When alarmed, the child seeks proximity to a caregiver, a safe, secure base. But proximity to a frightening caregiver increases the alarm.
This was written by Hazen and McFarland in 2010, and this is the core of the dissonance and the conflict in the child, when the child is faced with an abusive parent.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, and a professor of clinical psychology.
The infant in a dysfunctional household is a hostage.
Infants can't go anywhere. They don't have credit cards. They don't have smartphones where they can dial emergency numbers. They don't know anyone. They know only mommy and daddy. And so sometimes daddy, if they're lucky.
So they are hostages. They are kind of hijacked or kidnapped out of the womb.
And when the household, a single mother, a dyad, a couple, a married couple, a family with other siblings, without, when the household is dysfunctional and includes prominent elements of abuse and trauma when the household provides adverse childhood experiences ACEs the child is a captive, simply a hostage.
There's a power asymmetry between the infant and the adults in the infant's life and the infant catastrophizes. The infant believes internally, develops a conviction that whatever is happening at home threatens his or her survival.
Survival is at stake.
The entire two or three first years of life revolve around this catastrophizing belief or linkage between the behavior of mother and the conduct of father and your chances to survive intact or at all as a child.
So this is the only type of environment where the Stockholm syndrome is common, not rare.
There's a big debate about the Stockholm syndrome. Is it real? Does it exist? Is it a misogynistic ploy? Feminist would tell you that. And so on and so forth.
But there's no question that at the core of the Stockholm syndrome, there is a real phenomenon. A phenomenon of bonding with the abuser in order to somehow control the abuse.
And while the Stockholm syndrome is actually very very very rare, 5 to 8 percent, this is the estimate of the FBI, within dysfunctional families, violent domestic households, this percentage is much higher.
Infants bond with their abusive parents via the Stockholm syndrome. It's a variant of trauma bonding. We'll come to it a bit later.
The infant's dilemma is the following.
The infant has to identify with his parents. Identification, introjection, incorporation. These are critical processes and functions in the formation of an identity, in the constellation and integration of the self.
These processes are automatic. They are inexorable. The infant can't turn off the identification or switch off the introjection. They just happen.
And so the child implicitly has to make an unconscious decision because the parents are so disparate, because they are so different. One of the parents is abusive, traumatizing. One of the parents causes pain and hurt and is very threatening, fear menacing figure. And the other parent is loving and accepting and warm and compassionate and empathic.
Faced with this choice between two alternatives, the child must decide which of the two parents is more conducive to survival.
And so initially, the child tries to carry favor, to ingratiate itself with the abusive parent. The child gravitates towards the abusive parent because the love of the other parent, the parent which is non-abusive, is taken for granted.
It's as if the child has a checklist and says, this parent is already guaranteed. The love of this parent is in the sack. Check. There's a check mark.
I don't need to invest any additional resources and efforts in this parent because this parent loves me and is very unlikely to hurt me and to endanger my survival.
However, the other parent is a big question mark. The other parent is sometimes loving, sometimes hateful. This is known as intermittent reinforcement. The other parent is sometimes loving and hating at the same time. This is known as ambivalence. The other parent can devolve into physical violence, which is life-threatening. The other parent can instrumentalize the child or parentify the child or cut the child or from reality or isolate the child or become overprotected. There are numerous ways to abuse and traumatize the child. But something's wrong with the other parent. It's clear even to an infant. The infant realizes that the other parent has a problem or a series of problems. And therefore, the other parent constitutes an ominous, ominous caregiver, which basically threatens and undermines the infants their life. So rather than invest scarce resources, emotional resources, cognitive resources, rather than invest these resources in the loving parents whose love is totally guaranteed, ever present, regular, predictable, and so and so forth. Rather than invest resources in this parent, all the resources go towards the other parent, the abusive parent, the traumatizing parent, the unpredictable parent, the parent that generates an ambience of uncertainty. The child tries to become the favorite of the abusive parent, ingratiate himself, serve somehow, provide services to the abusive parent, carry favor by becoming performative the child performs as an act going on and so on so forth anything just to get the abusive parent on the child's side because the alternative is death in the child's eyes and the child's catastrophize the alternative is death and the child doesn't want to die and so the child's eyes, and the child's catastrophizing. The alternative is death. And the child doesn't want to die. And so the child chooses sides. And initially the child chooses the abusive parents' side. It's a form of learned helplessness, internalized oppression, identification with the aggressor. Fairbairn, who was one of the luminaries of the British Object Relation School, suggested that the child splits the offensive parent, splits the abusive parent. Now to remind you, splitting is a primitive, infantile, psychological defense mechanism, where you see the world in terms of all bad or all good, all black, all white, all right, or wrong. This is known as splitting or decotomous thinking. Fairbairn suggested that the child does split the abusive parent, but the splitting is very special, very unique, and he called it the moral defense. He was not the only one to suggest this. Strachey came up with the idea of the primitive super ego three decades before Fairburn. And there is a concept of internalized bed object. What all these fancy phrases mean is that when the child faces the abusive parent, the child says, the abusive parent is all good. I am all bad. The abusive parent is actually loving and caring and compassionate and empathic, exactly like my other parent. But I am bad. I am unworthy. I make the abuse happen. I'm the cause of the abuse. It is justified. The abuse is justified. I deserve to be punished. Child becomes self-punitive and self-rejecting and self-hating. Rather than say, this parent is bad and I'm all good, which is very frightening, the child says, this parent is all good and I'm all bad what's the difference if you say my parent is all bad you're in trouble as an infant because if your parent is all bad if your parent is evil and wicked and abusive and traumatizing and hateful and rejecting and abandoning. If you have an absent kind of parent, if you have this kind of parent, your life as an infant is at risk because you're not going to get your basic necessities, like food and shelter and water, and know what the parent a bad parent is very ominous proposition it's very menacing it's a horror movie and if the parent is bad you as an infant have no control over the parent. There's nothing you can do about it.
But if you are the bad object, if you are the reason for the abuse, if you provoke the trauma, this has two benefits, psychological benefits.
One, the parent is all good, so you don't need to be anxious about it. The parent is essentially all good.
Number two, you are the source of your own difficulties and adverse experiences, and you can change yourself. You cannot change your parent, but you can change yourself.
You cannot change your parent, but you can change yourself. So this restores a sense of mastery, a sense of control.
And this is Fairbairn's moral defense, essentially.
What the child does, the child gangs up in a coalition, forms a coalition with the abusive parent against the good parent. The child teams up with the abusive parent in order to abuse the good parent and thereby gain a modicum of power.
The child empowers itself by emulating and imitating the abusive parent. And of course the target is the good parent.
It's a cult mentality. It's a siege mentality. It's we the abusers versus them the loving parent. So we, the abusers, versus themthe loving parent.
So we is the abusive parent and the child who is imitating the abusive parent.
There's a lot of mimicry going on, and this is one side of the equation, and they gang up on the loving parent.
And this way there's a cult. The members of the cult are the abusive parent and the abused child.
And by ganging up against the loving parent, they create a situation of we versus them. It's a kind of ontological splitting if you wish.
The loving parent is perceived as a threat.
Now those of you who want to learn more about this dynamic, I recommend that you read Robbins and Anthony's work. They came up with the destructive cult disorder idea, concept, and they built upon it, and their work is pretty amazing when it comes to cult dynamics.
Within the cult, and the cult to remind you is comprised of the abusive parent and the abused child, within the cultthere is a symbiosis.
It's a specific, a highly specific form of trauma bonding, which I call symbiotic trauma bonding.
It's a trauma bonding that involves merger and fusion as a way to control the abuse and its source.
It's as if the child says, the only way to control my abusive parent is to become my abusive parent.
And the only way to become my abusive parent is to merge with my abusive parent, to fuse with my abusive parent, to create a symbiosis between myself and my abusive parent, to fuse with my abusive parent, to create a symbiosis between myself and my abusive parent, to disappear into my abusive parent.
Now that we are one and the same, my abusive parent and me, says the infant, now I'm safe.
The infant generates an ersatz, a fake, secure base by kind of infiltrating or invading in his mind, infiltrating or invading the abusive parent in order to take control from the inside.
The child conceptualizes itself as a kind of Trojan horse.
By offering the abusive parent love, subservience, admiration, adulation, attention, services, even sex, the child tries to take over the abusive parent.
As I said, infiltrate and invade it from the inside.
The child develops a parasitic mindset, a host and a parasite within a symbiosis that is built on trauma bonding.
Of course, the more the child identifies or merges and fuses with the abusive parent, the more the child humanizes the abuser.
The more the child humanizes the abuser.
The child cannot merge with an abusive parent and still maintain or retain the view that the abusive parent is bad or traumatizing or wicked or evil. No way.
Merging and fusing with the abusive parent is another method to humanize the abusive parent.
So there's moral defense. The abusive parent is all good. I am all bad. I am unworthy. I'm deserving of punishment. I had it coming. The abuse is justified. This is moral defense.
And the second mechanism is symbiosis, Trojan horse strategy or tactic, trauma bonding via merger and fusion and taking control, imaginary control of course, over the abusive parent, thereby humanizing, humanizing the dysfunctional parent.
Gradually, as the child grows up, the child begins to share the values and the worldview of the abuser, imitate the behaviors of the abuser. The child becomes a mini-replicant of the abuser, a copy, a clone.
Luckily, this process reverses itself in adolescence.
So everything I've said is common between the ages of 18 months and more or less 12 years old, 13 years old.
In adolescence, there's usually, usually, not always, there's usually a reversal of the situation.
The child begins to team up with a loving parent against the abuser.
So there's a switch because adolescents are rebellious, they are defiant, they are reckless, the abusive parent becomes a target of the adolescents' ire and anger and wrath and envy and other negative emotions.
And so the adolescent drifts away from the abusive parent towards the loving parent and creates a coalition yet again, a coalition with the loving parent against the abusive parent. This is common in adolescence.
An equally common outcome is when as an adolescent the child becomes very angry, angry at the abusive parent for the abuse and trauma the child had endured, and angry at the loving parent, because a loving parent didn't stand up to the abusive parent, the loving parent didn't protect the child, didn't fight off the abuse, didn't denounce the trauma, didn't go to the police, didn't beat the abuses.
So the second possible outcome in adolescence is a child is very angry at both parents for different reasons.
And then the child renounces the family all together.
All these strategies, survival strategies, which are very kaleidoscopic and keep shifting, you know, alliance with the abuser, coalition with the loving parent, symbiosis, merger, fusion, trauma bonding, disconnect, detachment, Trojan horse, internal object.
It's a bloody mess and inevitably it generates in some cases narcissists and psychopaths.
But all these strategies and techniques and attempts to survive in an impossible environment, essentially, an environment that is dissonant by its nature, an environment that creates all the time, cognitive, emotional dissonances, and so forth.
So this has lifelong impacts.
For example, cognitively, these kind of children, as adults, they're likely to be very confused, they're likely to be dissociative, blurred memories, some of them become delusional. For example, narcissists, they have in extreme cases PTSD and recurring flashbacks and so on so forth. Cognitive distortions, some of them develop impaired reality testing and develop grandiose fantastic image of themselves, which is a cognitive distortion, as I said.
So the cognition is impacted.
Emotions are impacted. Some of them lack feeling altogether. They become numb. They have what we call reduced affect display. Some of them become fearful. They feel helpless throughout life and hopeless, which of course leads to depression and externalized aggression. Some of them feel guilty and they become dependent on the abusive parent for life.
And most of them develop CPTSD, complex trauma.
Social functioning is also affected.
Most of these children when they grow up and become adults, they become anxious, irritable, cautious, they are hypervigilant, estranged. I mean, their relationships usually involve an insecure attachment style and a defective internal working model of relationships. They become dismissive or avoidant.
Finally, we now know that this kind of condition in childhood has long-term physical impacts, effects, various conditions, which are the result of food restrictions, sleep disturbances, exposure to fear, and so on so forth, regulation of stress hormones, so this has long-term impacts on the body, cardiovascular system, diabetes, metabolic diseases, and so on so forth.
It never ends well, is what I'm trying to see.
Those of you who want to learn more, search online for ACE adverse childhood experiences, a giant study, and they go into much more detail there.
Thank you for listening.