Controlling behavior in relationships
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Power and control in abusive relationships (or coercive control or controlling behaviour) is the way that abusers exert physical, sexual, financial and other forms of abuse to gain and maintain control over a victim.
Control freaks
In psychology-related slang, control freak is a derogatory term for a person who attempts to dictate how everything around them is done.[1] Control freaks are often perfectionists[2] defending themselves against their own inner vulnerabilities in the belief that if they are not in total control they risk exposing themselves once more to childhood angst.[3] Such persons manipulate and pressure others to change so as to avoid having to change themselves,[4] and use power over others to escape an inner emptiness.[5]
In terms of personality-type theory, control freaks are very much the Type A personality, driven by the need to dominate and control.[6] An obsessive need to control others is also associated with antisocial personality disorder.[7]
Psychological manipulation
Braiker[non sequitur] identified the following ways that manipulators control their victims:[8]
- Positive reinforcement: includes praise, superficial charm, superficial sympathy (crocodile tears), excessive apologizing, money, approval, gifts, attention, facial expressions such as a forced laugh or smile, and public recognition.
- Negative reinforcement: involves removing one from a negative situation as a reward, e.g. "You won't have to do your homework if you allow me to do this to you."
- Intermittent or partial reinforcement: Partial or intermittent negative reinforcement can create an effective climate of fear and doubt. Partial or intermittent positive reinforcement can encourage the victim to persist.
- Punishment: includes nagging, yelling, the silent treatment, intimidation, threats, swearing, emotional blackmail, the guilt trip, sulking, crying, and playing the victim.
- Traumatic one-trial learning: using verbal abuse, explosive anger, or other intimidating behavior to establish dominance or superiority; even one incident of such behavior can condition or train victims to avoid upsetting, confronting or contradicting the manipulator.
Financially Controlling Abusers
One cannot conduct scientific or psychological studies and tests to determine what a 'financially controlling psychological abuser' is. One must have lived in such a setting and have been personally exposed to the atrocities that these people commit. The abuser himself is well aware that he is not acting within socially accepted norms and will hide his behavior from everyone outside of the household. Most of the adult victims are women who have grown up in homes with similar psychological abuses and are incapable of discerning subtle clues that would tell them their fiancé is not a socially normal person. Most manipulators become financially, psychologically, emotionally, and verbally abusive only after they have married their victim.
These husbands gain a position of domination by seizing their wife's financial assets and/or property, leaving them penurious and helpess to retaliate. State laws offer no recourse for this abuse of power and thus an abusive manipulator can virtually impoverish and enslave his wife - legally - and the deprived spouse has no legal grounds whatsoever against this type of action. While most state laws decree that a husband cannot rape his own wife, there are no laws preventing a husband from seizing his wife's financial assets.
Manipulators employ any number of tactics that would be illegal if they were not married to their wives, including the following commonly practiced methods: taking her cashed paycheck from her wallet or bullying her into handing over her paycheck every payday; periodically emptying her bank account by stealing her debit card; forcing her to withdraw funds from her account to hand over to him; forging her signature on checks and keeping the cashed funds; tranferring money from her account to his; selling her property & keeping the proceeds from the sale; seizing her investments or liquidating her portfolio and keeping the money; transferring funds from joint accounts into personal ones; taking her jewelry, personal possessions or car & selling them; confiscating checkbooks, her debit, credit cards & drivers license when he leaves the house; becoming physically abusive or threatening if she dares to withdraw money from their bank account, use her debit or credit card, etc.
These occurrences happen every day in every state across the U.S.; women all over the country are denied access to their own legal money by their own legal husbands and it's perfectly legal to do so.
Characteristics of Financially Controlling Abusers
These abusive spouses have a Jekell and Hyde personality, behaving in a socially approved manner out in public while treating their wife with a degree of behavior so condemnable at home that it would be grounds for criminal prosecution if the two were not married to each other.
Common abusive behaviors from a manipulator who has thus legally impoverished & subjugated his wife include: deprivation of money as outlined above; giving her insufficient amounts of money for her own personal use or as 'household money'; refusing to give her the car keys, money for gas or auto repairs; refusing to provide material necessities to the now penurious wife such as food, clothing, medical needs or making her beg for these necessities; "punishing" the wife for imagined or fabricated 'infractions' by commiting various socially unacceptable atrocities on her; continuously acting in demeaning, degrading, humiliating and contemptuous ways towards her in measures that are considered objectionable toward even animals; showing detestation towards her as a member of the human race; making a show of awarding a higher degree of respect and regard to all other family members, including family pets.
In the majority of these marriages, the abuser treats his wife as nothing more than a despised, unpaid servant, mentally inferior to not just himself, but also their children. The children are taught from a very young age to also regard their mother as inferior and to treat her with the same lack of respect as their father does. The children then grow up to perpetuate this behavior in their own marriages.
There is no psychological test that can be devised to ascertain or measure this atrocious behavior, one must live within the walls of such a household to witness these daily domestic behaviors that are never exhibited in public because the psychological abuser knows full well that what he is doing is socially and morally reprehensible, and would be denunciated & vilified by society if witnessed by outsiders.
The financial abuser, like all psychological abusers, isolates his family from other relatives and close friends by various means such as moving far away from them all, creating animosity and feuds, not allowing friends or other family members in the house, etc. Children growing up in this envroment are thus isolated from a normal family structure and the manipulator can more easily control his wife and his children's behavior.
Women who do try to tell others about their husbands' abusive behaviors are - just as rape victims used to be - ignored, regarded with varying degrees of disbelief or thought of as 'crazy' because no one has ever witnessed the manipulator abusing his wife. Worse, she is shunned because she dared to reveal one of society's darkest secrets.
It is common for the accused manipulator to defend himself against his wife's charges by outright lying- to accuse her of maliciously slandering him, of exaggerating his actions towards her, of seeking revenge over a minor domestic disagreement, of committing a heinious wrongdoing by discussing private family matters with others, or simply accusing her of insanity or some other mental disorder.
No abusive manipulator of this degree of moral turpitude, like all true dictators, is ever truthful and admits to any wrongdoing, and the fact that he takes great pains to hide his behavior from the public eye - even from other family members such as siblings or parents - indicates that he is fully aware his actions are socially condemnable by the society he lives in and by his own culture.
These manipulators are always extremely volitile in nature with explosive temperments. They control as much by fear, terror, threats of bodily harm and additional deprivations or 'punishments' - in some cases by physically striking their wife - as they do by financial control. There are hundreds of thousands of these financially abusive marriages in each and every state across the U.S., and in every case, the wife is a virtual slave with no legal recourse whatsoever against her perpetrator.
Emotional blackmail
Emotional blackmail is a term coined by psychotherapist Susan Forward, about controlling people in relationships and the theory that fear, obligation and guilt (FOG) are the transactional dynamics at play between the controller and the person being controlled. Understanding these dynamics are useful to anyone trying to extricate from the controlling behavior of another person, and deal with their own compulsions to do things that are uncomfortable, undesirable, burdensome, or self-sacrificing for others.[9]
Forward and Frazier identify four blackmail types each with their own mental manipulation style:[10]
| Type | Example |
|---|---|
| Punisher's threat | Eat the food I cooked for you or I'll hurt you. |
| Self-punisher's threat | Eat the food I cooked for you or I'll hurt myself. |
| Sufferer's threat | Eat the food I cooked for you. I was saving it for myself. I wonder what will happen now. |
| Tantalizer's threat | Eat the food I cooked for you and you just may get a really yummy dessert. |
There are different levels of demands - demands that are of little consequence, demands that involve important issues or personal integrity, demands that affect major life decisions, and/or demands that are dangerous or illegal.[9]
Silent treatment
The silent treatment is sometimes used as a control mechanism. When so used, it constitutes a passive-aggressive action characterized by the coupling of nonverbal but nonetheless unambiguous indications of the presence of negative emotion with the refusal to discuss the scenario triggering those emotions and, when those emotions' source is unclear to the other party, occasionally the refusal to clarify it or even to identify that source at all. As a result, the perpetrator of the silent treatment denies the victim both the opportunity to negotiate an after-the-fact settlement of the grievance in question and the ability to modify his/her future behavior to avoid giving further offense. In especially severe cases, even if the victim gives in and accedes to the perpetrator's initial demands, the perpetrator may continue the silent treatment so as to deny the victim feedback indicating that those demands have been satisfied. The silent treatment thereby enables its perpetrator to cause hurt, obtain ongoing attention in the form of repeated attempts by the victim to restore dialogue, maintain a position of power through creating uncertainty over how long the verbal silence and associated impossibility of resolution will last, and derive the satisfaction that the perpetrator associates with each of these consequences.[11]
In an intimate relationship
Background
The power and control wheel was developed in 1982 by the Domestic Abuse Program in Minneapolis to explain the nature of abuse, to delineate the forms of abuse used to control another person, and to educate people with the goal of stopping violence. The model is used in many batterer intervention programs, and is known as the Duluth model.[12] Power and control is generally present with violent physical and sexual abuse.[13]
Control development
Often the abusers are initially attentive, charming and loving, gaining the trust of the individual that will ultimately become the victim, also known as the survivor. When there is a connection and a degree of trust, the abusers become unusually involved in their partner's feelings, thoughts and actions.[14]
Next, they set petty rules and exhibit "pathological jealousy". A conditioning process begins with alternation of loving followed by abusive behavior. According to Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse, "These serve to confuse the survivor leading to potent conditioning processes that impact on the survivor's self-structure and cognitive schemas." The abuser projects responsibility for the abuse on to the victim, or survivor, and the denigration and negative projections become incorporated into the survivor's self-image.[14]
Traumatic bonding occurs as the result of ongoing cycles of abuse in which the intermittent reinforcement of reward and punishment creates powerful emotional bonds that are resistant to change.[15]
| Gain trust | Overinvolvement | Petty rules and jealousy | Manipulation, power and control | Traumatic bonding | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The potential abuser is attentive, loving, charming | → | The abuser becomes overly involved in the daily life and use of time | → | Rules begin to be inserted to begin control of the relationship. Jealousy is considered by the abuser to be "an act of love" | → | The victim is blamed for the abuser's behavior and becomes coerced and manipulated | → | Ongoing cycles of abuse can lead to traumatic bonding |
Tactics
Controlling abusers use multiple tactics to exert power and control over their partners. According to Jill Cory and Karen McAndless-Davis, authors of When Love Hurts: A Woman's Guide to Understanding Abuse in Relationships: Each of the tactics within the power and control wheel are used to "maintain power and control in the relationship. No matter what tactics your partner uses, the effect is to control and intimidate you or to influence you to feel that you do not have an equal voice in the relationship."[17]
Coercion and threats
A tool for exerting control and power is the use of threats and coercion. The victim may be subject to threats that they will be left, hurt, or reported to welfare. The abuser may threaten that they will commit suicide. They may also coerce them to perform illegal actions or to drop charges that they may have against their abuser.[19]
At its most effective, the abuser creates intimidation and fear through unpredictable and inconsistent behavior.[15] Absolute control may be sought by any of four types of sadists: explosive, enforcing, tyrannical or spineless sadists. The victims are at risk of anxiety, dissociation, depression, shame, low self-esteem and suicidal ideation.[20]
Intimidation
Abused individuals may be intimidated by the brandishing of weapons, destroying their property or other things, or using gestures or looks to create fear.[19]
Economic abuse
An effective means of ensuring control and power over another is to control their access to money. One method is to prevent the abusee from getting a job. Another is to control their access to money. This can be done by withholding information and access to family income, taking their money, requiring the person to ask for money, giving them an allowance, or filing a power of attorney or conservatorship, particularly in the case of economic abuse of the elderly.[19]
Emotional abuse
Emotional abuse include name-calling, playing mind games, putting the victim down, or humiliating the individual. The goals are to make the person feel bad about themselves, feel guilty or think that they are crazy.[19]
Isolation
Another element of psychological control is the isolation of the victim from the outside world.[13] Isolation includes controlling a person's social activity: who they see, who they talk to, where they go and any other method to limit their access to others. It may also include limiting what material is read.[19] It can include insisting on knowing where they are and requiring permission for medical care. The abuser exhibits hypersensitive and reactive jealousy.[13]
Minimizing, denying and blaming
The abuser may deny the abuse occurred to attempt to place the responsibility for their behavior on the victim. Minimizing concerns or the degree of the abuse is another aspect of this control.[19]
Using children and pets
Children may be used to exert control, by threatening to take the children or making them feel guilty about the children. It could include harassing them during visitation or using the children to relay messages. Another controlling tactic is abusing pets.[19]
Using privilege
Using "privilege" means that the abuser defines the roles in the relationship, makes the important decisions, treats the individual like a servant and acts like the "master of the castle".[19]
In the workplace
A power and control model has been developed for the workplace, divided into the following categories:[21]
Bullying
An essential prerequisite of bullying is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power.[22][23]
Workplace psychopaths
The authors of the book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work describe a five phase model of how a typical workplace psychopath climbs to and maintains power:[24]
- Entry - psychopath will use highly developed social skills and charm to obtain employment into an organisation. At this stage it will be difficult to spot anything which is indicative of psychopathic behaviour, and as a new employee you might perceive the psychopath to be helpful and even benevolent.
- Assessment - psychopath will weigh you up according to your usefulness, and you could be recognised as either a pawn (who has some informal influence and will be easily manipulated) or a patron (who has formal power and will be used by the psychopath to protect against attacks)
- Manipulation - psychopath will create a scenario of “psychopathic fiction” where positive information about themselves and negative disinformation about others will be created, where your role as a part of a network of pawns or patrons will be utilised and you will be groomed into accepting the psychopath's agenda.
- Confrontation - the psychopath will use techniques of character assassination to maintain their agenda, and you will be either discarded as a pawn or used as a patron
- Ascension - your role as a patron in the psychopath’s quest for power will be discarded, and the psychopath will take for himself/herself a position of power and prestige from anyone who once supported them.
Caring professions
According to Field, bullies are attracted to the caring professions, such as medicine, by the opportunities to exercise power over vulnerable clients, and over vulnerable employees and students.[25]
Institutional abuse
Institutional abuse is the maltreatment of a person (often children or older adults) from a system of power.[26] This can range from acts similar to home-based child abuse, such as neglect, physical and sexual abuse, and hunger, to the effects of assistance programs working below acceptable service standards, or relying on harsh or unfair ways to modify behavior.[26]
Oppression
Oppression is the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner.[27]
Zersetzung
The practice of repression in Zersetzung comprised extensive and secret methods of control and psychological manipulation, including personal relationships of the target, for which the Stasi relied on its network of informal collaborators,[28] (in German inoffizielle Mitarbeiter or IM), the State's power over institutions, and on operational psychology. Using targeted psychological attacks the Stasi tried to deprive a dissident of any chance of a "hostile action".
Sadistic personality disorder
Individuals with sadistic personality disorder derive pleasure from the distress caused by their aggressive, demeaning and cruel behavior towards others. Sadistic people have poor ability to control their reactions and become enraged by minor disturbances, with some sadists more abusive than others. They use a wide range of behaviors to control others, ranging from hostile glances to severe physical violence. Within the spectrum are cutting remarks, threats, humiliation, coercion, inappropriate control over others, restrictive of others' autonomy, hostile behavior and physical and sexual violence. Often the purpose of their behavior is to control and intimidate others.[29]
At the affective level, the sadist shares many of the critical features of the psychopath: they lack remorse for their controlling and exploitative behavior, they do not experience shame or guilt, and they are unable to empathize with their victims. They are cold hearted.
— Adrian Raine and José Sanmartin, authors of Violence and Psychopathy[29]
The sadistic individual are likely rigid in their beliefs, intolerant of other races or other "out-groups", authoritarian, and malevolent. They may seek positions in which they are able to exert power over others, such as a judge, army sergeant or psychiatrist who misuse their positions of power to control or brutalize others. For instance, a psychiatrist may institutionalize a patient by misusing mental health legislation.[29]
Serial killers
The main objective for one type of serial killer is to gain and exert power over their victim. Such killers are sometimes abused as children, leaving them with feelings of powerlessness and inadequacy as adults. Many power- or control-motivated killers sexually abuse their victims, but they differ from hedonistic killers in that rape is not motivated by lust (as it would be with a lust murder) but as simply another form of dominating the victim.[30] (See article causes of sexual violence for the differences regarding anger rape, power rape, and sadistic rape.) Ted Bundy is an example of a power/control-oriented serial killer. He traveled around the United States seeking women to control.[31]
See also
References
- ^ Kristin Glaser, in The Radical Therapist (Penguin 1974) p. 246
- ^ Michelle N. Lafrance, Women and Depression (2009) p. 89
- ^ Art Horn, Face It (2004) p. 53
- ^ Robin Skynner/John Cleese, Families and how to survive them (London 1994) p. 208
- ^ Robert Bly and Marion Woodman, The Maiden King (Dorset 1999) p. 141
- ^ Andrew Holmes/Dan Wilson, Pains in the Office (2004) p. 56
- ^ Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door (2005) p. 47
- ^ Braiker, Harriet B. (2004). Who's Pulling Your Strings ? How to Break The Cycle of Manipulation. ISBN 0-07-144672-9.
- ^ a b Johnson, R. Skip (16 August 2014). "Emotional Blackmail: Fear, Obligation and Guilt (FOG)". BPDFamily.com. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
- ^ Susan Forward/Donna Frazier, Emotional Blackmail (London 1997) p. 28, 82, 145, 169
- ^ Petra Boynton The Telegraph (26 Apr 2013) Silent treatment: how to snap him out of it
- ^ Dr. Joan McClennen PhD. Social Work and Family Violence: Theories, Assessment, and Intervention. Springer Publishing Company; 8 February 2010. ISBN 978-0-8261-1133-3. p. 147.
- ^ a b c Global and regional estimates of violence against women: prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. World Health Organization. 2013. ISBN 978-92-4-156462-5. p. 7.
- ^ a b Chrissie Sanderson. Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse. Jessica Kingsley Publishers; 15 June 2008. ISBN 978-1-84642-811-1. p. 83.
- ^ a b Chrissie Sanderson. Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse. Jessica Kingsley Publishers; 15 June 2008. ISBN 978-1-84642-811-1. p. 84.
- ^ Dr. Joan McClennen PhD. Social Work and Family Violence: Theories, Assessment, and Intervention. Springer Publishing Company; 8 February 2010. ISBN 978-0-8261-1133-3. p. 148.
- ^ a b Jill Cory; Karen McAndless-Davis. When Love Hurts: A Woman's Guide to Understanding Abuse in Relationships. WomanKind Press; 1 January 2000. ISBN 978-0-9686016-0-0. p. 30.
- ^ Dr. Joan McClennen PhD. Social Work and Family Violence: Theories, Assessment, and Intervention. Springer Publishing Company; 8 February 2010. ISBN 978-0-8261-1133-3. p. 149.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Power and Control. Duluth Model. Retrieved April 19, 2014.
- ^ Chrissie Sanderson. Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse. Jessica Kingsley Publishers; 15 June 2008. ISBN 978-1-84642-811-1. p. 25.
- ^ Power & Control in the Workplace American Institute on Domestic Violence
- ^ "Children who are bullying or being bullied". Cambridgeshire County Council: Children and families. Cambridgeshire County Council. 2013-07-24. Retrieved 2013-10-28.
- ^ Ericson, Nels (June 2001). "Addressing the Problem of Juvenile Bullying" (PDF). OJJDP Fact Sheet #FS-200127. 27. U.S. Department of Justice: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Retrieved 2013-10-28.
- ^ Baibak, P; Hare, R. D Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (2007)
- ^ Field, T. (2002). "Bullying in medicine". BMJ. 324 (7340): 786. doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7340.786/a.
- ^ a b Powers, J. L.; A. Mooney; M. Nunno (1990). "Institutional abuse: A review of the literature". Journal of Child and Youth Care. 4 (6): 81.
- ^ definition from Merriam Webster Online.
- ^ Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic: The Unofficial Collaborators (IM) of the MfS
- ^ a b c Adrian Raine; José Sanmartin. Violence and Psychopathy. Springer; 31 December 2001. ISBN 978-0-306-46669-4. p. 126–128.
- ^ Egger, Steven A. (2000). "Why Serial Murderers Kill: An Overview". Contemporary Issues Companion: Serial Killers.
- ^ Peck 2000, p. 255.
External links
- Sarah Strudwick (Nov 16, 2010) Dark Souls - Mind Games, Manipulation and Gaslighting