Those of us working in the field of domestic violence are confronted daily by the difficult task of working with women in problematical families. In my work with family violence, I have come to recognise that there are women involved in emotionally and\/or physically violent relationships who express and enact disturbance beyond the expected (and acceptable) scope of distress. Such individuals, spurred on by deep feelings of vengefulness, vindictiveness, and animosity, behave in a manner that is singularly destructive; destructive to themselves as well as to some or all of the other family members, making an already bad family situation worse. These women I have found it useful to describe as \u2018family terrorists.\u2019 In my experience, men also are capable of behaving as \u2018family terrorists\u2019 but male violence tends to be more physical and explosive. We have had thousands of international studies about male violence but there is very little about why or how women are violent. There seems to be a blanket of silence over the huge figures of violence expressed by women. Because \u2018family terrorism\u2019 is a tactic largely used by women and my work in the domestic violence field is largely with women, I address this problem discussing only my work with women.
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The potential for terrorism may rest dormant for many years, emerging in its full might only under certain circumstances. I found that in many cases it is the dissolution, or threatened dissolution, of the family that calls to the fore the terrorist’s destructiveness. It is essential to understand that prior to dissolution, the potential terrorist plays a role in the family that is by no means passive. The terrorist is the family member whose moods reign supreme in the family, whose whims and actions determine the emotional climate of the household. In this setting, the terrorist could be described as the family tyrant, for within the family, this individual maintains the control and power over the other members’ emotions.<\/p>\n
The family well may be characterised as violent, incestuous, dysfunctional, and unhappy, but it is the terrorist or tyrant who is primarily responsible for initiating conflict, imposing histrionic outbursts upon otherwise calm situations, or (more subtly and invisibly) quietly manipulating other family members into uproar through guilt, cunning taunts, and barely perceptive provocations. (The quiet manipulative terrorist usually is the most undetected terrorist. Through the subtle creation of perpetual turmoil, this terrorist may virtually drive other family members to alcoholism, to drug-addiction, to explosive behaviour, to suicide. The other family members, therefore, are often misperceived as the \u2018family problem\u2019 and the hidden terrorist as the saintly woman who \u2018puts up with it all.\u2019)<\/p>\n
While the family remains together, however miserable that \u2018togetherness\u2019 might be, the terrorist maintains her power. However, it is often the separation of the family that promises to rend the terrorist’s domain and consequently to lessen her power. Family dissolution, therefore, often is the time when the terrorist feels most threatened and most alone, and, because of that, most dangerous.<\/p>\n
In this position of fear, the family terrorist sets out to achieve a specific goal. There are many possible goals for the terrorist, including: reuniting the family once again, or ensuring that the children (if there are children in the relationship) remain under the terrorist’s control, or actively destroying the terrorist’s spouse (or ex-spouse) emotionally, physically, and financially. When it was evident to Adolph Hitler that winning the War was an absolute impossibility, he ordered his remaining troops to destroy Berlin: If he no longer could rule, then he felt it best for his empire to share in his own personal destruction. Similarly, the family terrorist, losing or having lost supremacy, may endeavour to bring about the ruin (and, in some extreme cases, the death) of other family members.<\/p>\n
The family terrorist, like the political terrorist, is motivated by the pursuit of a goal. In attempting to \u2018disarm\u2019 the family terrorist, it is vital that the practitioner begin intervention by trying to recognise and understand the terrorist’s goal.<\/p>\n
The source of the terrorist’s goal as in the case of the political terrorist, usually can be understood to spring from some \u2018legitimate\u2019 grievance. The grievance’s legitimacy may be regarded in terms of justified feeling of outrage in response to an actual injustice or injury, or the legitimacy may exist solely in the mind of the terrorist. Whether this legitimacy be real or imagined, the grievance starts as the impetus for the terrorist’s motivation. One hallmark of an emotional terrorist is that this motivation tends to be obsessional by nature.<\/p>\n
Whence this obsession? Why this overwhelmingly powerful drive? In many cases, that which the terrorist believes to be the grievance against the spouse actually has very little to do with the spouse. Although the terrorist may be consciously aware only of the spouse’s alleged offence, the pain of this offence (real or imagined) is invariably an echo of the past, a mirrored recreation of some painful situation in the terrorist’s childhood.<\/p>\n
I will not describe here in any detail the types of childhood that tend to create the subsequent terrorist. I will say, however, that invariably the terrorist’s childhood, once understood, can be seen as violent (emotionally and\/or physically). Also invariably, the terrorist can be regarded as a \u2018violence prone\u2019 individual. I define a \u2018violence prone\u2019 woman as a woman who, while complaining that she is the innocent victim of the malice and aggression of all other relationships in her life, is in fact a victim of her own violence and aggression. A violent and painful childhood tends to create in the child an addiction to violence and to pain (an addiction on all levels: the emotional, the physical, the intellectual, the neurochemical), an addiction that then compels the individual to recreate situations and relationships characterised by further violence, further danger, further suffering, further pain. Thus, it is primarily the residual pain from childhood \u2013 and only secondarily the pain of the terrorist’s current familial situation \u2013 that serves as the terrorist’s motivating impetus. There is something pathological about the terrorist’s motivation, for it is based not so much on reality as on a twisting, a distortion, a reshaping of reality.<\/p>\n
Because the emotional terrorist is a violence-prone individual, addicted to violence, the terrorist’s actions must be understood as the actions of an addict. When the family was together, the terrorist found fulfilment for any number of unhealthy appetites and addictions. When that family then dissolves, the terrorist behaves with all the desperation, all the obsession, all the single-minded determination of any addict facing or suffering withdrawal.<\/p>\n
The single-mindedness, the one-sidedness of feeling, is perhaps the most important shibboleth of the emotional terrorist. Furthermore, the extent of this one-sidedness is, for the practitioner, perhaps the greatest measure and indicator of how extreme the terrorist’s actions are capable of becoming.<\/p>\n
Any person suffering an unhappy family situation, or the dissolution of a marriage or relationship, will feel some pain and desperation. A relatively well-balanced person, however, will be not only aware of their own distress but also sensitive, in some degree, to the suffering of the other family members. (For example, reasonably well-balanced parents, when facing divorce, will be most concerned with their children’s emotional well-being, even beyond their own grief.) Not so the emotional terrorist.<\/p>\n
To the family terrorist, there is only one wronged, one sufferer, only one person in pain, and this person is the terrorist herself. The terrorist has no empathy and feels only her own pain. In this manner, the terrorist’s capacity for feeling is narcissistic, solipsistic, and in fact pathological.<\/p>\n
Again, I will not attempt here to detail the factors in childhood that lead to the creation of an emotional terrorist. What is, however, evident, in the terrorist’s limited or non-existent ability to recognise other people’s feelings, is that the terrorist’s emotions and awareness, at crucial stages of childhood development, were stunted from reaching beyond the boundaries of self, due to a multiplicity of reasons. Later, the adult terrorist went on to make a relationship that was, on some level, no true relationship, but a re-enactment of childhood pains, scenarios, situations, and \u2018scripts.\u2019 Throughout the relationship, the solipsistic terrorist did not behave genuinely in response to the emotions of other family members but self-servingly used them as props for the recreation of the terrorist’s program. And when that relationship finally faces dissolution, the terrorist is aware only of her own pain and outrage and, feeling no empathy for other family members, will proceed single-mindedly in pursuit of her goal, whether that goal is reunion, ruin, or revenge. The terrorist’s perspective is tempered by little or no objectivity. Instead the terrorist lives in a self-contained world of purely subjective pain and anger.<\/p>\n
Because conscience consists so largely of the awareness of other people’s feelings as well as of one’s own, the emotional terrorist’s behaviour often can be described to be virtually without conscience. In this lack of conscience lies the dangerous potential of the true terrorist, and again the degree of conscience in evidence is a useful measure in my work to anticipate the terrorist’s destructiveness.<\/p>\n
An additional factor, making the terrorist so dangerous, is the fact that the terrorist, while in positively monomaniacal pursuit of her goal, feels fueled by a sense of omnipotence. Perhaps it is true that one imagines oneself omnipotent when, in truth, one is in a position of impotence (as in the case of losing one’s familial control through dissolution). Whatever the source of the sensation of omnipotence, the terrorist believes herself to be unstoppable, and unbound by the constraints or conscience or empathy, believes that no cost (cost, either to the terrorist or to other family members) is too great to pay toward the achievement of the goal.<\/p>\n
The terrorist, and the terrorist’s actions, know no bounds. (The estimation of the extent of the terrorist’s \u2018boundlessness\u2019 presents the greatest challenge to my work). Intent only to achieve the goal (perhaps \u2018hell-bent\u2019 is the most accurate descriptive phrase) the terrorist will take such measures as: stalking a spouse or ex-spouse, physically assaulting the spouse or the spouse’s new partners, telephoning all mutual friends and business associates of the spouse in an effort to ruin the spouse’s reputation, pressing fabricated criminal charges against the spouse (including alleged battery and child molestation), staging intentionally unsuccessful suicide attempts for the purpose of manipulation, snatching children from the spouse’s care and custody, vandalising the spouse’s property, murdering the spouse and\/or the children as an act of revenge.<\/p>\n
In my experience both men and women are equally guilty of the above behaviour, but on the whole, because it is men’s dysfunctional behaviour that is studied and reported upon, people do not realise that to the same extent women are equally guilty of this type of violent behaviour.<\/p>\n
My working definition, then, of a \u2018family terrorist\u2019 or an \u2018emotional terrorist\u2019 is: a woman or a man (but for the purposes of this work, I refer only to women) who, pathologically motivated (by unresolved tendencies from a problematical childhood), and pathologically insensitive to the feelings of other family members, obsessionally seeks through unbounded action to achieve a destructive (and, therefore, pathological) goal with regard to other family members.<\/p>\n
Of course, this defining profile pertains to individuals in differing degrees. Many people, unhappy within a relationship or made unhappy by the dissolution of a relationship, may lapse into periods of \u2018irrational\u2019 behaviour. What characterises the terrorist, however, is that the vindictive and destructive behaviours are consistent; the moments of calm and periods of lucidity are the lapses, temporary lulls in the storm.<\/p>\n
Also, there are women who, suffering chagrin and misery during or after the life-span of a relationship, appear far more self-destructive than destructive to anyone else. For the other partner, contemplating leaving this kind of individual, the very thought of leaving such a person is made difficult and untenable by such frequently uttered protestations as \u2018I cannot live without you,\u2019 and \u2018Without you, I might as well be dead.\u2019 To be sure, many women exist, extremely dependent within their relationships, who, probably having suffered severe emotional betrayal during their childhood, genuinely feel that their life outside a relationship would be so lonely as to be unbearable. It is difficult to leave such a woman, and the man attempting to leave may well feel that, by leaving, he would be responsible for delivering a mortal blow to an already pathetic wretch. Men also, are often kept in their relationships, which can only be likened to \u2018personal concentration camps,\u2019 by the fact that they feel a genuine feeling of \u2018chivalry\u2019 towards their partner. Women tend to put so much more of themselves into their relationships and therefore suffer when these relationships fall apart.<\/p>\n
There is a valid question as to whether or not this sort of suicidally-inclined individual may be deemed a terrorist. (To many minds, this kind of individual, no doubt, would seem to fall more within the category of \u2018emotional black-mailer.\u2019) I believe that, sadly, there are people, deeply damaged by their childhood, who genuinely cannot face life by themselves. When dealing with such potential cases, however, I try to make the leaving partner understand that the suicidal inclinations predate the relationship by many years, and that, however tragic the situation, one person simply cannot be held responsible for keeping another person alive.<\/p>\n
In some individuals, the authentic (though unhealthy) longing for death is a longing planted within them since early childhood, and there is very little a partner can do to alter the apparently inevitable course of that longing.<\/p>\n
Among true terrorists, however, threats of suicide can be seen to serve a largely manipulative role. In short, the terrorist says, \u2018If you can’t do as I tell you, I will kill myself.\u2019 Whether suicide remains only a threat or is realised, the true terrorist uses suicide not so much as an expression of desperate grief but as a weapon to be wielded against others.<\/p>\n
In working with clients struggling either in relationships or with the dissolution of a relationship, I am faced with many questions, all relevant to gauging the woman’s terrorist potential: \u2018Will the woman persevere in her efforts to financially ruin her partner?\u2019 \u2018Is she sincere when she promises to kill her partner, or have him killed, should he ever become involved in a new relationship? Are the threats of suicide genuine or manipulative?\u2019 \u2018Will she carry out the promises of using the law to \u2018kidnap\u2019 the children in order to hurt the ex-partner?\u2019 \u2018Will she brain-wash the children to such an extent that her ex-partner dare not form a new relationship?\u2019<\/p>\n
Emotional terrorism is by no means confined to the family context.<\/p>\n
I know an extremely successful woman in the world of fine arts. This woman has been haunted by a former assistant who, vicariously imagining herself to the writer herself, dresses like her, stalks her, and issues public statements that it was she, not the writer, who created the works of art for which the writer is internationally famous. If the writer is to ensure her own safety, then very definite steps must be taken.<\/p>\n
In situations of emotional and family terrorism, there are two areas of work to be done: practical measures of protection (\u2018strategies for survival\u2019) on the part of family members, and therapeutic work with the terrorist himself or herself. I must reiterate at this stage, that both men and women are capable of terrorist tactics but men tend to behave in a more physically violent manner within the family. Women, as I have shown use far more subtle tactics ie. that of the terrorist as opposed to outright war.<\/p>\n
The first step, on the part of other family members, toward limiting the terrorist’s destructive potential is to understand the terrorist to be a terrorist. In a recent case, a Mr. Roberts described to me how, during his marriage, he and his children faced a daily onslaught of verbal abuse from his wife. Mrs. Roberts was also physically violent to the children. Now that he has asked for a divorce, she is making use of every weapon in her arsenal. In the children’s presence, she has used drugs and drunk alcohol to the point of extreme intoxication. She has staged several unsuccessful suicide attempts in front of the children, threatened over the telephone to \u2018do something stupid,\u2019 promised to kill Mr. Roberts new partner, and assured Mr. Roberts that when she has finished with him he will not have a penny to his name. To Mr. Roberts, all of this behaviour seemed perfectly usual.<\/p>\n
After all, he had witnessed this sort of commotion for thirteen years of their marriage. When I suggested to him, \u2018What you endured is emotional terrorism\u2019, he suddenly and for the first time was able to see his situation clearly. Now, he realised, his wife’s behaviour was neither appropriate nor acceptable. No, this was not the treatment that every man should expect from his wife, either in or out of marriage. No, he does not want his children to be subjected to such extreme behaviour any longer. The fact of recognising a terrorist is the essential first step.<\/p>\n
Then, because a terrorist is fuelled by a feeling of omnipotence and is prepared to behave without bounds, (usually encouraged by feminist therapists who insist that their clients suffer from \u2018low self esteem\u2019), pragmatic measures must be taken to define clearly the boundaries of behaviour. It is unfortunate that the legal situation which many divorce agreements mandate is open-ended. Certainly, when both parties to a divorce are reasonably well-balanced, it is entirely fitting for the settlement to be flexible enough to incorporate changing financial circumstances, child-care capabilities, and visitation rights. When, however, one party to the divorce is an emotional terrorist, then both the confrontational divorce procedure and the resultant open-ended divorce settlement provide infinite opportunity for the courts, lawyers, and the entire battery of psychologists called in for evaluations, to be used a the terrorist’s weapons. In these cases, the court and the divorce procedure provide no boundaries for the terrorist; instead they allow the terrorist to continue to behave boundlessly.<\/p>\n
For this reason, when dealing with a terrorist, it is best for the divorce procedure and final decree to be as swift, as final, as absolute, as unequivocal as possible. Every practitioner or attorney handling divorces is familiar with clients described as \u2018litigious.\u2019 Only when \u2018litigiousness\u2019 is seen as a manifestation of terrorism can the course to swift and precise legal settlement be steered.<\/p>\n
To limit the terrorist’s feelings of omnipotence, there are many effective measures. The guiding principle, as in the handling of political terrorists, must be \u2018There is no negotiating with terrorists.\u2019 Endless telephone calls, conversations, confrontation, trial \u2018get-back-togethers,\u2019 correspondence, visitations, gestures of appeasement, and efforts to placate the terrorist’s demands, all serve to reinforce the terrorist’s belief that she is accomplishing something. Only determined resolution in the face of terrorism shows the terrorist that her power is limited.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, for anyone dealing directly with the terrorist, reassurances, \u2018ego boosts,\u2019 \u2018positive strokes,\u2019 and consolations are lamentably counter-productive. Mrs Roberts soon found for herself a feminist therapist staunchly supporting the erroneous belief \u2018All feelings (and therefore behaviours) are valid.\u2019 Mrs Roberts is told by this therapist that she has a right to feel and to behave in any manner she chooses, in callous disregard for the devastation inflicted upon the children. Such reassurances serve only to fortify the terrorist’s already pathological, solipsistic, and eternally self-justifying perspective.<\/p>\n
If wishing to undertake the second sphere of disarming a terrorist \u2013 personal intervention with the terrorist herself \u2013 the therapist must be prepared to be straight, honest and very direct. In my own dealings with women as terrorists, I have found on occasion that one quite simply can point out to the terrorist, \u2018You are behaving like a terrorist. This is what you are doing. This is how you are being destructive. This is the destruction you are heading towards,\u2019 and the terrorist, seeing themselves clearly for the first time, might be encouraged to reconsider their behaviour. More commonly, however, extremely deep therapy is required. For the terrorist’s behaviour to change, there must first be a solid and fundamental change within the terrorist’s physiological constitution.<\/p>\n
Usually it is only by an in-depth excavation and resolution of early childhood pain that the terrorist can begin to gain a real, true, and level-headed perception of her own current situation.<\/p>\n
Erin Pizzey<\/b> was the founder of a women’s shelter in Chiswick, England, the first modern battered women’s shelter in the world. She found that of the first 100 women who came to her shelter, 62 were as or more violent than the partners they tried to escape from — only to return to their partners time and again because of their addiction to pain and violence, violence that they persistently did their best to bring about. Over a period of ten years, Erin Pizzey became involved with about 5,000 women and their children who came through her shelter. She has written a number of books on domestic violence, one of which \u2013 \u201cProne to Violence\u201d \u2013 addresses the issue of women’s abuse and violence. Many of her books are difficult to obtain due to suppression by feminist groups and organisations, but may be available from: http:\/\/www.amazon.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Erin Pizzey\u2019s book \u201cProne to Violence<\/a>\u201d is now on line.<\/p>\n