Coercive control .

For my experience of coercive control, please follow this link.

It is a beautiful day outside!

A blue sky, warm, peaceful. But I've spent the morning brushing up on domestic abuse. In particular, the subject of coercive control. This might seem a long way away from Eros in Therapy', unfortunately I don't see distance enough!

During my four thousand pounds worth of therapy, Kit was oblivious - as far as I can tell - to the concept of interpersonal trauma. And I've come to see that there is a problem if a therapist focuses only on developmental issues. By not dealing with the problem of the present, the therapist can inadvertently perpetrate a particularly insidious version of victim blaming. 

So, what is the reparative relationship:

"The developmentally needed or reparative relationship is an intentional provision by the psychotherapist of a corrective, reparative, or replenishing relationship or action where the original parenting was deficient, abusive or overprotective'" Petruska Clarkson.

For me it is this:

The reparative relationship is love without Eros, and without friendship.

The antidote, by the way is relational depth.

Relational depth is characterised by qualities such as authenticity, openness, and a mutual sense of value. 

So I'm in a bit of a quandary about something I've been told by my son about a friend of a friend.

It concerns a religious expert who forms intense relationships with women who come to him for spiritual guidance. At present he is working with a woman who suffered coercive control. She has been living in his home for a year - mostly in silence and prayer. 

Each evening the religious expert has 'worked' with her, framing her distress within a religious paradigm. Their relationship has been intense, he has cried with her - he has accepted her rage and frustration. 

He has sat with her through many, many long nights. 

He believes this is what she needs.

Now her year is over and she is returning to the world. They go out each day to help her re-integrate into the world. He has given her permission to tell him what to do, they play together - is the best way I can describe it. And, the reason why I'm hearing alarm bells is that something very similar happened with this religious facilitator the year before.

Before the woman who wanted the year of prayer, he had gone to gigs and other events with another woman who came to see him for instruction. They wrote songs together and he asked her to send him videos of her internal examinations, 

This last part? 

He was helping her overcome her fear of medical procedures, apparently.

And then she told him that she had fallen in love with him.

Don't know what he said?

And she never came back. 

I don't have details.

Then he received complaints from her friends who made it very clear that they thought he'd engaged in spiritual abuse. But there is no ethical body to complain to, and no simple way for them to engage rationally with him. I imagine he is well practiced in denial.

For sure, he felt that he was simply providing what she needed...

This reparative stuff can only at best infantilise someone, at worst it sends really crazy making messages.

Does an emphasis on a reparative relationship risk becoming coercive control?

Coercive control is a pattern of behaviours used by one person to take away their victim's liberty and to strip them of their sense of self.

In both cases, mine and the women seeking spiritual guidance, Kit and the religious expert were both shocked when they realised the truth, that women have erotic thoughts and can form deep attachments to them. In fact that idea is anathema. Both were blindsided and didn't think it could happen. And yet it did.

I had thought that Kit genuinely enjoyed talking to me, and he told me a lot of things about himself. I purposefully pretended not to remember when I was invited in, so to speak, because I didn't wish to make him feel attached to me. But it began to feel like an adult and truthful relationship...

And I guess the religious expert is doing the same.

So what is it about this that makes it abusive?

This is a work in progress.

Kit and the religious expert are invested in their version of the truth. The truth of their beliefs will set the suffering, ignorant others free. So, to keep contact with the beloved expert, the victim must not be honest about their adult emotions, and must come to accept the beloved's framing of them, as mad and sexless, add tangential and contrary.

When the victim becomes childlike (expresses stereotypical child-like emotions of frustration, sadness, fear, that's OK) the perpetrator sees this as a sign of how much the victim needs therapy or instruction. But if the victim boldly states that they are 'in love' in the adult sense, the perpetrator will say that they can no longer work with them...or it will be implied. 

A horrible threat will be under the surface, and it is important that the punishment isn't explicit enough for the victim to actually challenge it. If the victim finds the courage to challenge, the perpetrator will say, 'it's all in your head' and tell you to 'let it go'. Meanwhile, the precious contact will be withdrawn, and so the punishment is delivered.

OK, the above begins the dialogue explaining why Eros is important, and why relational depth, is an antidote to the possibility of misandry of some male practitioners! 

All I needed to know from Kit was if I'd imagined that bulge (see my notes in pages) and what was really going on!

I think misandry might be more of Factor X than I'd originally thought