The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep: A Relational Approach to Internalized Perpetration in Complex Trauma Survivors

Harvey L. Schwartz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136159633
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Santé mentale en psychologie

The literature on psychological trauma and traumatic attachment has progressed over the past few decades, however issues of coerced and internalized perpetration have not been fully explored and deconstructed. This book presents a synthesis of relational and archetypal psychology, trauma and dissociation theory, and highly relevant child soldier literature, to offer new clinical perspectives to assist psychotherapists and trauma patients to achieve more successful therapy outcomes.

The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep offers instructive, cautionary and innovative therapeutic approaches to help transform the lives of survivors of complex trauma. Providing an explanation of how the effects of coerced perpetration trauma are built, and the damage done to the psyches and lives of most trauma victims, the book extends our knowledge base in a thorough deconstruction of the nature of perpetration and its effects on the psyche.

Chapters include:

- trauma, dissociation, and coerced perpetration

- the child soldier as a model of internalized perpetration

- relational concepts in the treatment of trauma and dissociative disorders

- treatment trajectory

- archetypal constructs as a vehicle for integration.

This book provides valuable new perspectives on the psychodynamic challenges and opportunities for mental health professionals treating internalized perpetration in survivors of complex trauma, and will prove essential reading for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and post-graduate students as well as researchers, legal scholars and policy makers.

Chapter 1

The alchemy of wolves and sheep

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.

Abraham Lincoln

Overview

An unfortunate legacy of some unimaginably cruel childhoods – those in which children have been subjected to prolonged mind-altering immersion in malevolent familial, cult, criminal, and paramilitary systems – is inculcation into a culture of brutality, to the point of internalizing their perpetrators’ identities and values. One of the worst transgressions against a victim occurs when a perpetrator systematically confuses the victim about his or her true identity through the victim’s coerced violence against a third party. This traumatically bonds the child in forged complicity to his or her perpetrator. Even as theories and practices presented in the psychological literature on traumatic attachment have progressed over the past few decades – from acceptance of the Stockholm Syndrome onward – issues of coerced and internalized perpetration have yet to be fully elucidated and deconstructed.

Many dissociative trauma patients (e.g., severe child-abuse survivors, child and adult soldiers, gang members, prostitutes, trafficked individuals, and cult victims) report coerced perpetration as the most difficult aspect of their trauma histories and recoveries. When these victims do find their way to treatment, they often vehemently reject and undermine opportunities for liberation by re-enacting the confusion, threats, betrayals, and sadism of the pathological social systems wherein they were raised and indoctrinated. The acute, yet defiantly self-protective, deformation of a person’s identity along with eruptions of dissociated aggression can destabilize the patient–therapist relationship in ways few clinicians have been adequately prepared to anticipate or manage. The well-documented plight of child soldiers who have been abducted into armed cartels and political revolutionary groups, or who have “volunteered” under a range of psychosocial and economic pressures in conflicts throughout the world, provides a valuable model of parallel processes resulting in perpetrator identity states. These children (and the adult survivors of child soldiering) lend important insights into the rehabilitation process of victims of coerced perpetration.

This book illuminates the psychological terrain at the far end of the spectrum of traumatic attachment and “identification with the aggressor” to provide valuable new perspectives on the psychodynamic challenges and opportunities for mental health professionals treating internalized perpetration in survivors of complex trauma. By standing on the shoulders of groundbreaking pioneers, whose insights into the processes and rehabilitation of child soldiers have informed my perspective, I present a systematic investigation of the parallel clinical profiles of Western trauma and dissociative disorders patients. In turn, my relational perspective may prove valuable to clinicians and policy makers designing protocols for child soldiers and others ensnared in victim–perpetrator– collaborator matrixes.

This book offers instructive, cautionary, and innovative therapeutic approaches grounded in relational psychoanalytic and archetypal theory to help transform the lives of survivors of complex trauma.

Introduction

The potential to become a perpetrator exists in every human being. When perpetration is cultivated in the psyches of traumatized children, numerous maturational processes are disrupted and deformed. Because of “successful” self-protective cover narratives, compensations, and dissociative self-organization, adult survivors of complex trauma ¹ suffer a profound sacrifice of psychological, emotional, and spiritual development. This condition coincides with the emergence of alternate pathways of psychological development where defensive precocity, resilience, and degeneration appear in unusual combinations, including: activation of primitive impulses and concretization of aggressive fantasies; mobilization of precocious abstraction abilities and survivalist cognitive functions such as hypervigilance and hypermnesia; institutionalization of omnipotent thinking; and the management of emotional, sensory, and identity challenges with resourceful dissociative strategies (Kluft, 1999; Putnam, 1997; Schore, 2002 , 2009; Van der Kolk et al. 1996). Those whose trauma experiences involved being forced to perpetrate extreme abuse against others carry an exceptionally heavy burden with them into treatment. Although this book addresses the treatment of internalized perpetrator identification in adult survivors of coerced perpetration in childhood, many of the underlying psychodynamics and treatment perspectives discussed here also apply to individuals whose identification with perpetration occurred through indirect (nonviolent), unconscious, intergenerational transmission, as well as to adult posttraumatic stress disorder patients – including war veterans, gang members, former prison inmates, victims of sex trafficking – who have been involved in acts of severe violence (and betrayal) against others in service to sub-cultural instructions and imperatives. ²

Coerced, and then internalized, perpetration is one of the most challenging forms of psychic damage to heal psychotherapeutically. The difficulty with treating internalized perpetration is rooted in the paradoxes of survival mechanisms under tyrannical interpersonal conditions. Challenges derive primarily from the complex process of attachment to, and identification with, aggressors (A. Freud, 1936; Ferenczi, 1933). ³ This includes the self containing and internalizing terrifying alien objects, resulting in the antilibidinal ego or “internal saboteur” (Fairbairn, 1954). Further treatment complications involve the delicate intricacies required by the treatment of all complex dissociative disorders – especially victims of torture and mind control (Lacter, 2011; Miller, 2012; H. Schwartz, 2000), where overwhelming affects and frequent dangerous enactments threaten to undermine the basic therapeutic alliance. Psychotherapy for patients afflicted with the conflation of victim and perpetrator experiences naturally overlaps with broader psychotherapeutic approaches, yet must be designed along independent lines of inquiry and intervention.

By its nature, internalized perpetration tenaciously insists on remaining hidden. ⁴ The truth of coerced and internalized perpetration is not only sequestered in the psyche of the patient, but it is also unseen in the training of the majority of psychotherapists ⁵ and for the most part concealed in our culture at large. Prejudice and disgust are not uncommon professional attitudes toward victims of organized child abuse (where most coerced perpetration trauma occurs) and many professionals who treat these patients are subjected to, or fear, collegial skepticism. When internalized perpetration does reveal itself in therapy, the way it presents itself can be alarming and intimidating and it stubbornly resists treatment. A perpetrator personality state often provokes threats and actions against others (and the self) as re-enactments of the cruelty and betrayals of the pathological social systems in which victims were raised and indoctrinated.

Perpetrator alters are motivated by some of the same intrapsychic, attachment, and trauma-based stressors that inspire the development of the well-documented “hostile” or “persecutory” alter phenomenon in dissociative identity disorder (DID) patients (Kluft, 1984; Putnam, 1989; C. Ross, 1997). However, perpetrator alters and self-states tend to have a greater narcissistic investment in separateness (Kluft, 1984; 1999), and demonstrate more deeply entrenched pseudodelusionality (Kluft, 1987; 1996). They are more intensely organized around the severe dissociation-mobilizing affect states of disgust, shame, helplessness, rage, terror, and hopelessness, and maintain a deeper commitment to perpetrator protection and perpetrator ideology. Abuser personalities have long been understood as part of most severely dissociative patients’ systems and mostly all clinicians and theorists encourage an appreciation of their protective function in the patient’s life, regardless of their initial presentation. Some clinicians (Blizard, 1997; Curtis, 1997; H. Schwartz, 2000) have noted the existence of psychopathic or criminal self-states that wish only for their own power, find pleasure in deception, provocation, and “duping delight” (Salter, 1995; 2003) and chillingly embody archetypal demonic identifications.

Several authors (e.g., Lacter, 2011; Miller, 2012; Sinason, 1994; H. Schwartz, 2000; Vogt, 2008) have described the existence of perpetrator-engineered (i.e., not self-generated) and implanted self-states conjured under conditions of torture-based mind control extending to identifications with antisocial, criminal, and diabolical behaviors. Underscoring the differences between perpetrator self-states and other dissociative phenomena in complex trauma survivors, Vogt (2008) describes perpetrator states as demonstrating: startling unpredictability and intractability; shocking betrayals; choleric and coercive internal and interpersonal pressure; a pattern of quick, impulsive and violent actions followed by rapid withdrawals; and causing chronic mental confusion. Treating perpetrator states in violent, dissociative children, Marks (2012) has observed these children feel utterly demoralized and intimidated by their own unpredictable perpetrator behaviors and identities. When therapists try to deal with perpetrator introjects as if they were normal dissociative identities, Marks notes there is often a backlash in the therapy office, exasperating the therapist and patient alike. Perpetrator introjects can remain elusive and unresponsive to traditional trauma/dissociation treatment methods; unlike other self-states, they may circumvent normal processes of integration, sometimes moving underground only to emerge at full force at a later stage of treatment (Marks, 2012).

Traumatic attachment of victims to abusers and the misdirection of aggression in posttraumatic stress disorder patients have been well researched, however the particular dynamics that give rise to traumatically-induced perpetrator states have yet to be thoroughly excavated and studied. This deficiency of investigation is exacerbated by the fact that violent acts of coerced perpetration are often kept secret by adult patients as self-protection against incredulity, shame, and criminal liability. The child soldier phenomenon – the mechanics of their abduction/ recruitment/enlistment and the tentative paths to their rehabilitation – provides parallel patterns derived principally from non-Western contexts for understanding and treating perpetrator states in DID ⁶ patients, specifically adult survivors of severe child abuse who have been subjected to prolonged mind-altering immersion in criminal, familial, paramilitary, and cult systems where unspeakable deeds were coerced from the child both as a perverse end in itself and to forge an enduring allegiance.

Interview excerpts

Child soldiers

These interview fragments are based on excerpts of testimony from child soldiers who have at some point entered the demobilization process.

I was attending primary school. The rebels came and attacked us. They killed my mother and father in front of my eyes. I was 10 years old. They took me with them […] they trained us to fight. The first time I killed someone, I got so sick, I thought I was going to die. But I got better […] My fighting name was Blood Never Dry. ⁷

D., 16-year-old, Sierra Leonean male

The rebels told me to join them, but I said no. Then they killed my smaller brother. I changed my mind. ⁸

L., 7-year-old, Sierra Leonean male

The rebels attacked my village. All the huts were burned and many people were killed. The RUF [Sierra Leone] rounded up those who lived. Then they took some young boys to go with them. They said they would kill us if we did not go. They gave me a rifle and told me to kill this woman […] she was my relative [aunt] and I didn’t want to hurt her. They told me to shoot her or I would be shot. So I shot her […] I did it to survive. ⁹

16-year-old, Sierra Leonean male

Everybody was gathered. They talked about us newly abducted children and they said: “You look like people who plan to escape and we are going to make you rebels now.” They told us to lie down. Now we were surrounded by 40 rebels. They said: “Do not raise your head or we will kill all of you.” We had to stretch our hands forward and put our foreheads to the ground. They started beating my back. Three hundred-fifty strokes were given on my back and buttocks. After a while the pain was so big that I felt that it would be better if I was dead. It was just too much to bear. Coldness started creeping into my body. And the trembling started. And then it happened again. I looked at my body from outside. I knew I would die. I saw death. It was in me. Death takes people’s soul. My soul was already outside my body. I could feel pain, deep pain, but it was not from my back, from the strokes, it was everywhere inside me now […] I couldn’t hear anything. I also didn’t realize when it was that they had stopped beating me. But then I heard a loud voice: “Get up.” I tried, but I couldn’t sit. I kneeled for almost one hour. It felt like a very long time. I realized that all other children around me had died in the beating. I could see them lying still and not breathing. They were lying all around me. Their bodies were swollen and full of blood all over. The rebels dragged their bodies and dumped them into the nearby river. ¹⁰

O. B., abducted at age 14 by Lord’s Resistance Army, Ugandan male

I think I joined freely. All my friends were already part of this group, even my uncle and many of my cousins […] it didn’t take me long to decide. In those days I was frightened since our home was attacked almost every night by bandits and other rebel groups as well. What did I have to lose? Also my parents were too poor to send me to school anymore. My mind was made up fast, I joined my friends and from that day I never went home to my parent’s house again. I know you think, how can I not think of home, but I never did. I was totally there in the forest with the rebels, I only thought of today and the drugs we got there. One time my parents tried to find me and buy me out with a goat, but I didn’t even look at them. Home did not exist anymore, you know, I was always under drugs from that day onwards. Also we had a purpose […] many people come and want to rule us, they come and want our riches and we need to fight that, we need to fight for our freedom and to fight for our village. Our commander used to talk to us about this every morning when we met for morning assembly. ¹¹

K.G., joined at 13-years-old, interviewed at 16-years-old male, Democratic Republic of Congo

I’m proud of what I learned – how to speak to groups, organize people, command, use weapons. I never got this from (the) government. How else am I supposed to have a future? If I had to do it again, I’d join again. ¹²

16-year-old female commander in Sierra Leone

Dissociative identity disorder patients (perpetrator alters)

These interview fragments are taken from sessions with patients who are dissociative survivors of, among many traumas, coerced perpetration.

I am not a person. I am a creation of them [the abusers]. I am a cube posing as a person. I’ve been allowed to have a life providing I play by the rules and instructions book. If I don’t I can be recalled. If I am recalled, I have to be broken down all over again. That would be a pain I could not survive.

Alex, 42-year-old DID male

My father gave me two choices for disobeying him and having bad thoughts about the family. Either my new puppy, the one he had just bought for me, could die a slow and painful death at his hands or he said I could kill it quickly and put it out of its misery. He said if I loved him and I loved the puppy I should kill it quickly. After I killed it he had sex with me and told me what a good girl I was and after that he bought me ice cream and after that he told me that I was going to be of great use to the family some day and that the family had many enemies that I would enjoy killing.

Sonja, 48-year-old DID female

If I tell you all my dirty secrets, I’ll blow up, I’ll explode, I’ll bleed away, I’ll bleed out.

Jen, 52-year-old DID female

I’m afraid to think about it [the training to kill] or say it out loud. If I say it I might become it. If I tell you what they taught me I might become what they taught me – again. My head is not a safe place. It can make me turn into someone else.

Mike, 43-year-old DID male

Once you’ve crossed that line into hell you can never come back and you can never belong in this world again.

Steve, 44-year-old DID male

Don’t you g...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. The alchemy of wolves and sheep
• 2. The child soldier as a model of internalized perpetration
• 3. Dilemmas of dissociative survival
• 4. Mind control
• 5. Perpetration and perpetrator states
• 6. Transforming perpetration
• 7. Treatment concepts and trajectories
• 8. Using archetypal concepts as a vehicle of integration
• Notes
• References
• Index