Hello all. It's become a cliche that bad guys had bad childhoods, that abusive adults were abused themselves, that cruelty gets passed on to the next generation.
I want to understand why this pattern takes place in terms of clinical psychology. I would like to know what mental process is at work that makes this happen, in the same way that say a school pupil might want to understand why gravity forces an object to drop when you let go of it.
Because it's not a given that if you get caught in the rain, you become determined to shower a stranger in a bucket of water. It's not obvious that if you lose your possessions, you go and destroy someone else's.
And there are people out there who had bad childhoods and do not create bad childhoods for the next generation of children.
Is it really a simple case of abusers relieving their own trauma by taking out their resentment with the world on an innocent target? How does that feeling of relief occur, when some people are by contrast relieved by doing good to others - or better still, being aware and fair?
Full disclosure, aged 45 I had a waking dream this morning with a flashback to the time my real-life childhood tormentor complained that his childhood tormentor sought out his alleged mistakes and failings as a pretext to punish him. (Although said phrase was that the person "wanted him to be perfect".) Which is precisely what my childhood tormentor did to me, although probably to a less abusive extent than their own experience.
Am sure we all have personal ideas about the dynamics at work, but any links to articles or videos or books by professionals commenting about this are very much welcome. Because in my case, understanding the reasons for why it happens is a form of relief.
I want to understand why this pattern takes place in terms of clinical psychology. I would like to know what mental process is at work that makes this happen, in the same way that say a school pupil might want to understand why gravity forces an object to drop when you let go of it.
Because it's not a given that if you get caught in the rain, you become determined to shower a stranger in a bucket of water. It's not obvious that if you lose your possessions, you go and destroy someone else's.
And there are people out there who had bad childhoods and do not create bad childhoods for the next generation of children.
Is it really a simple case of abusers relieving their own trauma by taking out their resentment with the world on an innocent target? How does that feeling of relief occur, when some people are by contrast relieved by doing good to others - or better still, being aware and fair?
Full disclosure, aged 45 I had a waking dream this morning with a flashback to the time my real-life childhood tormentor complained that his childhood tormentor sought out his alleged mistakes and failings as a pretext to punish him. (Although said phrase was that the person "wanted him to be perfect".) Which is precisely what my childhood tormentor did to me, although probably to a less abusive extent than their own experience.
Am sure we all have personal ideas about the dynamics at work, but any links to articles or videos or books by professionals commenting about this are very much welcome. Because in my case, understanding the reasons for why it happens is a form of relief.