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Becoming Other
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 Posted August 18th, 2010 10:22 PM IP   
When a Child Kills
abused children who kill their parents
by Paul Mones
http://www.amazon.com/When-Child-Ki...82183721&sr=8-2
I've started to read this and it is fascinating. Mones had worked in reform schools and other aspects of the juvenile system. This prepared him to understand these cases. There are 300 to 400 per year in the US.
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Posted August 20th, 2010 08:39 PM IP
page 13
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A psychiatrist friend once described the primary difference between what, for lack of a better term, might be called the "typical" physically or verbally abusive parent and the parent who dies by the hand of his child. The former beats of belittles her child because she has an honest, albeit misguided, belief that it is the appropriate way to reform or control the child's behavior; the second parent doesn't care about reforming the child's behavior -- instead he is addicted to his power over the child and the pleasure derived from exercising it.
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I find this passage extremely interesting. I have long noticed that there are parents who are authoritarian and who believe in strict pedagogy, and yet the families do seem to work. I mean no, I would not say there is anything like enlightenment, and no I do not agree with such parents and I do not share the world view of they or their children.
My parents really never did believe in strict pedagogy. They wanted to jetison it. But in fact they were extremely oppressive with their constant belittling and the need to crush me. Its not because they consiously thought that was right. I don't know if they were addicted to power either. Rather, they had a need to continually try to crush me in order to defend themselves. They saw me as an extreme threat. I beleive it was mostly to their denial systems. So it makes no difference what sort of pedagogy manual they were reading, as they were not even thinking pedagogy. They simply had an extreme need to defend themselves from emotional connection, from anything which would break themselves down.
In the movie Manchurian Candidate the soldiers always go into this speech they were brain washed to recite, about how wonderful Sgt. Raymond Shaw was. The truth starts to surface when Capt. Marco finally breaks out and says exactly what a jerk Sgt. Shaw is.
When my mother talks about her childhood and her family it has always sounded to me like exactly that sort of brain washed speech. It gives her power in the family. Or she uses it to get power. It means that everyone else is responsible that the family is a nightmare, not her. It also means that she does not have to face the truth, she does not have to face her own repressed experience. I explained all this to a therapist, now 20 years ago.
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Posted August 21st, 2010 08:14 PM IP
It seems that child abuse was not talked about at all until a 1946 article written by a radiologist. It did not become a medically recognized problem until a 1962 article which describe how you can still see hairline or green twig fractures for as much as 6 months after.
There was not recognition of sexual abuse until 1984, the statements of a senator from Florida and a moview, "Something About Amelia".
Child abuse is still not treated like major crime, but only as child endangerment because people don't want to see the malicious intent.
This is something Vachss talks about too.
The FBI says around 500 to 600 children are killed by their parents each year. But this is considered extremely inaccurate because of the numbers of deaths covered up as being accidental. The National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect puts the number at 5000 per year. Also, as of 1989 West German had around 1000 per year.
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Posted August 21st, 2010 08:19 PM IP
Bessel Van der Kolk, a psychiatrist with the Harvard Medical School,
"The emotional development of children is intimately connected with the safety and nurturance provided by their environment. Children universally attach themselves to their caregivers. This is a survival mechanism necessary to provide the needs that a child is unable to satisfy alone. Certainty of the presence of a "safe base" allows for normal emotional and cognitive development. ... In the absence of such a safe base, as in cases of child abuse and neglect, a child goes through a variety of psychological maneuvers to preserve maximum protection. Abused and neglected children often become fearfully and hungrily attached to their caregivers, with timid obedience, and an apparent preoccupation with the anticipation and prevention of abandonment.
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Posted August 21st, 2010 08:23 PM IP
page 34, Mones,
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Though seemingly inconceivable to the average person, when caregivers abuse children, the attachment can actually become even stronger. It is perhaps the most insidious aspect of child abuse that, as Dr. Van der Kolk noted, the abused child seeks protection from abuse in the abusive parent. A child's dependency on his parent is so profound and all encompassing that the parent remains the primary source of nurturance even in the face of draconian treatment.
Second, this overpowering urge to maintain and strengthn the attachment to a caregiver, even an abusive caregiver, is complicated by feelings of confustion and built after an abusive episode.
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Posted August 22nd, 2010 05:06 PM IP
The 5000 children, usually age 3 or under, killed per year in the US is about 15 times the number of parricides, according to Mones.
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Posted August 22nd, 2010 05:13 PM IP
page 13
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These parents and children have relationships marked by extreme emotion - colossal expressions of love and devotion running side by side with a tremendous undercurrent of hate and resentment. "These cases are a psychoanalyst's nightmare. They [often] combine and agressive violent streak with a seductive . . . loving streak," says Dr. Jerome Miller, former Massachusetts comminsioner of Youth Services and now director of the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, who has treated many of these children. Ironically, to the outside world such parents and children often appear to have unusually close relationships. They are in each other's company much more than the average parent and child; and the child is almost always immensely respectful, to the point of being obsequious. These parents exploit not only their authority, but also the trust their children place in them. They do not want their children to "honor" them, they want their children to worship them as gods. And they do.
Most of these parents recognize no boundary between themselves and their children - for them their son or daughter is an extra limb or just another object that belongs to them, like a piece of furniture. They perceive the act of conception as granting them absolute, unfettered control over the life they have created. Their child exists solely to satisfy their needs and desires and thus is raised to have no independent identity.
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