Is it common for an abuser's friends and family to encourage him to be abusive?

Answer 1

The commonality may be less the direct action of encouragement than a learned response to the abuse. The family may avoid seeing, hearing, or feeling that there is abuse in the relationship but respond to it as the abuser needs. So, the abuser gets his/her pay off. Obtaining help of family and peers is difficult, if not impossible.

AnswerStatistics show that intimate partner abuse, including domestic violence, has declined by one half in the last decade in the United States. Jay Silverman and Gail Williamson demonstrated in "Social Ecology and Entitlements Involved in Battering by Heterosexual College Males" (published in Violence and Victims, Volume 12, Number 2 (Spring 1997) that abuse is best predicted by two factors: the belief that mistreatment is justified and the succor of peers.

These two facts elucidate the cultural and social roots of abusive behavior. Abuse is bound to be found in patriarchal, narcissistic, or misogynistic collectives. Many societies exhibit cross sections of these three traits. Thus, most patriarchal groups are also misogynistic, either overtly and ideologically so - or covertly and in denial.

Paradoxically, women's lib initially makes things worse. The first period of social dislocation - when gender roles are redefined - often witnesses a male backlash in the form of last ditch patriarchy and last resort violence, trying to restore the "ancien regime". But as awareness and acceptance of women's equal rights grow, abuse is frowned upon and, consequently, declines.

Alas, four fifths of humanity are far from this utopian state of things. Even in the most prosperous, well-educated, and egalitarian societies of the West there are sizable pockets of ill-treatment that cut across all demographic and social-economic categories.

Women are physically weaker and, despite recent strides, economically deprived or restricted. This makes them ideal victims - dependent, helpless, devalued. Even in the most advanced societies, women are still expected to serve their husbands, maintain the family, surrender their autonomy, and abrogate their choices and preferences if incompatible with the ostensible breadwinner's.

Women are also widely feared. The more primitive, poorer, or less educated the community - the more women are decried as evil temptresses, whores, witches, possessors of mysterious powers, defilers, contaminants, inferior, corporeal (as opposed to spiritual), subversive, disruptive, dangerous, cunning, or lying.

Violence is considered by members of such collectives a legitimate means of communicating wishes, enforcing discipline, coercing into action, punishing, and gaining the approval of kin, kith, and peers. To the abuser, the family is an instrument of gratification - economic, narcissistic, and sexual. It is a mere extension of the offender's inner world, and, thus, devoid of autonomy and independent views, opinions, preferences, needs, choices, emotions, fears, and hopes.

The abuser feels that he is entirely within his rights to impose his species of order in his own impregnable "castle". The other members of the household are objects. He reacts with violent rage to any proof or reminder to the contrary. Moreover, his view of the family is embedded in many legal systems, supported by norms and conventions, and reflected in social arrangements.

But abusive behavior is frequently the outcome of objective societal and cultural factors.

Abuse and violence are "intergenerationally transmitted". Children who grow up in dysfunctional and violent families - and believe that the aggression was justified - are vastly more likely to become abusive parents and spouses.

Social stresses and anomy and their psychological manifestations foster intimate partner violence and child abuse. War or civil strife, unemployment, social isolation, single parenthood, prolonged or chronic sickness, unsustainably large family, poverty, persistent hunger, marital discord, a new baby, a dying parent, an invalid to be cared for, death of one's nearest and dearest, incarceration, infidelity, substance abuse - have all proven to be contributing factors.

For a critical reading of R. Lundy Bancroft's Essay - Understanding the Batterer in Custody and Visitation Disputes (1998)

Click here: http://www.suite101.com/discussion.cfm/spousal_domestic_abuse/93699

AnswerAbuse can be a learnt behaviour, and in a personal case involving my abusive boyfriend his entire family had grown in a structure of belief that you fight and fight dirty. A son for instance may grow to have the same abusive behaviour as his father, and although he spent his childhood watching the distress and anguish of his mother being abused by his father he still developed the same mistreating ways. His mother perhaps ( as did the mother of my boyfriend) after years seeing how "men behavaved" (although she had herself been a victim) may still encourage violent behaviour in her grown son as seeing her son act in a more passive way would look whimpish to her as her perception of a man is her husbands violent ways. As for the abusers friends, well it may be that they are intimidated by his aggressiveness, or they find themselves relating to him therefore siding with him even justifying his actions. Answermy ex partner was abusive towards me. his sister who used to be my friend and how i initially met him, was also abusive towards me throughout my relationship with him their mother abused both of them as children. they saw no wrong in the way they treated people. blamed it always on someone else hence why i believe that for both my ex partner and ex friend they thought it was normal. familiy dynamics play a huge part in our lives and a dstfunctional family will always be that way as it is their norm AnswerYes, therapist, doctors, and "my" family also supported my husbands abuse. Friends believed the professionals, who at the time belived that the abusive behavior was normal, provoked or all in my head. My husband was a real charmer. My family had and continued to abuse me and blame me for it. My husband and my family supported and justified their past, present and on going abuse. My husband was close to and in contact with my family. I grew up and believed that I never had to see my family again in my life. This was my choice. They had ruined my health from the stress and left me without life options. No health and no family eguals no choice but the stay and take the abuse, i had children to care for. I faced this alone and had no one. Our culture nurtured the abuse. Answer"Is it common for an abuser's friends and family to encourage him to be abusive?"

Yes, carefully study the mother's mentality and dig deep into her role as a mother outside of her community and public image. Be sure to study the fathers background outside thelied about private and public image him as well.

All of these children were abused and have very sick parents.

How in the hell can you as a parent not know your child is being sexually abused and it happens over the course of years and you not know anything about it?? Yet you claim supreme wisdom.

Why would you shame and embarass your child in public by making you're fed up and have always had problems statements??? Is it true you've told people you didn't want this child??

Your play favorites and have tormented your own child his entire life. He is your most gifted child and you torment him because he is not your favorite.

Why do you promote animosity and blame him for everything that goes wrong?? Why would you call him Cain??? Why would you torment someone with these lies knowing his illness has nothing to do with Cain & abel???

Stop telling lies!! Your dealing with human beings not Fairy Tales in some ancient book that has gotten your movement nowhere in 75 years in helpig the very people you claim it was meant to help!! Stop telling lies!!!

Here's a great article on Sado-Masochist:

WHO BECOMES A SADO-MASOCHIST?

by Terence Sellers Author of The Correct Sadist and Dungeon Evidence

A question often presented to me, who am an acknowledged authority on the subject is: what makes a person a Sado-Masochist? Sado-Masochism is a complex parapathy, that always manifests obsessive symptoms. There does seem to be a very wide variety of determinants; yet I would vouch that a temperamental tendency, which is as close as we can get to an inborn trait, predisposes one to require, and thus to prefer the power-play of Sado-Masochism in the sexual and affective life, over the gentler forms of love. "The investigation of the Sado-Masochistic paraphilia is like a journey through the inferno of human brutalities."

(This and all quotes following are from Wilhelm Stekel's work, "Sadism and Masochism".)

Stekel affirms that Sado-Masochism plays a very large part in the structure of every sexual perversion. Therefore it behooves anyone who is possessed of a sexual anomaly to make a study of the Sado-Masochist's especial logic.

The entire emotional life of the Sado-Masochist clusters about a fixed idea. This might be as minute as a word; could manifest as a fixation on a physical type; might stay forever worshipful before a fetish; or will revolve within an elaborate fiction, with multiple characters, specific locations, costuming and dialogue. While this last may impress us as a higher evolution in sexuality, one must remember that such scenarios are fixed, unyielding, and in reality represent a tragic restrictiveness in the emotional life.

The fixed idea of the Sado-Masochist is anchored in early life, in the first relationships of the child. For within the family was that first, specific 'scene' enacted. "The first sin is the incest complex, and hatred towards those nearest one... the specific 'scene' of the sadomasochist is to be understood as a fiction, in which many infantile incidents are condensed to one single scene."

In consequence of the hate-love fixation upon an infantile object, Sado-Masochists are often incapable of deep and abiding love, and are impotent to interact in a flexible, free give-and-take with another person, even should they desire to. Usually the sadomasochism may be linked to a single member of the family who excited the parapathy, but "frequently the entire family is the secret harem of the sadist".

Stekel thinks that this incapacity to feel love - (that submissive, unconditional emotion) - that this 'incommunicado' of body, mind and psyche creates in time physical impotence in the male, and frigidity in the woman. "But where there is some potency, the 'proper orgasm' is lacking." By this he no doubt means the fullest and most gratifying sexual orgasm remains in reserve for the Sado-Masochistic fantasy. "Their highest pleasure is always attained through the autoerotic act - which means only with the aid of the imagined, specific 'scene'."

The creation of the Sado-Masochistic 'scene' is only creative in that the Sado-Masochist has determined not to succumb to his 'normal impotence'; now permits himself the illicit acting-out of the fiction. The fiction itself is determined; it arises from the subconscious with all primordial emotions intact. "The fixation upon an incestuous object is unconscious, and disguised through inversion and displacement." Thus one does not consciously, auto-erotically enjoy one's father, but an image, let us say, of great power and authority, perhaps tall and forbidding, and wearing a certain kind of hat...

The most definitive psychogenesis of Sado-Masochism, according to our Maestro Stekel, is jealousy within the family circle. Jealousy is the wellspring of hatred. "The effect of jealousy cannot be overestimated ... it effects ideas of putting someone out of the way, fantasies of revenge, which are repressed, but which form the nucleus of the masochistic feeling of inferiority. The sadistic and masochistic intertwining fantasies are only variations of these original ideas of revenge."

An unhappy marriage between one's parents is another psychogenesis of sadomasochism. On the one hand an unhappy mother or father may, without reserve, transfer onto the child their unrequited love and need for affection. Into this love will be infused some degree of antipathy towards the other parent, in effect 'demonizing' that sex. On the other hand, active hatred may be projected onto the child, reflecting the hatred towards the spouse. For the child is a fetter, binding one to the despised husband or wife. Such marriages filled with hatred are seed-beds thus, generating forcibly, in the childish mind, archtypical images of evil to whom one is irrevocably bound.

In sadomasochistic men, the faithlessness and/or promiscuity of the mother/mother figure is extremely determining; positing for his sexuality either punishing sadism towards women, or submissive placativeness towards women who do not love him. In sadomasochistic women, again a type of 'Don Juan' character in the father, rake-hellishness and cavalier attitudes will create in the woman a similar punishing persona, or a fixation upon men indifferent to her. How does this occur in the psyche?

"The parent is despised for the promiscuity; the hatred splits off and carries over to the entire sex; then, the sense of guilt and overcompensation result in a deification of the original, dishonored incest object." Deification! So the beloved is a god we worship - or gleefully blaspheme. But never again are we free of that god.

The sexual activities of the parents may as well enliven in the child images of force and terrifying violence. It has been documented that normal sexual intercourse may appear to a child to be an act of violence upon the mother. Arguments and strife, followed by kissing and making-up, also may determine in a child that connection between violence and love.

Stekel also observes that "children will not tolerate parents' interference in their own sexual life." Strict patrolling of a child's onanism, enraged punishments of infantile sexual play "will readily produce an attitude of hatred in the child towards parents." For it is pleasure they are feeling, after all - and who are these people to stop their pleasure? Still, the onus remains, and their pleasure is then intermingled with the idea of a deserved punishment.

Yet none of these demonstrations of the violence inherent in sex and love will determine the creation of a Sado-Masochist, unless "hate is permitted to strike its roots early and deep into the heart of a child." By this might we understand that jealousy in a child should always be assuaged; the sexual life of the parents should remain behind closed doors; and if one is given to arguments, it is better to divorce, than to have the child ruined, as it were, by perverted demonstrations of a spoiled love.

Stekel also illustrates cases of the traumatizing effect, towards the development of Sado-Masochistic obsession, of viewing violent scenes - an objection which we might assuredly understand as pertinent to carry over in our uninhibitedly violent times.

Here is his form of that rule as per the 1800s: "The evil practice of allowing children to look on, when animals are slaughtered; letting them see pictures in illustrated papers which represent brutal scenes - all have a devastating effect upon the child's affective life."

"Fairy tales are frequently the nucleus of a sadomasochistic fantasy." (See his Case #57). "One should refrain from telling children frightful stories, even in fun, or in carrying out sadistically colored play." Yet who has not observed how much children love, and gravitate to, stories of Horror, cannibalism, murder, imprisonment and loss? And why are fairy tales themselves so violent? I would venture to say it is because violence is a commonplace in human life...

Punishment by whipping still proves the best method for the development of Sado-Masochism. It is known as 'the English vice', as beatings were (and are) an everyday fact of disciplinary life in the English private schools. Stekel goes to great lengths to quote many classical sources vouching for the usefulness, even the necessity of corporal punishment in the training of children. Indeed, we must agree that to never corporally punish a child is as bad as the improper applications of the same.

As per Menandros, a writer of comedies, circa 300 B.C.: "A person who has not been beaten has not been trained!"

A well-rooted belief amongst the ancient Greeks was that physical pain was the most fitting means for the building of character. We comprehend this well today in the context of athletic training, and in military school discipline. This belief in the morally purifying force of bodily pain was behind the development of the martial state of Sparta, infamous for its practice of eugenics; that is, leaving weakly infants to die in the wilderness. The philosophies of 'the perfect society' are always sadistically tainted. But we must consider it an extremely moral point, that the decadent, intellectual, homosexually-emphasized society of Athens was able to beat down and destroy those stringent Spartans.

Quintillan however denounced sadistic usages in education, making a number of salient points we might further consider. Sadism as an educative tool disgusts him, "First because it is odious and slavish and dishonouring at any age; next, because anyone who is so base that he could not be improved by kindly persuasiveness and affectionate admonition, will also be insensible to blows." This makes a powerful statement for the predeliction as a temperamental condition. Furthermore, "it cannot be stated, without blushing for shame, to what disgusting orgies unworthy persons abuse the right to chastise."

"Beating trains only slavish natures, embitters the child, and destroys his joy in his task."

So we ask again: Who becomes a Sado-Masochist? Anyone whose parents argued? Anyone spanked, whipped, or slapped? Anyone who looked at a fictional scene of murder? Anyone chastised for childish games of 'doctor'? He who loved his furious mother, who stood over him in red high heels ... she who misbehaved so she might lie across her mother's tight-skirted lap? Just about anyone exposed to sights, sounds or thoughts of violence? And therefore, just about anyone?

Recollect again what our revered Doctor has said: Sado-Masochism is not a thing congenitally fated; but it is "a reaction to life that arises when hate is permitted to strike its roots early and deep into the heart of a child."

And who does not harbor that germ of hatred.

Answer

Yes definitely I can say that with my own situation. My husband is extremely abusive and he has kept me away from all my in-laws and no one from my in-laws really support me but they keep on listening to what my husband says and keep on blaming me.

My mother in law who is absolutely under her son's control can do anything and everything her son tells her.She will not even think about right or wrong. If her son is saying his wife is bad she will say that too not only in the family but to all the friends also.