Transcription
There is a short story by Franz Kafka titled Metamorphosis. The protagonist of the story, one Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a cockroach. The realization of his transformation dawns on him only gradually, based on the responses, the reactions by his horrified family members.
The same thing happens to victims of narcissistic abuse. One morning or one series of mornings, they wake up, they find themselves transformed into their abusers. They find themselves identifying with the beliefs and the values of the abuser, imitating the abuser's behavioral patterns, defending the abuser, the abuser, justifying the abuser's misconduct, finding all kinds of contexts and narratives within which the abuser is perfectly right, upright, and righteous.
This process has been documented a long time ago by one of the pillars of the psychoanalytical movement, Sándor Ferenczi. He called it identifying with the aggressor. Now, it's important to realize that identifying with the aggressor is an unconscious mechanism. It's not that the victim wakes up and says, "From today, I'm going to be like my abuser," or "From today, I'm going to be the abuser. No one is going to abuse me ever again." That's not how it goes. It's gradual. It's incremental. It creeps on you. It's unconscious.
An individual identifies with someone who poses a threat, and by identifying with the source of the threat, removes the threat in his or her own mind. Of course, it's childish, infantile even. Of course, it's a form of magical thinking. If I agree with my abuser, if I support my abuser, if I justify my abuser, if I collaborate with my abuser, if I become an accomplice, an accomplice, the abuser is not going to hurt me. There's no such ethics in abuse. But magical thinking heals all wounds, and victims deceive themselves into believing that should they emulate and imitate the abuser, should they adopt the abuser's modeling, then they're safe, which of course is not true.
Similarly, people identify with opponents who cannot be mustered, people who are perceived as beyond control, beyond punishment, beyond rules and laws and regulations. At that point, the only option is submission. The only way not to incur the wrath of such an opponent is by collaborating with him or her, by becoming a sycophant or an acolyte or a satellite, an extension of this indomitable opponent.
Identification with the abuser may involve adopting the aggression or emulating other characteristics of the aggressor. It's not only about aggression. In the majority of cases, the imitation involves externalized aggression. When the abuser is verbally aggressive, the victim becomes verbally aggressive, verbally abusive. Where the abuser is physically, um, um, you know, abusive, then perhaps physical violence may creep in. But there are other facets and other aspects and other dimensions and other characteristics of a typical abuser, and the victim may choose to imitate those because they present less of a problem. They, they don't create dissonance. They are not ego-syntonic. They are not alien to the nature and the character and the self-concept and the self-image and self-perception of the victim. The victim says, "I can't be aggressive. It's against who I am. It's not who I am. It's not my core identity. But I can be other things which the aggressor is. I can imitate the aggressor's behavior in other ways which do not involve aggression." And so this has been observed in cases of hostage-taking and in other extreme situations, for example, in concentration camps with couples, couples who imitated actually SS personnel, SS guards.
In psychoanalytic theory, identification with the abuser occurs on a developmental level when the child identifies with a rival, the father or the mother, towards the end of what came to be known as the Oedipal phase. It was first described by Anna Freud in 1936. Anna Freud was a child psychologist, a genius in her own right. She was Sigmund Freud's daughter, of course. And she described identifying with the aggressor in the context of the Oedipus complex, where, for example, a boy child, a male child, would tend to be attracted sexually and otherwise to his mother, and the father would become a competitor, and so the child would identify with the aggressor, would identify with the father. And it remained largely confined to this until Ferenczi came along and expanded the framework dramatically.
Now, today, we use the phrase "defensive identification." Defensive identification is a process by which the victim of abuse psychologically identifies with the perpetrator of the abuse. Pay attention. There may not be behavioral manifestations. The victim's behavior may not change at all, but internally, the victim would find herself more and more attracted to the aggressive and abusive elements and behaviors in her abuser. She would identify with the abuser. She would begin to admire or justify or crave to be or emulate internally, psychologically. The abuser doesn't have to be an individual. It could be a group with which the perpetrator is identified. And it's a defensive strategy against continuing feelings of vulnerability and helplessness and a way to fend off further victimization by pretending to be, um, by pretending to be powerful, by pretending to be the abuser.
So, defensive identification, identifying with the abuser, identifying with the aggressor, is magical thinking in the sense that the abuser's power is appropriated by the victim, magically, psychologically. There's a fantastic space of imagination. There's a paracosm within which the victim transmogrifies into, is transformed into, metamorphoses into the abuser, thereby appropriating the abuser's power and preventing the abuser from any further abuse or victimization, taking away the abuser's power.
In the classical psychoanalytical theory of Sigmund Freud, defensive identification was an integral part of the identification process. In his work, a child identified with a parent. In his, in his actual work, it was the father identifies with a parent who is perceived to be powerful, threatening, punitive. So, a child identifies with this figure, and it's a form of identification that develops as the child's defense against punishment by the parent evolves. The child is terrified of punishment, of adverse outcomes, of consequences of misbehavior, and so on. And one way to cope with this is to identify with a punitive parent, with the source of the punishment. And again, the identification is not a kind of transubstantiation. It's not like becoming the father. It's just taking away the father's properties, the father's qualities, the father's traits, father's characteristics, and appropriating them, appropriating them, and assimilating them, thereby becoming, in effect, a proxy father or a pseudo-father or a replica of the father.
And this, this applies to victims of abuse as well. That's what they do. They, in their minds, develop a narrative, a narrative space or a fantastic space where they increasingly and gradually are becoming the abuser, their abuser. They're being abused from the outside by a potent, threatening, cruel, um, unbridled, merciless figure. And the only way to cope with this is to say, "Well, I'm going to be the same. I'm going to be the same." And by appropriating these qualities, by taking away this power from my abuser, I am going to prevent my abuser from further hurting me, further harming me. Of course, it's, as you see, it's highly infantile. It's highly childish. And it involves magical thinking, merger, fusion. Essentially, the victim and the abuser, in the victim's mind, develop a symbiotic state. The victim merges with the abuser, fuses with the abuser, thereby digesting the abuser, assimilating the abuser, and, and in a way, preventing the abuser from having any degree of freedom, limiting the abuser's capacity to act.
Now, this is one type of identification, the defensive identification. We have many other types of identification in psychoanalytical theory and later in object relations theories. And one of them is the analytic identification. Again, Sigmund Freud was the first to describe it. He said that analytic identification is the first phase of the identification process. It's rooted in the child's initial dependence, this time on the mother, as well as later on on other caregivers. The child needs a mother for basic biological needs, emotional needs, and so on and so forth. So the child acquires the mother's characteristics in the service of becoming their own source of reinforcement, nourishment, and comfort. In other words, because a child begins to realize that mother is an external object, that mother has a life of her own, that she might sometimes be absent or non-responsive or frustrating. What the child does, the child creates a representation of the mother in his or her own mind, in its own mind, and then continues to interact with this representation of mother because this representation of mother is always there, never abandons, never absent, and always responsive, always caters to the child's whims and wishes and needs. So the child provides itself, uh, with comfort, self-soothes, the self-soothing via the avatar or the internal object that represents the mother, the real mother, the external object. And this is the initial phase of the identification process.
If the mother is not only frustrating but is withholding, is a dead mother, is a cruel mother, is a neglectful mother, is an abusive mother, a traumatizing mother, then in this case, the child will not only create an internal representation of a mother, but he will create an internal representation of the mother that he can control, that the child can control. The child can own, direct, because when the mother is a dead mother or a bad mother or a frightening mother or dangerous mother or traumatizing or abusive, internalizing the mother as she is would be would create enormous dissonance and anxiety in the child. The child cannot internalize the mother as she is. He internalizes the mother as the child is. He internalizes the mother as an integral part of the child, so that the child becomes the mother. In this case, the mother is excluded completely altogether, and the interaction continues exclusively with the representative mother, with the internal object, the maternal internal object.
So, let's summarize this part. It's very important. When the mother is okay, a good enough mother, to use Winnicott's language, the child would create a representation of the mother in its mind and continue to interact both with the real mother in the external world, the separate mother, and with the representation of the mother, with the internal object of the mother, when the mother is absent. So when the mother, the real mother, the external mother, the physical mother, the, the separate mother, when she's really there, the child would prefer to interact with her. When she's out of the room, when she's absent, unavailable, frustrating, the child will go inwards and continue interaction with a representation of this good enough mother. However, when the mother is bad and dead and horrible and absent and selfish and narcissistic and psychopathic and traumatizing and abusing and instrumentalizing and parentifying, and you name it, when she's the wrong kind of mother, the child cannot create an internal object which would genuinely and authentically reflect the real mother because that would create enormous anxiety and dissonance, internalizing a bad object. So what, what the child does, the child creates a representation of, of mother, and then he misattributes the representation to itself. The child becomes the mother. The child becomes their own mother. The child from that moment on continues to interact only with the internal mother, only with the internal object, only with the introjection, and excludes, cuts off the frustrating, threatening, abusive, traumatizing external mother, which is, of course, a great description of the psychological development of pathological narcissism. It's exactly what narcissists do.
The child also incorporates the mother into the superego. It's actually, clinically speaking, it's the ego ideal, but okay, let's call it the superego. And later on, the child incorporates other significant figures into the superego: teachers, role models, influential peers, and so on. So, we all, we all starting in childhood, we all incorporate, we all internalize, we all introject, we all, you know, identify ourselves with other people, starting with mother, then father, then influential peers, then teachers, role models, and so on and so forth. We all, we all do this all the time, all the time. We maintain this zoo of internal objects that represent real people out there, external objects. The problem begins when the external object is threatening, abusive, traumatizing, cruel, hurtful, damaging. Internalizing such an external object is not an option. And so the only way is to create a representation of that external object and then merge with it, take over it, fuse with it, become one with it. And that is identifying with the aggressor.
We see it most commonly in what used to be called the Stockholm syndrome. I'm saying "used to be called" because the Stockholm syndrome has been disputed and largely debunked in the scholarly literature, especially as of late. But still, there are a few interesting observations there. The Stockholm syndrome was described as a mental and emotional response in which a captive, a hostage, displays loyalty, even affection, even falling, falling in love with the hostage-taker, with a captor, with a criminal, with a person, the very person who has taken away the victim's, the hostage's freedom and perhaps sooner or later, the victim's life. And yet, there is loyalty. There's love. There's affection. There's collaboration and complicity. The captive comes to see law enforcement, police, rescuers as the enemy because they endanger the captor and they threaten to break the newly emergent, the nascent bond between the hostage and the hostage-taker. And Stockholm syndrome derives from the case of a woman who was held hostage in 1973 during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. She became so emotionally attached, actually infatuated with one of the robbers, with one of the bank robbers, that she broke her engagement to another man and remained faithful to her former hostage-taker, to her former captor, during his prison term. The term was coined by Swedish psychiatrist and criminologist Nils Bejerot.
So, even though the Stockholm syndrome is no longer accepted as real, it is true that identifying with the aggressor is not only an intellectual exercise. It's not only saying unconsciously, "This person is a danger to me. This person threatens me. This person abuses me. This person has power over me, and there's nothing I can do to this person. This person is untouchable, indomitable, invulnerable. Nothing I can do." So the only way is to digest this person, assimilate this person, absorb this person. The only way is to take over this person, to merge with this person, to fuse with this person, to become one with this person. The only way to avoid future abuse, future maltreatment, and victimization is to not play the role of the victim, but to become one with the abuser.
So, this is the intellectual part. But it's true that there are emotional correlates. There is emotional involvement in this process. Identifying with the abuser is not only identifying with the behaviors of the abuser. It's identifying with the abuser as a personality, as a human being, with the personhood of the abuser. And so it could lead to infatuation or Limerence. It could lead to compassion. It could lead to protectiveness, being protective of the person. It could lead to constant justification of this person. It could lead to to lying for this person. It could lead to a panoply of behaviors which are emotionally motivated. And in this sense, there is a kernel, there is a grain of truth in the Stockholm syndrome.
Identification with the aggressor is a psychological defense mechanism. The victim adopts the traits and behaviors of the abuser in order to cope with trauma, to gain a sense of safety, to reduce imminent threat and fear. The process involves internalizing the aggressor's characteristics and, in some cases, adopting an aggressive posture, aggressive behaviors, aggressive mannerisms. Um, there's also the kind of incipient, subtle, subterranean belief that if I become similar to the abuser, the abuser is going to like me. I'm going to become the kin and kith of the abuser. I'm going to become a member of the clan of the abuser. And so then the abuser will change his behavior, will no longer abuse me. Actually, exactly the opposite. Will, will, will admire me and will protect me. There is a belief that it's like abandoning, abandoning camp. It's like deserting from the army and going over to the enemy. It's like, if I'm no longer the enemy of the abuser, if I'm no longer perceived as a target of the abuser, but I'm an extension of the abuser, I am a replica, clone of the abuser, or I am the abuser himself, then the abuse will stop.
And so this internalization leads to behavioral changes. And the aim, the purpose of the behavioral changes is communication. The changes in behavior, the victim, the changes in the victim's behavior, the victim becomes more aggressive, more abusive, more assertive, more dominant. The aim is not to compete with the abuser. The aim is to communicate to the abuser. Look, I'm becoming like you. I am you. I am your offspring. I'm a member of your clan. I am your kin and kith. I support you. I believe in you. I justify you, and so on. Don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. Don't victimize me. Don't abuse me anymore because I've deserted. I've abandoned my camp, the camp of the victims. I am now one of the abusers. I'm now one of yours. It's a communication thing. It's a survival strategy during abuse.
Identifying with the abuser can persist after the abuse is over and it can negatively impact mental health and future relationships. So outwardly, when you observe such a victim in the transition from victim to abuser, when you observe the impacts, the, the ostentatious, observable impacts of the action of the identification with the abuser mechanism, what you see initially is that the traits of the victim are changing. The victim begins to mimic the aggressor's negative or feared traits and diminish, minimize, or even eliminate the positive aspects of the abuser. So, in a way, the victim becomes a caricature of the abuser, becomes more abuser than the abuser, more perpetrator than the perpetrator. And we see this a lot when we have couples who commit crimes together, Bonnie and Clyde types, or the famous cases of serial killers, a woman and a man working together as serial killers. We see this happening, and the traits are exaggerated. They're caricatured. The victim becomes a caricature of the abuser, and the victim replaces her own thoughts and feelings with the aggressor's postulated, speculated feelings and thoughts. The victim asks herself, "What is the abuser thinking? What is he feeling? I have to think and feel the same." And that way, the victim becomes what the attacker or the perpetrator needs them to be in their own mind.
The whole thing takes place in the mind of the victim. It's not real to the abuser. Abusers don't perceive this as a change. The victim tries to emulate and imitate the abuser. The abuser perceives it as a show of weakness, as submissiveness, as obsequiousness, as the victim trying to placate the abuser, cowtowing, you know, and so on. So, the abuser doesn't perceive this as a change of allegiance. It perceives it as a signal of vulnerability and frailty, and, and reacts with even enhanced or increased aggression. Actually, having emulated the traits of the abuser, having changed their own minds, their own subjectivity, is about seeking safety and control. By identifying with the abuser, the victim gains a sense of safety, empowers herself because she now aligns herself with the source of the threat, and now the situation paradoxically feels more manageable. Now she is in control.
So, a molested child might seek to become her sexual abuser's partner. You see situations in child sexual abuse where the child plays the role of a spouse or a partner and becomes highly eroticized and highly seductive and flirtatious. It's a way of catering to the expectations of the abuser by essentially transforming the child transforms itself from victim to full-scale collaborator and accomplice. Or a child who is constantly henpecked and constantly criticized and attacked and humiliated and mocked and ridiculed by the father. So this kind of abused child might become a tough guy to gain approval from the abuser. These are enduring defense mechanisms.
Identifying with the abuser continues to affect victims long after the abuse has ended or the abuser has died or exited their lives, and it has adverse mental health effects. The defensive reaction can lead to various negative outcomes. For example, it's been associated with depression and anxiety and substance use disorders. The term, as I said, was expanded on by Anna Freud and applied to child psychology, but it was introduced by Sándor Ferenczi, and it was Sándor Ferenczi who applied it more generally.
So, identifying with the aggressor is a psychological defense mechanism. The victim of abuse unconsciously adopts the traits and behaviors of a threatening figure. The idea is to cope with fear, gain a sense of control, survive intimidation by becoming the source of the threat, by somehow taking over the source of the threat and absorbing it, assimilating it. It's magical thinking. It's infantile, and but it results in a strong bond with the abuser. When you become the abuser, how can you let go? You're letting go of yourself. So there is self-infatuation, self-cathexis. There is an investment in the self, what Freud called narcissistic cathexis. And it's a strong bond with the abuser because now there's a common narrative. The abuser's narrative is now the victim's narrative as well. And they are complicit in maintaining what is known as a shared fantasy. And this is, this is really, really bad because when the abuser is removed from the victim's life, the victim experiences grief and a complete disorientation and a disruption in a sense of continuity and core identity. She feels adrift. She feels dead, unalived. She feels the victim feels distraught. And because by taking away, by removing the abuser from her life, the narrative that was the organizing principle of her life, the narrative that made her life make sense of her life, imbued her life with meaning, purpose, and direction, that narrative has been shattered.
Now, identifying with the abuser, as I've mentioned, involves multiple psychological mechanisms, many of them infantile, like internalization or introjection. Identifying with the abuser is definitely a form of introjection. It's a process where a person takes in an experience or trait from another person and appropriates, makes them their own. In this case, the negative or feared traits of the aggressor are adopted. And you're beginning to see, of course, the interface with narcissism. Narcissists are people who have been abused and traumatized in early childhood. And what they've done, they have created a representation of their abuser, a representation of the traumatizer, a representation of perpetrators, usually caregivers like mother and so on. They've created representations of these people. And then they identified with these representations. They became one with these representations. Consequently, they lost the capacity to tell the difference between external objects and internal objects. And they remain grounded in the fantasy of being an omnipotent, godlike figure, the false self, which essentially is the abuser. Because children perceive their parents as godlike, as infallible. And by creating godlike, infallible internal objects, they, the children become godlike and infallible. And that's lifelong. It's an unconscious process. And, um, the mind, the mind tries actually to protect itself, to defend itself, to protect itself from danger and from mental anguish and from extreme dissonance and the anxiety that it provokes. And of course, all this, this is the reason all this is happening unconsciously. When it comes to consciousness, when it's brought to consciousness, there's a major crisis, and usually, we usually clinicians handle these situations in therapy very frequently.
The thing to understand is, identifying with the aggressor is a survival strategy. And in this sense, in this very limited sense, it's a positive adaptation. By identifying with the aggressor, the person seeks to understand, to anticipate, to make sense, to predict, and to minimize the threat, to gain a sense of order and meaning in the world, to assert a modicum of control, to reestablish an internal locus of control. So, in abusive relationships, victims may develop empathy for the abuser or act in ways that the abuser demands in order to survive or comply with the abuser's expectations, even when these expectations are not pronounced, are not made clear, promulgated.
In childhood abuse, children who are abused internalize the perpetrator's experience and behavior. They try to cope with the inability to escape or to prevent the abuse by saying, "Okay, I'm not actually being abused. It's fun. It's a fun game. I'm participating in it willingly." And I mentioned the Stockholm syndrome. Identifying with the aggressor is seen, um, is seen as a way to co-opt the aggressor, to kind of bring the aggressor to your camp, to or to be on your side. And all this leads to maladaptive coping. It serves a purpose in the short term, but identifying with the aggressor is a maladaptive defense. It can worsen the victim's situation in the long run. It can perpetuate the cycle of abuse.
As I've explained, the abuser does not perceive this as a kind of amelioration of the abuse. The abuser doesn't perceive when the victim identifies with the abuser. Many abusers react with aggression and violence because, "Who are you to be me?" Many abusers are narcissistic. So, like, "Who are you, the victim, to assume that you're like me or that you are me?" And also, they perceive it as a weakness. So, the outcomes are never good. In other words, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It contributes to the continuation and exacerbation of the cycle of abuse. And the more the victim becomes like the aggressor, the more potential for conflict there is. And it often deteriorates to the point of verbal exchanges and physical violence, and in some cases, unfortunately, murder.
The defense mechanism, this defense mechanism always results in lasting negative impacts on the victim's mental health without mitigating the abuse or the victimization even in the short term. So, while it is a positive adaptation in the sense that the victim can deceive itself into believing that everything will be okay, there's this magical thinking. "If I just wish it strongly enough, it will happen. If I become the abuser, then we will be two abusers, not an abuser and a victim." All these are magical narratives which are typical of children. So, in this sense, it's a positive adaptation because it does reduce anxiety. It's anxiolytic. But in reality, it doesn't work. It leads to much worse outcomes, both in the relationship and in the psychology of the victim.
As I said, the abuser perceives all this, the changes in the victim when the victim becomes more like the aggressor. The abuser perceives this as either an attempt to manipulate him, which enrages him, or there's a grandiose reaction. "Who are you, the victim, to be like me? I'm much superior to you. Where, why are you so presumptuous to assume that you could be like me?" Or as a manifestation, an indication of extreme vulnerability and weakness, which, in for example, psychopathic and narcissistic abusers, triggers abusive behaviors because they leverage, leverage vulnerabilities, frailties, and weaknesses in order to further manipulate, take over, punish, and modify behaviors of victims. So, it's a no-win situation. And yet, it is grounded in early childhood. It is unconscious. And so, in many cases, the victim is not aware that this is what's happening unless and until people from the outside alert the victim that there are changes in the victim's behavior and identity which are irreconcilable with how the victim used to be, who the victim used to be. But then, most victims are isolated. The abuser cuts them off from family and friends, denies them social network, support, succor. So, there's no feedback. It's an echo chamber, and the victim descends further and further into the reverberations of her own growing insanity because there's no one out there to calibrate her, to wake her up, to put a mirror to her, and to alert her that something really bad is happening within the hall of mirrors and the shared fantasy of the abuser. The victim becomes nothing but a reflection in multiple convex mirrors, distorted more and more to the point of vanishing.