This article was originally published as a note on a Facebook page and republished here with the permission of the author.
By Renata S Roux
During my research regarding Parental Alienation, I became aware of everything from the corrupt justice system to the psychological aspects involved in this type of child abuse. Many may wonder what this has got to do with our present situation as this mostly concern children, parents, and custody battles.
Many people have accused political leaders of narcissism in the past, something I have come to agree with. It took some time before I realized the cruel reality of such a claim.
Today, we as South Africans live in one of the most troubled countries in the world. No one can deny that. Not only is crime, corruption and murder part of our reality, we are also subjected to the psychological trauma that goes along with these everyday occurrences.
I am no expert in any field, but it doesn’t take much more than a bit of common sense and some research to reveal to the average person that there are much more involved in understanding what we are going through as a minority group in this country.
Every day we see the same comments on Facebook, but after 18 years we have still not been able to fight against something that is considered a crime by International Law.
The question remains “Why?”
In much the same way I read not only these comments regarding the political situation in South Africa, but I also see daily comments and updates of people who are fighting for access to their children and of activists against this cruel form of child abuse.
The main problem with society today is that evidence is required to substantiate any claims that are made, whether the claims are made by a person, a group, or a movement.
Society in general rely on what can be seen, pay little attention to what can be heard, and ignore anything that has not yet been proven, has been discredited in the past, or which requires knowledge regarding psychology. Those that do possess the knowledge hold their own views and there always seems to be controversy in regards to certain matters.
Again you may ask how this influences our daily lives and our situation. In order for me to explain this in the simplest terms, I will make a comparison.
First of all, let’s look at one of the definitions of Parental Alienation (PA):
“A form of emotional child abuse where a custodial parent belittles or vilifies the other parent to the child.”
(Please note that this is only a short definition and that no one single definition exists – most at very long though.)
In most of the cases I have come across, the ‘alienating’ parent shows narcissistic tendencies.
Why is this important?
I am sure most people have come across the basic signs of narcissism, or at least know what it is, but have you ever thought of our current government as a narcissistic entity?
Yes, Collective Narcissism exists and has been noted in the history of politics.
In order to really understand this though, you have to understand that we are not only dealing with a government that is leaning towards communism; we are also dealing with a group of narcissists. That in my opinion is a very dangerous combination, but it also explains much of what we have not been able to understand until now.
You have to keep in mind that we, the white minority in SA are very important to these narcissistic communists. In much the same way that a child would be important to a narcissistic parent. Yet, in both of these situations, they care very little about the well-being of the ‘child’.
The basic signs of narcissism include:
An obvious self-focus in interpersonal exchanges
Problems in sustaining satisfying relationships
A lack of psychological awareness
Difficulty with empathy
Problems distinguishing the self from others
Hypersensitivity to any insults or imagined insults
Vulnerability to shame rather than guilt
Haughty body language
Flattery towards people who admire and affirm them
Detesting those who do not admire them (narcissistic abuse)
Using other people without considering the cost of doing so
Pretending to be more important than they really are
Bragging (subtly but persistently) and exaggerating their achievements
Claiming to be an "expert" at many things
Inability to view the world from the perspective of other people
Denial of remorse and gratitude
Sandy Hotchkiss also identified what she called the seven deadly sins of narcissism:
Shamelessness: Shame is the feeling that lurks beneath all unhealthy narcissism and the inability to process shame in healthy ways.
Magical thinking: Narcissists see themselves as perfect, using distortion and illusion known as magical thinking. They also use projection to dump shame onto others.
Arrogance: A narcissist who is feeling deflated may reinflate by diminishing, debasing, or degrading somebody else.
Envy: A narcissist may secure a sense of superiority in the face of another person's ability by using contempt to minimize the other person.
Entitlement: Narcissists hold unreasonable expectations of particularly favourable treatment and automatic compliance because they consider themselves special. Failure to comply is considered an attack on their superiority, and the perpetrator is considered an "awkward" or "difficult" person. Defiance of their will is a narcissistic injury that can trigger narcissistic rage.
Exploitation: Can take many forms but always involves the exploitation of others without regard for their feelings or interests. Often the other is in a subservient position where resistance would be difficult or even impossible. Sometimes the subservience is not so much real as assumed.
Bad boundaries: Narcissists do not recognize that they have boundaries and that others are separate and are not extensions of themselves. Others either exist to meet their needs or may as well not exist at all. Those who provide narcissistic supply to the narcissist are treated as if they are part of the narcissist and are expected to live up to those expectations. In the mind of a narcissist there is no boundary between self and other.
Sam Vaknin describes narcissists as: cunning, immoral extortionists. They hate authority and are likely to be a criminals, rebels, dissidents, or critics. They get bored easily, trapped in cycles of idealisation and devaluation of people, places, hobbies, jobs, values. They are mercurial, unstable, and unreliable. To narcissists, other humans are mere instruments, Sources of Narcissistic Supply. They are no reason to consider their needs, wishes, wants, desires and fears. They derail the lives of others with ease and ignorance. Narcissists mimic real emotions artfully. They exude the air of someone really capable of loving or of being hurt, of being passionate and soft, empathic and caring. Most people are misled into believing that they are even more humane than average. Their false emanations are not restricted to messages with emotional content. They may contain wrong or false or partial information. They do not hesitate to lie, deceive, or "reveal" (misleading) half-truths. They appear to be intelligent, charming and, therefore, reliable. They are convincing conjurers of words, signs, behaviours, and body language.
Never underestimate them.
Misleading information is something that the ANC government has been providing not only to their own people, but to the world outside of South Africa for years.
An example of that would be the recent changing of street names in Pretoria. Something that did not only cost people millions due to the fact that they had to change everything from their business addresses to maps, but it was also done for reasons that is beyond logic, 18 years after the ANC came into power.
These changes included changes from mainly names that was attributed to the Afrikaner history in the country to the mostly names of various ANC, Azapo and Black Consciousness Movement activists and leaders.
One such name change was the change from Potgieter Street to Kgosi Mampuru Street.
According to a speech delivered by Minister of Labour Mr Membathisi Mdladlana at the commemoration of Kgosi Mampuru and Kgosi Nyabela, Mamone Royal Kraal, Limpopo on 27 January 2007:
“Kgosi Mampuru was a revolutionary who fiercely resisted colonial rule. He was hanged by the colonial government in November 1883, while Kgosi Nyabela was sentenced to life imprisonment, as they refused to abide by the authority of the colonial government. After serving just five years of his sentence Kgosi Nyabela was poisoned. No one knows where both Kings' remains are.”
http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2007/07050412451001.htm
There are various references to the name of Kgosi Mampuru available on the internet, but none pertaining to government or the street name changes state why Kgosi Mampuru was hanged, which was in fact for the murder of his half-brother, Sekhukhune, and that Kgosi Nyabela protected him and did not want to hand Mampuru over to the authorities.
Andries Hendrik Potgieter was one of the leaders of the Voortrekkers who moved from the Cape Colony to the interior, fiercely resisting colonial rule by the British.
A number of African chiefs who held him in very high regard came to pay their respects before his death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Potgieter
This is just one classic example of how the ANC is twisting the facts, providing half-truths and yet they still blame Apartheid and the world agrees.
Now you have the liberals displaying the reactions that a victim of a narcissist normally displays, this should not surprise anyone with the right knowledge regarding the topic of narcissism.
Sam Vaknin ("Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"):
1. Malignant Optimism
A form of self-delusion, refusing to believe that some diseases are untreatable. Malignant optimists see signs of hope in every fluctuation, read meanings and patterns into every random occurrence, utterance, or slip. These Pollyanna defences are varieties of magical thinking.
"If only he tried hard enough", "If he only really wanted to heal", "If only we find the right therapy", "If only his defences were down", "There must be something good and worthwhile under the hideous facade", "No one can be that evil and destructive", "He must have meant it differently" "God, or a higher being, or the spirit, or the soul is the solution and the answer to my prayers"
2. Rescue Fantasies
"It is true that he is chauvinistic and that his behaviour is unacceptable and repulsive. But all he needs is a little love and he will be straightened out. I will rescue him from his misery and misfortune. I will give him the love that he lacked as a child. Then his (narcissism, psychopathy, paranoia, reclusiveness) will vanish and we will live happily ever after."
3. Self-flagellation
Constant feelings of guilt, self-reproach, self-recrimination and, thus, self-punishment.
The victim of sadists, paranoids, narcissists, borderlines, passive-aggressives, and psychopaths internalises the endless hectoring and humiliating criticism and makes them her own. She begins to self-punish, to withhold, to request approval prior to any action, to forgo her preferences and priorities, to erase her own identity – hoping to thus avoid the excruciating pains of her partner's destructive analyses.
The partner is often a willing participant in this shared psychosis. Such folie a deux can never take place without the full collaboration of a voluntarily subordinated victim. Such partners have a wish to be punished, to be eroded through constant, biting criticisms, unfavourable comparisons, veiled and not so veiled threats, acting out, betrayals and humiliations. It makes them feel cleansed, "holy", whole, and sacrificial.
Many of these partners, when they realise their situation (it is very difficult to discern it from the inside), abandon the personality disordered partner and dismantle the relationship. Others prefer to believe in the healing power of love. But here love is wasted on a human shell, incapable of feeling anything but negative emotions.”
Keep in mind that we are not dealing with an individual, but with a collective entity.
Maybe at some point people will realize that this is not only a physical war that we are fighting, that it is in fact a psychological war and the everyday occurrences that we are witnessing is simply a symptom, we will have no future before that realization.
You cannot fight something that you do not know.
I thank my father for what he has taught me the day he said to me:
”Verwoerd was a good leader because he understood psychology.”
Very few people will read through everything I just typed, but I sincerely hope that you did and that you understand why this is an important aspect to be taken into consideration when we are thinking about whether or not we have a future in this country.
No one can offer solutions if people don’t even understand the problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment