Am I a Magnet for Abuse?

Dear Carole,

Consider the possibility that the victim-blaming attitudes we’re all surrounded with and inundated with might actually have been the main “dagger through your shoe” keeping you stuck in certain situations. Even if we resist internalizing the blaming views, the fact that other people believe this shite can affect how they treat survivors, can impact policy and generally make the world seem like a more dangerous place while also doubling down on the same message that abusers universally spew at victims– that defective losers and beggars can’t be choosers and we should lower our expectations for better because we “brought this on ourselves.”

Most of what I and fellow advocates did while working for a domestic abuse advocacy network was to disabuse survivors of all the victim blaming myths and bullshit they’d had shoved down their throats by bystanders, incompetent so-called helping professionals and even in state-funded shelters which, at the time, mostly subscribed to the moldy, blamey old “codependency” theory of domestic abuse, specifically, the long-debunked “psychological deficiency” theory of battered women.

When I say “disabuse” I mean it very literally. We got a lot of refugees from shitty therapists and misdirected state shelter professionals who seemed to be finishing abusers’ campaigns to destroy these survivors’ self esteem and hope, mostly by falsely holding victims “partly responsible” for their own plights. Those moldy old blaming theories in psychology were probably the single biggest obstacle to escaping abuse, recovering from it, getting meaningful support and accessing needed resources for most survivors which is why victim-blaming clinical approaches have been cited for causing what is called the “second injury” of domestic abuse for generations.

But since those views were still disastrously prevalent twenty years ago and there weren’t enough mental health professionals working from the more cutting edge, non-blaming perspective, we encouraged survivors to become the “experts of their own situations” and to go to the clinical “horses’ mouths” to read academic material debunking the blaming theories.

One network consultant had doubts about whether victims would be able to understand academic and clinical material but instead we found that survivors in the throes of struggling to survive can suddenly develop brilliant accelerated learning curves. Even people with no more than high school level educations had no problem at all devouring this material, particularly the chapter on DV by coercive control expert and veteran advocate, the late Dr. Evan Stark and his wife and fellow researcher Ann Flitcraft in Frank Ochberg’s Post-Traumatic Stress Therapy and the Victims of Violent Crime.

Anyone interested in reading the final word on “victimology” should read that chapter since Stark and Flitcraft– through statistics, research and clear writing– basically Ginsu and bury the old blaming bs and then tramp down the dirt and pour cement on it.

Speaking of the term “victimology,” Google’s idiotic (and sometimes politically suspect) AI feature says that victimology is either a) the study of crime and the psychological effects of being victimized or b) an attitude that perpetuates viewing oneself as a victim.

The second definition is just gross misuse of the term probably dredged up from psychobabble blogs or the manosphere. Though credentialed social scientists and helping professionals who study, treat or opine about factors related to victimization can obviously sometimes still subscribe to antiquated blaming forms of “victimology” and argue that victims draw abuse to themselves on Voodoo tractor beams, that doesn’t make their views or any dusty old science they base views on currently valid. Yet, as CL explains, the world is filled with shitheads and abusers whose MOs revolve around and are entirely dependent in the idea that victims “had it coming” so there’s always a market for that blamey junk science and there are always going to be shills selling it.

For example, I think it’s pretty clear RIC practitioners and so-called sex addiction specialists are simply dusting off the usual moldering concepts on victimology from the bad old days of domestic violence research and policy and “repurposing” these garbage theories to exonerate sexual abusers by splitting blame with victims. The practice is akin to psychiatric dumpster diving but hey, why let profitable bullshit go to waste when creeps all over the planet will still avidly promote it in the media and pay therapists who spew it?

You can even find professional mentors from the stinking “blame school” in common among some of today’s most prominent victim blamers in the media and policy these days. But what this illustrates is how the blaming theories aren’t just toxic to individual victims in a therapeutic sense but literally dangerous in a policy sense. I’ll just paraphrase my comment from CL’s post about so-called Reunification camps from a few weeks ago:

One of the primary influences behind many of the more toxic and sexist core precepts of the “Reconciliation Industrial Complex” as well as the “Parental Alienation Industrial Complex” appears to be the late psychotherapist Salvador Minuchin.

If that doesn’t ring a bell, Minuchin, who died in 2017, is credited as the “pioneer” of structural family therapy which has been repeatedly criticized for promoting and normalizing traditional gender based roles and structures within families at the expense of women and nonbinary individuals. In other words, Minuchin’s influence might have something to do with the frequently reported misogynistic bent of family therapy.

So what that has to do with blaming chumps and threatening their custody due to parental alienation charges? Everything apparently. Here’s an excerpt of a study that heavily cites Minuchin regarding how to approach chumped partners in situations involving adultery and child custody (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284068213_A_Family_Affair_Examining_the_Impact_of_Parental_Infidelity_on_Children_Using_a_Structural_Family_Therapy_Framework)

… Once parental infidelity is discovered in the family, triangulation may occur with the involvement of the children (Afifi, 2003). This may lead to one parent intentionally or unintentionally encouraging their children to form cross-generational alliances with them against the other parent (Minuchin, 1974).

How’s that for a junk science nexus? But it just keeps getting better. The way I discovered this was by digging into the history and training of one of the key figures in the whole “parental alienation industrial complex”– Susan Gottleib, founder of the infamous Turning Points for Families (featured in the harrowing Pro Publica story. https://www.propublica.org/article/family-reunification-camps-kids-allege-more-abuse)– is connected to Esther Perel through their mutual “trainer” and “mentor,” Salvador Minuchin, who, before he died, wrote a recommendation for Gottleib’s crusade and book on parental alienation syndrome:

“With your book, you’ve created a niche for PAS in family therapy. Bravo! Congratulations!” (4/16/12)

It might also be important to note that Minuchin is originally from Argentina, one of the countries that, aside from France, is still disturbingly influenced by the theories of Jacques Lecan, the controversial psychotherapist whose work influenced the Spanish dictatorship under Franco and then the Argentine Junta under Vidella, both of which wove Lacan’s theories of the “psychopathic influence of mothers on children” and resulting “feminization of culture” into political justifications for mass removal and displacement of children from political opponents (and sometimes the murders of their mothers). I’m not saying Minuchin supported the Argentine reign of terror in the same way Jacques Lacan buddied up to the Franco regime but I’m saying that his view of women and mothers has some interesting overlaps with Lacan and both dictatorships.

It’s also worth noting that Minuchin had appeared on clinical boards and discussion panels with disgraced child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, the coiner of the term “parentectomy” who believed– like Lacan– that autism is caused by toxic mothers, making child removal a first line of treatment (a practice that still continues in France). But this isn’t the main controversy that trails the career of Bettelheim. Instead it’s the fact that he fabricated stories of having been imprisoned in Auschwitz and furthermore allegedly raped some of the children he removed from supposedly “toxic mothers.”

End of cut and paste.

Anyway, the point is that– again– blaming views in “victimology” aren’t merely bad for victims themselves but can affect policies and social attitudes that represent yet more bars on the cage keeping many effectively entrapped or making the aftermath of abuse so punishing that survivors have difficulty recovering. Furthermore, any survivor who disagrees with those views and attempts to cast them off by refusing to “take partial responsibility” for having been abused may find themselves being castigated for “playing the victim” by negative bystanders or lousy helping professionals. In that sense, the victim blaming view seems to be some kind of existential cult that, sort of like Scientology, is as difficult to escape as leaving an abusive partner. At the very least, the whole thing creates a kind of hope-killing “out of the frying pan, into the fire” effect where victims are either blamed by abusers or blamed again by those purporting to help them.

But the important thing to remember is that the only people who “play” at being victims are perpetrators which is what the entire RIC and CSAT and “Parental Alienation” industries are about: pretending abusers are victims to their own victims.

Meanwhile actual victims hate being victims, never signed up for it and, furthermore, face endless disparagement for having ever been victimized. But that’s why it’s critical for all genuine survivors to push back. To quote Gisele Pelicot, “It’s not for us to have the shame [and blame]– it’s for them.”