Easy Target: Child Abuse and the Angry Parent

"So let's look at some of the possible causes.

Sometimes a significant stress, such as divorce, moving, a change in the household, or sudden unemployment can trigger uncharacteristic aggression against children, because they're the easiest target against which to express physiological disturbances from disappointment, fear, and anger. In addition, some parents lack knowledge about developmental processes, so their erroneous expectations can create a form of stress that triggers maltreatment.

A child who makes unexpected demands with loud crying, waking up more often than anticipated, and being generally difficult may provoke a parent to act out suddenly, with violence. Such incidences are generally followed by horror and remorse, and quick action to ensure that the child is all right."

 

Incidents, not incidences.

 

Thank you for posting this, Little. My theory about Jason is that his parents were doing meth not pot. But they aren't poor or ill-educated. Child abuse cuts across economic lines these days, if it didn't always.

Patsy was under extreme stress during that Christmas. So was the entire family. JonBenet was the breaking point.

 

What were the stresses on Patsy? What were hers alone. Since most of the evidence points to her as the perp, what were her stresses that were not John's? The entire family was under stress? Children are usually stressed by the parents, their stresses come from the parents stress. So it's down to John or Patsy.

 

1. Christmas.
2. 40th birthday.
3. Fear of death.
4. Cancer/medication.
5. Jonbenet's looming 7th birthday.

Others ...

 

It's been my observation that most of the Christmas shopping, gift wrapping, party planning, meal preparation, trip arrangements, packing for the entire family, supervising the kids, and on and on and on, fall on the wife/mother of the family. Patsy was indeed under stress over Christmas with all her party planning and preparations, getting clothes ready and packed for two trips (one to Michigan and one to Florida, I believe), shopping and wrapping gifts (in her basement), keeping track of parties to attend and giving parties in her own home. It is very stressful and tiring to keep the kind of social schedule Patsy kept around the holidays.

When she came home on Christmas night after attending a Christmas dinner at the Whites, she was most likely bone tired - I would have been given all the excitement and high activity of the previous days. Knowing she had to get up early the next morning and make the trip to Michigan, Patsy would have longed to do nothing except fall into her bed and sleep.

However, kids don't always conform to our comfort needs. The same stressors and energy-consuming activities that affected Patsy could have wired her young daughter, causing her to act up at the time Patsy only wanted her bed. JB may have wet the bed, and Patsy may have had to get out of her own bed (if she ever went to bed that night) to clean her up and change her sheets, causing her to have to wash and dry the stinky pee sheets. Or, there could have been other things going on in that house that night that caused a very tired and stressed out Patsy to freak out.

This isn't farfetched at all. Anyone who thinks Patsy Ramsey wasn't stressed out on Christmas night isn't being very realistic. Holidays are stressful for just about everyone in some way.

 

I think Patsy was on the brink of total exhaustion this night. It's a lot to expect someone to maintain the image of the perfect children, husband, marriage.

This is just one example of outsiders noticing that the children had a problem with bed wetting, yet Patsy would constantly refer to it as “not a problem†or “no big dealâ€. She would revert to her being a cancer survivor (again, bringing the topic back to herself).

 

Ya, I know. I get stressed every Christmas putting up MY twelve Christmas trees and putting MY house on the parade of homes list and inviting strangers in to see MY trophy room.

I imagine it is stressfull being carried downstream toward the falls. And then again, PADDLING TOWARDS THEM FULL SPEED is another thing.

Self abusers can become abusers of easy targets. There's no easier target than oneself when one is willing.

 

Yes, the family was under stress. There was sexual abuse going on. John was a distant father, who worked a lot, traveled a lot, and had a first family in any case. This was a second marriage for him, with a new family after his first kids were already grown. Patsy was sick and had been under extreme treatment, yet he didn't accompany her to those treatments. JonBenet was wetting her bed and even having bowel movements unexpectedly. Patsy was under stress and yes, children do respond to the parent's emotions. Maybe she took all these activities on willingly, but then there is only so much one person can do, and she got resentful and ready to snap.

I guess you could call the children's stress "secondary" to the parent's. But the incest alone meant the family was already dysfunctional. I think they were coming apart at the seams and would have blown apart in any case, but JonBenet's death was reflective of what was really going on behind closed doors.

 

"But she also understood that JonBenet was performing because her mother wanted her to, not because she wanted to.

Someone else taught her those pseudo-adult movements, the provocative walk, the poses, all of it. The pageants were Patsy’s gig.

JonBenet was her alter ego.

Patsy didn’t have a sense of proportion about how this should fit into her child’s life."

Patsy's over-the-top behavior is an indication of an ego that lacks the ability to mediate instinct and impulse. Patsy has often been described as not knowing the difference between herself and her daughter.

"After Patsy finished decorating the house, Burke became her favorite child.
He was her first project.
Then, when JonBenet started school, she became Patsy’s second project. The children really were like projects to her."

They became objects to her, in true narcissistic fashion, to be USED.

The events of 12/25/'96 weren't due to snapping from holiday/dysfunctional family stress. IMO.

JonBenet was a stand-in for Patsy, an object that Patsy USED for a long time.

When the fight or flight mechanism is stimulated the energy has to go somewhere, inward or outward, to suicide or murder, sometimes both, sometimes suicide by proxy.

 

And stress leads dissociative types to dissociate.

 

Recently considered rare and mysterious psychiatric curiosities, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) (previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder-MPD) and other Dissociative Disorders are now understood to be fairly common effects of severe trauma in early childhood, most typically extreme, repeated physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse.

In Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994), Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) was changed to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), reflecting changes in professional understanding of the disorder resulting from significant empirical research.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), widely accepted as a major mental illness affecting 8% of the general population in the United States, is closely related to Dissociative Disorders. In fact, 80-100% of people diagnosed with a Dissociative Disorder also have a secondary diagnosis of PTSD. Recent research suggests the risk of suicide attempts among people with trauma disorders may be even higher than among people who have major depression. In addition, there is evidence that people with trauma disorders have higher rates of alcoholism, chronic medical illnesses, and abusiveness in succeeding generations.

WHAT IS DISSOCIATION?

Dissociation is a mental process, which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. During the period of time when a person is dissociating, certain information is not associated with other information as it normally would be. For example, during a traumatic experience, a person may dissociate the memory of the place and circumstances of the trauma from his ongoing memory, resulting in a temporary mental escape from the fear and pain of the trauma and, in some cases, a memory gap surrounding the experience. Because this process can produce changes in memory, people who frequently dissociate often find their senses of personal history and identity are affected.

Most clinicians believe that dissociation exists on a continuum of severity. This continuum reflects a wide range of experiences and/or symptoms. At one end are mild dissociative experiences common to most people, such as daydreaming, highway hypnosis, or "getting lost" in a book or movie, all of which involve "losing touch" with conscious awareness of one's immediate surroundings. At the other extreme is complex, chronic dissociation, such as in cases of Dissociative Disorders, which may result in serious impairment or inability to function. Some people with Dissociative Disorders can hold highly responsible jobs, contributing to society in a variety of professions, the arts, and public service -- appearing to function normally to coworkers, neighbors, and others with whom they interact daily.


HOW DOES A DISSOCIATIVE DISORDER DEVELOP?

When faced with overwhelmingly traumatic situations from which there is no physical escape, a child may resort to "going away" in his or her head. Children typically use this ability as an extremely effective defense against acute physical and emotional pain, or anxious anticipation of that pain. By this dissociative process, thoughts, feelings, memories, and perceptions of the traumatic experiences can be separated off psychologically, allowing the child to function as if the trauma had not occurred.

Dissociative Disorders are often referred to as a highly creative survival technique because they allow individuals enduring "hopeless" circumstances to preserve some areas of healthy functioning. Over time, however, for a child who has been repeatedly physically and sexually assaulted, defensive dissociation becomes reinforced and conditioned. Because the dissociative escape is so effective, children who are very practiced at it may automatically use it whenever they feel threatened or anxious -- even if the anxiety-producing situation is not extreme or abusive.


Repeated dissociation may result in a series of separate entities, or mental states, which may eventually take on identities of their own. These entities may become the internal "personality states" of a DID system. Changing between these states of consciousness is often described as "switching."

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF A DISSOCIATIVE DISORDER?

People with Dissociative Disorders may experience any of the following: depression, mood swings, suicidal tendencies, sleep disorders (insomnia, night terrors, and sleep walking), panic attacks and phobias (flashbacks, reactions to stimuli or "triggers"), alcohol and drug abuse, compulsions and rituals, psychotic-like symptoms (including auditory and visual hallucinations), and eating disorders. In addition, individuals with Dissociative Disorders can experience headaches, amnesias, time loss, trances, and "out of body experiences." Some people with Dissociative Disorders have a tendency toward self-persecution, self-sabotage, and even violence (both self-inflicted and outwardly directed).

WHO GETS DISSOCIATIVE DISORDERS?

The vast majority (as many as 98 to 99%) of individuals who develop Dissociative Disorders have documented histories of repetitive, overwhelming, and often life-threatening trauma at a sensitive developmental stage of childhood (usually before the age of nine), and they may possess an inherited biological predisposition for dissociation. In our culture the most frequent precursor to Dissociative Disorders is extreme physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in childhood.

Current research shows that DID may affect 1% of the general population and perhaps as many as 5-20% of people in psychiatric hospitals, many of whom have received other diagnoses. The incidence rates are even higher among sexual-abuse survivors and individuals with chemical dependencies. These statistics put Dissociative Disorders in the same category as schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety, as one of the four major mental health problems today.

Most current literature shows that Dissociative Disorders are recognized primarily among females. The latest research, however, indicates that the disorders may be equally prevalent (but less frequently diagnosed) among the male population. Men with Dissociative Disorders are most likely to be in treatment for other mental illnesses or drug and alcohol abuse, or they may be incarcerated.

WHY ARE DISSOCIATIVE DISORDERS OFTEN MISDIAGNOSED?

Dissociative Disorders survivors often spend years living with misdiagnoses, consequently floundering within the mental health system. They change from therapist to therapist and from medication to medication, getting treatment for symptoms but making little or no actual progress. Research has documented that on average, people with Dissociative Disorders have spent seven years in the mental health system prior to accurate diagnosis. This is common, because the list of symptoms that cause a person with a Dissociative Disorder to seek treatment is very similar to those of many other psychiatric diagnoses. In fact, many people who are diagnosed with Dissociative Disorders also have secondary diagnoses of depression, anxiety, or panic disorders.

DO PEOPLE ACTUALLY HAVE "MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES"?

Yes, and no. One of the reasons for the decision by the psychiatric community to change the disorder's name from Multiple Personality Disorder to Dissociative Identity Disorder is that "multiple personalities" is somewhat of a misleading term. A person diagnosed with DID feels as if she has within her two or more entities, or personality states, each with its own independent way of relating, perceiving, thinking, and remembering about herself and her life. If two or more of these entities take control of the person's behavior at a given time, a diagnosis of DID can be made. These entities previously were often called "personalities," even though the term did not accurately reflect the common definition of the word as the total aspect of our psychological makeup. It is important to keep in mind that although these alternate states may appear to be very different, they are all manifestations of a single person.

All information on these pages
© the Sidran Institute, 1995-2003

 

Paradox, you may have stated this before, but what severe childhood trauma do you think Patsy experienced? Do you think she was molested as a child? What's your theory about WHY Patsy may have been a MPD or DID?

 

Since JonBenet apparently suffered vaginal abuse and she was inappropriately sexualized for the pageants and photo shoots and Patsy was reportedly atleast semi-frigid, I would tend to think she was sexually violated.

But both Pam and Patsy show behavior problems typical of children with an intrusive narcissistic mother. And Patsy's possible identification with Muriel Spark and Sandy Stranger point to mothering problems.

I think the line of descent can be taken backwards from JonBenet to Patsy to Nedra. A violation occured in Patsy's life, physical and/or emotional. I'm guessing both, by Nedra, very much in the same manner that Patsy misused JonBenet.

As far as severity, that depends on how the child takes the offense. In The Three Faces of Eve the offense was kissing the corpse of her grandmother. That was enough to cause the split and memory loss. It doesn't have to be something that is obviously extreme. Children have their own druthers and fears.

I'm going to say that it was repeated intrusions by Nedra into the daily activities of Patsy of sharp dictates as to what she was supposed to do and not do, coupled with clear statements as to who she was and was not, to the point that Patsy learned to consult her mother (as in classic superego formation) and disregard her own instinctual sense of self. The failure of a connection between mother and infant can have terrible consequences for a child. Extreme narcissistic mothers look the infant to validate them, when it is the role of the mother to validate the infant.

 

IMO, Patsy's stresses were those that many women feel during the holiday season and those stresses most likely would not have been John's too.
Patsy had to get the house ready for the big Christmas Open House tour. Let me rephrase that...she had to get her hired help to ready the house. She had to get JonBenet ready for her last little holiday performance at the mall. Add to that buying gifts, wrapping gifts, planning and packing for a trip and planning for the big Christmas party. Patsy most likely was under a lot of stress. I also don't doubt she worried constantly about her cancer.

opps, I answered this before I read the other replies. Mods feel free to delete this. It's a bit repetitive.

 

The British Isles are dotted with ancient stone monuments where people held rituals at the winter solstice designed to induce visionary experiences looking for light in the darkness.

It's in our blood.

 

Don't we all? My mom thinks I'm intelligent but tempermental, my brother thinks I'm nuts, my boss thinks I'm resourceful, and my dog thinks I'm a god!

 

You have a good dog. Mine think I'm just a frisbee launcher.

 

You left out, "My teenagers think I'm stupid!"

 

I have no children.