The Psychology of the Abuser in Traumatic Relationships

This article was first published on the "Caesura" page.

One of the difficulties in studying those who commit abuse within traumatic relationships is the lack of direct access to them. Such people — naturally — have a powerful motive for concealing their injurious behavior. The abuser often either sees nothing wrong in himself for which he might seek treatment, or else the fear of losing his position of dominance, or the intensity of his inner shame, will not permit him to acknowledge his own deeper psychological needs.

Although abusive interactions carry complex historical, cultural, economic, and political dimensions as well, what follows concerns some of the most salient psychological aspects of abusers within traumatic interactions, drawing on recent psychoanalytic theory. The focus of this piece is not diagnosis, but the psychic and relational logic of abuse.

Much of the data we have concerning abusers comes either indirectly, from hearing the accounts of victims or examining legal documents and reports, or from the work of therapists with them in the role of "offender" — not within their ordinary relationships. For this reason, any conclusions we draw must necessarily be made with caution, and by relying on recurring patterns within injurious relationships.

Identifying abusive individuals outside the context of their injurious relationships is no easy task. Many abusers appear, in public settings, respectable, reasonable, and trustworthy, and they confine their violence to the spaces where they hold greater power and greater immunity. In some cases this behavioral gap is so deep that others find it difficult to believe there is any dark side to their character at all.

Even when the mistreatment comes to light, it is often the abuser's social standing that makes his account seem credible and the victim's testimony seem unreliable. This form of "face-saving" extends beyond the injurious relationship itself, as those around the couple, whether out of attachment to the abuser or in order to preserve their own peace and safety, deny the mistreatment and discredit the victim. In this way, the abuser draws not only on his own individual power; the silence, disbelief, and self-interested caution of those around him become part of the very structure of his immunity.

Beyond this, the abuser's behavior within the relationship typically follows an oscillating pattern. After periods of enacted violence, he may return to a state of kindness, remorse, or apparent compassion. In doing so, he can not only deny outright the victim's psychic experience, or make its nature and extent appear altogether different — a phenomenon which, if it occurs persistently, can leave the victim doubting her own memory, perception, and understanding — but he can also keep alive, within the victim, the hope that things might improve.

Although some individuals deploy this change of face deliberately, more often than not these are unconscious maneuvers on the abuser's part, aimed at keeping the other person within the relationship — for he, despite his outward appearance of dominance, is profoundly dependent on the victim for the regulation of his self-esteem and the coherence of his own psyche.

Abusers themselves have generally emerged from a background of injurious relationships. In many severe and merciless instances of interpersonal abuse, the offending party has a history of having suffered physical or psychological abuse in childhood. These injuries have sometimes damaged the structure of the person's psyche so severely that preventing its complete collapse becomes possible only by resorting to others, drawn in as supporting pillars for this structure.

Under such conditions, the other person, by setting aside their own needs and becoming an instrument for the satisfaction of the abuser's needs, protects him from confronting his own severe deficiencies and weaknesses. In other words, the victim becomes, in a sense, a "regulator" of the abuser's psyche, containing his shame, his anxiety, his sense of worthlessness, and his fear of falling apart.

Although the other's submission to the abuser's demands sustains the injurious relationship, it still remains insufficient to fill his inner void. He wants the victim to accept her own submission willingly, wholeheartedly — and even to recognize it as love, as faith, as gratitude, or as moral necessity. And yet the abuser's thirst to possess the victim's mind never fully subsides, for he — even amid complete physical domination — sees no guarantee of such possession. Any mastery over the psyche of a "willing victim" will always be a fleeting, fragile mastery.

The terror of never gaining total access to the victim's inner world — in other words, the ongoing terror of the collapse of his own fragile order — drives the abuser ever further toward totalizing behavior. In domestic violence, the child or spouse must not only bear the suffering and terror of the abuse; they must also set aside every other relationship in order to prove their love and loyalty to the parent or spouse. In sexual abuse, the victim must not only submit to the violent desire of the assailant; she must also demonstrate that she wants this suffering, and takes pleasure in it.

This same pattern can be clearly observed in larger groups as well: for example, in the sacrifice of members' own wishes to the will of a cult leader, or in the summoning of citizens to take part in public spectacles of violence and the forced extraction of confessions from dissidents under a totalitarian regime.

Since the victim becomes an extension of the abuser's psyche, and comes to serve the maintenance of his sense of worth and the continuity of his self, any sign of opposition, independence, or even simple difference of perspective on the victim's part feels to the abuser like an act of utter betrayal. This is why so many abusers not only fail to see anything wrong within themselves, but even present themselves as the victims of others' behavior, regarding their violence as a natural and unavoidable response to provocation, disrespect, or disobedience on the other's part. This inversion transfers responsibility for the violence from the abuser to the victim, and facilitates the continuation of the cycle of harm.

And yet, one of the most important factors in breaking the cycle of chronic trauma is insisting on the abuser's own share in its formation and perpetuation. A painful past can explain why a person is so fragile in the face of another's shame, need, difference, or independence — but it does not justify the violence, nor does it absolve him of responsibility. Most survivors of childhood violence and mistreatment do not go on to become abusers in adulthood.

Beyond this, abusers, in many social situations, exercise perfectly good control over their own behavior. This shows that their injurious interactions are, more than anything, a situational choice rather than an unavoidable reaction to intolerable circumstances.

The decisive difference lies in what a person does with his own wounds: whether he acknowledges them and takes responsibility for his own emotions and behavior, or whether, in order to preserve his own coherence, he turns others into instruments of control, humiliation, and the discharge of his pain.

Payvand Jalali, Psychoanalytic Therapist