Stalker, Hacker, Voyeur, Spy

A Psychoanalytic Study of Erotomania, Voyeurism, Surveillance, and Invasions of Privacy

Helen K. Gediman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367327101
• eBook ISBN: 9780429919442
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book covers the phenomenon of stalking in its two major variations, sexual and surveillance, by emphasizing its central relevance to today's social, cultural, and political dilemmas with particular reference to stalking in cyberspace and its inevitable invasions of privacy.

Part I
Developmental Roots

Chapter One
From psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and attachment theory

Scant references to the words “stalking” or “stalker” from the now standard source, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEP CD ROM) fall into three main categories: neuroscientifically based stalking—usually genetic patterns in animals, stalking based on mother–infant attachment patterns, and stalking in aggressive and sadomasochistically charged object relationships. My account is brief because the findings are sparse.

Predatory animals and human beings stalk their quarry

In the psychoanalytic literature on neuroscience and neuropsycho-analysis, authors identify stalking in animals and, to some extent, humans, as brain mediated normal behavior. One animal will stalk another animal to kill and eat it for purposes of survival. A genetic code governs the timing of stalking that avoids danger and promotes survival (Bloomfield, 1987). “Kairos,” an experiential sense of time, governs and enables the stalker to wait for the right moment to mobilize a range of aggressive actions: to make a sexual advance toward a selected mate, to attack a foe, or to spring while stalking prey for food, These behaviors enable or even guarantee an animal’s survival. Zellner (2000), in his review of Panksepp’s (1998) work on anger and aggression, notes some neuroscientific bases for stalking in animals that could promote psychoanalytic consideration of stalking in humans. Panksepp’s investigators have unearthed evidence for at least three different kinds of aggression typical for animal stalking behavior: predatory aggression—or “quiet-biting attack”; internal aggression; and affective attack—“defensive attack or rage.” Zellner maintains that quiet biting-attack entails “methodological stalking and well-directed pouncing” (p. 194). Behaviorally speaking, affective attack in animals, which involves hissing and growling while attacking, looks like anger in humans. These two states have been linked, in animals, to different brain structures: quiet-biting attack is elicited by stimulating the dorsolateral hypothalamus, and affective attack by the ventrolateral and medial hypothalamus. However, these two forms of aggression are not absolutely disconnected. Of course, the brain linkage has not been established in human stalkers.

My personal experience on safari has encouraged me to indulge in a speculative attempt to translate some of the neuroscientific knowledge of animal stalking to human stalking of animals. Each and every game ride through the bush in a Land Rover may be considered a stalking expedition, because safaris inevitably involve humans stalking animals that are stalking other animals as prey. Human tourists who stalk animals are now generally no longer animal killers, so they might not fit very well into Panksepp’s classification. Vacationing tourists tend to be amateur photographers or else non-photographing viewers who use binoculars to search and gaze for pleasure and wonderment. On a photographic safari in the Mala Mala game reserve abutting Kruger National Park in South Africa, I was the only one in my group who did not bring a camera. I feared that if I were to focus on getting good shots of the animals, I would be distracted from looking at them and from deeply taking in the scene. So, I used my high-powered binoculars instead, eating and drinking them in with my eyes. Stalking and voyeurism are indisputably involved on safaris. And, as we shall come to discover from many film images of both sexual and surveillance stalking, binoculars serve as an apt logo that frequently precedes or accompanies voyeuristic stalking activity in films.

The Mala Mala game guides have a reputation for being among the best in South Africa, and the animal spotter, who sits on a high perch at the rear of the Land Rover, directs the driver–guide at the wheel to head for areas on the reserve where one would be most likely to find the prey of the day or night. One starry night, we paying guests found ourselves on a dizzyingly driven search for what we did not know at first, but the object of our guide’s stalking frenzy turned out to be an exquisitely beautiful leopard who had found sanctuary up in a tree after the professional safari-stalkers had intensely followed his own stalking behavior. On and on we went in pursuit, seemingly for hours, until, lo and behold, there he was. The cameras were all poised to shoot. I peered into my binoculars and could imagine what it felt like to be up in the tree as prey to satisfy another’s pleasure, if not survival. Before you knew it, our guide shared, via up to date electronic walkietalkies, cell phones, and other devices, his stalking success with the several other guides from nearby camps who were out competing on their own similarly motivated stalking safaris. Several Land Rovers converged with their enthralled guests, all in love both with the animals and the thrill of the hunt. The safari professionals in the Land Rover that carried me emerged as the macho heroes of the night because they got to the site first to corner the prey. I suddenly understood, at least in my gut, some of the excitement of stalking, and I have been processing the experience since that lucky starry night. We were mesmerized by the sight of the beautiful animal, as well as overcome by our own instinctive urge to pursue our stalking mission until accomplished.

Still keeping in mind the primal hunter–prey model of animal stalking, I turn to possibly derivative parallel examples of human stalking. The ones I choose are, not surprisingly, stalking of and by the analyst, which, as I noted in my Introduction, have been the subjects of several psychoanalytic studies. Gornick (1994) studied stalking driven by erotic transferences by men toward the women treating them. He offers an example of a therapist who worried at first that she had elicited a male patient’s sexual feelings toward her by acting in a seductive manner. Specifically, she was concerned that her patient would “get erotically attached and would not be able to find other people,” and that he would then intrude on her and “start stalking… find me in personal life.” This therapist seemed to sense potential erotomania and erotic transferences as a prelude to stalking of the analyst, and, of course, others as well. Gottlieb (1994), in his work on vampirism, wrote of a woman patient who literally stalked her male analyst. Prior to transforming fantasy into action, this particular patient had imagined herself as a vampire/ghoul, “stalking me as prey (the ‘deer’) and feeding upon me as carrion. Her necrophagic interests… I believed, had found expression in her fantasy… of visiting my summer home and of repeatedly telephoning me” (p. 476). In a later work (2000), Gottlieb states that, from an object relations point of view, the central narrative of a manhunt centers on a description of an object relationship between hunter and quarry. He believes that the special relatedness of hunter and quarry is more frequent as a transference manifestation in analysis than is commonly appreciated. He wonders just how many psychoanalysts have experienced a patient tracking us to our homes, stalking us, learning about our habits, lying in wait for us—or as warding off such enactments? When associated with other ideas of analyst-as-food, the stories in which such vampiristic actions actually appear can be expressions of cannibalistic fantasy.

Miller and Twomey (2000) also refer to stalking and stalking fantasies in the analytic relationship. A male patient who was interested in finding out where his female analyst lives and goes on vacation, for example, expressed the belief that his therapist might call the police to report her fears that he was stalking her menacingly. The patient simultaneously imagined that should he actually appear on her doorstep, she would casually dismiss him as an annoying nuisance, a “mere fly.” This account reminded me of my “peeping Tom” patient, to whom I referred in my Introduction. After he regaled me with grand stories of how he followed any woman, indiscriminately, he suddenly stopped treatment after a few months. I was reasonably certain, then, that he had started secretly to stalk me, but anticipated he would not be able to bear the shame of me learning that he wished to be a fly on the wall who could see all and then be sent off on petty harassment charges.

Stalking as disorganized attachment in mother–infant dyads

The second broad category of neuroscientifically relevant developmental roots of stalking involves human parent–infant dyads characterized by disorganized and other poor early attachment patterns in which mothers stalk, or “sham stalk” their babies with regular and describable patterns. Some of the findings are remarkably consistent with the neuroscientists’ observations of stalking in animal behavior. Hesse and Main (1999, 2000) discovered that some parents in interaction with their infants exhibit serious, as opposed to playful, movements that resemble the predatory stalking behavior of animals in a hunt or pursuit sequence. In one study, a mother was observed suddenly crawling, silent and catlike, toward her infant. Then, simulating “mauling” behavior, she turned the infant over with her fingers extended like claws. Other parents engaged in hissing, deep threatening growls, teeth baring, and even one-sided lip raising; in essence, one-sided canine exposure, a well-known primate threat gesture. Again, none these expressions appeared to be playful, as we might see in affectionate mimicking of mother-bear to baby-bear threats, or other familiar threats from beloved fairy tales about primitive animals. Most of them seemed to arise out of nowhere, and then to disappear. The crucial importance of what might have been on the minds of these mothers that could be of interest to psychoanalysts in their quest for the meaning of stalking behavior in human interactions was not mentioned in this very sparse coverage of the literature.

Attachment theory, added to older psychoanalytic perspectives on stalking, might help to clarify adult interpersonal behaviors that otherwise could remain obscure. The disturbed, complex, later object relationships that are based on earlier neuroscientifically based observations range from the avoidance of intimacy characteristic of a detached personality style to its phenomenological opposite: an obsessional and even perverse preoccupation with the attachment figure that, in one extreme form, might result in stalking as a manifestation of an inability to leave an abusive relationship. “Don’t make that call” or “don’t mail that letter” are prototypical warnings against perpetuating stalking in many sorts of abusive attachments. Using the developmental insights of attachment theory in conjunction with other object-relational theories has potential for advancing the psychoanalytic thinking of internalized self and object representations in the stalker–stalkee couple.

From “clinging and going in search” to perversion, internalized object relations, and object relationships

Stalking gratifies not only survival and attachment needs, but also sexually and aggressively charged internal object relations in adults who have suffered humiliating losses or shameful rejections at the hands of loved, yet abusive, others. This psychoanalytic literature on stalking, per se, to repeat, is very sparse, a major reason for my motivation to fill it out somewhat in this book. The few referenced contributions in this category are most consistent with my views on sexual stalking as a perversion of the search for idealized romantic love. When writing up this latest draft of my work, I looked particularly closely for references of work written after 2005, when I did my initial PEP CD ROM search. To my amazement and delight, I came upon an article written by Eileen McGinley and Andrea Sabbadini, published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (2006). Its title, “‘Play Misty for Me’ (1971): the perversion of love,” captured subject matter that stunned me because it was so similar to what I had already extensively written and reported on (Gediman, 2005, 2006) and expanded in Chapter Three of this book in the section on film portrayals of erotomanic sexual stalking.

Several writers (Ogden, 2002; Shelby, 1997; Solomon, 1997) refer to stalking and extreme sadomasochism, a frequent component of erotomanic and voyeuristic sexual stalking. The sadism in melancholia (generated in response to the loss of, or disappointment by, a loved object) gives rise to a special form of torment for both the subject and the object—that particular mixture of love and hate between predator and prey encountered especially in relentless, crazed stalking. Such relational problems suggest that stalking might imply serious narcissistic tensions, often embedded in a borderline personality organization. Goldberg, in his important 1995 book, details how behavior such as the sexualization found in telephone stalking can aid in self-cohesion. Splitting mechanisms are used extensively, so patients with narcissistic behavior disorder experience a reality self alongside a more archaic, primitive self. Different self-states develop from both sides of the split. The erotomanic stalker’s idealized love object could then be a selfobject who, in reality, does not reciprocate the stalker’s desperate erotic cravings despite the stalker’s belief, at times quasi-delusional, that he or she does reciprocate. Today, we must not fail to add a degree of terrorism to the sadism found not only in internal object relations, but also in the external reality contexts of aggressive stalking.

I end my brief overview of psychoanalytically relevant developmental contexts for stalking, and now continue with the bulk of my ideas on sexual and surveillance stalking as illustrated clinically, in film, and in today’s real and virtual world at large.

Part II
Sexual Stalking

Introduction

Part II covers, in four chapters (Two to Five), two forms of what I refer to as broad sexual stalking. I begin with stalking that involves eroto-mania, unrequited love and revenge, and the move on to voyeuristic stalking. There are two chapters on erotomania: Chapter Two, which contains clinical vignettes, and Chapter Three, which covers film portrayals. Chapter Four, on voyeuristic sexual stalking, covers two film portrayals, Rear Window and Peeping Tom. Chapter Five is devoted to gender issues in sexual stalking.

Chapter Two
Erotomania and unrequited love: case vignettes

As interesting as my clinical encounters with erotomanic stalkers and stalkees may be, I cannot do justice to the phenomenon as well as those who have portrayed the stalker–stalkee couple in film. So, I begin with case examples and lead up to the more gripping film presentations of erotomania, unrequited love, and revenge.

In 2008, a woman writing under the assumed name of Kate Brennan published a memoir, In His Sights, of her experience as a victim of erotomanic stalking for more than a decade by her former boyfriend, Paul, whom she had rejected. According to the New York Times article (Newman, 2008) that reviewed her stalking history and that of others, most stalkers are driven by a need to control others in order to prove that they cannot be excised from life by a simple “Dear John” or “Dear Jane” letter of rejection. Paul enlisted the help of hackers and others to break into Brennan’s computer and house to “psych her out” online, by misplacing items in her home, and by manipulating her mind and baffling her in other eerie ways. His aim was to relentlessly torment and terrorize, all the while loudly protesting his love for the woman who rejected him. Clearly, surveillance stalking was a way to avenge his rejection. He made so many extremely harassing invasions into her private life that she moved her residence sixteen times in sixteen years. I have not had the opportunity to treat such vengeful reactions as this to unrequited love, but I can present some of my work with two stalkees who have deepened my understanding of erotomanic stalking.

Charity: stalking excitement wards off dread of aphanisis

Aphanisis (Jones, 1927, 1929) is the fear of total extinction of the capacity and opportunity for sexual pleasure and excitement. Not only was that fear paramount in the patient I am about to discuss, but is, I believe, very commonly found in men and women who are involved in erotomanic sexual stalking.

A thirty-one-year-old married woman patient, whom I shall call Charity, was a high level executive, well educated, intelligent, attractive, and privileged. She spent her childhood in the late1960s and 1970s with a free-thinking, hippie, single mother who seemed to be as highly devoted to the welfare of the poor and underprivileged as she was to that of her only and out-of-wedlock child. In the name of protection, Charity’s mother made sure that Charity’s biological father, who had left her shortly after their baby was conceived, never had any contact with Charity, an action whose meaning to Charity had lifelong effects on her choice of men. An unforgettable bit of family lore that mother told daughter when she was about six is that father did attempt to maintain a connection with his daughter. Mother refused father’s request and succeeded in her efforts to keep Charity’s father at bay. Charity has harbored a grudge against her biological father ever since. Although she focused on her father’s abandonment of her, I understand her chronic anger and the chip on her shoulder as indirect resentful expressions toward her mother for forbidding any encounter in the name of “benevolent” social intentions toward strangers above family. Charity was nursed until four and slept in her mother’s bed until she was eighteen. She developed...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• Dedication
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
• PART I DEVELOPMENTAL ROOTS
• PART II SEXUAL STALKING
• PART III SURVEILLANCE STALKING
• PART IV STALKING AND HACKING IN THE WORLD WE LIVE IN: THE PLANET EARTH AND CYBERSPACE
• REFERENCES
• INDEX