).

Compulsion to repeat trauma : Bessel van der Kolk writes, "Many traumatized people expose themselves, seemingly compulsively, to situations reminiscent of the original trauma. These behavioral reenactments are rarely consciously understood to be related to earlier life experiences (5)". Survivors of earlier rape and abuse may put themselves at risk of further harm, not because they want to be abused or hurt, but because they may be seeking a different, better`outcome, or to have more control. It may also be because they believe they deserve the pain inflicted on them. Often, reenactment has a compulsive and involuntary feel. Survivors may feel completely numb, and unaware of how reenactment is taking place (6). Conversely, it may call forth the same terror and shame as experienced in childhood. van der Kolk further explains,

People who are exposed early to violence or neglect come to expect it as a way of life. They see the chronic helplessness of their mothers and fathers' alternating outbursts of affection and violence; they learn that they themselves have no control. As adults they hope to undo the past by love, competency, and exemplary behavior. When they fail they are likely to make sense out of this situation by blaming themselves. When they have little experience with nonviolent resolution of differences, partners in relationships alternate between an expectation of perfect behavior leading to perfect harmony and a state of helplessness, in which all verbal communication seems futile. A return to earlier coping mechanisms, such as self-blame, numbing (by means of emotional withdrawal or drugs or alcohol), and physical violence sets the stage for a repetition of the childhood trauma and "return of the repressed (7)

The effect of trauma : It is true that some people may have a series of violent partners, or encounters with rapists. I had a friend who was subjected to rape three times in two years . A family member - echoing typical victim-blame - sneeringly asked me "why she kept leaving herself open to it. - wouldn't you think that if she went through it once, she should have known how to steer clear of creeps?" This reflects a lack of knowledge about the workings of trauma: While some survivors may be overly cautious about everybody, other traumatized people actually have a harder time forming accurate assessments of danger (8). The above question also absolves the perpetrator who falsely seeks to engage the trust of a trauma survivor in order to abuse them.

Traumatic Bonding : Judith Herman writes about the tendency of abused children to cling tenaciously to the very parents who hurt them (9) Perpetrators of sexual abuse may capitalize on this tendency by giving their victim the only sense of specialness, or being loved, that they have ever had. Bessel van der Kolk tells us that people subjected to trauma and neglect are vulnerable to developing the tendency to traumatically bond with those who harm them. Traumatic bonding is often behind the excuses of battered women for the violence of their partners, and for the repeated returning to a batterer (10).

REVICTIMIZATION AND ME

Unfortunately my adult experiences of rape and battering were not new to me. Being battered by both my parents since infancy and sexually abused throughout childhood and early teens (by non-related perpetrators), and receiving little in the way of protection or belief taught me some powerful lessons, which I brought to an abusive partner. I remember exactly what I felt the first time he hit me. He cracked me across the face, and as I cradled my rapidly swelling cheekbone, I was certainly upset. But there was another, deeper feeling of validation; something went "click" inside me. It was a sense of correctness about what he had done, an utter familiarity which confirmed a bone-badness I had always felt. The first time he raped me, there was a similar - and terribly powerful - sense of meeting with something I seemed destined for. It works differently for different people, but let me share with you some of the specific lessons of childhood that I believe made me fair game for a battering and raping partner - you may identify:

As a woman who lived in a violent relationship; returned to it again and again, loved the abuser and truly cared about him, I have been patronized, had insulting inferences drawn about my intelligence, been branded as "sick", and "masochistic" - that last by a psychiatrist whom I told about the relationship. Many of us will recognize these labels. People who blame you don't understand that layer piled upon layer of trauma may tend to produce a crippling of ability to care for oneself in the ways non-traumatized people would see as commonsense.. Child abuse really is like a cancer; left untreated that malignancy can metastasize into further and possible fatal dangers - indeed, I am lucky to be alive.

But does this need to be the case? Let's look at the next section.


SOLUTIONS AND HEALING
Socially, picking up on children who have been hurt and offering early intervention so that they carry far less damage into adulthood with them would be a great big plus. Not kicking abuse survivors in abusive relationships or who are repeatedly hurt by rape when they're down by branding them "stupid" and abandoning them - thus proving to them again that they're worthless - will also go a long way.

I think that what worked for me was that I at least had a concept of safe, nurturing love - even if I didn't feel I deserved it. Some people don't even have that concept, and I believe I am lucky that I did because it gave me a starting point. My fellow survivor, If you have identified with any of the above, I implore you to seek counselling to overturn those old scars and recognize that you too, have the same place in the scheme of fairness and love as anybody else. All that I learned, and all the ways in which it was reinforced have not, after all, stopped me from growing into a woman who knows that I don't deserve to be the recipient of other people's abuse. It was not my fault; I was not bad, and I can tell somebody with a mind to hurt me to go to hell - I owe them nothing; least of all my soul.

Does such a change in attitude rape-proof us? No, as long as there are perpetrators, we are all vulnerable regardless of what we think about ourselves. To say that somebody is raped because of their self-image is victim-blame - again - it's the perpetrator who takes advantage. But I do believe that the reduction in self-hatred and boundaries that come with healing make us less inclined to accommodate people who are disrespectful and even dangerous. Knowing I deserve to be safe - that I do not deserve to be raped - means that I listen to my gut, put distance between myself and abusive people and reduce my chances, at least for now, of being harmed again. Our safety is sometimes contingent on how much we value it; healing means changing patterns of devaluing it.

I healed. You can do it too, even if the damage is extensive. You are worth it. You are. You were not abused again and again because you deserve it. You have been traumatized, you were set up and others capitalized on it. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Please feel free to discuss multiple victimization at the Pandora's Aquarium message board and chat room - we understand, and we value you even if many others didn't.

Please give yourself compassion - you certainly have mine.

SOURCES

    1. Herman, J. Trauma and Recovery: From domestic abuse to political terror, BasicBooks, USA, 1992
    2. Cited in Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: From domestic abuse to political terror, BasicBooks, USA, 1992
    3. Herman, J. Trauma and Recovery: From domestic abuse to political terror, BasicBooks, USA, 1992
    4. Herman, J. Trauma and Recovery: From domestic abuse to political terror, BasicBooks, USA, 1992
    5. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. MD. "The Compulsion to Repeat the Trauma: Re-enactment, Revictimization, and Masochism", Psychiatric Clinics of North America, Volume 12, Number 2, Pages 389-411, June 1989 http://www.cirp.org/library/psych/vanderkolk/
    6. Herman, J. Trauma and Recovery: From domestic abuse to political terror, BasicBooks, USA, 1992
    7. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. MD. "The Compulsion to Repeat the Trauma: Re-enactment, Revictimization, and Masochism", Psychiatric Clinics of North America, Volume 12, Number 2, Pages 389-411, June 1989 http://www.cirp.org/library/psych/vanderkolk/
    8. Herman, J. Trauma and Recovery: From domestic abuse to political terror, BasicBooks, USA, 1992
    9. Herman, J. Trauma and Recovery: From domestic abuse to political terror, BasicBooks, USA, 1992
    10. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. MD. "The Compulsion to Repeat the Trauma: Re-enactment, Revictimization, and Masochism", Psychiatric Clinics of North America, Volume 12, Number 2, Pages 389-411, June 1989 http://www.cirp.org/library/psych/vanderkolk/
    11. Herman, J. Trauma and Recovery: From domestic abuse to political terror, BasicBooks, USA, 1992
    12. Herman, J. Trauma and Recovery: From domestic abuse to political terror, BasicBooks, USA, 1992
SOURCE

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Thursday, September 13, 2018

Repetition Compulsion



(Are you repeating the same issues & problems in your relationships? Seem to be caught in a cycle of the same abuses over & over? It may be REPETITION COMPULSION.)

[Victims] can also be caught in the grip of a repetition compulsion. They repeat the same pattern again and again in their attempt to master their anxiety and cope with the trauma they feel. Characteristically, the repetition compulsion takes on a life of its own. Rather than feel calmer and therefore have a diminished need to be controlling, their behavior locks them into the same pattern in an insatiable way.

Successes at controlling do not register on their internal scoreboard. They have to fight off the same threat again and again with increasing rigidity and intransigence.

by Thomas J. Schumacher, Psy.D., R-CSW

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Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Overcoming Triangulation in Love Relationships


Reginald B. Humphreys, Ph.D. , Kathleen P. Eagan, M.S.

from the book: Detoxifying Love Relationships: Solutions for Couples

Although the term triangulation may at first seem to be highly complex, it has a simple meaning. Triangulation refers to the tendency of certain individuals to become involved in love triangles. The person struggling with triangulation goes through a repetitive cycle of love relationships, in which two or more men are simultaneously involved with the same woman, or in which one man is simultaneously involved with two or more women.

The problem of triangulation in love relationships remains one of the most serious issues confronting modern society. Infidelity in love relationships, often caused by triangulation, destroys the marriages and lives of many individuals, couples, and families each year.

Theological and religious sources would maintain that the answer to this problem is already at hand, and that a strict observation of principles of loyalty and fidelity can eliminate the phenomena and effects of triangulation. However, much of today’s society is beyond the reach of religion, and so society’s growing epidemic of triangulation and infidelity is likely to continue to rage out of control unless solutions are found which transcend the limits of individual religions. Also, clinical experience reveals that even enthusiastic participants in religious activities are often crippled with the same triangulation tendencies of the non-religious.

Overcoming triangulation does require that the individual be grounded in some system of morality or other. However, the main issues in triangulation are inadequately understood by most, and therefore these crucial issues are not usually addressed in any adequate fashion. The two most important issues which should be addressed in order to fully understand and correct triangulation, are:

(1) the tendency of the individual to unconsciously reconstruct and reenact unhealthy love triangles which were present in the individual’s early childhood experiences with parents, and;

(2) repetitive attempts by the individual to symbolically "correct", "resolve", or "master" these historical issues and their ill effects, within current-day love triangles.
Only the well-analyzed person is usually aware of these two critical aspects of triangulation. On initial introduction of these ideas to patients in psychotherapy, it is common for both these notions to be rejected immediately as incorrect or inapplicable. However, the therapist will have to return to these ideas time after time, until the patient finally accepts and works on these two issues as the issues which are in control of the triangulation problem.

Many persons caught up in lifestyles riddled with triangulation claim that they would like to overcome this problem. However, the true motivation for this kind of self-correction rests entirely on the individual’s ability to deal with the two core issues. The more the person expresses opposition or indifference to these key insights, the worse that person’s prognosis for improvement becomes.
The person may protest that no love triangles or infidelity were present in the parents’ marriage. And while this may be factually true, this is where the person must learn to broaden their understanding of the nature of love triangles. The patient must eventually learn that he or she was the third party in the triangle, and that as a child, the individual became trapped in an envelope of triangulation dynamics which has left a life-long and deeply life-altering residual.

Patients often react with great intensity to the first discussion of these issues. The topic becomes controversial, and the patient may express disgust over the idea that it is possible that the child and parents are engaged in love-triangle dynamics. This disgust represent the deep unacceptability to the person of childhood triangulation feelings, and explains why the individual has felt forced to repress and hide these issues throughout life, although symbolically reenacting these in each new attempt at a love relationship.

As therapeutic work progresses, the individual may be even more resistant to the idea that within the early-childhood love triangle involving parents, that one of the parents may be loved obsessively, jealously, and possessively, while other parents may be loathed and hated with intensity that may reach homicidal proportions.

Rather than being in a context where the patient could have loved both parents in an appropriate way, the child is prematurely caught up in adult heterosexual dynamics, in which defenses of splitting may play a primary role. One parent is idealized as perfect, and becomes the repository for the child’s fantasies of perfection and omnipotence, while the other parent becomes the repository of everything that is hated, rejected, and scorned.

Being unable to accomplish the normal developmental task of establishing an integrated perception of parents which includes a realistic sense of both desirable and undesirable parental qualities, the patient also loses the ability to have an integrated perception of self. "Splitting of the self" occurs, and this non-integration of self-identity continues throughout the patient’s life unless this split is corrected in treatment.

Without such correction, the individual is condemned to compulsively repeat and reenact the unhealthy triangulation dynamics in the family of origin. These sexually-toned dynamics, impossible for the child to integrate, are re-enacted with each new person and relationship in life.

It is not difficult to understand why exposing the child to adult triangulation dynamics would have a life-long destructive impact. The child has literally had their childhood stripped away or stolen by the parents’ illness. The traumatic loss of childhood usually has lasting or permanent effects. The premature forcing of the child to cope with disturbing adult dynamics floods the child with unmanageable feelings and reactions, which leave an indelible effect. The child now is eroticized by the triangulation situation or thoughts of triangulation. Over time, only the triangular situation can "turn the person on". Without the psychological presence of a third party, feelings of love and eroticism are unattainable. Eventually, the only way to achieve a feeling of love and excitement requires that there be one person who is idealized, and another who can be rejected and symbolically "murdered" by rejection or elimination.

In the childhood situation either parent may be idealized, regardless of the sex of the child. Similarly, either parent may be hated with unconscious homicidal intensity.

Although few adults remember childhood erotic or retaliatory feelings, a few do have memories. The majority who do not remember the oedipal period of development (which is normal) must do their therapeutic work by reconstruction of events rather than direct recall. Adults may also deny any idealizing of current partners or any destructive motivation towards other partners. These feelings are usually so deeply buried that much work may be required for the person to see that each time they enact a love triangle, they are symbolically winning the idealized parent, and murdering or eliminating the hated one.

Persons with triangulation pathology (oedipal pathology) cut a destructive swath through humanity, retaliating against and symbolically "murdering" one "love partner" after another.

Especially characteristic of the "murderer" in these instances is a cold-heartedness and lack of remorse or sense of responsibility for the "victim" in the triangle. The person, having invested through splitting defenses all their rage toward one parent, can easily enjoy the disposal of the hated parent by disposal of the parental stand-in in the contemporary love triangle. If asked to reverse their infidelity, they may feel an utter coldness and unwillingness to alter their life course. They "must" murder the parent surrogate in order to fully "get off". Empathy or concern for their victim is impossible, and highly irrelevant. To do "what is profitable for oneself" becomes the only remaining remnant of a moral standard. The parent-surrogate is dehumanized and negated, as the child feels is justly deserved by the parent (surrogate) for having put the child through a traumatic loss of their own childhood, and the resulting lifelong ill effects.

Persons with triangulation pathology are often incapable of normal feelings of empathy or responsibility toward their "victims". Therefore, these persons can be easily thought of as being psychopathic, due to their unwillingness to adopt a responsible correction to their acting out, even when confronted. During the symbolic act of murdering the hated parent, their lack of remorse is obvious.

Confronting these behaviors in psychotherapy, the therapist becomes the only possible mechanism for correcting the defects of conscience that can allow the person to harm others in a wanton and indifferent fashion. The technique required in the psychotherapy of such individuals is highly specific. Two case vignettes are provided.

Patient N:

Patient N presented with a history of serial love relationships of varying degrees of duration. These were characterized by a rapid development of physical intimacy, immediate spending of all leisure time with the partner, a fusional quality of interaction, and then abrupt ending provoked by minor causes.

During the unfolding of one of these liaisons, therapist asked patient whether he had any perception regarding the eventual outcome of the current relationship. Patient revealed that he knew that he would eventually terminate the liaison. Over time, it was revealed that patient always had a perception that the relationship would end, but desired to experience whatever could be experienced as long as things could work out.

On questioning as to whether the respective feminine partners had a similar lack of concern over the future, i.e. an equivalent degree of comfort with a "no-strings, no-future" kind of expectation, the patient revealed that the current love object was not comfortable with this at all, and regularly requested a change in the status of the relationship to one with a serious future.

With analysis of new relationships and retrospective review of former ones, it became clear that Patient N was a "heartbreaker" in that each person he romanced experienced the termination of the relationship by him as traumatic and damaging. Patient N had left a string of depressed, brokenhearted women as victims of his psychopathic disregard of their lives and feelings.
Was N psychopathic, or merely neurotic? The answer to this crucial diagnostic question is often revealed by the patient’s response to the therapist’s verbal interventions.

Over time, the therapist asked N to recognize and acknowledge his destructive romantic patterns, and to come to terms with what it would mean about his character if he were to be willing to continue to inflict psychic pain and damage upon each new lover.
Although N may have always had a subliminal awareness of the implications of his relationship conduct, once it had been named and discussed in psychotherapy, the entire context could begin to shift. With his pattern now "on the table", patient could be asked to reverse his pattern and to adopt responsible conduct during new liaisons. N failed to do this, while acknowledging "I know that I should".
Triangulated patients can be expected to reject the therapist’s encouragement for them to give up exploitive relationships. These individuals are at the very brink of their developmental deficit, and need help to "bridge the gap" up to the next level of maturational sophistication.. At this juncture, the interventions of the therapist are critical. If the patient’s conscience development is ever to be solidified, there is no alternative except to succeed with the patient at this point. The therapist can no longer be a passive witness to the spectacle of abuse, but must now begin to operate according to the maxim that if the therapist cannot be part of the solution, they have become a part of the problem.

During the unfolding of one of N’s liaisons, at a highly opportune moment, the therapist asked N if he was planning on continuing with the relationship pattern as usual, and if so, inquired whether N would mind terminating therapy first, so that therapist could be saved from again witnessing the savage destruction of an innocent human being. Along with this, therapist acknowledged the fact that since N had continued his harmful conduct without interruption, that the therapy should now be considered to be failing anyway, further strengthening the appropriateness of terminating therapy at the current juncture.

Patient N’s subsequent choice to alter his relationship conduct was motivated by his desire to retain the therapeutic relationship, and to regain acceptance by the therapist. This factor works exactly in psychotherapy as it works in raising children. Children develop a conscience in order to retain parental acceptance, and if parents are flawed or passive in their teaching of conscience, or have deficient conscience themselves, then significant deficiencies in the child’s conscience development usually occur. To reverse the ill effects of this deficient parenting, the therapist assumes a parenting role in requiring the patient to either progress morally or exit treatment.
Beginning with Freud’s earliest observations regarding childhood oedipal issues, successful resolution of oedipal issues has been regarded as the fundamental cornerstone of conscience development. Without renunciation of the forbidden oedipal love object (parent), conscience formation is incomplete, and moral deficiency is inevitable and pervasive.

To correct the deficient adult conscience, the adult patient is always asked to renounce the inappropriate love object. If they choose to do so, even if with complaints, then they may be assumed to have occupied the neurotic spectrum of psychopathology. The more the patient resists the renunciation of the inappropriate love-object, the more the diagnosis should be psychopathic personality.

To expand on this important idea, it should be recognized that the neurotic triangulator can be persuaded to renounce inappropriate conduct, and feel remorse when the usually-repressed implications of their conduct are illuminated. No similar remorse or motivation for self-correction can be evoked in the psychopathic triangulator, who remains apathetic about the injury done to others, and never renounces the illicit love-object.
It is always tragic if the patient refuses to renounce the illicit partner in the current triangulation. Before the therapist brings this issue to the forefront, there always remains the possibility that the individual might choose a moral alternative. However, once the patient identifies with the psychopathic choice, then their personality becomes crystallized in alignment with a psychopathic orientation. At this point, the prognosis for the future begins to approach zero. However, occasionally the patient may leave therapy and return months or years later, as the "lessons" from the work on triangulation become gradually integrated. The patient returns to now deal in earnest with the issues previously analyzed.

Persons suffering from borderline personality disorder (BPD) also exhibit triangulation in their close relationships. These individuals are easily differentiated from oedipal neurotics by the pervasive presence of many other regressed symptoms, including profound depression, rage, poor impulse control, among others. In contrast, the neurotic is characterized by the central role which oedipal concerns take in the individual’s daily existence, along with a relative absence of other major symptoms.

Triangulated relationships and dynamics are sometimes suggestive of schizophrenia. A tipoff to the presence of an underlying schizophrenic process may be found in the degree of chaoticism of the triangulation patterns. For example, if a situation is already complicated by the presence of several love triangles, the most chaotic thing that could happen might be for the schizophrenic individual to add yet another triangulation to the situation by recruiting a new liaison. The more unpredictable, bizarre, or unfathomable a triangulation acting-out behavior seems, the more a schizophrenic process might be indicated. A diagnostic hypothesis of schizophrenia would of course require corroboration on other traditional diagnostic grounds.

In summary, triangulation phenomena are seen in small amounts in most relationships. Seriously harmful triangulation phenomena may occur in neurotic individuals, in psychopathic and borderline personalities, and in schizophrenia. Individuals at the treatable end of the spectrum, the neurotic end, are distinguished by the individual’s willingness to recognize and reverse the triangular acting-out, through renunciation of the illicit love-object (the triangulated relationship partner). The psychopathic patient refuses to revise their conduct, and becomes solidified in a non-empathic stance of willful abuse to the "victim" in the love triangle. The intractable patient refuses to stop reenacting the symbolic pattern of possession of the idealized parent, and "murder" or elimination of the opposing parent.

Patient Y:

Patient Y was a woman involved in a relationship which was fairly long-term, but unsatisfying. Patient Y had recently met another man who was desired, and the possibility of a liaison seemed of interest to both. Patient Y discussed her plans to see the new interest socially, citing her enhanced interest and feeling as compared to her current relationship.

Therapist advised the patient that since her feelings of new interest occurred before she had announced or decided upon leaving her current involvement, that her feelings of attraction could not be trusted as valid. Any feelings for a new person would tend to be idealizing as compared with her feelings for the individual in the more lasting relationship, which would tend to be more reality-based and less contaminated with idealizing fantasy. Only new, shallow relationships allow for deep idealization fantasies, and often promote splitting of toxic projections into the partner who has greater longevity of relationship with the individual.
Patient Y asked if the new love interest might not "work out" in spite of its inappropriate beginnings. The patient was advised that personal relationships which are built on the abuse and misfortune of others cannot later result in a valid relationship. The moral stain attached to the relationship from its inception is permanent, providing a built-in nullification of the validity of the relationship in all futures to come.

Patient was further advised that if the therapist were to witness the patient abusing her relationship partner in this fashion, that the therapist would be obliged to resign as therapist, as the commission of such actions by the patient would have profound implications that would tend to disqualify her as a valid candidate for future success in psychotherapeutic activities with that therapist.

Striking about the case of Y is that as soon as the barrier of resistance to renouncing the illicit love-object had been transcended, the patient was flooded with many critical perceptions of the new love interest, including an acute perception of severe flaws in the new person which had been obscured or repressed under the influence of intense idealization and idealizing defenses.

Patient Y’s gratitude to the therapist for "rescuing" her from the use of idealizing defenses with men she barely knew was profound. Her subsequent ability to succeed in her already-existing love relationship was attributed by her to her acquired ability to ignore and contain triangulation impulses, rather than being tempted to act on them.

In the cases of both patients N and Y, appreciation was eventually shown to the therapist for insisting that each patient achieve moral advancement when the patient was otherwise uninclined to advance. Each patient showed moral advance in other areas as well, as the generalized benefits of conquering triangulation dynamics began to accrue. Both preferred their developmental advances over their former acting out, and both went on to achieve fidelity and success in their respective love relationships.
In couples where neither party is in psychotherapy, the process is similar. The triangulating partner is usually confronted with their disloyalty by the other partner, and asked to renounce the illicit (triangulated) third party. However, the spouse, lover, or suitor of an individual rarely has the leverage and influence which are available to the therapist, and therefore rarely get a positive response to their request. Without the needed influence from a psychotherapist, the neurotic’s underlying potential to mature and transcend triangulation may never be fully realized.

Rationale for Interventions:

What is the nature of therapeutic change in these clinical examples? Why are these specific interventions indicated, and how may their effects be understood?
The original reason the individual acquired developmental arrest within the oedipal phase is that the child’s parents did not shield or protect the child from exposure to adult triangulation dynamics. Instead of being allowed to devote their inherent maturational capacities to the task of resolving their personal oedipal issues, the child’s life sphere is contaminated or saturated with the unfinished oedipal issues of each parent. The child automatically takes on the unfinished oedipal issues of each parent, as well as a new contamination that has to do with the way the particular childhood experiences originally unfolded. For example, if a child was used by one parent as a shield and buffer against the other parent, then the child’s oedipal disturbance will reflect this problem as well as each of the parent’s unresolved oedipal issues.

The adult with triangulation pathology cannot seem to take a stand based on conscience, fairness, and morality. The reason is clear: the child’s parents were unable to take a protective, empathic stance toward the child, by protecting the child from adult triangulation dynamics. The child therefore cannot take a protective stance toward anyone else whom they may harm within a love triangle. Empathy for the "victim" is impossible, as modeling of moral conduct by parents was inadequate.
Before the individual can take a empathic, moral stance which may be personally costly, this behavior must be modeled within the therapeutic relationship. The therapist must take a moral stand risking great cost (loss of the patient’s therapy) for the sake of the patient’s evolution. Also, the therapist must model a distaste and unwillingness to be a silent participant or accomplice in the degradation, harm, and destruction of any human being. In this special clinical circumstance, the therapist must momentarily shift into modeling empathy for the victim (of the love triangle) instead of empathy for the patient. In so doing, the therapist is not truly losing empathy with the patient, but has refocused the empathic connection on attempting to resonate with the patient’s latent capacity to function empathically and with conscience. Not until the patient is convinced regarding the necessity of maintaining empathy for all individuals at all times can the solidification of the individual’s conscience development be regarded as complete.

Parents use this same approach when they have empathy for a pet which a child has carelessly harmed, or for any sibling or other child whom their child may have hurt. Parents, like therapists treating adults with triangulation pathology, must ally themselves with the individual’s latent potential to function empathically if they hope to promote evolution of the empathic capacity of the individual. Without continuous functioning of the empathic faculty, conscience development remains arrested at the oedipal level.

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Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Attachment to the Perpetrator

The Problem of Attachment to the Perpetrator

Colin A. Ross, M.D.

Over the last few years I have come to believe that a core problem in the psychotherapy of dissociative identity disorder is the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. This is also true for survivors of severe chronic childhood trauma who do not have D.I.D. The treatment that follows from this new model is different from the treatment of the ‘90s which focused more on memory recovery and abreaction. My sense of things is that the dissociative disorders field as a whole is shifting in this direction, away from “memory work” as such.

Memories are still a major element of therapy, and the trauma of the past is still talked about a lot. It’s a matter of a shift in emphasis rather than a change to a whole new way of providing therapy.

In the old model, which goes back to Pierre Janet in the nineteenth century, the idea was that the blocked memories were driving the symptoms – uncover the memory, process it and the symptoms go away. The key thing was to recover the information about what happened and all the feelings that go along with it. The old model was not wrong, it just wasn’t complete. For one thing, recovery involves learning a lot of new skills, not just abreacting trauma.

In this new model, the core problem is attachment, not dealing with memories and feelings as such. All baby birds and mammals must attach to a caregiver in order to survive. The attachment systems that control the behavior of mother and child (also father and child) are built-in genetically. The baby bird does not decide to chirp for food, and the mother bird does not decide to go out collecting food. All this just happens. The same is true for human children. A baby does not conduct rational adult analysis of human interaction patterns and then decide that crying has positive survival advantage. The baby just cries.

Similarly, the nursing mother who has a letdown reflex when her baby cries does not consciously decide to release more oxytocin from her brain in order to make her milk flow. Her body just does that for her. There are countless attachment behaviors that are built-in biologically. The parents also make conscious decisions about how to take care of the child for which they are responsible as adults. But the little child just attaches naturally in order to survive.

The basic goal is survival. Attachment serves that goal. This is true biologically, emotionally, humanly, spiritually, however one wants to look as it. To thrive and grow the child must attach to its caretakers. Separation and individuation from these caretakers is a task that is down the road developmentally, from the perspective of the newborn baby.

In a reasonable, healthy family this works out reasonably OK. The parents are imperfect and everybody has the usual neurotic conflicts about not having gotten all the love and nurturance that would have been ideal and perfect. We all have ambivalent attachment to our parents to some degree; we all are faced with the task of separation and individuation and none of us are complete successes.

In a family with active physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, however, things are different. The young child in this family – say it is a girl – must attach to her father for her survival. She cannot run away from home, get married, or go away to college because she hasn’t even gone to kindergarten yet. She depends on her parents for food, clothes, a roof, and her basic survival needs. She also needs her parents for her emotional and spiritual development. The problem is that the father she must attach to, in order to survive, is also the perpetrator who is abusing her.

Just as love, approach and attachment to parents are built-in biologically, so is the recall reflex. If you touch a hot stove by mistake, your brain pulls your hand away even before you consciously experience the pain. Your biology does this for you, without any conscious analysis or decision-making. Similarly, your body goes into recoil mode from child abuse automatically. You just automatically withdraw, pull back, and shut down.

One way to cope with the abuse would be to go catatonic. This would be developmental suicide. Except possibly in rare cases (which therapists never see in their offices) the body will not allow permanent catatonia – the attachment systems must be kept up and running for the organism to survive whether it is a child, a kitten, a bird, or a rabbit. There must be an override of the withdrawal reflex.

How can this be accomplished? By dissociation. The fundamental driver of the dissociation, in this way of looking at things, is the problem of attachment to the perpetrator. In order to survive, the child must attach to the person who is hurting her. There is no escape and no other option. In order to maintain the attachment systems up and running, they cannot be contaminated by the traumatic information coming in through the sense; that reality must be dissociated.

What difference does this model make in therapy? First, the focus of therapy is not on the content of the memories – the target is the ambivalent attachment. This ambivalent attachment is visible in current relationships and in the structure of the internal world.

This is true whether the diagnosis is DID, PTSD, DDNOS or borderline personality disorder. Borderline personality is an inevitable consequence of the problem of attachment to the perpetrator and is a biologically normal human response to severe chronic childhood trauma.

A focus on the problem of attachment to the perpetrator sidesteps most of the controversy about false memories since the content of the memories is not the main concern. If the memories are accurate, they explain how the problem of attachment to the perpetrator arose; if they are inaccurate, they symbolize that problem. Either way, the ambivalent attachment is the focus, not the content of the memories.

In the new model, there is much, much less abreaction in therapy, if any. By this I mean, the kind of full-tilt abreaction where the person is back in the past, reliving the trauma as if it is happening all over again. Within the new model, abreaction is unnecessary and retraumatizing. What does occur is what I call intense recollection. The description of the trauma is still intense, vivid, and difficult, but it is grounded. Even in relatively pure cognitive therapy, as I do it, there is lots of intense feeling.

The first goal of therapy is to hold both sides of the ambivalent attachment in consciousness at the same time – to feel both the love and the hate. The love is always there, somewhere. I believe it is biologically impossible to extinguish your love for your parents, no matter how abusive they were.

Therapists can make a mistake by identifying with and supporting one side of the ambivalent attachment only. A not uncommon error is to validate and identify with only the anger, and push the love, attachment and approach underground. A pseudo-resolution of ambivalent attachment can occur when there is an artificial complete separation from the parents – this can be just a cover for unresolved ambivalence.

This error by therapists is a fertile ground for false memories.

In some situations, the parents are in fact so manipulative and abusive in the present day that complete separation is the only healthy option. That’s not what I’m talking about. I am thinking of people whose parents are semi-OK in the present and who are missing out on a limited positive relationship in the present because they have shut down the positive side of their attachment.

Once both sides of the ambivalent attachment are held in conscious awareness at the same time, and processed a bit, the next step is grief work. One must mourn the loss of the parent one never had. The task is to dissolve the unrealistically all-good or all-bad parent, deal with the actual disappointment and loss, and complete the task of separation and individuation. This is a job we are all working on. Those who were not severely physically, sexually, or emotionally abused as children have a much easier time because they did not have to dissociate in an extreme way to survive extreme conditions.

One reason I like this model is because it makes the extreme nature of the trauma clear, but emphasizes the fact that the core of therapy is a common human problem.

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Saturday, January 06, 2018

Protect Yourself from Victimization by Psychopaths


 Vulnerability and Other Prey of Psychopaths
By Marisa Mauro, Psy.D.

Certain personality traits may create better perpetrators and, unfortunately certain cues may create better victims. In a study by Wheeler, Book and Costello of Brock University, individuals who self reported more traits associated with psychopathy were more apt to correctly identify individuals with a history of victimization. In the study, male student participants examined video tapes of twelve individuals walking from behind and rated the ease at which each could be mugged. The men also completed the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale: Version III (Paulhus, Hemphill, & Hare, in press) which measures interpersonal and affective traits associated with psychopathy as well as intra-personal instability and antisocial traits. Finally, they were asked to provide verbal rational for their ratings. Overall results confirmed a strong positive correlation between psychopathy scores and accuracy of victim identification. This means that individuals that score higher for psychopathy are better at selecting victims. Statistically significant results for psychopathy traits including interpersonal manipulation, callous affect and antisocial behavior were found.

Acknowledging that fault always lies with the perpetrator, this research may empower individuals with a history of or concerns about victimization. As for myself, a prison psychologist often dealing with career criminals and individuals with psychopathic traits, I am convinced, in the course of observation alone, that certain personal characteristics are associated with tendency to be on the receiving end of bullying such as harassment and manipulation. I have found that the demonstration of confidence through body language, speech and affective expression, for example, provides some protection. This sense was confirmed by Wheeler, Book and Costello, who found that increased fluidity projected through one's walking gait was associated with less reporting of victimization. With respect to gait, the author's provide five cues of vulnerability originally reported by Grayson and Stein (1981). They state, "potential victims had longer or shorter strides, had nonlateral weight shifts, had gestured versus postural movements and tended to lift their feet higher while walking."

Besides one's walk, individuals can purposefully project dominance thereby potentially decreasing perceived vulnerability by increasing eye contact, decreasing the use of small body movements of the hands and feet, and increasing large body movements or changes in postural positioning. Personally, I have also found that conscious control of changes in affective expression, particularly through control of fear, surprise and embarrassment, as well as the rate, tone and fluency of speech decreases one's likelihood of victimization or bullying. It is recommended that individuals maintain the general projection of confidence via dominant body language even in situations where they feel safe. Potential perpetrators may perceive changes in body language signaling vulnerability and act on this perception.
 

Wheeler, S., Book, A., & Costello, K. (2009). Psychopathic traits and perceptions of victim vulnerability. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 36(6), 635-648.

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