Translating Defenses
on Feb.26, 2009, under Excerpts
An excerpt from the book Real-Time Relationships: The Logic of Love by Stefan Molyneux
HONESTY AND PROOF
If we lie to evade an unjust punishment, we are called “bad.”
If, by telling the truth, we inflict a just punishment, we are called “bad.”
This is the simple evil of the world.
However in this – as in all things I write – there is absolutely no reason to take my word for it in any way at all.
If your mother ever told you not to lie, how do you think she should logically react when you tell her the truth about how you feel?
Because telling the truth is good, right?
Will she praise you for your honesty?
Try it and see.
TYPICAL DEFENSES
When you begin to tell your mother the truth about how you feel, she will instinctively and inevitably begin to deploy a series of psychological defenses designed to disorient and punish you for telling the truth.
Let us have a look at the likely obstacles that will be thrown in your path when you dare to be honest.
If you tell your mother that you are afraid of answering the phone when she calls, she will immediately ask – usually in a wide-eyed, innocent voice – but… why?
The purpose of this maneuver is to have you provide a reason that she can reject – usually initially through the defense of minimization.
If you say: “I do not feel that you listen to me,” then she will immediately say something along the lines of…
MINIMIZATION
| Source | Script | Translation |
| Mother | “What do you mean – I’m listening to you now, aren’t I?” |
You’re actually the bad listener, because you don’t even notice that I always listen to you! |
| Mother | “Are you trying to tell me that I have never – not once in your entire life – ever listened to you?” |
You’re insane and exaggerating – I am going to create an impossible standard of proof, wherein a single exception to a complaint dismisses the entire complaint. (“Hey, remember that one Sunday when I didn’t beat you?”) |
| Father | “Yeah, yeah, you had it sooo tough, didn’t you? Why, when I was your age… [Followed by cavalcades of desperate parental childhood stories.] |
You’re a pussy. |
| Mother | “Sweetie! What on earth could have put that thought into your head?” |
There is absolutely no evidence for your complaint. We must look for external sources for your insanity. |
SELF-PITY
| Source | Script | Translation |
| Mother | [Bursts into tears!] | If you ask me to have sympathy for you, I will forcibly extract sympathy from you. If you think this is a two-way street, I will run you over. |
| Mother | “I’m sorry, I know that happened, I was so distraught, your father was never home, I was overwhelmed, I did the best I could in a difficult situation…” |
Only an unbelievably cold and selfish child could fail to dissolve into tears when considering my plight… |
| Mother | “I’ve done everything for you! I’ve devoted my whole life to my kids – how can you accuse me of these things?” |
You owe me an endless debt of allegiance and obedience – it would be utterly evil to refuse to repay it, let alone criticize me! |
| Father/Mother | “How many times do we have to apologize for this before you’re satisfied?” |
You are using criticism as an unjust weapon to hold power over us and make us feel bad. You bastard. |
DENIAL
| Source | Script | Translation |
| Mother | “What nonsense – of course I listen to you!” |
Your experience is utterly incorrect. You are attacking me unjustly. You’re crushing my illusions! Dear god, whyyyyy?!?! |
| Mother | “You don’t really mean that, do you? You can’t possibly believe that!” [Tears.] |
Your experience is utterly incorrect. You are attacking me unjustly! |
| Mother | “Nothing like that ever happened. I never did that.” |
Your experience is utterly incorrect. You are attacking me unjustly! I’m an eyewitness, too, and my testimony should at least balance yours! |
| Siblings | “No one else has a problem – only you. What does that tell you about the reality of the situation?” |
You are attacking them unjustly. We are claiming to have no problems so that you will start doubting your own experiences and shut the hell up.Because no one else who was there will support your claims, you must have been seeing things. |
COUNTER-ATTACK
| Source | Script | Translation |
| Mother | “You kids were just so difficult. I know I lost my temper, and I’m sorry about that – but you kids just pushed me and pushed me, and never listened.” |
You were a bad kid, and forced me act “badly” on occasion. But it was still all your fault. I get so frustrated when people explicitly tell me to punish them and then complain when I do what they ask for. |
| Mother | “I never did that! Why are you saying this? Why are you making up these stories? Why are you trying to hurt me?” |
I am completely insensitive to your real pain, but you’d better be totally sensitive to my imaginary pain! |
| Siblings | “Yes, bad things happened for sure, those were difficult times for all of us – but it was a long time ago, it’s time for all of us to forgive, forget and move on.” |
I feel really anxious when you bring up the past, so I’m going to pretend that you’re irrationally resentful, and that you’re bringing up the past as a weapon in order to control us in the present. |
| Siblings | “Yeah, you’ve always had a hard time forgiving people. You can nurse a grudge until it grows a beard.” |
It is irrational to feel resentment about being badly treated in the past. You are just imagining all the pain that you suffered. Our parents were fine; you are the bad one. |
| Siblings | “Tell me – who is it in your life that you feel listens to you just the right amount – not too much, and not too little? What? No one does it exactly right? Well then, the only common denominator in all the problems you have with everyone is, well, you!” |
The only reason that you could ever feel pain about the past is because you have impossible standards and can’t ever be satisfied. Mom and dad were the victims of your irrational standards. |
| Father | “How many times do we have to apologize for this before you’re satisfied, you selfish little…?” |
I am going to get angry every time you bring this up, because since I have apologized angrily before, you should be satisfied now. |
GENERAL BLANKNESS (gaslighting)
| Source | Script | Translation |
| Mother/Father | “I don’t remember anything like that ever happening, but I can understand that it would be frustrating for you. Any time you ever want to talk about it, I’m here for you.” [Followed by blanket denials if you ever bring the subject up again.] |
We’re very sorry that you had bad parents in the alternate universe that you inhabited as a child. We understand that you’re insane, but we get understandably weary of it. |
| Mother/Father | “Your memory of that is different from mine. That’s not how it was for me, but everyone is entitled to his opinion.” |
Your experience of your childhood is just an opinion, not reality. You are delusional, but we support you, because we are good parents. |
| Father | “I don’t remember that ever happening. Are you sure you didn’t dream that?” |
It’s a shame that you find it so hard to process reality. I am more than happy to sacrifice your sanity for the sake of retaining my own illusions. |
FRAMING
| Source | Script | Translation |
| Siblings | [Rolls eyes.] “Oh that’s just how [your name] is – don’t mind him. He’s always got a bee in his bonnet about something.” |
Only an irrationally angry person could ever complain about our parents. Don’t mind him. He’s always upset and angry about unimportant things. |
| Mother/Father | “Oh we already know how you feel about this topic – don’t start that again, we got it, you have a problem with the family…” |
No matter how much we try to appease you, you always want us to grovel a little bit more, because you are addicted to shaming us. |
| Father | “What exactly do you want me to do with all your complaints?” |
I will do my best to satisfy your insane little requirements, just to keep the peace. I have absolutely no idea what it is you’re asking for, so you might want to get to the point. |
| Mother | “Is there anything I can do differently?” [When you give a list, you are attacked.] |
I have always been very happy to accommodate your requirements – unless you actually give me your requirements, at which point I will attack you. |
AGGRESSIVE APPEALS TO COMPASSION
| Source | Script | Translation |
| Father | “You should not bring this stuff up with your mother, because she is fragile.” |
We should be very gentle with fragile people – unless they are children, in which case we are allowed to attack them at will. |
| Mother | “Don’t you know how much these topics hurt me? Don’t you have any compassion for my feelings?” |
Only my feelings are important in our relationship – your “feelings” only exist to serve my convenience. |
| Siblings | “Mom did the best she could. She had the best intentions, she just didn’t have the knowledge. Things were different back then – there was no ‘Oprah.’” |
You are completely intolerant for criticizing mom – it’s like getting mad at a houseplant for not knowing how to program a computer. The fact that she had irrational standards for us when we were children is completely irrelevant. |
| Siblings | “Mom and Dad are getting old now. We know they didn’t always do the right thing, but they’re not about to change now, so we have to make the best of things.” |
It requires real maturity – which you apparently do not possess – to accept people’s inevitable limitations. We must forgive those who do wrong – especially those who never forgave us for doing wrong! |
AGGRESSIVE APPEAL TO “SELF-RESPECT”
| Source | Script | Translation |
| Siblings | “You have to give up your anger about the past, otherwise it just ends up controlling you forever.” |
Now that our parents no longer have total control over your environment, I’m going to try to convince you that they have total control over your happiness. Your feelings will overrun you if you continue to feel them. If you’re strong, you’ll crush them. |
| Siblings | “We could dwell on all this for the rest of our lives, but what good would it do? You’ve just got to accept things for how they were, and move on from there.” |
I am going to reject the pain that you feel, while preaching that it is moral to accept things for what they are. |
| Siblings | “Someone’s got to be the bigger person in this relationship – clearly it’s not going to be mom, so I guess it’s up to you then, isn’t it?” |
The bigger person must always bow down to the smaller person – that’s how we know how big he really is! Mom is a horribly weak person, so she can’t treat family members as they hope to be treated. Surely you won’t be as weak as she is! |
5 comments for this entry:
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March 9th, 2009 on 08:52
First of all, lest I be misunderstood, let me admit that I too was abused fairly badly by my parents as a child, and that I used to be strongly influenced by Alice Miller, primal therapy literature, depth psychotherapy, etc. for a couple of years, and that in the past, I used to think as you do too.
But lately, I’ve really been starting to have doubts and second thoughts. When I think about it, the scripts you’ve given for the parents and siblings do kind of make some sense. And really, just how often do we have to keep blaming and accusing our parents, until everyone is so tired of listening to us, and our parents become so defensive, and people think we hang on to grudges and can’t move on? Maybe we’re the ones who are being unreasonable and manipulative. It’s true our parents were unreasonable and manipulative in the past, and maybe they still are to some extent now, but what do we really want? For our parents to apologize repeatedly, and become so guilt-ridden about what they’ve done to us? And even after they apologize repeatedly, we’re still unable to forgive them, so understandably, they take back their apologies!
It’s true that their abuse in the past has damaged us, but the past is unchangeable, and maybe we have to accept and come to terms with it, and start to take responsibility to recover as best as we can without constantly guilt-tripping our parents? After all, even if our parents become extremely guilt-ridden over what they’ve done to us, how can that possibly help us NOW? Even they can’t undo the past.
I have to think, were most of us so grudgeful and resentful BEFORE we became influenced by Alice Miller and primal therapists? Or could it be possible that they were the ones who constantly encouraged and manipulated us into constantly hating our parents? first, they make us think that unless we fully feel though our hatred of our parents, we’re unable to recover, but no matter how much we hate or attack them, it’s never quite enough to heal, and there’s always more “emotional work” to be done. And whenever we bring up the perfectly true observation that our parents weren’t 100% evil monsters, but they were sometimes loving, and sometimes abusive, sometimes nurturant and sometimes neglectful, sometimes good and sometimes bad, we’re accused of having a “defense” blocking us from fully feeling our childhood hurts. We’re encouraged to split our image of our parents so that we only focus one-sidedly upon all the bad things they’ve done to us, and downplay or dismiss all the good things they’ve done to us, but the truth is, they’re BOTH good and bad!
I have to wonder if we were somehow brainwashed into a constant obsessive hatred of our parents. The translations you gave have a common feature of always looking for the worst in our parents/siblings. If we constantly expect the worst in them, and nothing they do can ever satisfy us, isn’t it understandable why they’re starting to become tired and annoyed with us?
Lastly, let me stress once again that I’m not trying to attack you, but merely expressing some doubts that I’ve been entertaining for quite some time now.
March 10th, 2009 on 18:50
Well, I didn’t have to be told by Alice Miller that my parents were cruel and abusive, I already knew this. What I got from Alice Miller was validation and sympathy, what I got from therapy was sympathy that I never got. Society tends to sympathize with the parent at the expense of the child, calling the child bad for complaining about abuse. If we don’t process this justified anger then we can only repeat this on our own children and in our future relationships. I don’t see my parents anymore, thus it can’t be said that I am “abusing and manipulating them”. If we hold new standards for the way we are treated, our relationships can only improve as we get rid of the people who treat us badly and find people who treat us well.
One last thing, as something to think about in terms of the logical consistency of your argument. If they did the best they could with what they knew then we are doing the best we can with what we know by condemning their behavior. They cannot say (without being rank cowards and hypocrites) that they made mistakes and that they didn’t understand right from wrong because their justification for abusing us was that we had made mistakes and we had done wrong. When the shoe is on the other foot, when the gun is in the hand of the victim, of course they’re immediately nice and begging for mercy and manipulating us by saying that we are bad for condemning them. We were bad when they condemned us and they were good, but now suddenly we are bad when we condemn them? Suddenly the rules have reversed?
They showed us no mercy when we made mistakes, how can it then be said that it is good for us to show mercy in condemning them for their choice to do great evil. Abuse of a helpless and dependent child is evil, period. How can we show tolerance and mercy for evil and expect it not to continue in the following generations? Why should we give evil a pass and how would that affect the state of the world if the rule is that the victims must give abusers a pass? That those who abuse power an punish unmercifully are victims of those who want justice? Can you really say that the victims are the abusers and manipulators for condemning the evil that was done to them, rather than those who committed the crime?
Does a murderer get off because he spent all but 5 minutes of his life not murdering someone? How about a rapist or a thief? I would consider your values and decide if it is more evil to commit a heinous crime or to condemn it. Is it more evil to commit a rape, or to point out that someone is being raped?
March 10th, 2009 on 21:48
Jason,
I’m sorry to hear that your parents abused you as a child and about the current state of your relationship with them.
Your parents think that abusing others is fixed by punishing the abuser. When you bring up what they did, they think you’re demanding that they punish themselves with more apologies and guilt than they’ve already given.
That idea is very common, but it’s not at all good.
Abusing others is fixed by helping the victim to find significant healing. I think that’s what you really want from them. Apologies do help, but they’re only a first step. Taking the next steps will help you to feel better because your parents will actually be showing that they care (and the healing methods will help of course), it will help your parents to feel better about themselves, and it will help the relationship you have with them in the future.
You can help them out by explaining that you don’t want them to punish themselves; you want them to help you to heal.
Will they do things that have proven to help other abuse victims ? Will they pay for a therapist of your choice for you ? Will they go to a therapist of their own ? Will they go with you to counseling to help you all to have a happier relationship with each other in the future and to help you all learn to talk without punishment about what happened in the past ? Are there other successful methods you know of that you can suggest to them ?
They can’t undo the past, but they can do a lot to help heal it. Please let us know how it goes.
March 11th, 2009 on 05:37
Thanks for all the replies. Let me clarify that I used to criticize them years ago, but I’ve stopped doing so for quite some time now, but the undercurrents of my past criticisms can still be felt in my present relationship to my parents, but we pretty much avoid talking about the past, at least openly.
I’ve been thinking maybe getting angry with our parents for all the abuses they’ve done to us might only be a temporary stage to get us out of denial so that we realize what they did was wrong and realize how badly their past behavior had affected us, and so we wouldn’t repeat the same pattern of behavior with others. But once we see all that, I fail to see how it would be productive to continue to be angry with them, and with anyone who wouldn’t side with us against our parents. I don’t have any children at the moment, and won’t have any in the near future, but maybe what’s more important at a later stage is to NOT repeat abusive behaviors with our children (or future children, if we’re going to have any) or others. I agree that healing is far more important at this stage, but that can be done without involving our parents, and in fact, it’s probably far better if they weren’t involved! And is it really necessary to continue to criticize our parents to prevent us from mistreating others, especially those with less power than us? This is just my opinion, and it’s something I’ve been entertaining lately, but do two wrongs make a right? If it wasn’t right for our parents to condemn us and see the worst in us, and treat us harshly, is it any more right for us to condemn our parents and see the worst in them? I do realize there used to be a power differential in the past, but is there still one NOW? Revenge is mostly counterproductive, and often leads to vendettas. Just about the only reasonable justification for revenge is deterrence to discourage others from doing the same in the future, but now that we’re no longer children, it’s unlikely that anyone will treat us in the future the way we were treated when we were children. And even if it causes others to treat us more “respectfully”, it isn’t really genuine respect, but more like the fear of stepping on our toes because we’re perceived as being too sensitive and too easy to hold on to grudges.
After all, we’re all grown up now, and no longer children, and our parents are no longer abusing us. Criticizing them and getting them to stop when we were younger would have been extremely helpful (at least by someone other than the child, someone who has more power), but now that we’ve grown up, what’s the point? It’s not like they’re still abusing other children.
Maybe it was worth it to bring up the topic of their past abuse a couple of times, but what is there to be gained by repeatedly bringing it up? A couple of times is more than enough for them to get the point.
If we’re doing it because of our emotional needs, and not so much because of anything our parents are doing in the PRESENT, how is it any different from the times when our parents punished and abused us, not so much because of what we did, but because of their emotional needs?
Nathan has brought up the analogy with criminals, but it has been shown that rehabilitation works far better for criminals than punishment, or shaming. It also appears that at least politically, the Truth and Reconciliation policy of South Africa after the end of apartheid was far more effective than the execution or imprisonment of war criminals.
And are we supposed to discount all the times when our parents actually helped us just because they were also sometimes abusive? Does the bad they’ve done toward us negate all the good they’ve also done toward us? It’s true they could’ve done a lot more (if they were capable of it, and under better circumstances), but should we discount what little they’ve done for us because they weren’t much better? And besides, if we were to hold ourselves up to the same high standards of behavior we expect from our parents, would we measure up well? Probably we’d come out slightly better than them, but how much better? Does this observation mean I’m identifying with my parents?
March 11th, 2009 on 06:57
Jason,
I’m sorry that we couldn’t help you.