I am reading a great novel called A Soft Place to Land by Susan Rebecca White. A passage from this book made me think about my recounting of my experiences with S & L, my most sadistic abusers. In this passage, Julia is writing about her “evil stepmother” Peggy, who was emotionally abusive:
… Peggy, who shall from here on be known as my mortal enemy. (Ah, but I can just hear my favorite writing teacher tsk-tsking now. I must evoke sympathy for poor Peggy! I must make her real for the reader, and therefore lift her out of the one-dimensional role I have cast her in as “the villain.” I must give you reasons for understanding why she came to be the way that she is. Well. I will have to receive an F in character development. I have nothing nice to say about my stepmother.) pp. 188-189
I feel the same way about S & L. That is not to say that they were not three-dimensional, only that I did not see other sides of them. Even when they were not being cruel, their actions came across as staged. I felt no warmth from them, and I saw no redeeming qualities.
I would guess that they both suffered as children, too. I suspect they were both raised in families that practiced ritual abuse and that they knew great pain as children. Whether or not this is true, they showed me none of this vulnerability. By the time they entered my life, they treated me like an object to be used and abused to meet their sick desires, not as a child who just wanted to be loved.
Like Julia in the novel, I am unable to see any other side to these people. In my eyes, they are monsters and not people. Unfortunately, there is a huge downside to seeing an abuser as a one-dimensional monster. This actually makes the abuser seem more daunting. It is a much scarier idea to take on a monster than it is to take on a flawed human being.
The truth is that all human beings are flawed and have weaknesses. Our abusers are no exceptions. As helpless children, we frequently only saw one side of our abusers, and we might have taken away that they were all-powerful monsters. We need to reach a place of removing our misperception of our abusers having “godlike” powers and reduce them to what they really were – pathetic flawed human beings. Flawed human beings are much easier to beat.
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Good point, and I agree with it mostly, but I’m not sure it’s that black and white.. Also, children are very instinctual and pure in their feeling, thoughts and processes. Just because they didn’t have fangs and claws doesn’t mean they are not monsters.
But true sociopaths are both. Flawed humans and monsters. They have no real caring in them. They’ve cut it off or it’s been cut off for them. Some learn to fake human emotions and go by the rules when they are forced to, so as not to be noticed. They don’t want help or care to get any. They just want to keep acting out their sick fantasies till they die or are stopped.
That is not only a flawed human, it’s a monstrously damaged one. I find that scary as hell. All at the same time, I see where you are coming from. I’m stuck in the middle I guess.
I think it is a process, and you have to feel what you feel till it is time to go onto the next perspective. If a person starts out with compassion it is hard to feel the justified anger of realizing one has been abused. I think that a person has to have their anger, even their rage to show they have dignity as a person and realized they were treated in a way they should never have been treated. But when that stage is over, there is room for compassion at the level of at least realizing the person is human. It seems like in these extreme cases though the compassion is not for the benefit of the abuser, but to free oneself from the fear.
I believe that once we see the abusers as just flawed human beings, we can get angry. Anger helps us move forward thru the pain. Great post and wonderful opinions!
I can have compassion for those that have traumatized. I can have sympathy. I can not have empathy.
I have no compassion for that that are currently traumatizing, no sympathy and certainily no empathy.
Some that are abused become abusers. Most do not. “Abusers become abusers” is the psychopath’s way of pretending they are like everyone else.
Psychopaths are not as easy to spot as most people believe. It is intrinsic that a psychopath is not easily spotted.
I have a broad definition of what a psychopath is. I consider Clinton and Nixon both exposed psychopaths.
Human yes. Human like me NO.
I agree that we need to reduce the power that the abusers have had over us mentally…and to see them from our adult perspective, not the perspective of a child…
But…and this is a big but….to always remember that they lack some very important things that make humans more than just animals. A moral conscience and personal integrity. Martha Stout, in her book The Sociopath Next Door calls this lack the biggest dividing line among human beings and states that roughly 20% of the population is deficient in this area (to varying degrees,)
In my own life, misplaced compassion for and trying to understand my abusers derailed my own healing for many years. It’s one thing to see and understand the life circumstances that contributed to them becoming what they are, as long as that doesn’t translate into excuse making and enabling (as it many times does) I find it interesting that the most heinous offenders style themselves as the victim, especially when they are caught. As M. Scott Peck says, they are the people of the lie.
While seeing abusers as monsters with god-like powers keeps us frightened, seeing them as “flawed human beings” downplays the abuse too much for me. People who willfully choose to do evil, heinous, horrible things to small and helpless children over and over and over again, are beyond “flawed”. They may look human, but the lack of a conscience, the lack of responsibility for their crimes, the lack of remorse, and the deliberate aligning with evil, makes them less than human, in my opinion.
Kate, you made me think of a very important distinction that in this discussion so far I think was not clarified…
The definition of monster. I think we all have our own versions of what that means… my version of “the monster” label, is not a creature with superhuman powers, as a child would think of… I am thinking of somebody who can’t be reasoned with and who’s emotions cannot be their guide, because they are disconnected from them or are only connected to the dark ones. (like you point out)
This disconnection is what makes them dangerous to me. Not necessarily powerful in superhuman ways, but they don’t live by the same rules as connected people do… I believe that they don’t have the same self preservation instincts that the rest of us do, and therefore have much less to loose… and when victims try to reason with them or somehow continue to try to reconcile the love that they did not get from them… it is dangerous to their psyches. does that make sense?
I think even non victims need to be wary of them!
Everyone,
This is such a great discussion! You have taken this discussion to deeper places than I thought about when I wrote this. Thank you! :0)
Please feel free to continue the discussion. I just wanted to pop in and say thanks. :0)
- Faith
[...] July 6, 2010 Filed under: Challenges — faithallen @ 6:03 am Yesterday, I wrote about the one-dimensional child abuser. I talked about how there is a danger in seeing your abuser in a one-dimensional way because you [...]