Visar inlägg med etikett not blaming the parents. Visa alla inlägg
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10/05/2008

Jean Jenson om att känna sig som ett offer…


Förbudet att känna sig som ett offer är i högsta grad moraliserande!!? Jag reagerar starkt när jag får höra någon uppmuntra en annan att inte känna sig som ett offer, å dens vägnar som inte får känna det hon/han känner!


Se t.ex. tidigare inlägg om offerklandring som maktutövning? Ja, det är faktiskt också ett maktövergrepp om en terapeut säger till sin klient att denna inte får eller bör känna sig som ett offer. Denna terapeut missbrukar sin makt? "Blaming the victim it's all about power..."


Den amerikanska terapeuten Jean Jenson (nu helt eller delvis pensionerad) skriver om detta på sidorna 178-179 i sin bok ”Att återerövra sitt liv”.


En vän skrev ett mejl för några dagar sedan om detta och jag har gått och grunnat på detta tillsammans med en massa andra saker.


I Jensons bok står det:

”Ett annat negativt fenomen, som kanske också beror på tolvstegsprogrammens inflytande, är att många människor /…/ får höra att de ska akta sig för att känna sig som ett offer. Vissa menar att ’offerkänslan’ är en karaktärsbrist som måste övervinnas [i AA-rörelsen fall med hjälp av en högre makt!].”

Vissa hävdar dessutom att var och en ”väljer” våra kränkande föräldrar så att vi ska kunna få den erfarenhet vi behöver i detta liv för att ”växa”, vilket ju är en annan aspekt av den andliga inställningen.


Jenson menar att båda dessa synsätt är felaktiga i två avseenden.


1/För det första har man inte förstått att situationer kan ha symboliska aspekter, dvs. då sker automatisk växling över till ett medvetandetillstånd från barndomen och detta tillstånd kan vi inte påverka med viljan. Vi bara reagerar automatiskt på saker. Vilket inte innebär att vi inte har ansvar för våra handlingar eller vad vi säger. Eller att man kan bortförklara reaktioner med att de inte har med verkligheten här och nu att göra.


2/För det andra kan denna uppmaning att inte känna oss som offer vara (eller bli) en indirekt uppmaning att inte klandra våra föräldrar. Och detta stör vår förmåga att bearbeta det vi varit med om och vår förmåga att få kontakt med känslor som hade varit adekvata som reaktion på det vi upplevt (på faktiska förhållanden i vår levnadshistoria), men inte fick uttryckas då kanske alls eller bara delvis.


Det är faktiskt så att kränkta barn är offer och Jenson menar att när vi är i detta barndomstillstånd så måste vi, i våra känslor, kunna och få vara de offer vi en gång var. Hon menar att under påverkan (indirekt och kanske omedveten, men därför inte ursäktlig) av att föräldrarna inte får klandras (och det är faktiskt detta det handlar om när vi inte får känna oss som offer??) går väsentlig information förlorad.


Och till råga på allt kan följden bli att människor som försöker läka sina sår från barndomen mycket väl kan komma att utöka sin lista av problem med självkritik och skam. För arbete med bardomens smärta kommer ofrånkomligen att få oss att känna oss som offer menar hon.Och det är ju ett stort problem: att de som utsatts för övergrepp känner skam och tror att de var värda det som skedde och därför håller tyst, för att de skäms över det utsatts för.


Hon menar också att terapeuter borde hjälpa sina klienter att förstå att det är det barn som de var som är offret och att det nu är den vuxne som måste ta ansvar för läkningen.

”Önskan om rättvisa eller gottgörelse [från eller visavi föräldrar] måste bytas ut mot upplevelsen av att förlusten är verklig och sorgen smärtsam. Människor som känner sig som offer kan få stöd att ge upp denna identitet om de får hjälp att förstå att de faktiskt har rätt att ha dessa känslor – när det gäller det förflutna.”

Ja, det kan lätt bli en massa moraliserande!!! Och det gäller att passa sig för det.


Jag vill också tillägga att man nog ska vara försiktig med regressiva metoder... Det var en kvinna i ett forum som undrade över metoder över huvudtaget (i detta fall angående, ganska berättigad, kritik av metoden IFS - Internal Family Systems):

"Varför behöver man metoder för att bry sig om någon?"
Och det ligger ganska mycket i det!?

9/24/2008

Spankings, blaming co-victim, power abuse…


Some loud thinking, after a really hectic month:

Struck me about blaming the big sister (or big brother) for things that have gone wrong, for needs that haven’t been fulfilled… Is this exactly as it has always been: the big sister (brother) has had to take what should have been directed towards the parents???

And if the big sister or brother has done something she/he is maybe to blame. But shouldn’t the parents have protected the younger child, or been one to hear about abuse from and between siblings and been able of dealing with this??

And is it always the older sibling that is abusing younger?? Maybe older siblings need protection too!??? And I think Miller is right: if you blame scapegoats you won't recover. Only when you are capable of blaming the true perpetrators you will gradually recover. The unjustified anger is endless she writes (if I remember right). And I think that's true.

I thought further, on grown ups, in this case in a forum dealing with childhood issues. In a forum that seems to have the ambitions being a sort of replacement for therapy it seems today (and in the name of a well-known authority). Where the moderator only writes “Post was received” when she (he??) didn’t post a posting. No explanation whatsoever.

Isn’t this quite authoritarian (and totalitarian, as the moderator is the one in power)?

Of course if the subscriber had been repeatedly abusive and got this pointed out, and really being listened to and had gotten all opportunities to explain what she/he meant but continued being abusive, then I can understand that a moderator doesn’t think it’s any idea to explain anything.

But if the subscriber hasn’t been really met or listened to, and not been abusive till that point, I think such treatment from a moderator, especially on a list dealing with such things, is ABUSIVE! And can be very harmful!

What about talking as grown up to grown up?

7/07/2008

A frustrated therapist...

who went to monasteries - and why?

Read Alice Miller's conversation with a frustrated therapist here and here, about a small boy the therapist has as client/patient, beaten by his parents; thrashed so there are big red welts on his buttocks:

"...when he goes to other people, men, women teachers, parents, therapists, to try and get some help, some information, something of the truth to help him clear his confusion, the message he gets is that its his fault if his beatings upset him, its his fault because of the way he took his beatings, his parents are not to be blamed, its no-ones' fault, it was not wrong of them to beat him because the law allowed it. So he doesn't go to therapists any more. They just abuse him.

AM: Why don't you tell him that nobody has the right to hit and mistreat him and that you will talk to his parents and tell them that what they are doing is a crime. It is your duty to protect this boy from the lies he has been taught and to tell him the truth. Otherwise a so-called therapy is a farce.

JR: Oh, I tried that, believe me. They have full support in their abusive behaviour from his headmaster, his headmistress, all his teachers, the police, the vicar, the priest, the imam, the counsellor, and the doctor. They all assure his parents that their son is evil, it is a kindness to correct him. And then, there are all my professionalist colleagues who will insist, to his parents and to everyone else that it is not their job to say what is right or wrong, that people are entitled to their opinions, it is an issue of difference and that it might well be the way he has taken his beatings that is causing his problems. His parents feel very strongly that I am a commie beatnik and they did in fact threaten to call the police if I didn't quit their premises immediately."

6/23/2008

Summer reflections...

more pictures here.

Questioning and seeing things as wrong makes one less inclined to passing the same things forward. Realising that the treatment one received wasn’t deserved due to ones character.

A long time ago I had a piano-teacher who had severe problems with stage fright. So he started to study psychology on distance. He meant that bad self-confidence isn’t something inherited!

“I am that sort of person! That’s my character!”

The implications of that – which are they? There’s nothing I can do! I have to live with this! One push the responsibility away, doesn’t one? I can’t do anything! And adults between one perhaps can stand it? And help the other person overcoming this hopefully. But parent-child between how is this? Who has to take responsibility actually?

I am bad, wrong! I was and still am the guilty one for the bad treatment I received! I am to blame myself.

Oh, I get so tired.

What does this lead to??

There is a self-destructiveness I can get so furious at!!!

Totally paralyzed! Paralyzed by all guilt!

“To the ground bent!”
a mother used to say. The child(ren) felt extremely guilty!!?? Responsible! As if they should go in as counselors or therapists? And on top not add to that burdening!

I know of a girl, around 12 who had got measles. She got a slight ache in her joints (phalanxes) in connection with the disease. The girl was actually 13 because at this time we had switched from driving on the left side of the road to the right. Her mother should drive her to the nurse, and was so nervous so she almost drove in the ditch! So paralysed. So the child almost had to hold her mother’s hand, comforting and calming HER!!!

Addition in the evening: searching on the web I found this article “The Prize we pay for shaming little boys,” In this it stands for instance:

“Sulzer, in 1748, explains that humiliation of children is key to producing obedient citizens who are willing to submit to the laws and rules of reason once they are their own masters, since they are already accustomed not to act in accordance with their own will (Miller, 1990, p. 10). Dependence on authority plus the intense shaming of children produced the generation of Germans who obediently followed Hitler into the second World War and found their emotional release in carrying out its atrocities./…/

What surprised me most, though, was that the German people I have spoken with about this deliberate and immoral cruelty either do not know these facts or have only a hazy awareness of this period in German history. When I first attempted to discuss this with German colleagues and friends, I was bewildered by their reaction. These well educated and knowledgeable people knew nothing of these chapters in their own history. Generally, they expressed amazement, a hazy familiarity with the details or simply uncomfortable refusal to talk with me about what was clearly a forbidden subject./…/

The reluctance of Germans to ‘know about’ what was done to them after the fighting was over reminds me of those three little monkeys: See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil. In my twenty years as a psychotherapist treating survivors of childhood trauma, I am familiar with this tendency of those who were once helpless to minimize the impact abuse has had on their lives. It is the same with my abused clients who trivialize the beatings of their childhood, saying they deserved to be hit, that they were very bad children. People who have been traumatized tend to normalize their traumatic situations.

It is hard for humans to accept that they were powerless to protect themselves from deliberate mistreatment. They are much more likely to take the blame for having been abused. For example, people who have been sexually abused as children tend to blame themselves, at least unconsciously, for somehow causing the abuse by being too sexy or too bad. Part of therapy is to help them realistically assess what was done to them and to what degree they are responsible for the shame they feel. (Of course, children bear no actual responsibility for being abused.) A first step in healing, then, is to accept that you were hurt by the trauma./…/

How, Gilligan asks, can a person who does not experience any feelings himself know that others have feelings or be moved by the feelings of others./…/

Fathers' contempt for their sons produces men who believe they are worthless, who are hyper-vigilant to signs of disdain, who are defensively ready to attribute negative intent to others, and who find a quick fix for making themselves worthwhile by degrading those less powerful than themselves, such as their wives. They believe they can make themselves feel some worth by making someone else lower than themselves.

In Bierman's programme, therapeutic procedures based on Eugene Gendlin's Focusing enable the participants to work through their own remembered physical or emotional abuse. The men are encouraged to let their feelings happen, to resist telling themselves what they should feel and to stop judging their feelings. They are taught to quietly put their attention into the part of their body where they usually have their feelings. They are instructed to let go controlling and to simply follow what is happening inside. For most of us the physical sensation connected to a feeling occurs as a tight knot in the stomach, a choking in the throat or a heaviness in the chest. Bierman trains the men to pay attention to these physical body signals which provide a way into unconscious knowing (Gendlin, 1996)./…/

In the methods of schwarze pedagogik, the child never experiences hatred for the father. When it is not possible to admit and express hatred for a parent, the rage gets projected onto others. As with Ralph Bierman's battering men, those who are weak and vulnerable (the way the batterer was as a child) become targets for this pent up rage. The adult who is filled with rage and shame becomes the perpetrator making others feel the way he felt when he was helpless.

This shame/violence cycle clearly played itself out when Germans who had been traumatized in childhood took out their rage on Jews and others who reminded them of themselves when they were helpless children. They projected onto others all their own ‘bad’ qualities which they had never been able to accept in themselves. Jews became dirty, greedy schemers, plotting to overthrow the rightful authorities. Concentration camp guards had the perfect opportunity to restage their own childhood traumas. Prisoners were helpless to defend themselves or to escape.

Their captors, urged on by the state, indulged in humiliating defenseless Jews. In fact, every German's repetition compulsion seems to have found a place in the hierarchy of terror which characterized the Nazi period. Men who had once been shamed as children now had the opportunity to demand from others, the cadaver-like obedience their fathers had exacted. They, in turn, gave automatic, unthinking obedience to their masters in The Third Reich's hierarchy of terror./…/

This paper deals with shaming in the childhood of Germans. But this is not specifically a German problem. It is a problem throughout the world. It is my hope that once we better understand the underlying causes of violence, we will be able to find some solutions.

How do we protect little boys from being shamed and abused by their fathers? This is a generational problem. It is self-perpetuating. Men who have been abused and shamed by their fathers tend to shame and abuse their small boys. As a society, we must find ways of cutting into this cycle of abuse where fathers humiliate their boys and passive mothers stand by without interfering on behalf of the children. But before we will be able to do this, we will have to accept whatever we ourselves experienced as children, as well as the ways in which we act out of our own traumatic experience.”
See this with “Evilness and responsibility…”; how badly we even became treated this is no excuse for what we do, how we behave, “Evilness and violence…” and “Anger, outbursts…” And postings on the label manipulation.

6/07/2008

Can a pill make a murderer “safe”?

[Andra hälften av denna postning är på svenska, en översättning av den engelska texen]. Triggered by the previous posting, as a follow up: The American neurologist Jonathan Pincus writes in the chapter “Prevention and treatment” in his book “Base Instincts – What Makes Killers Kill?” at page 210:

”It is highly unlikely that any pill would ever make a murderer ‘safe.’ Certainly, no such transformation has been demonstrated to date. Treatment might lower the risk of violence in the predisposed, but will not eliminate it. I would strongly oppose the release of a murderer from prison based solely on an apparent successful medication regime. Nevertheless, drug treatments can be beneficial in the prison environment.

In my view, child abuse is the most important element in generating base instincts and the one that is most amenable to correction. The benefits to society of eliminating this cause of the impulse to act violently would be felt in lower rates of assault and murder and would break the devastating cycle of child abuse in succeeding generations. It might also decrease terrorist acts, dampen the will of citizens to fight aggressive wars, and reduce the number of hate crimes associated with racism.

Not less importantly, elimination of abuse would enable individuals to achieve their full potential. The brain of children would develop and grow unimpeded by the burden of the base instincts that abuse engenders. No longer victimized, they would be less likely to be perpetrators of violent crime and could enter the portals of normal society rather than the gates of prison.”

Pincus also writes (page 212) that when he examines the most violent serial killers he asks about things the patient did as a child that led to punishment. This approach is deliberately chosen because it puts the “blame” on the child as he writes. And here comes something interesting:

“Violent individuals have a strong bias toward preserving their good opinion of their parents and often do not wish to blame them for abuse or to characterize them as abusers.”

I will maybe write more about what Pincus writes about this topic later, what these killers actually consider as abuse and what can be signs in children of abuse.

And see once again what Miller said recently:

“Feeling and understanding the causes of our old pain does not mean that the pain and the anger will stay with us forever. Quite the opposite is true. The felt anger and pain disappear with time and enable us to love our children. It is the UNFELT, avoided and denied pain, stored up in our bodies, that drive us to repeat what have been done to us [and which gives us all sorts of troubles]." (Alice Miller in an answer to a reader’s letter May 24, 2008, relating to a talk between Andrew Vachss and Oprah Winfrey).

If they had been able to question and see as wrong what their parents did they wouldn't have committed those crimes, or a little less bad crimes? If they hadn't had to deny how wrong this was? And, mmm…, that about therapists preaching forgiveness and reconciliation... Seeing reconciliation as a/the goal in therapy. Even if the parents have sexually, physically and emotionally abused their child and not ever admitted to it or wanted to admit to it and ask forgiveness for it. Playing on the tendencies in the client to guilt and blaming her/himself. Awful!

Translated it would be (in my amateur-translation):

“Det är högst osannolikt att ett piller någonsin skulle göra en mördare ’säker.’ Någon sådan förvandling har till dags dato sannerligen ännu inte kunnat demonstreras. Behandling skulle kunna minska risken för våld i den predisponerade, men den kommer inte att eliminera den. Jag skulle starkt opponera mig mot frigivandet av en mördare från fängelse baserad enbart på en till synes lyckosam medicinering. Dock kan drogbehandling vara välgörande i fängelseomgivningen.

Enligt mitt sätt att se så är barnmisshandel det viktigaste elementet i genererandet av grundläggande instinkter och det som är mest mottagligt för att korrigeras. Fördelarna för samhället i att eliminera denna orsak till att agera våldsamt skulle märkas i lägre grader av överfall och mord och skulle bryta den ödeläggande cykeln av barnmisshandel i efterföljande generationer. Det skulle också kunna minska terroristaktioner, dämpa viljan hos medborgare att föra aggressiva krig och reducera antalet hatbrott associerade med rasism.

Inte minst viktigt, att eliminera barnmisshandel skulle sätta individer i stånd att uppnå sin fulla potential. Barns hjärnor skulle utvecklas och växa ohindrade av den börda av grundläggande instinkter som misshandel skapar. När de inte längre görs till offer skulle det vara mindre troligt att de skulle bli förövare av våldsbrott och de skulle kunna gå igenom portalen till ett normalt samhälle snarare än fängelseportarnas.”

Pincus skriver också att när han börjar att undersöka dessa de mest våldsamma seriemördarna i USA, så börjar han med att fråga vad för slags saker personen ifråga gjorde som ledde till bestraffningar. Detta angreppssätt lägger ”skulden” hos barnet skriver han och är avsiktligt valt. Och sedan kommer något mycket intressant:

”Våldsamma individer har en stark benägenhet [tendens mot] att bevara den goda åsikten om sina föräldrar och vill ofta inte klandra dem för misshandel/övergrepp eller karaktärisera dem som misshandlare.”
Om de inte hade måst förneka vad de blev utsatta för och att det inte fanns något som helst berättigande i det hade de aldrig begått de fruktansvärda brott de har begått.

Och det är det Miller skriver i ett svar till en av sina läsare i citatet ovan:

Att känna och förstå orsakerna till vår gamla smärta [och kanske att överhuvudtaget ha kontakt med den, vilket troligen dessa seriemördare inte har] betyder inte att smärtan och vreden kommer att stanna för evigt [något många, kanske de flesta terapeuter verkar vara rädda för och tror kommer att ske]. Motsatsen är faktiskt sann. Den vrede och smärta man känt/är i meveten kontakt med [kunnat känna, om inte förr så med hjälp av ett eller flera medkännande, upplysta vittnen] försvinner med tiden och gör oss förmögna att älska våra barn. Det är den smärta vi undvikit och förnekat, som lagrats i våra kroppar, som driver oss att upprepa vad som gjordes mot oss [och som ger oss en hel rad med problem, somliga är vi kanske inte ens medvetna om heller, för vi vet inte av något annat? Och vi kan gå miste om ganska mycket! På ett sätt som kan vara direkt tragiskt??].”
Alice Miller i ett svar på en läsares brev 24 maj, 2008, angående den amerikanske barnrättskämpen och advokaten Andrew Vachss hos Oprah 1993, där han reagerar över den försonlighet hon visar och visat mot dem som begått övergrepp mot henne som barn (vilket förmodigen dock appåderas av väldigt många i samhället, av vanligt folk men inte minst av s.k. "professionella" inom psykoterapi, psykologi och psykiatri!? Se länken "reconciliation is a good thing" ovan, vilket är en länk till "Jesper Juul svarer" i en norsk blogg).

Brevskrivaren skriver att det verkar som om Oprah tror att det gäller för henne/handlar om att "komma över" det som gjorts och förlåta sina förövare, hon tror att vrede är en dålig sak. Och detta ifrågasätter också Vachss ganska rejält och han går på Oprah rätt bra i deras samtal. BRA!!! Och brevskrivaren undrar vad Miller tycker och Miller håller med om att hon inte tror på Oprahs metod.

Och återigen se intervjun med Vachss "You carry the cure in your heart."