Domestic violence and maternal perversion

Mordas Ekaterina Sergeevna PhD in Psychology Associate Professor at Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis 121170, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Kutuzovskii Prospekt, d.34, str.14 morkaty@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

There is a different understanding of the nature of violence and violent human behavior in the scientific community. It is interesting that the experience (practice) of violence has taken place throughout the history of human development as a whole – from ancient times to the present, we can observe this destructive experience and experiences in the human world.

Family and close people are the first social system where a child gets to after birth. The early experience of a relationship with a significant Other is often reproduced in adulthood: identity is formed, certain patterns of interaction with another, affects, partners who are in tune with each other meet, internal conflicts play out. For some, violence is the usual way to interact with another, or even the only one. There are many forms of violence: from the real (attack, abuse, total destruction, etc.) to the symbolic (ignoring, rejection, devaluation, etc.).

In our article, we use a sociological approach (the ideas of R. Collins) and a psychoanalytic approach (the ideas of A. Motz and E. Welldon) to the problem of violence. We will focus on the disturbed mother-child relationship, using a modern view in psychoanalysis on the phenomenon of perversion in child-parent relationships.

R. Collins lays the situation at the basis of the nature of violence. A violent situation is a series of conditions that lead to violence: the search for a weak victim, dominance, confrontation, tension, fear, panic.

The psychoanalytic authors (A. Motz, E. Welldon, etc.) understand violence as a loss of control over aggressive impulses leading to action; causing physical harm; violence is directed against people. The roots of violence are connected with the inability to comprehend one's own development, the mental state of another person. The deep nature of violence is associated with the hostility of the mother towards the infant, which makes it difficult for the child to understand the intentions and feelings of the mother ^{[1, p. 24]}.

Domestic violence, according to R. Collins, is a variant of violence of the weak and helpless, namely: children, the elderly and the disabled, the dominant spouse over the spouse (or vice versa). R. Collins notes that tension and fear are the dominant emotions in a situation of violence. The most common form of violence is an attack on a weak victim. A person becomes vulnerable and weak not because he cannot fight back against the aggressor or is afraid of being killed or offended. This is due, according to R. Collins, to tension and a sense of fear in the process of micro-interaction. "Fear" at a meeting is a tension associated with a violation of the fundamental ritual of solidarity, a tendency to mutual infatuation, according to R. Collins. Each side of the conflict is trying to establish its own rhythm in micro-interaction, impose this rhythm on the opponent and thus take a dominant position, defining the affective emotional field where the situation of violence unfolds ^[2].

The aim of the study is to integrate sociological and psychoanalytic approaches to understand the nature and manifestation of domestic violence as a form of violence of the weak and helpless.

Research objectives: 1. To consider the ideas of R. Collins regarding the problems of domestic violence (mechanisms for the development of violence in couples, parents and children, in relation to the elderly and sick people). 2. To explore the nature of maternal perversion = violence and hatred in a psychoanalytic approach. 3. To develop the provisions of the model of the phenomenon of maternal perversion in a situation of domestic violence.

R. Collins' view on the situation of domestic violence

The victim is made weak by "situationality", a position in interaction: the victim cannot defend himself because he allows the aggressor to take the initiative, take a dominant position, control the process and the direction of mutual infatuation. Successful aggression is when both "agreed" on what is happening: the aggressor and the victim fall into a trap where one takes the lead and the other reacts to it.

Domestic violence is often described as an attempt to control (adults over children, spouse over spouse, or vice versa, etc.). The rapist (aggressor) dominates the family, seizes control over the emotional definition of the situation. Poverty and social discrimination are not the root cause of violence between people (R. Collins). The author also notes that the connection between the experience of violence in childhood and the manifestation of violence in adulthood is not well defined, that is, most victims of abuse do not commit violence. In turn, M. Hirsch will note: ".... the aggression contained in the family is directed at its weakest members, that is, children, and in order to preserve the family as a whole, children are sacrificed in the name of a higher goal. A simple rule of thumb remains in force: the one who aggressively attacks others, turning them into victims, was himself once a victim of violence, improper treatment or unstable conditions" ^[3]. In this regard, the question remains open for research. But A. Motz will continue that motherhood is a much shorter path to power for psychopathic women than sex and money, and the perversion of motherhood is at the heart of women's perversions.

Domestic abuse has the same nature and "path" as any other violence. There are a variety of relationships in domestic violence. One spouse may attack the other; adults may beat children, but also vice versa; the adults involved may be parents, as well as guardians, casual friends of one parent or babysitters. There is abuse of adult children by elderly parents and abuse by elderly care workers. Finally, the most common form of family violence occurs between siblings.

The usual causes of domestic violence are poverty, stress, life changes and social isolation, but most people in such situations are not prone to violence; further situational process is required to create real cases of violence.

Caring for the sick and violence. Sick people and people with disabilities are often the object of violence. A family member who takes care of such a person out of solidarity, love for the needy, spends his strength and time day after day, experiences emotional crises, loss of strength, gradually burns out emotionally and caring for the helpless becomes routine – on the one hand. On the other hand, as R. Collins notes, the person who provides care receives less emotional energy from performing an altruistic role, and there is an increased sense of power struggle. The very fact that the caregiver strives to be altruistic gives the person in need an advantage over him. As in a love relationship, the principle of least interest applies: the person who loves more is in a less advantageous position compared to the one who loves less. Thus, although a physically healthy adult caring person has full power, a helpless child or an elderly person possesses an emotional weapon and uses it to their advantage, regardless of whether this commitment comes from religious or altruistic beliefs, a sense of duty or personal love ties. A conflict situation arises based on the inequality of resources. Anger accumulates from one side and the other. The options for resolving the situation are different, presented in the work of R. Collins. This kind of violence is based on the stress experiences of the caregiver; this condition is aggravated if the person is alone in caring (as a rule, this role is assigned to a woman). R. Collins notes that the degree of dependence of the older generation increases the likelihood of abuse against them.

Violence in a couple. Violence in a couple can be represented when the role of the victim is assigned to a woman, and the role of the aggressor is assigned to a man. Violence can be in a mild form (scandals, reproaches, control, etc.) – but the couple does not allow to enter into a situation of interaction - the destruction of each other.

Or a form of violence, when a couple creates such a relationship that one person pursues the other to the point of complete destruction (murder). In family violence, a period of intense confrontational tension escalates into total dominance. The rapist literally stalks the victim until he destroys her.

In a situation of violence between a couple, a woman plays the role of a victim, and this is part of the feedback during microinteraction, which keeps the dominator (aggressor) captive to his aggression. The victim's involvement in conflict with the aggressor is a central micro-process that gives episodes of violence a situational impulse.

In a couple, if a man occupies a higher social position compared to a woman, a woman with a lower social status can compensate for this by subordination. His initial criticism of her indicates a recognition that she does not fit his status and that he wants to be with her. His criticism is a way to assert her situational passive, weak position. In fact, the couple is trying how their negotiating resources will be turned into permanent roles: he is studying methods of creating his emotional impulse as a dominant, she is learning to be a victim. People learn to play these roles and play with each other.

In domestic violence, there is often a pattern of passive, helpless behavior of the victim, whose ostentatious helplessness or ineffectual resistance seems to provoke the aggressor to even greater attacks of aggression (cases of victim harassment and murder).

The victim causes the aggressor to be disgusted and increasingly angry; this is a self-healing cycle, since the aggressor feels drawn into continuing the attack only because of his anger at the groveling of another. The effect is that the attacker and the victim are connected to each other at the moment of violence - two organisms send bodily and emotional signals that are transmitted to each other and further enhance what they are doing: one is more groveling, the other is more angry and attacks.

R. Collins concludes that this is an unspoken negotiation process, the process of probing each other, identifying their strengths and weaknesses; it involves the use of their resources (coercive force, material resources, emotional rituals, opportunities for interaction in the market) to the extent that they can be used in the current situation. It's not just raw materials that are important here; they need to be put into action in such a way that they help control the partner.

In order for an act of abusive violence to occur, two (or more) chains must coincide: the aggressor must have learned techniques that will work on a particular person; some of them involve a high degree of self-involvement in confrontation and violence; others are skills of how to direct their own energy to train another person's reaction to their own violence.

On the other hand, the victim must have learned the techniques of how to interact with the aggressor, maintaining a relationship and subtly encouraging his methods of aggression. After all, this path has two branches: the first is where the victim has learned some techniques of confrontation, but not those techniques that lead to limiting fights at the level of ordinary episodes with a balance of power; this is a path that leads to increased tension, and then to panic explosions. The other path leads to slow, insidious appeasement and a regime of terrorist torture; here the victim has learned to receive very small ritual rewards at the cost of passively becoming a tortured person.

There may be other ways. But they all involve the coincidence of two areas of study: mastering the skills of abuse by the aggressor, and mastering the role of the victim, or at least the inability to master the skills of limiting violence by the victim. These two roles will show up very clearly in the case of bullying.

Child abuse. Child abuse is often the conscious infliction of physical and mental suffering on a child. It includes such manifestations as rejection, neglect, devaluation, neglect, physical punishment, bullying, sexual abuse, etc. A child with an experience of abuse is experiencing mental deprivation.

In child-parent relationships, the drama (childhood trauma) of an adult is often played out. Personal immaturity, the inability to contain, cope with aggressive drives on the part of an adult, leads to the fact that such a person may simply be psychologically unable to withstand the child, his feelings. And then, instead of the established affective adult-child contact, adult control, child subordination and struggle (violence, aggression between them) come to the fore. That is, an adult does not consciously plan to harm a child (he can just bathe or just feed, or just sit next to him to help do homework, for example), but if the child resists, the adult begins to make more efforts to control and maintain his demands (power). Often, an adult wins the "battle" by forcing a child to do what an adult thinks is necessary. At the same moment, the adult succumbs to the mood of the child (victim) = projective identification, consisting of screams, resistance, anger and tense muscles. Both sides of the conflict are spiraling out of control; since one of them is much weaker than the other, the tension of the struggle turns into a hot rush and violent behavior that causes panic.

Abuse of a crying infant has a similar dynamic as in the case of the elderly and their caregivers. The child is crying, the parents are not coping with the situation, the situation is getting out of control, disappointment + deprivation of the mother's sleep, fatigue, the mother is alone in taking care of the child = the mother breaks down on the child, beats, shakes him so much that he can injure or kill.

Abuse does not occur at the first cry of a child, this is a recurring situation, in previous experience parents failed to calm the child and the current episode is perceived – "well, he's yelling again or he needs something..."

A child's crying is a non–verbal message about his emotional state; through crying, a child can express aggression, protest, pain, horror, longing, anxiety, fear, etc. An adult in a situation of long crying can fall into the state (unconscious) that the child informs him about through his crying (according to Bion, we are talking about beta elements). If you are unable to experience these affects (that is, the inability to understand, process and verbalize them), the adult becomes enveloped in them and begins to behave like a child himself, falling into such an affective field that provokes a situation of violence and aggression – "yes, when will you shut up ...".

Women are more likely than men to resort to violence against young children, since they spend most of their time with children. Girls are subjected to less severe corporal punishment than boys. Men do not use corporal punishment (abuse) against girls, unlike how boys are treated; in the case of teenagers, fathers usually do not punish their daughters physically (although mothers sometimes do). Corporal punishment or forced control of children is not a male model, but men use violence to control women.

At the level of more serious violence, men tend to physically abuse teenagers, while women are more likely to abuse young children. This is consistent with the pattern that the stronger attacks the weaker; older children, especially in adolescence, become too big for women to abuse them. The brutal abuse of children, the murder of infants, etc. are stereotypical offenders in the eyes of the public. But in fact, women kill their own children more often than anyone else, usually to get rid of unwanted births (involuntary miscarriages, abortions, frozen pregnancy and psychogenic female infertility can also be mentioned here). As E. Welldon notes, for murderous mothers, children are not separate beings, but are perceived as a narcissistic extension of themselves. A mother who kills her child, especially during his early childhood, symbolically kills herself ^[4].

The psychological nature of maternal violence (perversion)

According to the psychoanalytic approach, we are dealing with the aspect of maternal perverse motherhood (infanticide and death drive, pathological narcissism).

Perverse motherhood is a phenomenon of early disturbed object relations in the "mother–child" dyad at an early stage of development, characterized by the use of the child by the mother (destruction of his autonomy or devaluation) in order to resolve unconscious conflicts with his own mother, which may not include elements of direct deviant sexuality towards the child and based on female sexual perversions.

Female sexual perversions are directed at one's own body (or at children perceived as part of one's body) or are realized through one's own body, formed through a woman's inner space (including psychosexual development, formation of nuclear gender identity, reproductive functions, fantasies of pregnancy) and biological clocks (including concepts of menarche and menopause), and traceable in at least three generations.

Most women reproducing the perverse motherhood system are not clearly psychotic and do not suffer from complete disintegration of the Ego. They can be called borderline personalities who suffer from narcissistic disorder of varying severity.

For some women, motherhood provides a good opportunity to realize perverse desires towards children and take revenge on their own mothers. Both men and women, describing early relationships with their mothers, talk about feelings of absorption and dependence and relive them in a transfer with an analyst. In terms of J. Bergeret, such a mother can be called overprotective ^[5]. This is a mother who does not allow the child to achieve the register of desire, constantly being present and anticipating his slightest desires, thus making them non-existent. According to the theory, M. Mahler, this is a mother who did not allow either his separation or individuation. As a result of such overprotection on the part of the mother, the child does not form his own Self, the boundaries between Self and others are not established, which leads to the formation of psychotic or borderline structures. J. Masterson and D. Rinsley write about a similar process in the study of the role of the mother in the formation of a borderline personality ^[6]. The authors emphasize the influence on the child of the alternation of libidinal maternal accessibility and its absence at the stage of separation-individuation. A child who develops a borderline personality structure in the future responds to encouragement from the mother by denying separation. This reinforces the child's acting out of his fantasies of reuniting with the maternal partial object and contributes to his dependence and fear of being abandoned if he dares to separate. Thus, the consequences of overprotection are the child's infantilism and lack of independence, the desire to evade responsibility, and dependence on authorities.

At the other pole is the absent mother, who does not allow the child to connect the painful expectation with the representations of the desired object. The child's temporary ability to cope with helplessness and tension by hallucinating satisfaction is limited. If mom is gone for too long, then the growing excitement, pain and rage makes his desire for her (the idea of her) useless and meaningless. And somatic arousal, rage, unrelated to images and representations, accumulating in the body, become sources of psychosomatic diseases in a child. Thus, as a result of hypoopection (indifference or preoccupation of parents) the child loses his sense of security, there is a shortage of love and a constant search for it. In the worst case, according to E. Welldon, a woman can easily attack a child who causes her frustration and restricts her freedom, due to the constant confrontation of her punishing mother and as a result, identifies with an aggressive mother.

E. Welldon, mentioning P. Greenacre, notes that the author, working with patients with sexual perversions, identifies disorders during their development in the first two years and notes how they affect the normal course of the separation-individuation process. Broken relationships: inadequate care and/or rejection of the child is the ground for the further development of perverse tendencies. The very inability to be with a child does not determine the content of perversion. Long-term experiences of uncertainty about the Other Self affect the pathology of the situation in the relationship. Object relations deteriorate, primary aggression is retained, secondary aggression increases due to disappointment. Sadism is actualized in response to violence on the part of the mother.

R. Stoller wrote that for a perverse mother, the child himself turns into a "transitional object". From his point of view, the "transitional object" is used by pervert for manipulation, use and abuse, destruction and rejection. According to R. Stoller, "hostility in perversion takes the form of a fantasy of revenge hidden in actions that form perversion and serve to transform childhood trauma into the triumph of an adult" ^{[7, p. 99]}. E. Welldon, notes how in her clinical practice she noticed that the possibility of full control over the situation, The benefits of motherhood create a fertile ground for women who have experienced traumatic events to abuse and abuse their children. This gives rise to mothers who beat up their children, whose children become transsexuals and sexual perverts.

E. Welldon hypothesizes that sometimes a woman becomes a mother for unconscious perverse reasons. Having become a mother, she automatically becomes the main one, completely controlling the other, who must obey not only the emotional, but also the biological requirements of the mother. She believes that a perverse mother feels her child as a part of herself that she will never part with, and will not allow him to develop his own gender identity and individuation. She enjoys making the child fulfill her inappropriate demands.

The perversion itself is transmitted from the mother to her child at the preedipal stage and is formed in the process of separation-individuation with the desire of the perverted mother for symbiotic fusion and deprivation of the child's autonomy. And motherhood as a perversion manifests itself in the form of destroyed internal mental structures, as a result of which the mother feels not only unable to cope with the enormous psychological and physical demands of her child, but also powerless and helpless to obtain satisfaction from other sources. Due to her unresolved internal conflicts, she considers her perverse behavior to be the only authority that is available to her by right to dispose of the emotional and physical condition of the child. The main purpose of perverse motherhood and its consequences are the result of the child's emotional instability and insufficient individuation. In such conditions, a child is more likely to develop a borderline or psychotic personality structure with corresponding psychopathological consequences, including perverse sexual deviations and difficulties in establishing object relationships in adulthood.

Another group of perverse motherhood and mother-child violence relationships is incest. David E. Sharff, exploring sexual relations from the point of view of object relations and in particular the origins of sexual deviations, writes that: "real incest is a special case of violation of parental function, regardless of who becomes a participant in it: siblings or stepbrothers, adult relatives – grandfather, uncle or father of a girl. Actual incest between mother and son is a very rare phenomenon" ^{[8, p. 103]}.

D. E. Sharff presents the idea of actual and symbolic incest. It characterizes incest with varying degrees of severity: from mild form between siblings to incest between parent and child, which has the most serious effect on the latter. He refers to symbolic incestuous events, for example, when a child regularly sleeps in the parent's bed or with one of the parents, without sexual interaction. Symbolic incest, in his opinion, can create problems in the psychosocial development of a child, but they will be much less severe than the consequences that actual incest entails. In our opinion, symbolic incest between mother and child (and the child can be of any gender) is the most common, but mothers and society refuse to accept and call it incest, and even when the mother continues to sleep in the same bed with the child until the age of majority, she considers it quite normal and does not deviate from norms of behavior. D. E. Sharff believes that symbolic incest is found in neurotic and other disorders of moderate severity. In our opinion, symbolic incest is no less traumatic for a child than actual incest. This behavior of the mother greatly increases the likelihood of developing a defective Ego structure, blurring the boundaries between Myself and Others, between my body and the body of Another, which leads not only to borderline personality functioning, according to D.E. Sharff, but also to psychopathic. Incest itself deals a heavy blow to the child's desire to preserve his personal boundaries and integrity ^[8].

Actual incest is a fundamental violation of the child's safety both physically and psychologically, leading to a primitive mental organization. Primitive Ego splitting and dissociation are necessary in order to separate libidinal and anti-libidinal objects if the actual experience involved the sexual use of a child by a highly charged object (mother) combining arousing and haunting aspects. Incest is one of the most severe violations of psychosomatic partnership, and its consequences are always very serious. In a situation where incest becomes possible, the child becomes defenseless. In such situations, the mother becomes unfit in her parental role, she not only does not provide security, but also attacks her child, violates the child's bodily integrity under the pretext of caring. D. E. Sharff believes that the harm done to the child is too significant to be simply pushed into the unconscious. Instead, the threatening object (which is perceived by the child both as a manifestation of an external aggressive attack and as the return of his own aggressive projection) should be separated from the image of a good object. The aggression of a bad object and at the same time an exciting object increases confusion in ideas about one's self. In an attempt to separate libidinal and anti-libidinal objects, the Ego also splits into libidinal Ego and anti-libidinal Ego, and mental integrity becomes impossible. Ego splitting is the highest point of traumatic violations of bodily integrity and Ego integrity. Thus, D.E. Sharff showed the mechanism of formation of a borderline structure as a result of incest ^[8].

An equally important consequence is also the confusion of fantasies and reality that occurs in children who have been subjected to incest. In the process of normal development after the oedipal period, incestuous fantasies are repressed into the unconscious. In incest victims, the confusion of fantasies and reality hinders the development of mental functions, and the degree of violation corresponds to the severity of incest, in which fantasies become part of reality. D. E. Sharff believes that incest leads to the formation of borderline personality structures with sexual disorders.

E. Welldon, talking about the incest of a mother and her son, also emphasizes that incest and perverse behavior lead to a halt in emotional and sexual development. Pervert patients tend to use defense mechanisms such as cleavage, projective identification, and sexualization. Incest children can develop manic defenses to cope with their deep, chronic and latent depression, in order to cope with the situation when the child is forced to be a part or an extension of the mother's body, existing only to give the mother narcissistic or sexual satisfaction. E. Welldon, referring to S. Kramer, notes that maternal incest is the conscious actions of the mother in the form of stimulation of the child for her own pleasure. Gender doesn't matter.

S. Cohen, considering the genetic origins of eroticized sadomasochism, believes that the general genetic prerequisite for such behavior is the child's relationship with an inaccessible, depressed mother, who may be too seductive. Such mothers, in his opinion, cannot bear the hardships of caring for a child, they want to be taken care of themselves. As a rule, she envies the child, his autonomy, his capabilities, youth, etc. Out of envy and hatred, the mother unconsciously wants to destroy these distinctive qualities of the child, she disfigures him, binds him to herself and changes roles with him. The child identifies with the protective dominant position of the mother and interacts with her in a complimentary way. This encourages sexualization and sadomasochism as protective and adaptive phenomena designed to contain and mitigate unbearable affects. The sadomasochistic behavior of the mother towards the child can lead to the fact that the child will become overwhelmed with the affects of excitement, rage, resentment and humiliation. In the case when a child becomes the object of seduction or use in a sadomasochistic relationship on the part of the mother, he feels his exclusivity, or feels a sense of his own uniqueness. These feelings are replaced by a feeling of abandonment and loneliness, guilt for their sins, rage, helplessness. Protective identification and erotic or sadomasochistic repetition are aimed at coping with overwhelming negative affects, as well as the repetition of idealized pleasure. The child idealizes strong feelings and experiences and focuses on them in a protective way. A sense of one's own exclusivity, permissiveness, and the ability to seduce and excite others is used to protect against criticism of one's own destructiveness. The child did not receive a reasonable assessment of reality from the parent and explanations about what reality is. The reality was as this needy parent saw it. Such children will constantly try to involve their mother in emotional contact, they will try to adapt to their mother, sharing narcissistic singularity with her ^[9].

Unfortunately, no less often we encounter the same disastrous consequences of fathers' interference in the emotional and sexual development of daughters. E. Welldon, analyzing, paternal incest comes to the conclusion that it can be a consequence of prostitution or abandonment of sexual relations. Incest victims of both sexes face enormous difficulties in the way they build relationships. On the one hand, they feel used, seduced and perceived as sexualized partial objects, and on the other hand, they feel exceptional, omnipotent and ahead of others in development, because their unconscious oedipal fantasies have come true. Paternal incest towards her daughter is also a form of perverse motherhood, so the girl reacts to the mother's inability to cope with her physical, maternal, guardianship, marital or partner responsibilities, and becomes the mother's deputy in a relationship with her father. J. L. Herman gave a very precise formulation: "The father actually makes the daughter pay with her own body for intimacy and the care that should be given free of charge. Thus, he destroys the protective bond that exists between parents and the child, and introduces his daughter to prostitution," as noted in the work of E. Welldon [p. 165]. The incest situation can develop quite slowly. Very often, this process begins with the wife's refusal of sexual intimacy with her husband. When his wife rejects him, he goes to his daughter or son not just for the satisfaction of sexual desire, but for warmth and self-confidence. Such a strong reaction, according to E. Welldon, occurs in men due to the fact that such a situation often reminds of a nightmare from their own childhood, in which similar cumulative injuries occurred. Such men usually complain about their wife's coldness and distance, her frigidity. In such cases, the seduction of a child becomes a "solution", especially for couples in which the partners do not talk much to each other and experience a certain emotional deprivation. So, a daughter becomes the mother of her mother and the wife of her father. Therefore, its identity is confused and suffers from a lack of any external and internal coordinate system. Before they reached puberty, they had to perform the functions of mistresses and adults instead of their mother. It is extremely important that this happens within the family framework, in which the fundamental boundaries responsible for the distribution of responsibilities between generations are violated. Normal relations between children and parents disappear, who stop caring for their daughter and deprive her of the opportunity to develop at her own pace. Based on his numerous clinical observations of women who have experienced incest, E. Welldon notes that these women suffer from depression, which is veiled by obsessive, distorted, genital sexual activity, which is based on a deep need for revenge. At the same time, the basis of real encounters is hatred, not love, and the objects encountered – presented in the form of their own bodies – are only a symbolic substitute for the real objects at which revenge is directed. The behavior of these women is motivated by a strong aversion to their own body, which they deal with in various ways.

Violence in maternal perversion is presented in the form of a diagram.

Conclusion

Human development begins in the family. The family is the first social group. Parents create a space for development; this space is filled with love and/or hatred, various feelings, fantasies and dreams of parents. The experience of relationships acquired in the family is realized in the social life of an adult.

Violence against the weak is a type of violence and an experience of trauma. According to R. Collins, the act of violence is based on a situation: certain conditions that contribute to the unfolding of an act of violence and a person's experience in this situation. The family is a space (little studied, difficult to observe) where there is a possibility of developing a situation of violence.

The mother is a figure who has power over the child, in relation to which the child experiences primary absolute dependence. Development involves moving from absolute dependence to relative non-dependence and independence. The affective experience with the mother and the quality of attachment (early object relationships) form the child's personality.

Violence is possible in a situation of interpersonal dependence (pathological dependence) between a needy subject and a dominant subject - these are the types of violence that R. Collins designates as violence of the weak and helpless.

The violence is based on maternal perversion (=hatred). The perverse mother does not allow the child to separate from her; it contributes to the creation of sadomasochistic patterns of relationships and the unfolding of developmental destructions. These are the children who have experienced the early loss of a significant object (even in its physical presence) and the experience of hatred instead of love from a significant Other. Children with such experiences are often simply not capable of loving in the future. As a result of the future, acting out and reproducing this experience of trauma in a future life (according to R. Collins in a situation of violence). Such a life story of a person can be similar to the experience of a relationship, when violence is confused with love, and fear is the leading affect.

Let's formulate a model of violence in maternal perversion. We follow from the general idea of violence to a private one: 1. The situation of violence implies an aggressor and a victim, both are emotionally charged and are in the same affective field. The aggressor's task is to dominate, control and subdue the victim. The victim's task is to be controlled, subordinate and passive. 2. In a situation of violence with maternal perversion, the aggressor turns out to be the mother, the victim is the child. The affects experienced in the general affective field of this dyad are hatred, rejection, devaluation and fear. - This is a traumatic life experience for a child, his inner reality is being formed and acting out in the external reality. This is how we connect the internal and external reality of a person in the field of trauma associated with the experience of maternal perversion, which can serve as a basis for further research.