Where's the wrath? Keeping silent of shame, not allowed having just and righteous demands, justified anger stifled - empathy deficits in the power...

[Updated May 22]. In a news item in a local, Swedish newspaper you could read

”Where's the wrath?

We are waiting and waiting and waiting...

But nothing happens. Where's the wrath, the ardour, the passion and the hot engagement in the political opposition?

Where are all the human beings who have been kicked out from the jobs and who once again have an unsure future before them?”

Are they blaming themselves? Brainwashed for such a long time that people are cheaters, misusing systems?

And, quite ironically, who wants to be a cheater? So people are clenching their teeth instead?And keeping silent of shame?

”People are lowering the wages to avoid new notices to quit.

The government's own finance expert gives the government mark below the pass standard.

The Swedish Trade Union Confederation are you taking tranqullizers?

It's time to start mobilizing the last powers we have – or are we all waiting for Godot?”

Yes, why are so many young unemployed feeling so bad? A survey made by the Swedish National Institute of Public Health shows that young people without work feel less well than those who have works. They are less social and experience a lower emotional support and are at risk of psychological ill-health.

One of six young unemployed women have tried committing suicide and one of four young unemployed men have had thoughts of committing suicide.

They have problems with headache, tiredness, anxiousness, and troubles sleeping.

A job is important for factual issues with the economy and worktasks that are developing (for you as a person), but also because you become part of a social context and get the feeling that you are contributing. And most people want to do this. Most people don't feel well not doing this, at least not in long term. Shown in the fact that people who have been unemployed for a long time dies earlier. See earlier posting on that more equal societies almost always do better.

But we have been brain-washed with that people don't want to work but just want to live on grants and subsidies. And - does this say more about those upholding such things than about people in general?

I wonder how deliberate this has been from certain groups in the society?? Playing on peoples' tendencies to feel shame and blame themselves? In the same manner as we were treated as kids many times, and played out against each other!??? The reason why this propaganda has been so efficient??

They, the power groups, have succeeded in making people feel bad and ashamed and guilty!!?? Their purpose!? So people don't have any just and righteous demands?? The righteous anger is stifled and swallowed.

What our politicians in the government show is empathy deficits, see earlier posting in Swedish!! To say it straight!? And too many people in power positions suffer from empathy deficits???

And people haven't been allowed to really call the power in question!!! Paul Krugman actually writes about this today. People have been kept down! And played out against each other (divided and ruled). Probably exactly as we were treated (read manipulated) as small kids early in life (the reason why it's so easy to manipulate people in the same way when they are adults! And thus a justified anger is stifled).

Addition after lunch: See the review "Inequality makes us ill. And depressed. And violent."

Addition May 22: And if shame isn't enough, you use other means? Threats of punishments for instance?

George Monbiot writes in ”The Barbarians at the Gate- Why has policing in Britain gone so mad?”:

”The principal cause of man’s unhappiness is that he has learnt to stay quietly in his own room. If our needs are not met, if justice is not done, it is because we are not prepared to leave our homes and agitate for change.

Blaise Pascal ('the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his own room') couldn’t have been more wrong.

We do not starve, we are not arbitrarily imprisoned, we may vote, travel and read and write what we wish only because of the political activism of previous generations. Almost all MPs, when pushed, will acknowledge this. Were it not for public protest they wouldn’t be MPs.

Yet, though the people of this country remain as mild and as peaceful as they have ever been, our MPs have introduced a wider range of repressive measures than at any time since the Second World War.

A long list of laws – the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act, Terrorism Act 2000, Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the 2005 Serious Crime and Police Act and many others(1) - treat peaceful protesters as if they are stalkers, vandals, thugs and terrorists.

Thousands of harmless, public-spirited people now possess criminal records. This legislation has been enforced by policing which becomes more aggressive and intrusive by the month. The police attacks on the G20 protests (which are about to be challenged by a judicial review launched by Climate Camp) are just the latest expression of this rising state violence.

Why is it happening?”

Look how much power it can be in young people who are given opportunities to develop their talents and strengths:

The root of all evil…

I got tipped about this video by a very close and dear friend:-):

About the video:

”Jill Mytton left a religious cult as a young adult [together with her parents, when she was 16 years old], and now helps counsel people who are struggling with life after leaving cult environments.”

On Richard Dawkins see here.

Addition in the evening: Also see Mic Hunter on what sexual abuse is and how to define it and a review of his book “Abused Boys: The Neglected Victims of Sexual Abuse”.

Addition February 8: Mytton says that she doesn't blame her parents for what she experienced, because they were harmed in turn. But I think such a view can be (is) problematic if you really want a client (or you yourself) to recover. Miller for instance has written a lot about this, see on her site about forgiveness...

How many children haven't "understood" their parents through?? And what has this led to? Has this protected and prevented the latter grown up from doing the same thing, or similar things again? The conduct of forgiveness easily leads to denial about what's actually violating a child... But it is applauded in the society.

Also see what violations actually are.

Pia Mellody (and probably some other therapists/experts) writes/talks about these things too, see about defenses (but many so called experts are probably denying the problems with understanding our parents and early caregivers). Also see here on defenses.

Brainwash...

Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth.

The Swedish author Bodil Malmsten wrote on her blog about our current culture minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth who had said earlier this summer to one of our biggest newspapers that

"...to wash my brain I read detective stories."

Malmsten had given this blogposting the heading "Brainwash."

Brainwashing…

Margaret Singer.

[Updated April 6] In a comment to my former posting on “Emotional abuse…” I was tipped about a Margaret Singer and her 6 criterias for thought reform (my amateur translation from Swedish) I guess it was from the site "hjärntvätt" (brainwashing):

1. Keeping a person unknowing of what is going on and what is happening.
2. Controlling a person’s time and if possible its physical environment (milieu).
3. Creating a sense of powerlessness, secret fear and dependency.
4. Repressing a lot of the person’s old behaviours and attitude.
5. Infusing new behaviours and attitude.
6. Pushing a closed system of logic forward, not allowing critics.

The commentator wrote:

“Her description of brainwashing was very similar to what I suffered in a ‘normal’ psychotherapy (except milieu and time control)."

And it was like Singer describes it the child had it once and as many children still have it? Being obedient and keeping quiet? Not questioning or seeing through? As many of us had it more or less? So we are so used to it and thus have difficulties seeing this through?

Addition April 6: was tipped by a friend on Robert Jay Lifton’s "Theory of thought reform":

• Milieu Control (controlled relations with the outer world)
• Mystical Manipulation (the group has a higher purpose than the rest)
• Demand for Purity (pushing the individual towards a not-attainable perfection)
• Confession (confess past and present sins)
• Sacred Science (beliefs of the group are sacrosanct and perfect)
• Loading the Language (new meanings to words, encouraging black-white thinking, thought-stoppers)
• Doctrine over person (the group is more important than the individual)
• Dispensing of existence (insiders are saved, outsiders are doomed)

Also see "Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism" by Robert Jay Lifton.

And all these things you ought to avoid in therapy. And these are things many children have experienced when they grew up, in their families, to different degrees?

Translated the points above would be something in the style:

• Kontroll av miljön (kontrollerade relationer med den yttre världen)
• Mystisk manipulation (gruppen har ett högre syfte än resten, dvs. resten av världen? Manipulation av upplevelser vilka verkar vara spontana, men är planerade och orkestrerade)
• Krav på renhet (man pushar individen mot en ouppnåelig perfektion, världen ses svart-vit och medlemmarna är konstant förmanade att rätta sig efter gruppens ideologi och strävan efter perfektion)
• Bekännelse (man bekänner forna och nutida synder. Synder, som de definieras av gruppen, ska bekännas antingen inför en personlig ordningsman eller offentligt till gruppen)
• Helig vetenskap (övertygelser om gruppen är okränkbara, heliga och perfekta. Gruppens doktrin och ideologi ses om den ultimata sanningen, bortom allt ifrågasättande eller varje dispyt)
• Laddande av språket (nya meningar på ord, uppmuntrande av ett svart-vitt tänkande, tankestoppare. Gruppen tolkar och använder ord och fraser på ett nytt sätt så att den yttre världen ofta inte förstår)
• Doktrin över person (gruppen är viktigare än individen. Medlemmens personliga erfarenheter är underordnade den heliga vetenskapen och varje motsatt erfarenhet måste förnekas eller tolkas på nytt för att passa gruppens ideologi)
• Fördelande av existens (insiders räddas, outsiders är dömda. Gruppen har privilegiet, förmånsrätten att bestämma vem som har rätten att existera och vilken som inte har det)

Detta låter som något som skulle kunna existera i familjen för ett både litet och betydligt större barn i större eller mindre grad? Och dylika saker borde undvikas i terapi, både i individuell som gruppterapi.

Helga - part 6...

Helga wrote that she believes that many who have been injured (in therapies, sects, cults etc.) are ashamed they have let themselves be exploited. And this unmotivated shame is holding them in the victim’s role. This is the reason why defectors (avhoppare) from sects are prevented from clearly and in detail relating/telling how and with what means the wool was pulled over their eyes (hur och med vilka medel de blev förda bakom ljuset). And Michelle and Helga thought Helga had been in a form of sect or cult even in her therapy.

Because of this shame-feeling in the injured the perpetrators can, unpunished, continue with their destructive activities. This is the reason why I have tried not to forget what happened to me and to understand it in all important aspects Helga writes.

I can’t change facts. That I was exploited as a child and misled by people whom I trusted on and now also by my therapist – that can’t be undone. But the remaining results of these violations I knew about. They consisted of disregard of the person I am and of my achievements. All I did for others was valueless in my eyes, and later I struggled like a slave (people in Feeling therapy worked themselves exhausted and thus even less capable of being critical and questioning things than they maybe were from the beginning) and let myself be exploited Helga writes.

When we make this clear to us; that the psychological results of a tragic childhood contains of a weak self-confidence we can get over its results as grown ups.

When we have made this clear to ourselves we have already weakened the compulsion to re-enact. We realize that we were oppressed children, patients, sect-followers, but with this insight we take the liberty not being that any more she thinks.

Gurus and leaders can’t take those steps she thinks. They have to remain at the top, no matter what it costs. Therefore they are steadfastly denying the fact that they were victims earlier (in their childhood and maybe also later as adults) and flee into the power, into promises about cure, into roles, poses, dissimulation and not seldom into frauds. And this is also true in family-systems, where a parent (usually a father) has to remain on top? Denying they were harmed once?

A human being whom has survived the childhood’s oppression will hardly flee to a power-position. If he has integrated his experiences he can liberate himself from compulsions and meet his partner and friends in an open communication.

Tragically there have been women stuck in this ‘sect’ for years without realising this Helga thought with shivers. But she only just (med nöd och näppe) got out of its claws and she shivers realizing what could have happened. There were other women, who had become bodily ill (paralyzed or at least bodily handicapped) and stuck in their homes, and Helga visited those, while the therapist got the fees. When Helga realized this she felt like a fool.

Helga writes to Michelle that thanks to her presence and her letters she has got help showing her feelings, and to no longer hide in solitude, but entrust herself to people whom want her best. Thus being able to break walls of silence; both those in therapy as those in her childhood. Maybe not all, but enough to free her from the worst?

Yes, to handle those things the best and bring these topics out “into the world” most effectively, how do we make this? How do we deal with those things and act in a way that is as little destructive or self-destructive, but constructive – and more effective and productive?

Why haven’t we been able to change so much in our own lives (haven’t we) although we have read Miller for maybe twenty years??

And why does this take such a long time? Does it?

Is it because we have to do most of the work on our own, and thus in a much slower pace?

And would our strivings be better and more efficient (effective) if we had solved our own problems to a higher degree? So we saw clearer and don’t bring so much of our unsolved stuff into things, especially into those that are most important?

So we don’t harm others or ourselves… No, people don’t consciously and deliberately try and find abusive people to be around.

Addition: To what degree is it possible to change dysfunctional behavior to a functional, and can we be cured by symbolically doing things? And if so, to what degree? But with this not said we don't have responsibility for what we do, say, how we behave... It's no excuse, but only an explanation. Because we have responsibility, no matter how harmed we have been? And are we allowed to meet abuse with abuse? Is it constructive to meet the one with contempt that can't handle her/his life better, that someone is weak etc.?

And if things haven't changed so much in our lives; why haven't they?

Are people deliberately and consciously trying to find abusive people to be around? Destructive drives we have to learn to control? Didn't learn to control early?? As Freud thought?? Ideas many therapists still are working after, without being aware of it maybe, or are even denying they are working after? Is this the Primary defense; the child blaming itself for being so lousy in handling things? In others this can be about blaming others (but this doesn't exclude questioning things if it is needed, but the difficulty is to know the difference!?)? Or struggling in a false hope of being able to change a situation, person etc.? etc. Postings under the label Primary defence.

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My youngest brother is skiing the Vasaloppet today. He skied 90 km in 05:37 hours! We saw him coming to Mora now on the web!!! He turns 49 in June. The conditions were fairly tough it sounds...

Morning-tea in cups from Nittsjö keramik (lying in Rättvik, Dalarna).

Some more thoughts on therapy abuse…

Easter 2007 at the country-side, chocolate-cake with whipped cream and fruit.

In the shower: my relatives in the working-class (which I have had most contact with and have had further contact with, and where we played very freely when we grew up, as we did at home, but not at my paternal grandparent's home really) would never think of entering a therapist’s office…That is out of question. And earlier it was even more out of question. defenses (and denial) can take different expressions?

Not least was it so in my parents’ generation and earlier. Reading books could give one a lot of strange ideas, and working with creative things was no real occupation! And you shouldn’t think “too much”.

My youngest uncle is born 1935 and his wife is one year younger…

Helga was educated social worker, and she got her mom’s house in Santa Monica when her mother died, and thus she was seen as the rich and wealthy house-owner, who could afford paying expensive fees.

Michelle wrote that the sect-members she referred to (what Carol L. Mithers has written about in “Therapy Gone Mad…”) belonged to the middle-class; they were intelligent people, of whom many had Academic exams and was used to thinking.

How was this enslaving possible Michelle wondered? She thought that the patients through regression to childish helplessness obviously lost their ability for critical thinking or that they entirely directed the critics at themselves.

The people whom had come to the therapy-center to learn to perceive their feelings had been held away from exactly these true actual feelings instead, because their therapists had no use for those.

The members at the center had been exhorted to strict critics of their parents and at the same time been hindered refinedly seeing their contemporary extortionists through.

When the truths were revealed they became aware of that they had told the most intimate details about their childhoods and sexual lives in the “therapy-groups”, but that they had buried their true feelings and thoughts about the therapists behaviors inside instead. They had never really spoken with the other sect-members either. The patients’ lives were strictly controlled, day and night.

And they got a lot of perverse commands; couples who loved each others too much was ordered to have sex every day, so they should get enough of each others. People who didn’t’ really like each others were forced to intimate relations etc.

Michelle thought that regressive therapy-forms offer a certain favorable soil for these things. A human being suddenly thrown back to childish dependency can’t integrate her childhood. Only grown ups can do this with the help of a therapist who follows his patients and supports their independence, and who are not holding them in a childish dependency.

This dependency is the soil in which the illusion that the therapist can give a grown up human being all she lacked with her mother (and father) when she was a (small) child: being mirrored, understood, unconditionally loved (and given true, genuine respect, which is something a client has all rights to demand and expect!?).

If the mother is capable of this she has protected her child from being exploited later.

But expecting that shortages are possible to be taken back with a guru is self-delusion. It only leads to dependency on promises which can never be fulfilled, because the sect-follower isn’t a child any more and the guru isn’t his/her mother (or father) from the beginning of life. In spite of this this illusion is kept alive in many sects and religions.

Michelle writes that knowing this maybe can be of help to Helga; that she isn’t the only one who have done this experience (or been such a fool!) and succeeded to free herself from the confusion.

And I thought on the article I linked and quoted from yesterday (about the woman who was exposed to incest from she was 7, or earlier, till she was 14, and how her life had turned out later): how can it be to read this for the one that hasn’t been able to deal in the same way as this woman? How do newspapers nuance what they write? Are they “nuancing” things rather?? The Societal Denial again? Because I wonder if not more people have been exposed to things than we want to believe? Many more? Maybe almost all of us, but to different degrees. Some are less harmed, others more??

And - can a sexual abuser come to believe that what he (she) does isn't so harmful??

"See how she dealt with it!!!"

Minimizing and belittling the damage?? Which is absolutely intolerable and wrong!!! I guess most of those who have succeeded in their recovery would agree that the damage could have been undone, and the struggle to recover has taken so much of their time and life...

Also see the article "Compassion Gone Mad" by Heather Mac Donald.

And it was someone who wrote:

“I’m wondering why after many adult children finally say:

“Ok that’s enough! I’m done!”

and then they walk away and have little or nothing to do with the abusive parent after that, but they continue to or begin abusive relationships with others.

I know a woman who refused to speak with her dad because he molested her, but then started dating a man who was very mean to her and treated her like she was nothing.

He used her for sex just like her father did and abandoned her and then would come back just to hurt her.

After I stopped seeing my mother I became very friendly with a very mean woman who screamed at me when she got drunk I also dated a man who was mean and acted pretty much like my mother.”

Is it because they haven't actually worked things through (and this is certainly not easy or easy made)? And recovery isn't about solving things on a symbolic level??

Helga – part 3…

Helga replied that she had needed those six months to get more clarity. Now she thought she had come so far so she would have written to Michelle on her own, without being reminded.

“When you went to Peru it was as if you had died. You probably think this sounds strange, because of course you were reachable, I could have written. I could have replied to your loving letters to keep our contact going. But I couldn’t.

Even if I wrote kind letters to you I experienced myself as cut off from you for ever. For a long time I couldn’t understand this.

It was not until we met half a year ago I found the key which had been missing during the whole long therapy.

First it was Brigit who found it strange that I hardly knew anything about you. She wanted to know how it was when you left ten years ago. I didn’t remember. This surprised me. She said:

“How strange! Your best friend goes so far away, and you have no memory of your farewell? Did you feel abandoned then, after her departure?”

“No,”

I answered,

“I didn’t feel anything at all.”

I said these words calmly, surprised myself over my equanimity. But I discovered that I in some sense felt defiant, as a hurt child who isn’t possible to speak to.

"How come?"

I wondered.

"Brigit is kind; there is no need to react like that to her. She wants to help me. There is no reason for me to reject her."

At this simple truth my defiance broke down, I don’t know why it came then, but I started to cry. Now I suddenly felt the pain in being abandoned (the pain I had refused to feel and had held from myself when you left and with it memories of the whole event). At last I understood how motivated this was.”

When Helga was four her father had died. She was left with her mother, whom had a lot of problems herself and was incapable of giving Helga any security. A mother who strictly controlled her and at the same time clung firmly to her, because she needed someone and there was noone else but Helga. Helga had to take care of and fill her mothers needs and think of her.

It was impossible for Helga to feel or show her sorrow and despair over the loss of her father in her mother’s presence. Her mother first and foremost expected self-restraint from Helga and a good manner, but no expressions of emotions (but, once again, self-control!!!), not least as she was jealous to Helga’s love to her father.

Helga had to cleverly accept that her father was gone, i.e. silently and without emotions “accept” it.

Helga experienced Michelle’s departure in the same way. She couldn’t cry, as if somebody had forbidden it, and in a way she metaphorically "buried" Michelle.

Michelle’s mother had used all opportunities to teach Helga good manners. And maybe Helga thought that if she behaved well her father would return? Helga got used to not posing questions, this was forbidden (she had to figure things out on her own? And as good as she could on her own?).

After Michelle had left Helga met a man, but when she got pregnant this man left her, because he didn’t want the child. Helga had to handle all this. But her inner tension showed in difficulties to sleep. She started to take sleeping pills, and had to take stronger and stronger dozes till she realized that she had to do something about it. And thus the therapy.

But this therapy left her in the same childish state of helplessness and dependency, and the powerless anger which this led to, and she didn’t know how she should be able to change the state of affairs. She didn’t succeed in getting any use at all of all her crying. This state lasted for several years. And it was only the therapist who (greatly) benefited on this.

This man profited on Helga’s constant crying and idealized transference, instead of settling it, and Helga couldn’t break the vicious circle. She had got stuck at the same level as the little girl, who can’t understand what is done to her.

The therapist systematically depreciated all people whom stood her near, even Michelle and her co-workers and cousins, so at last she had noone else but him.

Helga thought the therapist only had figured out how he could intensify people’s childish needs, which aren’t possible to fulfill any more, till they were unendurable, to mitigate them with promises about cure. To reach this cure people are prepared to let themselves be exploited in different ways; economically, emotionally and sexually.

But this affair was so good that he probably saw no need to help her even if he had had those prerequisites, which he hadn’t.

The sexual violation often plays a special role. The women’s humiliation and the alleged intimacy shall prevent them from seeing the one through who is using them.

Helga thought that the sexual relation had given her an illusion of love, and as her therapist stayed alive she could tolerate his infidelity. What she had feared the most was her father’s death, because this had meant that she was handed out to her mother’s universally prevailing power.

But what she to whatever prize had tried to avoid occurred. She had become limitlessly dependent on a person who made her believe that he wanted and could help her, and who without hesitation or doubts wanted to drive her into a psychosis, only for to cover up what he himself had done.

Already with her mother Helga had experienced being talked away from her observations and thus made deeply insecure on her senses; on what she saw, heard, sensed (see Mellody on excessive control of reality or överdriven kontroll av verkligheten). She was so used to this that she had no chance of becoming aware that her therapist did the same thing to her once again. But much more consciously and skilfully.

It wasn’t until she met Brigit that she understood why she had let herself be blended for such a long time by this human being. And been able doing this with Brigit’s help in only six months.

He even succeeded in making her believe in his healing powers by showing her written “proofs”; letters from “healed”, which much later showed to be falsified. Emotionally she had got stuck as the small daughter in this relation, a daughter bravely enduring with her mother in the hope that she should “deserve” her father's return.

She had met with a man who had specialized in exploiting his patients’ special distresses as much as possible for his own aims

What gave him so much power over Helga were her early denied sorrow and the defence against the helplessness she had felt then. He now awoke this in the grown up woman, added fuel to it and exploited it.

When Helga met Michelle again then, six months ago, she wasn’t capable of telling her all she now had told her. It was the return of Michelle that helped her getting access to her history.

Helga, part 2 - the exchange with Michelle...

sign of spring.

During the therapy with Brigit, Helga met her best friend Michelle, whom she hadn’t seen since Michelle left for Peru ten years earlier. Helga told Michelle about her therapy, but wasn’t free from the shock yet, so she wasn’t capable of telling her friend everything. She promised her to write her, but Michelle was in advance of her.

Michelle wrote that she didn’t want to loose the contact again. And since she hadn’t gotten a life-sign so far in the passed six months she wrote.

“When I went to Peru I missed you a lot. But I dived into my work and got used to not having a friend standing me as close as you did. I tried to maintain the contact with you, but your replies came seldom and were relatively brief. I couldn’t understand the reason to the distance between us. I assumed you had got hurt because of my departure or that you had closer friends now, and therefore I didn’t ask about the reason.

Not until now, when I saw you again after I had returned you told me that your therapist had held you from all people you loved and trusted. Although you have seen him through and have found Brigit you don’t seem to be entirely free from him. That was at least my impression.

I traced a relief in you that you had allowed yourself to escape from this charlatan, but at the same time it looked as if you didn’t dare to feel the whole amount of your anger and indignation. You were controlled and told those shocking facts with a calm voice, sometimes you even laughed, and my impression was that you partly have been untouched by these circumstances. You told me these facts as if you were far away from the person exposed to all this.”

A tip I got...

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Kirkengen writes about (three) Norwegian men in therapy, with a male therapist, who were sexually abused in their therapy by their male therapist... And how greatly they suffered after this. They weren't capable of saying no. And was fooled by their therapist to believe this was part of their recovery? (I don't remember the facts now and don't have the book here). They put their therapist to trial.

So it isn't only women whom are abused but also men.

But women are the greater part of those that gets abused, not only sexually, but in other ways too (not least emotionally)??? Are they more often met with disrespect too, or with more disrespect than men, even by professionals despite the professional is man OR woman? Yes, investigations has shown that men and women are treated differently by doctors for instance. Where men are treated better and have gotten better help, generally?

All should be treated equally! But why aren't we treating all alike?? From where does this come?

Kirkengen also writes about power-imbalances, and what power abuse means... See this review of Kirkengen's book "Inscribed bodies..."

Oh, how tired I am of everything!!! Think if I should disappear into work?? And book a journey, go away… Relax from everything… Draw a blanket over me… Over the head.

Helga – the lucrative affair with the tears…

picture taken from here.

Eight years ago Helga sought help at a therapy-center where she lived. She was between 27 and 32 years old, just divorced and left with a one-year old daughter. She had got problems with sleeping-pills due to problems with her sleeping, and wanted to get help with this and with sorting things out.

Although the waiting-time (waiting-list) was two years she got an initial talk with the director for the center immediately. This together with the director’s allusions to her pronounced attractive external appearance flattered her, but also gave her a certain lack of confidence. But she pushed this away because of her desperate needs to get help as soon as possible.

During the first time in therapy she cried a lot. This phase lasted several weeks. The therapist didn’t say much about this, but it made her good that someone listened to all she had to say. In the beginning of the therapy they agreed about that she could call whenever she wished, if the agony became too much. She used this possibility a couple of times.

But at one of the occasions when she called the therapist wasn’t at home, but his wife answered. To Helga’s’ astonishment the wife started to tell her husband's patient about her own problems without being asked. She told her that her husband used young female patient’s dependency on him for sexual plays and neglected and hurt her, who yet was his wife.

Helga quickly ended the talk, because she didn’t want to listen to this “slander” against her savior. Later she even admitted that she wasn’t even shocked by these disclosures. At that time her confidence in her therapist was still unbroken and she interpreted the wife’s words as an expression for jealousy and envy against younger women.

She told her therapist about her talk with his wife, but he pushed everything away (implying that it was something wrong with his wife), and Helga was satisfied with this, and didn’t even reflect over her talk with the wife at the moment when she entered into a sexual relation with her therapist. This relation made her believe in everything the therapist said, and she felt loved and chosen by him. This strengthened her self-confidence to that degree that she walked like in an ecstasy of luck for some weeks. Until she got to know that there were other patients this man had entered a sexual relation with. And then for the first time she started to think in patterns of exploitation and betrayal.

She entrusted herself to a co-patient, Barbara, who immediately told the therapist, the therapist in turn showed Barbara Helga’s intimate letters to him, and spoke about psychotic disturbances and declared perfectly untouched that what Helga had said was lies, fantasies and expressions of Helga’s feelings of being violated. On the contrary, it was Helga who had tried to seduce him and now she wanted revenge because he had rejected her.

To Helga the therapist also showed the image of an absolute honest, upright man who neither had nor had had anything to blame himself for.

Helga had no experiences of such perfect defensive position and rather doubted herself, her own senses and her own memory than the therapist's character.

Helga’s therapist was even prepared to accompany her through this psychotic “episode” and treat her for “paranoiac visions”. With this he tried to obliterate or reinterpret every memory she had of sexual experiences with him. For a while Helga was attracted to his care. But when she was threatened with an admission note to hospital and prosecution for slander her suspicions were awoken that her case wasn’t the first of this sort for him.

Helga remembered her call with the therapist’s wife and understood that she had tried to warn her. This man was apparently a specialist in threatening people to silence. This insight came undoubtedly late, but not too late. If Helga hadn’t got to know this (through her talk with the wife) she would have found herself in the brainwash a longer time.

Now she broke the contact with the therapist. But it took a long time before she could liberate herself from her confusion and the severe bodily symptoms she had got.

She got help from Brigit, a social-worker and therapist, with a long experience of incest families, who helped her processing the damages the therapist had caused her.

Today Helga thinks that the reason this man succeeds in keeping his patients in a state of fear is that he only accepts people in therapy that are easy to frighten and make insecure.

Helga thinks that her experience has protected her from looking down on other person’s credulousness or even joke about it. On the other hand she wanted to profit from this experience for better understanding of how it could come that she for such a long time wasn’t capable of estimating her situation.

I will write more about this later...

Yes, it is 36 years since I read English, and haven't used until 3 years ago... Only read English (French and German) texts on note-books and such things during the meantime... And during my whole school-time I moved several times, so I wonder how the education was too? So if my English is what it is...

I went the nature-science program at the gymnasium... But chose music in the end... But didn't read English till I quited the gymnasium...

Gurus and leaders…

from tea now at around 10.30, with new-baked bread :-).

Gurus and leaders - a topic I have thought of writing about for a long time…

Miller writes about this and the roots to it in her book “Paths of Life” in the chapter “Reflections” and in the chapter about Helga and her therapy in the same book. And she also mention these topics in the revised version of "The Drama of the Gifted Child" and in "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware."

I googled on "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware" ("Du skall icke märka") and found this text from the bible. Also see here. The illustration below is from the last site, illustrating "Thou Shalt Not Be Aware"?

My summary of what she writes (in "Paths of Life") and eventual comments and thoughts below (from the Swedish edition, the last book that has been translated to Swedish of Miller’s books. Why is that? A societal and professional denial? Is it only due to Miller herself? And why has Miller turned the way she seems to have turned?).

Miller writes that we live in a time where it looks as if dictatorships seem to be replaced by democracies. But at the same time we see how totalitarian systems are growing in different sects.

People who have grown up with freedom and respect and whose distinctive characters have been tolerated and not been throttled with the help of education, would scarcely voluntarily let themselves be drawn into a sect or at least not stay in it if they by coincidence or skillful manipulations should land there.

But many people don’t seem to bother that there exists mechanisms which once again will deprive them of the freedom of thoughts, actions and feelings/emotions (see Pia Mellody about codependency and violations of a child's inner life). They don’t seem to worry that they are put under totalitarian control and are forced to obedience in a way that they will never free themselves from, because through the years they will become objects for an indoctrination which makes it impossible for them to acknowledge or of seeing what damages their personalities have suffered - once again.

Miller writes that the form of secterist groups she has been occupied with are the ones with the unconscious manipulation; the way in which parents or therapists suppressed and unconscious childhood-history influences their children’s and patient’s lives, without anyone observing. In their education they have learned to handle conscious manipulation, but not the unconscious. They haven’t sufficiently dealt with their suppressed history Miller thinks. Other therapists have similar ideas.

Stettbacher says something I think is true; that we ought to protect the watchers of life in ones children. Which means treating our children from the first moment with all the respect we are capable of, so they don’t have to suppress things, so they have to suppress as little as possible? And this is the best way to protect them.

Schools of different kinds and educational methods are never free from all risks for manipulation, how fine ideals one even has. I have had a discussion about Summerhill school system. Not even that system can entirely guarantee anything!? And there has existed things there too from the (very) little I have heard... And also see these experiences of private schools or rather boarding-schools in England. by a former boarding-school student.

In my work I have also seen things I have reacted against, maybe less harmful than other things though… Methods that almost becomes like sect-like things, with a guru a top… For instance as in the Suzuki-metod, we also use the Montessori-method etc. etc. etc. (not inthe music-school though). Noone of us are free from all those tendencies?

Miller writes that among the sect’s founders there are many paranoiac and megalomaniac psychotics who, in the crowd of followers, are seeking protection from their own agony, in that they offer themselves as helpers and healers. They want to avoid their childish powerlessness and impotence and fight this on the symbolic level. At the same time they offer themselves as saviors, because through their followers eulogizes they at last feel powerful instead of powerless/impotent.

But as soon as they fear being seen through they force their disciples to silence. Scary.

See what Arthur Silber has written about obedience and the obedience culture in his Miller-essays. What our early experiences of obedience can mean and lead to even (or not least) on a societal and political level too.

It’s not only the victims but also the leader/guru that regresses to the childhood Miller thinks. The leader/guru also looses the contact with reality (to different degrees) through the followers’ praising-songs, depending on how much or little he has suppressed or later processed (to what degree he is willing to question himself).

Gurus obtain a common assent through fatherly and motherly care, which blends the masses and through regression to early childhood makes them caught in a limitless admiration. In this regression critics of parent-figures as leaders and gurus are not possible at all. And self critic from the part of the leader also disappears in the power-inebriation and self-idealization.

The jubilation of the masses works like a drug on the leader’s excited affects and all the jubilant people doesn’t realize that he uses them only for this function.

The followers don’t question if they are sent out into wars (literally or metaphorically) by their loving and supposed loving leader, just because his personal history demands this. They join, don’t think, leave the thinking to him (and he wants them leaving the thinking to him), they trust him as small children, who don’t have any conception of future and planning yet, they are just trusting that their “father” wants their best - and knows best. They stop thinking themselves (or many do?). Even if he (metaphorically) comes home from work, shouting and with his hand lifted, greeting and correcting them, he is only doing this for their own best (and he knows better than them what is the best for them), he says.

Often well-formulated theories are offered, which despite the scientific façade has nothing with science to do, because they only replace lasting facts with those they make up or deduce from their own theories.

And I think Miller is right concerning failures in therapy (my amateur-translation!!):

If one uncritically cling to old methods' alleged infallibility (and she includes regressive techniques here AND primal therapy) and blames the client for failures, you inevitably land in the same fairways (waters) as the sect-guru, who also promises entire liberation. Such promises only produce self-destructive dependence which stands in the way for the individual’s liberation.

How many haven’t experienced the same (or similar things) as Helga experienced, in this case in therapy (another form of manipulation)? I think I will write about her story too in a later posting.the not best well-mannered dog at the table, begging (I have serious problems resisting him)!! :-)

Addition after lunch: On my walk (with a dog that has to arm himself with an enormous patience before anyone is ready to go out. It was wonderful out; sun and a blue sky, and we met a woman on a horse and a man with the dog in the forest! So this forest isn't so wild as it maybe looks!?) I thought further on what Mellody has found about violations and abuse:

The child could be violated by being told how to

• think,
• behave,
• feel,
• not think,
• behave,
• feel,
• what friends the child should have,
• and not have,
• which cloths it should wear,
• and not wear…

It was told:

• how it was
• and how and what it wasn’t,
• how it thought,
• and didn't' think,
  
• how it felt,
• and didn't feel,
• how it reacted
• and accused for not reacting, feeling, sensing…

How does a child meet this?

"No, I am not! I am not thinking that way!!"

Words, feelings, thoughts, reactions etc. put in its mouth?

Which Mellody thinks are violations and abuse. And disrespect for the child as person, a disbelief and distrust in its wishes and strivings. Mellody calls this “excessive control of reality” (my translation from Swedish).

And this is also abusive adults between and seldom leads to anything constructive (if it ever leads to something constructive)!? How do one meet:

“You are!!”

With:

“No, I am not!!”

How does one prove neither the first nor the second?

Projections has to be worked out in some way? And they aren’t (are they) by saying

“You are!!”

But it’s very tempting to use these words sometimes?? And where are the limits for when it's no idea to go on trying???

Using these words, is that to take responsibility for oneself? And to say things like that one need to be very self-aware?? Knowing what is about oneself and what is about the other part. But this is tricky! Is the alternative entire solitude??

How would the best way be to communicate? Taking responsibility for what we say, do, how we behave? We will probably go on making bigger and smaller mistakes with all what follows, but we can try to communicate???

No wonder there are wars in this world? But from where does this enormous rage and fury come where you are capable of killing, not only verbally but also literally? Did he child once experience its fathers outbursts as threats for life??

And both parts probably have to want to develop, and care about the relation? And this isn’t always the case? Thinking loudly here... Wondering, thinking (WHAT?? "Thinking!!!??" If one is emotional than one is too emotional and not thinking?? And when one is thinking, one is thinking too much and maybe also insensitive. Yes, it's that too: "You shall not think so much!!" that is also an expression of "excessive control of reality"?), not trying to write a hand-book...

Jenson writes something: from where does all the… in the world come? All needs for mood-rising medication? It’s obvious that there is something lacking? Is it the child’s….?

Mellody speaks about other emotional violations, as demands on perfectionism, neglect, abandonment (both emotionally as physically) etc too, and she is one of those who have pointed out that there exist emotional abuse and disrespect too.

Easer said than done all this!?? With all we probably have in our back-packs??

We can and maybe should communicate how we feel, react etc. And ask

“What did you mean? I reacted in this and this way! It felt...”

or I don't know. Think if there existed a hand-book in this!!??

See Bosch on boundary violations and a posting under the label integrity violations.

From an earlier posting:

"I came to think of the Norwegian doctor Anna-Luise Kirkengen and that she has written about boundary-violations and their effects (if not immediately so later), and the concept revictimization.

There were several references to boundary-violations in her book “Inscribed bodies”, and in the first the concept bio-medicine was mentioned too.

At page 2-4 she writes (my italics):

“Those human conditions which are embedded in interpersonal relations, societal values, and culturally constituted meaning, are, through the very logic of biomedical theory, made invisible. The logic of the dominant methodology also renders them incomprehensible. Finally, they are deemed ignorable or irrelevant since values and meaning are non-issues according to objective science. The result is that the power implicit in social rank and the humiliations of human beings due to abuses of power are turned into non-medical logics, making medicine, inevitably blind to the adverse effects which abuse has on human health [the results of abuse isn’t ‘only’ psychological ill-health to different degrees!]. This becomes even more the case whenever the practice of such abuse is either societally legitimized or culturally taboo./…/

As medicine is a respected societal institution, and in its guise as a science, the normative character of biomedical epistemology accrues crucial influence. It effects central decisions with regard to what is, and what is not, to be considered relevant in drawing medical conclusions. Purporting to apply objective scientific knowledge while actually applying societal norms, medicine as a practice maintains the mandate to define the categories of ill health and malfunctions. By defining these categories, medicine has the right to include any conditions which meet the categorical criteria. Thus, according to the rules of formal logic, medicine also has the power to exclude those conditions which fail to meet those criteria. This distinction between ‘proper’ and ‘improper’ states or conditions plays a role in every medical decision. The norms of biomedicine are embedded in the practice of any medical examination and treatment, and affect every living person who addresses a medical institution in the role of a sick patient. Through application of these norms, distinguishing the ‘proper’ from the ‘improper’ within a formalized societal context, medicine has the power to stigmatize people who ask for help for ‘improper’ conditions. While acting in the name of giving help, medicine may, in fact, violate a person’s dignity. But even those who present apparently ‘proper’ conditions may risk stigmatization if presumably appropriate medical interventions prove ineffective. According to objectifying medical theory, such measures ought to result I a predictable outcome. If they consistently do not, the most probable question is not, ‘what is wrong with medical judgment and medical theory?’ but rather ‘what s wrong with this patient?’ Failures stemming from the foundations of professional judgment, namely medical knowledge acquired by applying rules requiring objectivity, are more likely to be attributed to those whose conditions fails to improve. In other words: Medical norms exclude, marginalize and then stigmatize.”

Side-track: is this the case even more today, with doctors’ limited time with each patient?

And in school: shouldn’t we all try to improve the school in general, together, isn’t this our common concern?"

Here a sender-in in a newspaper here in Sweden on ”Abuse, a tool legitimized by the goal?”