Crime and Nourishment

• Both sympathy and empathy are scripts by Don Nathanson, 3/23/97
  
  

Don’s article “Crime and Nourishment”, which was recently made available along with the article on scripts, and Jim’s insightful comments regarding the often unacknowledged compulsive aspect of abusers’ behaviors (and the corresponding absence of sympathy for abusive people) are beacons of light for me. I felt the same when I read David Moore’s article on reintegrative shaming in “Knowing Feeling”. The longer I work with abusive people the more difficult it becomes for me to accept dichotomous victim/perpetrator labels as sufficiently useful, neat and distinctive categories. Consequently, I am increasingly led to question the efficacy of treatment modalities that issue from such dichotomous thinking.

Interestingly, courts and juries have, on occasion, recognized the blurring of boundaries between victim/perpetrator labels, most notably in those cases where abuse (even murder) perpetrators have been convincing in connecting/attributing their crime to their own previous victimization. The ‘battered woman syndrome’, (woman kills abusive partner and is aquitted) is probably the best known example of this defense.

Allan Dershowitz (sp?) wrote about this phenomenon in a book (which I have skimmed but not yet read) entitled “The Abuse Excuse”. I assume from the title that he is a critic of such a defense. Jim Duffy’s comments on who does and does not earn our sympathy, and why, may explain why it is generally easier for us to ‘forgive’ an abused wife who murders her husband than it is to forgive an abusive young man whose own history of abuse in his family of origin, attachment traumas, separation crises etc. seems more remote from his current offensive behavior.

Don’s tale of the abusive 300-lb Australian miner and the community’s reintegrative approach to his rehabilitation inspires me to continue trying to weave these disjointed thoughts together and to keep plugging away at my work with offenders.

• Rich...Inspiring...On the Path with Heart by c.h., 3/27/97
• Crime and Remorse by Ed Riemann, 3/30/97
  • Crime and Therapy by Rich Kuyper, 4/4/97
    • Crime and Injury by Ed Riemann, 4/5/97
    • Shame, in the prison settings by Mell Williams, Jr., 8/9/97
    • (No title) by (No author), 6/12/98
• Rich, Passing Along a Book Reference I Discovered by Jim Duffy, 4/5/97
  • Jim, Thanks for Reference! by Rich Kuyper, 4/7/97