Carried home

There are times when I think I must be one of the most naïve therapists in practice. I’m remembering two clients who presented in very similar ways. Each was certain that her husband (ex- in one case, divorcing in the other) had invaded her cellphone and was monitoring every aspect of her life. Not only that phone, but her children’s phones, mother’s, aunts’, cousins’ phones. And by these embeds, he knew every place she went, everyone she talked to or associated with – present or history; every email she sent or received, every dollar she spent. One woman regularly discovered items missing from her house. The home security system refused her password. Money disappeared from her private cache. The children, young teens, told her – ‘Mom, we think dad is cheating on you.’ Her suspicions were affirmed. The children said: ‘He will track us down if you divorce him.’ “I can’t protect my kids,” she moaned.

That one was a shambles, quick and intelligent but undeniably delusional at some level. The other woman seemed down-to-earth, calm and resilient. She had suffered stepfather’s sexual abuse – arranged by her mother – for years, reaching the point where she tried to kill them both by jerking the steering wheel out of his hands as he drove. The paranoid woman mentioned, as an aside, that her mother had been “extremely crazy” and an “inveterate liar.”

I get weak in the knees and in the brain when I hear these jeremiads of persecution. If I believe the women, then their life is pure torture and they will never live in peace. If I don’t believe them, therapy is seriously hobbled. They want help in the real world, but their problem lies elsewhere.

My problem or naivete – though it may also be a benefit – is that I can’t see their assertions as entirely implausible. There are narcissistic demon men who can fake their life so the rest of the world loves and admires them, often with rock star admiration. There are evil, successful men who run on poison, mental abuse and persecution, militant control, lurid possessiveness. Could such men make a life goal of murdering their wives’ souls, as my clients implied?

But then . . . . The women stay. One was married for sixteen years before having some disastrous epiphany and running. The other was complacent until she chanced upon husband and daughter in their underwear, touching. What factors make a weakened and bent woman stay with an awful man, and psychotically imagine or exaggerate acts that symbolize his total control over her?

There is probably a lifelong sense within these women of being transparent and insubstantial. They have adult brains, they have muscles in their arms, they have children to protect, they have friends. But ultimately their life has been waiting for the opportunity to be done in, taken over, vanquished. Carried home.

I haven’t read much psychology about the recondite satisfaction that comes from “return(ing) to the bad object”* – those attractions whose deep roots are the child’s mono-focus and umbilical dependency on an enervating, “bad object” parent. Stockholm Syndrome; inviting, again, the domestic abuser to come back; wanting to be “taken care of” and told what to do; regressing diminutive before elderly, cold parents. Political correctness names reasons other than the woman’s sense of peace or rightness to be small and in someone’s hands. It’s this that explains, I believe, the strange situation where a normally rational woman finds herself stripped of autonomy and privacy, and helpless to stop what is probably no more “deep state” than incompetent hacking and stalking by a childish man. Or helpless to not perceive it psychotically. The attorney can’t win her case, if he believes her at all. After all, she doesn’t have any money. The judge informs her that her husband hasn’t been violent, it’s his name on the mortgage, the cellphone, the bank account, the credit cards, the vehicles. He can’t steal them. And then the coup de grace: Her family is incredulous and disgusted that she wants to leave such a wonderful provider, charming, loved by all, gem of the community. Sometimes he’s a firefighter, sometimes a police chief, or a business owner. He is the Man.

Until he looks at her.

- - - - - - - - - - -

* W.R.D. Fairbairn’s concept. See blogs – https://pessimisticshrink.blogspot.com/search?q=Fairbairn and https://pessimisticshrink.blogspot.com/2014/01/strength-lot-of-mytherapy-happens-to.html, along with David Celani’s book, The Illusion of Love, which is based on Fairbairn’s theories.