Therapy for Abusers

• Responses to First Learning about Affect Theory by Jim Duffy a.k.a. J.C.D., 2/28/97
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    • You Are The Expert on Therapy, Rich. I Will Ponder Theories with You by Jim Duffy, 3/22/97
      
      

Hi Jim. Again, you have said it so well: "Whatever keeps the compulsively abusive person from being able to act in a truly helpful way could be undeveloped or inhibited because of a thoroughly dark shame about one’s own need for help when distressed, making the abusing client threatened and intolerant of such a need when observed in another. When a need for helpful sympathy from others is as powerfully shamed as I imagine it to be in compulsively abusive persons, I tend to look for a “software” (a la Nathanson) defect due to early attachment trauma".

I've been thinking about attachment trauma in terms of Affect Theory. If an infant is not nurtured effectively (accepted, appreciated, valued, tended to, etc.), then the impediment to interest-excitement and enjoyment-joy would be massive. As a new little person, he would have very little experience of anything and if the larger part of his expanding world contained only shame, then his defenses against it would have to grow correspondingly. How devastating. When more members of the mental health community deal with their own shame, perhaps we will have more understanding about what abusers need.

I don't pretend to have the kind of experience that Rich has---but his methods "feel" wonderful to me. To approach abusers with empathy and understanding about their painful early experience has GOT to be therapeutic. And to then give them the means to explore their dark shame (as you put it) and to begin to lower their defenses (like compulsive abusiveness) so as to get in touch with the experience of feeling the shame they have been unable to handle --- makes me want to stand in the back of the room and give Rich a standing ovation!

Your statement makes me wonder, of course---how big of a "software defect" is it possible to heal? When does it become hard-wired? Could we deal with something as big as Jeffrey Dahmer? Hitler?

• Wow, Good Idea! by Jim Duffy, 3/23/97