(This article is copyrighted © 2012 by Steve Becker, LCSW. My use of male gender pronouns is for convenience’s sake and not to suggest that females aren’t capable of the behaviors and attitudes discussed.)
It can be hard to hate or despise even the most terrible human being so long as he’s inflicted his cruelty on others, but spared you. Take a sociopathic relative, even a close one.
If somehow he compartmentalized his life, lived a “double life—”in any case, if you learned that he treated you (retrospectively even) with an exceptional, aberrant mercy that he denied his victims, you might very possibly remain “loyal” to him. You might still even “love” him.
Various defenses are pertinent—such as denial, dissociative and other self-deluding mechanisms. Gratitude may also be present, expressive of a different defense mechanism: the “monster,” after all, spared you, but not others. He exempted you from the cruel fate he inficted on them, who were helpless to protect themselves, as you were too, only he spared you. So it may seem as if he were somehow “protecting” you from the “demons” he unleashed on others.
This kind of analysis can engender, as I say, a form of “gratitude” and “loyalty” towards the victimizing individual; it is a variant of “identifying with the aggressor.”
Now it’s true that many, discovering the unseemly truth about someone close to them, even if they were spared the individual’s predations, will modify their view of the individual, bringing it into conformity with reality.
But not always.
I stress: sometimes the monster will retain his “backer.” And the chief point I stress is that his “backer” will probably be under the sway of twin, interrelated and twisted forces of logic—if he didn’t do this to me, then how could he have done this to them? And if he did it to them and not me, then he must have somehow “loved” me?
In either case, “I exculpate him.” In this way, I can remain “loyal” to him,without feeling I’ve transgressed my value system.
Thus disbelief (enabled by denial), mixed and confused with the fantasy of having been a special, exceptional object of his “love” (thanks to which he “amnestied” you from the cruel fate to which he subjected others) supports the rationalization to “stand by” him.
We are strange in the sense of this contradiction: on one hand, we are highly prone to judging others; on the other, we have the capacity to utilize defense mechanisms in the service of “withholding judgment” whenever the need arises.
We do both regularly—that is, regularly we relent to the tendency to judge, while often simultaneously exercising the detachment necessary to “not judge” sometimes disturbing individuals and their alarming stories of transgression.
Many professions, like that of psychotherapy, require the capacity to “suspend personal judgment” just so its practioners can work effectively with a wide range of stimulating, and sometimes disturbing, information.
Families have been torn apart by this psychological dynamic in a sometimes brutal clash of dichotomous positions. I’ve seen this more than a few times. A violator in the family has wrought it shame, perhaps public shame. The violator has perpetrated terrible things now known to the family.
Some family members revise their view of the individual and come to despise him, want nothing more to do with him, have sworn the individual out of their lives.
Other family (especially those who weren’t personally victimized by the individual) may “stand by” the individual, “retain” their faith and belief in him; and thus a rift between the “factions” occurs, adding another layer of nightmare to the trauma precipitated by the violating relative.
This is a preliminary examination of this very complicated subject, to be explored in further depth ahead.
DLD1965,
Wow! Since I know what he is, he just looks like a total looney to me. He rants, he contradicts himself, he refers to himself constantly, and probably loves re-reading his blog posts over and over and over.
His grammar sucks. His punctuation is off.
His writing, to me, reads like a hamster stuck on a wheel. There is no ‘there there’, no place he takes his ideas, because they are not really his ideas, but only snippets of human experience he has learned the words to.
He sounds like a child talking about an adult topic, and making childish mistakes, and connecting the dots with a childs mind.
That’s one of the things that stands out about these characters, their arrested emotional intelligence.
Slim
This blog is really getting to the heart of what drives me crazy. I know I have acted like a “crazy woman” at times driven over the edge by the psychopath.
For the women who have their children taken away from them I am so sorry. That pain is so searing and unending. My spath ex went to a lawyer and tried to have mine taken away. Thank God the lawyer warned him that if he tried his illegal life would be brought up so he backed off. But he took her away in spirit. He was filthy rich and I was poor and going to university. He sent her to private school and she thrived there. Every Christmas he took her to wonderful exotic places. I found a letter from her when she was eight and she said she told him that she wanted to come home to Mommy and he told her that I said that she should stop that and enjoy her lucky time in Hawaii. I never said that. She was so hurt by me saying that. I would never say that. That is just a small pebble in the wall of lies about me.His family disowned me after 12 years of marriage and don’t give a fig about what happens to me. That is ok but I am also the monster, crazy woman and my daughter picked up on that. There are lots of cousins and it is a large, powerful family. So the dominant story is that I am a freak.
I can’t convince you that I am not a freak and I felt like one for sure. I’m a children’s counsellor and I volunteer teaching ESL to immigrants. I am not a freakish bad person or a creep.I find it very, very hard to keep my head up though. I want my daughter to love me and be proud of me but I realize that she has been alienated from me.
She is torn too. Every step toward me is taken at the expense of the protection, support, power and respect of her father and his family. His current wife actually thinks that she is more my daughter’s mother than I am. This is so insane.
So for the women who know what this is like I feel for them and I understand. Men who do this are like poisoners. There are plenty of men who kill their wives or drive them to suicide. There really are men who are deliberately trying to get their wives to suicide. I have passed through that valley of the shadow of death. It is not hard to fall down that hole though. I think it is the PTSD.
For those who choose the path of siding with the offender I think of them like the people who went along with Hitler. I don’t care how nice they are on the surface. Everyone can be nice on the surface. It is just so lonely and frightening to be the one who sees.
This is by far one of the best posts and threads I have ever come across.
seastorm
sorry this happened to you. my ex did the same to my son. he told my son I was a bad person and put terrible words in my mouth. it is called parental alienation.
I held my head high, I never spoke badly to my son about his father, and I got him into weekly therapy starting at the age of 4. yes, the bullshit from his dad hurt and screwed up my son. but by the time he was 18, he saw the truth, and was fed up with his dads lies, and told me so.
athena
kim f
I watched the last movie u recommended. it was great.
I will rent THE GIRL.
I have been watching “WE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN”. outstanding to watch for anybody dealing with a sociopathic child or family member.
athena
Kim where did you find this movie?
Just watched the movie, “The Girl” about the trauma bonded relationship between Alfred Hitchcock, and his leading lady, Tippy Hedron. She starred in both, “The Birds”, and “Marnie”. Incredable study of the trauma bond, and psychopathic “tells” and cog-dis and power plays and seduction, and why we get trapped, and what we tell ourselves. It’s interesting that Hitchcocks films had the themes and content they did”.kind of an abysal structure of the story within the story. If you get the chance, “WATCH THIS MOVIE.
ABC123
Athena
It seems to me that is article is talking about another “flavor” of trauma bonding or Stockholm’s Syndrome. Even though the person does evil deeds, if he/she has spared you, then you will regard that as an act of love toward you if that person is a parental figure to you and someone to whom you look for your emotional needs. My stepfather was an evil monster to both me and my sister. But he favored me and we actually had many good times together. Because of that, I did feel some degree of love from him. When I became an adult, I was able to release my anger about his abuse and forgive him. I was even able to have a relationship with him before he died at age 70. My sister could not, and this was one of the main things that tore my sister and me apart. It was not ever my intention to choose any “loyalties”. If I did, they would lie with my sister, who wasn’t fortunate or enterprising enough to work through the abuse the way I did. But it was as though she was forcing me to choose one of them over the other. I felt that I needed to discover the boundaries of my relationships with my parents on my own terms and not those of my sister. So that was the end of our relationship, though this was never stated clearly – I think it was a given.
So I understand this dynamic very well. I don’t think it was a matter of feeling like I was special in any way. I was just a child trying to get a father’s love. He was the only father I had. He died over 20 years ago. If he were alive today, I’m not sure I’d want to have a relationship with him. It is very confusing for a child to see a parent have both a bad and a seemingly good side. I don’t think a child’s brain is sophisticated enough to understand what is really going on, so they compartmentalize and idealize. This is a survival mechanism. When it happens to adults, I would conjecture that perhaps it is a repeat of someone in that adult’s past who was similar to the current perpetrator.
I read on this site several articles by Travis Vining. His father was a murderer and a sociopath, but he never harmed Travis. Travis was his unwitting confidante. It was not until much later in his adult life that Travis could make sense of what his father really was and turn him in to the authorities. There was a time when he idealized his father, just like most little boys do.
It’s an interesting discussion whether someone who is trauma bonded in that way is evil for having a loyalty to a sociopath and not speaking out against them. I think of pure evil having to do with a person’s motives. I think many who turn a blind eye are unconscious, but not inherently evil. However, their behaviors may be evil because of the consequences. I don’t know what line needs to be crossed in order to consider a very unconscious person evil. I don’t feel it’s my place to make that judgment – I can only say that they are dangerous and exhibiting bad/evil behaviors. I make a distinction between evil behaviors and evil people. Because I think evil people cannot be cured. But I think there are some people who are not spaths but who do bad things and make bad choices, perhaps because they live their lives in a fog. They still need to be held accountable, but I wouldn’t say they are all inherently evil.
Star,
I would surmise that it depends on their age. There is no clear boundary but the older someone gets and continues to do evil, the more likely they are evil and will not change.
I think that is why we don’t diagnose spathy in people under age 18. There is a good chance that a bad kid might turn around but not all do. some get worse.
Also, a lot depends on who else is influencing them in their lives. A fence sitter may never do evil, and may even learn to do good stuff if they are surrounded by good people. But get one spath in their lives and they become just like them.
The reason for this is that we are born mimetic. We are the most mimetic of all animals. Even monkeys don’t copy as much as we do. This is why we can pass on culture and knowledge so effectively to our children. As we grow, normal people’s personalities and values solidify. We acquire an identity and we don’t feel compelled to follow trends or fashion as much as we did when we were young. A spath never acquires an identity and I think that fence sitters just barely do. They both stay infantile and mimetic.
The difference is that the spath actively chooses evil, while the fence sitter just does whatever everyone else is doing.
I agree, Sky. I think you can reasonably predict someone’s behavior based on their history of past behaviors, and the older they are, probably the less likely they are to change. I personally reserve the word “evil” for someone who is born without a conscience and incapable of change, i.e. a sociopath. I really don’t know at what point a person who was born with a conscience crosses a line into becoming “evil”. I don’t know how many bad things they have to do to be considered as evil or whether, with the right circumstances, they can change. I imagine that if someone has done a tremendous amount of really horrible things to other people, if they were to suddenly grow a conscience, the pain of their past behaviors would be enough to kill them many times over.
Most of us here have done most of the bad things in our lives to ourselves by letting people hurt us. Is it evil when people cause pain to themselves but not to others? Where do you draw the line? This is why – except in the case of a sociopath or obviously disordered person – I steer clear of labels. I don’t need a label to know if someone is dangerous for me to be around. “Toxic” gets the right effect for me. Or sometimes just “unconscious”. Or just “not good for me.” That’s all I need to know about someone.
Star,
I’m not sure if hurting yourself or allowing others to hurt you is “evil” but it is the opposite of good.
One thing I realized was that my exspath would get minions to hate innocent others, by first getting his minion to slander the innocent other. Then he might get them to do something mean. Once he had done that, the minion had to justify his behavior to himself. He had to believe that the scapegoat was really guilty, or else he would have to deal with his conscience –which he doesn’t want to do.
So when we allow others to hurt us, we are also allowing them to become more evil. This enabling of others to become worse than they are, is evil, IMO.