The Psychology of Female Violence

Crimes Against the Body

Anna Motz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351781442
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Explores the psychology of violent and criminal women from a psychodynamic and criminological rspective, also examining the link between childhood experience and adult behaviour. The book uses illustrative case material throughout.

Part I
Violence against children

Chapter 1
Female sexual abuse of children

So Ruth rose up and out of her guileless inefficiency to claim her bit of balm right after the preparation of dinner and just before the return of her husband from his office. It was one of her two secret indulgences—the one that involved her son—and part of the pleasure it gave her came from the room in which she did it… She sat in the room holding her son on her lap, staring at his closed eyelids and listening to the sound of his sucking. Staring not so much from maternal joy as from a wish to avoid seeing his legs dangling almost to the floor…

In the late afternoon, before her husband closed his office and came home, she called her son to her. When he came into the little room she unbuttoned her blouse and smiled. He was too young to be dazzled by her nipples, but he was old enough to be bored by the flat taste of mother’s milk, so he came reluctantly as to a chore, and lay as he had at least once each day of his life in his mother’s arms, and tried to pull the thin, faintly sweet milk from her flesh without hurting her with his teeth.

She felt him. His restraint, his courtesy, his indifference, all of which pushed her into fantasy. She had the distinct impression that his lips were pulling from her a thread of light. It was as though she were a cauldron issuing spinning gold. Like the miller’s daughter— the one who sat at night in a straw-filled room, thrilled with the secret power Rumpelstiltskin had given her: to see golden thread stream from her very own shuttle. And that was the other part of her pleasure, a pleasure she hated to give up.

(Song of Solomon, Morrison, 1977)

Mothering, whether in the home or on the hospital floor, is a much more common route to power for psychopathic women than is commerce or sex.

(Pearson, 1998:107)

INTRODUCTION

The site of female perversion is the whole body and, by extension, the bodies of children. When women attack their own bodies, through self-mutilation, self-starvation or bingeing, they are symbolically wreaking revenge on their own internalised, often cruel and perverse mothers. They identify their own body with the body of the mother. Likewise when they attack their children, they express violence towards a narcissistic extension of themselves:

The main difference between male and female perverse action lies in the aim. Whereas in men the act is aimed at an external part-object, in women it is against themselves: either against their bodies or against objects of their own creation—that is, their babies.

(Welldon, 1992:72)

These mothers have typically been used as extensions of their own mothers, who have treated them narcissistically: they repeat this pattern in the way they relate to their own babies. Early experience of maternal abuse or neglect increases the likelihood that in adulthood these women will be exposed to other situations of risk, including relationships with sexually and physically abusive men, leading to further distortions in their self-image, and psychological functioning; this will, in turn, adversely affect their own capacity to mother.

In this chapter I will explore disturbances of pregnancy and motherhood, addressing the specific problem of female sexual offending against children. I illustrate the chapter with three case studies of women who sexually abused children: in two cases their own children, in another, other people’s children as an accomplice to a male paedophile. I also present case material which demonstrates the psychic processes of a highly disturbed pregnancy, in which a young mother displayed physical rather than sexual violence towards her own pregnant body, and later towards her infant. These cases illustrate Welldon’s model of female perversion. In order to understand the phenomenon of sexual abuse of children it is essential to consider the nature of female perversion, and its roots in disturbed parenting. I begin this chapter with a discussion of female perversion, and psychological disturbances in pregnancy and mothering in general, before moving on to explore sexual abuse of children in particular.

THE NATURE OF FEMALE PERVERSION

Estela Welldon’s radical thesis challenged the assumption that perversion was related to the phallus, and thus the province of men, as Freud had established. In her preface to the 1992 edition of Welldon’s book, Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealisation and Denigration of Motherhood (first published in 1988), Juliet Mitchell writes:

Men are perverse; women neurotic; Estela Welldon was one of the first— perhaps in her field, the first—to question the status of this psychosocial truism…women could not be seen to be perverse because the model for perversion was male…. Welldon sets out her argument that female psychophysiology gives a completely different pattern to perversion. At the centre of female perversion is the perversion of motherhood. The source of both male and female perversion may lie in a disturbed infant/mother relationship but the aims of subsequent adult perversion in the two sexes differ. Both attack the mother who abused, neglected or deprived them but women will attack this mother as she is internalised in her own female body or found within her own mothering. The hated one is identified and lies thus within or in the baby who extends the self as once the perverse woman was her own mother’s extension. Consequently the typical perversions of women entail self-mutilation or child abuse … Perversion of motherhood is the end product of serial abuse or chronic infantile neglect. The reproduction of mothering is also the reproduction of perverse mothering.

(Mitchell, 1992:iv)

Welldon argues that female perversion has generally been overlooked by psychoanalytic authors who have identified perversion with male sexuality and the castration complex which results from Oedipal longings. Freud essentially neglected the study of female sexuality and the possible perversions of women’s maternal desires, attributing to women strong feelings of inferiority about being female and a compensatory craving to be impregnated with sons. For Freud the penis is symbolically equated with babies; girls resolve their Oedipus complex by transferring the object of sexual desire from mother to father, and then changing the wish for a penis to a wish to be impregnated by their fathers. Having babies fulfils a woman’s needs, related to her penis envy and the compensatory craving for babies by the father. There was no indication by Freud that pregnancy or childhood could afford disturbed women opportunities for perversion and that motherhood itself might provide such a rich source of perverse and destructive power.

Welldon was the first to describe explicitly how, for women, perversion is not simply located in the genitals. The whole functioning female body, and the babies which it produces, provide the focus for the manifestation of female perversion.

I believe the term ‘body’ in the definition of perversion has been mistakenly identified exclusively with the male anatomy and physiology, specifically with the penis and genital orgasm. How could we otherwise have overlooked the fact that women’s bodies are completely taken over in the course of their inherent functioning by procreative drives, sometimes accompanied with the most perverse fantasies whose outcome materialises in their bodies?

(Welldon, 1992:7)

Perversion as the erotic form of hatred

Perverse behaviour enables women to project their own experience of childhood victimisation on to someone else, namely a child or children entrusted to their care. This process illustrates an important psychological function of a perversion. In the psychoanalytic sense perversion is a term used not pejoratively but descriptively, referring to a particular kind of erotic activity which does not have as its aim genital sexuality, thereby avoiding the intimacy that full sexual intercourse involves. Analysts differ in their understanding of the defining characteristics of perversion. Stoller (1975) describes it thus:

Perversion, the erotic form of hatred, is a fantasy, usually acted out but occasionally restricted to a daydream (either self-produced or packaged by others, that is, pornography). It is a habitual, preferred aberration necessary for one’s full satisfaction, primarily motivated by hostility. By ‘hostility’ I mean a state in which one wishes to harm an object; that differentiates it from ‘aggression’, which often implies only forcefulness. This hostility in perversions takes form in a fantasy of revenge hidden in the actions that make up the perversion and serves to convert childhood trauma to adult triumph. To create the greatest excitement, the perversion must also portray itself as an act of risk taking. While these definitions remove former incongruities, they impose on us the new burden of learning from a person what motivates him. But we are freed from a process of designation that does not take the subject’s personality and motivation into account. We no longer need to define a perversion according to the anatomy used, the object chosen, the society’s stated morality, or the number of people who do it.

(Stoller, 1975:4)

Key characteristics of perversion include risk-taking, deceit, objectification of the victim, secrecy and ritualised behaviour. Perversions also appear to psychically engulf the person who enacts them, providing the central meaning to their existence. One is struck by the importance of the sexual behaviour for the perverse woman, who seems almost wholly preoccupied by it, as though there were nothing else of meaning or value in her life. This indicates the extent to which perversion may mask an underlying emptiness and sense of flatness, or depression, and helps us to understand how it assumes a life of its own, in that keeping the perverse behaviour secret, and employing elaborate strategies to preserve its existence become a governing principle of life. For mothers, presenting the facade of ordinary, devoted maternal care provides an invaluable subterfuge for sexual abuse, as the quality of the contact will then rarely be questioned.

THE ROOTS OF DISTURBED MOTHERING

The ideas of Dinora Pines and Estela Welldon in relation to women’s unconscious use of their bodies are complementary and make significant contributions to the understanding of female experience. The psychoanalyst Dinora Pines eloquently describes how women’s bodies, in particular their reproductive systems, can become the vehicles for the expression of unconscious conflicts. She explores the many ways in which unconscious conflicts may be expressed through pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth and sexuality. Her work differs from Welldon’s in that she does not specifically focus on perverse or criminal women, although the processes that she describes can also be seen in extreme forms in these women.

Through her pregnancies and the babies which she produces, the perverse mother is able to re-create the destructive patterns of her own birth and childhood, inhabiting a domain within which she has power, where she can wreak vengeance and gain compensation for her own abuse and deprivation. While these motivations may be unconscious, their conscious expression can be manifested in a woman’s apparently benign, but overwhelmingly powerful, desires to have a baby inside her body, and to produce a child who will finally give her unconditional love and affirmation of her own vitality and power. The baby may in fact be a potential receptacle for her own unacceptable feelings of helplessness and deprivation.

The notion of the separateness of the baby is difficult for such mothers to conceptualise. Their understanding of the needs of the children for welfare and protection is limited, as their main concern is their own need to feel cherished and loved. They may describe feeling ‘empty’ inside and wanting a baby to make them feel filled up, and whole. This emptiness may relate to and mirror an earlier experience of emotional deprivation and depletion: the absence of an internalised good object. The birth of children for these women is inevitably a tremendous disappointment, as the demands of the infants reawaken their awareness of their own unmet needs, making the situation persecutory and, at times, unbearable. ‘Mature object love, in which the needs of self and object are mutually understood and fulfilled, cannot be achieved, and the birth of a real baby might be a calamity’ (Pines, 1993:103).

Pines (1993) identifies an essential distinction between the experiences of pregnancy and motherhood; this differentiation is crucial in both practical and psychodynamic terms. The disappointment that women may feel when the pregnancy ends and the baby is born, the baby who not only fails to compensate them for their deprivation, but who also stirs up memories of frustrated needs and infantile rage, can lead to renewed feelings of anger, abandonment and isolation. The unbearable nature of the reactivated pain can lead to violent or perverse assaults on the baby.

In the following case illustration I describe the psychic processes which give rise to violent assaults on an infant, both in the womb and following her birth. These attacks are not sexual ones, but stem from the disturbed constellation of experiences which I suggest could also give rise to maternal incest. Both physical and sexual assault on children can be considered manifestations of female perversion. I have described this young woman, Kate, in order to illustrate the discussion of unconscious fantasies and terrors in pregnancy and their link with maternal abuse. She graphically illustrates Welldon’s notion of women’s ‘perverse fantasies whose outcome materialises in their bodies’ (1992:7).

Case illustration: Pregnancy and unconscious fantasies

Kate, an 18-year-old woman, was seen for assessment of her capacity to care for and protect her 7-month-old daughter, who was currently placed in foster care and was the subject of care proceedings. The local authority was exploring the possibility of placing the child for adoption as an alternative to returning her to Kate’s care. Kate presented as a vulnerable young woman with difficulty in understanding the nature and purpose of the assessment and an overall sense of confusion and distractedness. She was slight and dishevelled, wearing ill-fitting and dirty clothes. She chose to keep her heavy jacket on throughout the initial interview, despite the warmth of the room, conveying a sense that she needed the protection of her clothing, and was not fully aware of how to take care of herself or how to respond to her environment. Her unwashed and unkempt appearance and red-rimmed eyes evoked the image of a neglected child, or an adolescent runaway sleeping on the streets. She was twelve weeks pregnant with her second child when I met her and had recently separated from the violent partner, the father of her first child. She was unsure who the father of her second baby was, having had casual sexual relationships with several men over the past year. I was asked to provide a report for the Court in which I considered her parenting capacity and expressed an opinion about her general psychological presentation, particularly in relation to her mothering and any work which could be undertaken to help her in this.

Kate looked several years younger than her actual age, appearing ill at ease and awkward. Her face and voice were almost expressionless, aside from the occasion when she burst into tears as she described the extreme violence to which her mother, father and eventually stepfather had subjected her throughout her early life. At age 12 she had come to the attention of social services because of bruising to her face and arms and disturbed behaviour at school. Her parents had separated the previous year and her mother had formed a new relationship with a man who had been charged with, but not eventually convicted for, sexual offences against children two years before he had met Kate’s mother. Kate referred to this man as her ‘stepfather’ and disclosed that she had been ‘terrified of him’. She had eventually been removed from her mother’s care and placed in a children’s home when she was 13. She had two younger brothers, who still lived at home with her mother.

Kate’s own mother had been classified as having learning disabilities and had suffered with depression since her early 20s; her first depressive episode had occurred when Kate was three weeks old. Kate said she ‘could not remember’ if she had been subject to sexual violence in early childhood but she had been seriously indecently assaulted by a stranger when she was 14. She had been willing to give evidence against her assailant but he had died before the case came to court.

Kate gave the impression of being someone vulnerable and traumatised, who had been emotionally, physically and sexually damaged to the extent that she did not believe anything good or alive could survive inside of her. In conflict with her fear of what was inside of her was her overwhelming desire to continue with her pregnancy and become a mother, although she did not appear to have a real sense of what either experience involved.

Kate vividly described her sense of confusion and fear during her first pregnancy, ‘I didn’t know what was inside of me’ she explained, and went on to relate how she had used coat hangers and other sharp instruments to try to dislodge the unborn baby from 18 weeks on, eventually giving birth at 36 weeks to a girl. She had presented at casualty frequently during her first pregnancy and the medical reports gave a graphic picture of her: ‘the patient presented as a young woman screaming to have the baby taken out of her.’ She experienced her pregnancy as filled with horror, describing a powerful sense of invasion. She had vivid images throughout her pregnancy of a monstrous creature, growing inside of her. She had wondered whether the baby was fully human and felt desperate for it to be born so that she could find out whether it was, in fact, a human baby.

Once her daughter had been born, following Kate’s repeated, unsuccessful and violent attempts to induce labour, she had found it increasingly difficult to cope with her demands. When the baby was nine days old Kate had shaken and thrown her, finding it unbearable to hear her crying, which she could not stop, and which powerfully reawakened her own memories of deprivation. Her assault on the baby brought her to the attention of the social services once again, this time as a mother; she had only recently been discharged from a care order herself. When care proceedings were instigated on her newborn child Kate reported a sense of relief, because she was aware that she was not able to cope with motherhood. In this sense the relief and her desire to protect the baby from suffering as she had reflected a healthy and protective aspect of her maternal capacity. Although she had an intellectual awareness, at ti...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FOREWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN
• PART II: VIOLENCE AGAINST THE SELF
• PART III: VIOLENCE AGAINST OTHERS
• CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY