Posts by Kracklite
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Joe, I agree. "Intention" is the best term that can be used for behaviour that is oriented towards a process and/or goal without it necessarily being conscious. The thing about many personality disorders is that the person with it is rarely able to perceive it as such (though one person I know who's recovered from OCD and is now working through layers of atypical anxiety disorder is very self-aware, but this is after years of cognitive behaviour therapy).
The abuser works like a sculptor, knocking off the bits that stick out, forming their victim into an ever more "perfect", abject form. The abuser will not rationally decide to target their victim's weak points, they will instead find particular aspects intensely aggravating and attack those and be gratified by results, which is a form of Pavlovian self-conditioning if you like.
Pathological behaviour need not be consciously planned as such to be sophisticated, compulsive and systematic nonetheless.
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I think the saddest thing about Kristin and all the other women who are similarly 'trapped', is that they simply cannot walk away.
The thing is, the insidious trap that abusers lay, is that they really do not have a set end in mind, but rather that the means itself is the end. The purpose is not to "correct" "wrong" behaviour by the victim, but to reduce a previously independent person into an abject state of dependency and dread. There is no end, only the process. Nothing will make everything right. Abusers work by making their victims believe, desperately, that if only they changed themselves then things would be right whereas the abuser will always seek some new fault to be corrected in an escalating cycle because they have no end goal, only a process.
Thus, the victim feels that they cannot simply walk out, because they do not have the power to do so. This is exactly the potential strength that the abuser targets first and foremost.
And they'll do it through physical bullying, or emotional bullying. I've observed that there are abusive people, and if they're men, they'll abuse women physically, because they can, and if they're women, they'll do it emotionally, because that's the only way that they can, but in the end, abuse is abuse.
Which is precisely what she says in the section I quoted. She's an educated, professional woman -- she should have been able to walk away. But she couldn't.
Which is the exact point. The abuser wants to destroy the personal sense of empowerment that their victim has.
Sorry if that all seems rather grim and righteous, but I have a close, long-term (male) friend in frail health who's currently exiting an abusive relationship.
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Indeed, in sluicing money into yet more vaccine research, they're actually hurting people with autism and their families.
Let's see, airhead celebs vs. scientists, hmmm...
Well, if you're at the 'high functioning' end of the spectrum, its damned good fun - the only problem is that it makes six to seven billion neurotypical people seem like insufferable, facile fools who have no idea how to run the world. Stuff the "cure" let's look for what <i>causes</i> it and start selling it.
Seriously, though, the paranoiac edge helps no-one, no-one at all.
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I think Kracklite et al were not gossiping but instead discussing real experiences and trying to draw from their own knowledge to try and clarify what is going on so publicly for Mr Veitch. It may not help him but it may help someone who reads this thread.
Thank you, Bart, that was my intention. I think that Kerry made a vital and necessary - and deeply moving - contribution.
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Holmes:
Bozhe moi!
Simon, I see - as Tom Lehrer said when Kissinger got a Nobel Peace Prize, satire is redundant.
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...and a footnote.
I was discussing anorexia with an ex-friend (someone whom I am glad is in such a category) and he made the crass remark, 'And whose fault is that?'
The damned fool. As if it was a zero-sum game in which the blame had to be assigned somewhere; if it wasn't in one person's corner, the obviously it had to be another. No, not at all. Sometimes keeping score is a way of missing the point.
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Likewise, Giovanni and Islander, seconded and thirded.
Sweeping judgments just aren't going to work. They're not even the bloody point.
And Kerry, if your son doesn't say that he loves you now out of shyness, I'm sure that he does, and will say so soon enough and mean it from the bottom of his heart. And as for your brother, I don't know about your family, but mine being taciturn Scots, we often don't say things and that isn't always good, but then sometimes we don't need to either - so maybe there's something that's implicitly known that just needs a little nudge to bring it out into the open? Best of luck.
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Ah, congratulations!
I find that my own Black Dog does not haunt hilltops and pine trees at sunset (lots of Kaka, though).
Actually, that's a good marker - if someone stops doing the things that make them feel good, such as bush walks, then guide them back into taking the simple pleasures again.
The good news is, I think, that people who have known serious depression, provided that they are well out of it, have learned themselves how to cope better than most 'normal' people when they later have a tough period in their lives - provided that too much doesn't pile up all at once.
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Hmmm, yes, but he's been marinated in media for years, and that must have a warping effect. Remind me never to become famous.
I can't believe that I'm being Advocatus Diaboli here...
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It just seems so staged, all of it.
Jackie, I note that you say 'seems', not 'is', so please take what I say with my knowledge of your use in mind. The point I was trying to make in my characteristically overelaborate way above is that a lot of manipulative behaviour is indeed systematic in a way, but unconscious and compulsive. A lot of rationalisation is in fact postrationalisation.