Punishments and punishments....

a cute woodchuck trying to reach a fruit in a fruit tree
(photo: Steve Thomas).

[Updated during the day]. During my shower I came to think: we have a ban on corporal punishment in Sweden since 30 years. And I think that’s a right thing to have. Because it at least gives signals to children that spanking is forbidden.

But along with that it ought to be information about what spankings causes. Not only what they CAN cause, but what they actually cause. Because they are always damaging. Even though the damage can become softened by an enlightened witness, to the point that the beaten child as grown up doesn’t direct his anger at other people, but on her/himself? The effects ought to become investigated more…

I also came to think, when I went on drying my hair after the shower, that children not only need to get their physical needs met, such as with shelter, food, clean clothes and environment, but also - and not least – when it comes to emotional needs. They need to get their emotional needs met too! And not least, to be able to live as functionally as possible. As fulfilled and real and genuine as possible.

You can punish a child emotionally too with a lot of means, and these sorts of punishments are too belittled and minimized. And maybe they are even more important to meet, than if the child doesn’t have to starve or have clothes that aren’t clean and these sorts of things??

Some loud thinking in the midst of preparing myself for a long working day.

Thinking further on emotional abuse/punishment on the bike to work and from it to lunch: to surround a child with silence, laugh at it, belittle its feelings and reactions, what it says and expresses, how it says things and expresses things…

Miller writes about a wall of silence... And what it actually does in and to a child. That it's so extremely painful so the child has to suppress the feeling entirely, and thus have no connection with it later, and don't really understand what she/h is doing in turn, to a child or a person in her/his power.

But after all, it's different when we experience this wall of silence as children compared to as adults. In the first case we have no options, no choices. We cant leave the relation or divorce, but as adults we can usually escape the situation or react in some way. Except for in a therapy or therapy-like situation, when we maybe have landed in a childlike state, i.e. regressed to some degree (more or less).

Dependent on how harmed we were when we came to that therapy or how much we have processed early experiences or not we can handle a latter wall of silence. Condemn it if it's justified, and not stay in a bad relation. Not being incapable of leaving, and/or blaming ourselves for the bad treatment. That about an open, genuine, real communication!

And then I am back to decent treatments of people on a list for those harmed early in life, and abuse of power from a moderator and what it can cause...

More about manipulation in therapy…

[Updated April 11 with a translation to Swedish of the first quotation] I have been tipped long ago about the book ”Gaslighting: The Double Whammy, Interrogation and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psychotherapy & Analysis” by Theo L. Dorpat. It stands about it:

“In treatment, the psychotherapist is in a position of power. Often, this power is unintentionally abused. While trying to embody a compassionate concern for patients, therapists use accepted techniques that can inadvertently lead to control, indoctrination, and therapeutic failure. Contrary to the stated tradition and values of psychotherapy, they subtly coerce patients rather than respect and genuinely help them.

The more gross kinds of patient abuse, deliberate ones such as sexual and financial exploitation, are expressly forbidden by professional organizations [but they occur nevertheless]. However, there are no regulations discouraging the more covert [hemliga, dolda] forms of manipulation, which are not even considered exploitative by many clinicians. In this book, noted psychiatrist Theo. L. Dorpat strongly disagrees [with that they aren't exploitative, which he thinks they are?]. Using a contemporary interactional perspective, Dorpat demonstrates the destructive potential of manipulation and indoctrination in treatment.”

Also see Dorpat's new book “Wounded Monster – Hitler’s Path from Trauma to Malevolence” which sounds interesting:

”Few authors who have written about Hitler have understood the deeply damaging effects of psychic trauma on his private life and the way he functioned in the public sphere. Nearly all major biographers have neglected the importance of Hitler's childhood trauma and his later combat trauma during World War I. In Wounded Monster, Dorpat demonstrates how extreme emotional and physical abuse from his father, and his unusually long combat service during the Great War became the most formative influences of his life, resulting in severe, life-long, psychiatric disorders, including Borderline Personality Disorder and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. It is the first book to apply contemporary trauma theory to explain Hitler's malevolence [elakhet, illvilja].

This psychiatric biography of Hitler is the only work to discuss the central importance of his vulnerability to shame emotions, as well as the trauma-induced construction of an extensive repertoire of mainly unconscious mechanisms (including fight and flight) for the avoidance of feelings of shame.”

See earlier postings on Adolf Hitler, Jonathan Pincus on Hitler and Hatred, earlier posting on "Hat..." (the first part in Swedish, the second in English), a posting about bigotry, all postings on therapy abuse so far.

From bike ride this morning (see my on line photo album).

Addition April 11: See the site "Verbal and Emotional Abuse in Therapy." Translation of the first quotation above:

“I behandling är psykoterapeuten i en maktposition. Ofta missbrukas denna oavsiktligt. Medan terapeuter försöker förkroppsliga ett medkännande bekymmer för patienter [vara medkännande), använder de accepterade tekniker som oavsiktligt keder till kontroll, indoktrinering och terapeutiskt misslyckande [bristfällig terapi]. Tvärtemot den tradition och de värderingar som uppges eller läggs fram i psykoterapi, tvingar de [dock] patienter subtilt snarare än att respektera och genuint hjälpa dem.

De grövre överlagda, avsiktliga formerna av missbruk av patienter, som sexuellt och finansiellt utnyttjande, är uttryckligen förbjudna av yrkesorganisationer/fackorganisationer [men de förekommer ändå och kanske oftare än vi tror?]. Men det finns dock ingen reglering som avskräcker/hindrar de mer dolda, hemliga formerna av manipulation, vilka inte ens ses som utnyttjande eller exploatering av många kliniker [kliniskt praktiserande]. I sin bok är Theo L. Dorpat starkt oense med detta [med att de inte är utnyttjande, exploaterande, vilket han tycker att de är?]. Genom att använda samtidiga växelverkande perspektiv, visar Dorpat den destruktiva potentialen i manipulation och indoktrinering i [mången] behandling.”

Helga - part 5...

...My experiences the last years have also taught me that one can (only) master the results from childhood traumas if one can remove the actual trauma. As you have proved, these consequences consist of blockading due to fear, dumbness, and dispiritedness.

I agree with you, that if the grown up human being gets over this fear she will not have to go back to the old helplessness, despair and dumbness. The child’s impotent anger probably only arises if the grown up voluntarily puts herself into such a dependency as the one she was forced to live in in childhood. As in your childhood this path was barred for you. Regressed to a small child’s state you couldn’t possibly see that your tears were made an affair of and profited on.

It has been proved since long that one best gets over a shock if one doesn’t try to forget it, which one thought earlier, but instead that one feels what has been done to one and that one talk about this till the shock at last loses its meaning. Silence is exposed people’s biggest enemy.

It was no coincidence that Freud experienced his first hysteric patients’ paralysis symptoms as expressions for this forced silence. Women often express their states through bodily symptoms, through paralysis’s and language disturbances.

“I have to keep quiet, I have no permission showing my anger, not even to knowing what and whom it is about, must believe what I am told, mustn’t betray anybody, must remain immovable till the anger kills me.”

I know of women who have become bodily ill because they didn’t have the power to work themselves up to an accusation for sexual abuse in therapies

The fear of talking is so stubborn because its roots lies in childhood. But you can’t get over it there, but only in the here and now. If you have been exposed to abuse in the here and now, in therapy or in other circumstances, you can’t solve it there and then (i.e. in your childhood) and only blame your parents and not the perpetrators/abusers here and now. This is to cover the present reality up.

To break the silence was in fact life-threatening for many children. For grown ups this is true only in totalitarian regimes, and to them many sects belong. They are built on the old educational system, which people enlisted to them are all too well acquainted with from their childhoods.

Even many therapies are leaning on this system. The therapist (and other gurus) interprets critics from his patients as transference and in this way he disconnects them (this critic) from the first beginning. The patients’ perceptions becomes manipulated to that degree that they don’t dare to believe in their own senses any more, but develop real agony for them.

These mental manipulations can get a devastating effect on the psyche, but doesn’t necessarily have to affect the body at once.

However, there are other tools, the emotional manipulation, which unlike the mental rapidly affects the body.

In my view many healing movements are grounded on this. There are people with a so called charisma; to them many shamans belong, who have a talent for emotional manipulations.

Many of them uses this for others best, many on others misfortune, all due to their own ethical principles and interests. They chose a destructive career if the charisma is combined with a strong need for self-assertion and a psychopathic character. Both these things seem to be true for your therapist. And unfortunately not only for him.

Of course there are serious therapists who now as earlier carefully are revealing the sore points and by this make integration possible for their clients.

But there are more and more charlatans trying to earn money on regression. But the initial euphoria from the wizard’s apprentices seldom remains a longer time. With time troublesome transferences and co-transferences occur, which the self-proclaimed therapist has never learned to deal with.

Then he can rule over his clients with the help of indoctrination and manipulation, which can be successful for a while, and the sexual exploitation can help him to sweep undesired crisis’s and serious distress-situations under the rug.

What you have learned through your personal experiences I have learned through books and from my work with defectors from sects. Our conclusions seem to be pretty alike. We will probably have much to say about this when we meet. I am so glad for that and am looking forward to it.

I wish you all the best, Helga, enjoy the freedom you have fought (and struggled) yourself to.