Simplified: Why it's Easier to Take the Side of the Perpetrator

Through my sister, through her therapist, Andrew Feldmar, I read and re-posted this quote on Facebook.

"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering."
--Judith Lewis Herman

But after a little Googling I found more of the quote and some info about the author.  Judith Lewis Herman is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Training Director of the Victims of Violence Program at The Cambridge Hospital.  A fuller version of the quote follows, and loses none of it's power...

"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of the pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering...

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.

The perpetrator's arguments prove irresistible when the bystander faces them in isolation. Without a supportive social environment, the bystander usually succumbs to the temptation to look the other way. This is true even when the victim is an idealized and valued member of society. Soldiers in every war, even those who have been regarded as heroes, complain bitterly that no one wants to know the real truth about war. When the victim is already devalued (a woman, a child), she may find that the most traumatic events in her life take place outside the realm of socially validated reality. Her experience becomes unspeakable. . .

To hold traumatic reality in consciousness requires a social context that affirms and protects the victim and that joins the victim and witness in a common alliance. For the individual victim, this social context is created by relationships with friends, lovers, and family. For the larger society, the social context is created by political movements that give voice to the disempowered."

This crystalizes for me some dynamics I've observed in my family of origin, where injustices seem to be swept under the table, and "the problem" is the person who is upset about having been victimized.

Altering My Mind All Of The Time

When I was in high school I was yearbook photographer and almost always had a camera with me.  I shot and processed hundreds of feet of black & white film, but what I noticed back then, when I didn't have a camera, was that I was always looking for the beauty in a scene, or looking for texture, or a striking contrast, or some kind of special light.  So the thing I was doing some of the time was altering my mind all of the time, and I feel a similar effect here and now running with this Fanatical Moderate thing.

I feel the growing presence of a similar practiced perspective, like that frame I used to have in my mind's eye in respect to photography, but not visual.  Stuff happens that I think about, or do, or read about, and I increasingly consider how I might post it here with a comment, so this thing I do some of the time, again, is altering my mind all of the time, and more profoundly it seems, since it involves composition that goes beyond visual.

TED: I Am Enough

How one's only real strength is vulnerability...

Lean into the joy.

Escaping The Narcissistic Family III

I think it's common in our society that the relationships we have with family are held to be sacred.  Obviously our family are the people we have known, and who have known us, the longest in the world, and it is impossible to really see and understand ourselves without seeing and understanding our family.  We played together as kids, and suffered losses and celebrated gains together, and at face value, and all things being equal, this is completely understandable and correct.

But consider this:  On November 24, 2011, I sent my brother a Facebook message after he'd stopped making payments on a debt and had not communicated with me for over a year...

You owe me money. I want to know what your plan is. I will print up a complete record of all my expenses and all your payments and send it to you. The total is around $72,000 outstanding.  Let's solve this problem together, finally,
Thanks,
Mark

His response was...

Fuck you

I wrote...

Seriously?

He wrote...

Sue me

...and he unfriended me, and he's happy to leave it at that.  And I can't really fathom that,

Escaping The Narcissistic Family II

The thing I like about my process so far is that I really don't want to hurt them, but rather I want to not get hurt.  By way of example, If I met new narcissists now, I would simply not form any sort of expectation of safety in relationship with them, and that would not be that hard to do.  That, I think, describes the pattern that I need to import into my relationships with the 'golden circle,' that I form no expectation of safety.
I remain mostly in a state of 'no contact' at this time, and I am feeling the freedom.

Eric Says...

Eric says to cherish the pain I have in my heart.  Most of the time I consider pain a bad thing; I had certainly never considered cherishing it.  What is it like to cherish pain?  To some degree, I suppose that I have been cherishing it, because it has been unavoidable, to a large extent.  I can savour it and ‘roll it around on my tongue,’ as it were.  I sit down with it and have cigarettes with it; I take baths with it, and come home to it.  There is something sweet about the pain. 

The bad thing about pain is that it hurts.  You can only take something from ‘pain’ retrospectively.  While you are suffering from it, there is no gain.  While experiencing pain, one’s aim is primarily focused on keeping the pain to a minimum, if not subduing it all together.  And sometimes one doesn’t have the choice.  There are some pains for which there is no anaesthetic.

Eric says to cherish my heartache because it is real.  I think that I understand what he means.  Today, since there is no other option, I will cling fondly to my pain and hope for a better tomorrow.

Escaping the Narcissistic Family I

I am working under the hypothesis that I am from a narcissistic family, and that resolution of problems with certain people in that group is impossible.  Certainly this is borne out by my experience so far in life, wondering why it always feels like I'm the one who has to adjust and make accomodations and be concerned that everyone is feeling OK.  Almost to the same degree that I have adopted the role of being flexible in this regard, others seem to have adopted the role of being inflexible. 
Interesting observations I've read about online include, 1) because the narcissist can never take responsibility for errors, therefore the narcissitic family dynamics always get worse. Hurt and unresolved problems always accumulate because there is no mechanism for resolution.  2) 'No Contact,' the thing that I am doing now, is an accepted mechanism to get unhooked from the family pattern.  3) The GoldenChild/Scapegoat dynamic.  Some members can do no wrong while other members can do no right, and to implausible degrees.
I think I am healing in certain ways.  Certainly the feeling of stress I commonly had at family gatherings is not a factor now.  Also, I find I am partipating in other relationships better, so more involved, more prepared to talk about real things, more prepared to laugh, but this is an important feature to me of my disfunction, that I have so few quality relationships outside of my family of origin.
But now that is changing.  More to come...