One of the most prevalent issues that brings people to psychotherapy is the problem of having been raised by abusive people. By 'abusive', I do not mean those who were stern, or remote, or emotionally detached, unavailable, or difficult. In using the term 'abusive', I refer to those who actively and intentionally did harm to themselves, to one another and non-relatives, and to their children. People who assisted others in committing crime against their own, i.e. the mother who held her five year old child still while the boyfriend raped her. Or the father who committed pre-meditated murder, with assistance from his own brother. The uncle who coerced his pre-school niece into oral sex. The parents who stole their young adult daughter's financial identity in order to defraud credit card companies.
You know who I'm talking about-- bad people.
We all agree that there are bad people in the world. We read about them every day in the newspapers, online, etc. They blow themselves up on train platforms, decapitate members of rival gangs and post the heads for all to see, hatch plots against the government. We can also agree that bad people have children, just like good people do. But the logic breaks down when those bad people are our own parents or relatives.
When the bad person is a parent or relative, the issue is nowhere near as clear. The adult survivor of abuse quite often still harbors feelings of love for the attacker, alongside the profound resentment. And it is this sense of attachment that blurs the vision and stops us from knowing the truth.
The central issue for the survivor is Why? Why was this done to me? The most common answer, deeply embedded in human nature and exposed by abuse, is that there must be something wrong with me, that I must somehow invite this treatment. It is the child's best answer, because the self is all the child has to offer as an explanation. She does not have the breadth of experience with the human race to place the crimes in context, and so blames herself. The child's implicit trust in those who raised her will not allow her to understand that she is not the reason why she was victimized.
And so, when discussing these events, the survivor says things like "I don't want to judge him...", "I'm not saying he's a bad person..." when describing a person who committed murder. Because the family itself has probably been rationalizing evil for generations, the child also learns this trick and so becomes numb to his sense of empathic outrage for himself, his own suffering and that of other victims. If treated badly enough long enough, one of two things happen: 1) the survivor becomes a victim of himself, and his search for the nullification of pain through drugs, alcohol, sex, or a combination of all three 2) the survivor begins to prey on others as a way of escaping the enveloping sense of helplessness experienced by all victims.
In therapy, we are always seeking to stand before the truth. The answer to the question Why? is that the perpetrators are, or were, bad people, who succumbed to and were enslaved by their own evil. A potentiality we all share, but do not all give ourselves over to.
The question then becomes, how does one have a relationship with a bad person? How does one resolve the ambivalence of love and resentment, while struggling with the truth of having been victimized by someone you love? And what about forgiveness?
I believe that for most, forgiveness is beyond them. In therapy, I do not make forgiveness a goal, as I believe that is between the perpetrator and whoever he or she takes her Creator to be.
If ever there was a 'no easy answers' issue, this is certainly it. What is the right way to have a relationship with a person we know to be bad? (Hint- one thing for sure to NOT do is to allow any further abuse/manipulation/crime, etc)
To Be Continued
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