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Posts Tagged ‘alice miller’

Absolutely not.  Since they can’t be cured or psychologically changed, group therapy only teaches them how to pass more successfully.  It teaches them to become even more skillful wolves among the sheep.

Further, any therapist who believes they should is not actually a therapist at all, and should, in my opinion, lose their license.  Therapy only works through the therapist witnessing for the client’s unconscious (or soul or psyche) the client’s soul wounds.  The client may divulge to the therapist soul truths they can’t divulge to themselves, as the client journeys to reintegrate the alienated self.  Basically this is the Alice Miller methodology.  But it was ever thus, she is just one of the few to try to write it down.  The only therapists who are useful are the ones who’s subconscious can sense the needs of their clients’ subconscious and mirror them.  If the soul defect of the sociopath/psychopath is not apparent to the therapist, that person is a therapist in name only.

Being psychopaths, the normal psychopathic shenanigans will take place in the group.  Extremely manipulative the psychopath may essentially take over the group process without the enabling therapist’s even being aware of what is happening.  Or the psychopath may be driven by arrogance to prove his superiority over and over again.  There’s a well-known story of a psychopathic client bragging to the group of seducing both the therapist’s wife and girlfriend, all the while with the therapist sitting there attempting to keep his best therapist face on.  To put it bluntly, any therapist who allows a psychopath in group therapy with non-psychopaths is stupid and/or incompetent.

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Dr. Gabor Maté on ADHD, Bullying and the Destruction of American Childhood

The bully is just a kid who is emotionally very immature, has a desperate need to belong, and the way he attempts to do so is by exploiting somebody else’s vulnerability. But these are not deliberate behaviors, so they don’t call for punishments. What they call for is the understanding of where bullying arises out of.  http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/24/dr_gabor_mat_on_adhd_bullying

I simultaneously thought his comments were both excellent and deeply flawed.

He is totally unaware of or disbelieving in sociopathy (as a genetic, dichotomous form of humanity).  He very well lays out how empathy can be destroyed, how faux sociopaths can be created but doesn’t allow for the existence of those born without empathy or the possibility of developing it.  True sociopaths lead, set the bar, set the example for the faux sociopaths.  Bullying and other morally corrupt/damaged empathy social problems have two aspects — but the sociopathic side is totally ignored.

We need some high profile humanists to publicly recognize the problem of sociopathy, to say that we simply aren’t all brothers and sisters under the skin.  I used to read Alice Miller, Robert Bradshaw, etc.  They neither ever mentioned sociopathy, nor seemed to feel there was some motivation, some force in the tragedies of their patients and subjects that they couldn’t account for.  Though looking back I definitely see psychopathic individuals described in their writings.

On one hand Gabor Mate is a very deep thinker, on the other hand what he says is common sense.  Why has this common sense been so ignored or even smashed in our era?  Enlightened, deeply humanistic common sense has lost out to a sociopathic simple-mindedness, greed and ego-driven self-serving lack of understanding of others.  Surely he sees that, yet he can’t see that true sociopaths are the cause of his own defeat.  Preaching love to the loveless is a losing strategy.

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For those unfamiliar with her or her thinking I’ve summarized her thinking in two sentences (as I understand it, or perhaps just the area of interest to myself).  First, individuals when they become parents, all too often, seek to answer their own psychological neediness by “feeding” off the child, rather than answering the child’s own psychological needs — this pattern can last for generation upon generation.  Secondly, children only know they are entitled to their emotions if an adult mirrors these emotions.  I believe these two ideas to be extremely powerful.  The first one shows a way out from the phenomenon of generations of dysfunctional families.  The second promises the possibility of training “witness for soul” therapists as opposed to the hit or miss current system, in which capable therapists are essentially individual accidents.

Dear Alice Miller,

Some ten years back, I read and studied quite a number of your works.  Since that time I have, on my own, studied, thought and written about sociopaths.  I don’t recall much mention of sociopaths in your works but I don’t expect you to believe they are born, not made.  However, I don’t actually know that, this is just a surmise.  I’m very curious to know your view of sociopathy, if you have a chance to answer this.

I don’t see a contradiction between your thinking and the existence of genetic sociopaths.  Quoting my blog, “When one considers all the seemingly conscienceless and subtracts the attachment disordered, the narcissistically rigid, and the hideously abused and needy, there is still a core of the emotionally/morally colorblind, a.k.a. the Cleckley sociopath (from Cleckley’s Mask of Sanity), a.k.a., the Charlie Carewe sociopath (from the actress Mary Astor’s The Incredible Charlie Carewe).” https://pathwhisperer.wordpress.com/past-notes/.

I, and others, see sociopaths as developmentally arrested psychologically — but up through puberty they go through most of the same psychological developmental stages.  So following this line of thought, I would say that Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer were serial killers due to psychological abuse, their sociopathy simply made them extremely skillful at it.  Unclaimed and left in the hospital, as I recall from their bios, they screamed for their primal birthright, loving maternal attention, until their tear ducts dried and their psyches came to realize that help was not on the way.  This vast, unplacated, infantile rage then went subterranean to reappear again and again throughout life but now with an adult’s capabilities and, in their cases, a sociopath’s talents.

Perhaps you would be interested in my posts on incest, I believe I have adopted your view of psychological cause and effect:  https://pathwhisperer.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/incest-dad-represents-self-in-court-cross-examines-daughter/ & https://pathwhisperer.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/post-redux-josef-fritzl-and-reflections-on-incest-52308/.

I look forward to your reply.

Thank you,

The Path Whisperer

For more information on Alice Miller and her writings:  http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_3_12?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=alice+miller+prisoners+of+childhood&sprefix=alice+miller&sprefix=alice+miller&sprefix=alice+miller&sprefix=alice+miller, http://www.alice-miller.com/index_en.php.

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Rabbi Israel Weingarten cross-examines daughter at molest trial

A rabbi charged with molesting his daughter subjected her to hours of cringe-worthy cross-examination Tuesday in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Israel Weingarten, 59, who chose to represent himself against charges that could send him to prison for 20 years, rambled on all afternoon as his daughter looked away, wiped tears and struggled to understand what he was asking.

“Do I have to answer?” the now-27-year-old asked Judge John Gleeson in a trembling voice before gathering the strength to shoot back when asked why she didn’t complain sooner.

“My feeling of your molesting me was at most fear and blackmail and years of torture,” she said, eyes widening as she wiped tears off her cheeks. “Fear because you hurt me because I told my mother. Didn’t I get hit enough?”

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/03/2009-03-03_rabbi_israel_weingarten_crossexamines_da.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Israel+Weingarten

Father Charged With Murder, Rape, Incest Arraigned

Cass County prosecutors on Friday announced charges against a man for allegedly raping his teenage daughter and killing at least one of the babies.

Danial M. Rinehart, 47, was charged with one count of second-degree murder, endangering the welfare of a child, statutory rape, two counts of incest and two counts of abandonment of a corpse.

Authorities allege Rineha More..rt fathered four children with his then 13-year-old daughter. The girl is now 19. Only one of the girl’s children is alive — a 3-year-old who is now in custody of the state.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=113_1232832702

Possible sociopathic elements of the above stories

Depravity of both crimes and/or situation, though to sociopaths incest is the equivalent of the sex games of childhood, though with dominance and orgasms added.

Rabbi Weingarten representing himself.  Their ego seems to drive them to testify or even represent themselves in court and it seems they can’t imagine losing.  I would say their optimism is often pathological.

A strangeness in reasoning.  After his wife testifies of her discovery of the incest, Weingarten “complained to Judge John Gleeson that the translator misunderstood Faige’s answer about his father’s ailing health at the time of the alleged sexual abuse.  Gleeson was incredulous. “And you think that was the important part?” he shot back.”  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/05/2009-03-05_exwife_rabbi_israel_weingarten_halfnude_.html It seems that since the crime is of no real significance to them, they can’t sort out what’s truly significant or not.

Israel Weingarten is a rabbi.  The clergy, of all faiths, are an excellent hideout for those who excel at being wolves among sheep.

Danial Rinehart seemed to live as a drifter and freeloader.  His mother:  “Dolores Rinehart described her son as a drifter.  “They’ve been on the run. Dan’s run from Social Security — Dan’s run from everything,” she said. “He didn’t want to work.””

Reflections on incest

Incest varies from rape to seduction, usually closer to seduction.  It is after all using the human body to be close to another that one wants very much to be close to and using the body in ways that it is designed to be close to another.  In a way, the young women in these cases are better off due to the crude and obvious criminal nature of their fathers’ actions — the evil of the vampire father is obvious and the element of self betrayal is nearly absent.  The element of self betrayal and the horribly conflicted emotions are what cause such psychic damage in incest situations, in my opinion.  A father who portrays the seduction of his daughter(s) as being “one of those wrong things that people just do” can be even more damaging to a daughter’s psyche than an incest closer to rape.

The focus on preventing incest must rest on appealing to the fathers, in my opinion.  No daughter can resist a father so inclined, the situation is too close to the normal and healthy “family romance” or so I’ve heard from incest victims and reports from incest group therapy.  Furthermore, incest is not going to occur in a healthy family with a healthy marriage so relying on the mother to protect the daughters is problematical.  For example, an abused wife who cannot protect herself certainly cannot protect the daughter.  Or a woman in a long marriage to a sociopath has had her own personality degraded.  Or the incest occurs at the same point where the wife feels she may be losing her sexual allure.  If the father’s sexual charge from the incest rebounds in the marriage the wife may be even more reluctant to peer behind closed doors.  The “club-over-the-head” to prevent incest by both sociopathic and nonsociopathic fathers must be the fear of discovery and subsequent destruction of reputation of the fathers in my opinion.  Cases such as these should receive prominent coverage.

[March 13 edit] Father too close to daughter is one of the searches that found this post.  Basically I’d say believe the hairs at the back of your neck.  If a situation feels wrong, say the observed physical contact, it probably is.  A family is such an inviolable unit that it is very hard for an outsider to have much influence and a “doting parent” is considered fine and acceptable.

Assuming the search was written by a mother I’d suggest paying a lot of attention to nonverbal cues.  For example, before normal accompanied errands or ferrying the child back and forth from activities (particularly at night), do the child and the father show a heightened state of excitedness?  If you insert yourself in such a trip is there a sudden change in mood or sudden irritability?  The same question if you arrange for the child and father never to be alone?  Does the father become and stay angry?

If the situation is as you fear, do not enter into a situation of “living with craziness,” which is sadly too easy to allow to happen.  Both of the mothers in the above news stories did, though fortunately Faige Weingarten is supporting her daughter now.  A child only knows that they are entitled to their emotions if an adult mirrors them (read Alice Miller, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_3_12?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=alice+miller+prisoners+of+childhood&sprefix=alice+miller&sprefix=alice+miller&sprefix=alice+miller&sprefix=alice+miller).  The father has to be brought to justice to protect the child, even though this will mean destroying the facade of the  family (the family is actually already destroyed by the father’s actions).  Failure to do so will leave the child prey to evil manipulations throughout the child’s life.

Incest children (boys also, but most comments here are geared toward girls) grow up with an inability to judge trustworthiness in their relationships — both male and female relationships.  They’ll be taken advantage of over and over again, often by fake female friends.  Girls will sometimes go into prostitution — ‘Nothing wrong with my Dad.  See it’s just like shaking hands,’ and they will effectively Lucia di Lammermoor themselves (drive themselves insane by having sex against the wishes of the soul, effectively taking part in their own rape).  Or an incest victim/participant may go narcissistic — making the calculation that ‘If I didn’t have any emotions, I wouldn’t feel the shame’ and accept only the will and mind as being of the self, emotions then being split off as a manipulation from outside.

(Narcissism is a huge topic I should explore further.  In brief, rigid narcissism is frequently confused with sociopathy.  Both live in a universe of one, are incredibly selfish, have no concern for others’ feelings and can end relationships/marriages as though turning a page in a book.  However, narcissists actually have deep emotions and a soul, they just deny them — sociopaths have neither.  Narcissism is a deep psychological choice, sociopathy is genetically determined.)

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