Sadistic Father: "I'll Treat Him Like a Man."
Father
A man I once encountered in my practice was whipped with a cat-of-nine-
tails when he was seven, until he was almost dead, for an offense he
had not committed. The hanging thongs were attached to a woven leather
ball with the density of a golf ball.
When barely a teen, he was warned that if that kind of punishment did
not work anymore then his father would "treat him like a man" and
begin using his fists. (The father had been an amateur heavyweight
boxer. He weighed about 240 pounds at about 6-foot-one.)
This child had always been taught to brutalize any other child for
most any reason, and so the boy, being fairly large for his age
through junior high school, had gained a reputation for being a fierce
fighter (even though he would suffer tremendous guilt after hurting
another child).
At about age 13, he was accused at the dinner table of doing something
he had not done, and his father became insanely enraged when the boy
persisted in not admitting any guilt. The father walked over to the
seated child, who was just placing a fork in his mouth, and hit him in
the left jaw with such force that the boy was lifted up into the air
and landed in the corner of the room in a heap, momentarily
unconscious.
He looked up and saw the blurred figure of his towering father
standing above him with clenched fists, a red face, and yelling, "Get
up, so I can hit you again. Get up!" The boy was reduced to infancy
and cried loudly, uncontrollably, hysterically. At that moment, he
felt destroyed.
His deep shame over not being able to force himself to get up and take
another punch lasted well into adulthood. The boy backed down from
every other opportunity for a fight, even when confronted, for the
rest of his teen years. One time he let another teen snatch his
bicycle and ride away.
He gave up playing football in junior high and in fact developed a
hatred for athletics. He quit the Explorer Scouts, quit trying in
school, quit all previous interests, and resolved that he would do
nothing from now on unless paid. So he got a job working as a
dishwasher.
A few similar attacks occurred in his later teens. His father would
get right up in his face and then "sucker punch" him so that the boy
would go flying across the room and then hit the floor in a daze. The
boy, almost totally depersonalized, decided that he had to do
something.
Hitting his father, even though he had gained the courage by self talk
over the years, was unthinkable. He could not bring himself to hit his
father. He felt that was the worst thing a son could ever do.
But he did think of something that he could do that would partially
restore his male identity: He could refuse to fall down when hit, no
matter how hard. He mastered the skill of never going down, always
staying on his feet after a sucker punch. He would come right back
into his father's face and continue what he was saying, as though
nothing had happened.
By about 18, the young man told his father that he was through
listening to him at all and that he had no regard for him as a father,
nor for his opinions. The victim had made a tiny step toward becoming
a man with this absolute rejection of his abuser. In a way, he had
overcome his intimidator--not by force, but by denying his father's
personhood and the father's message from the earliest time that the
boy was contemptible and could not become a man.
The dynamic of conquering one's abuser is one that plays in the mind
of the victim forever. Because the abuser has robbed the victim of
power, the power must be regained in some manner. Hence, the endless
fantasies and dreams of overcoming the one who not only punished the
body but raped the self.
I use this example to assert again that mental-health professionals
must learn the dynamics of abuse. Even though I live in a large city,
Jacksonville, Florida, I know of know treatment programs or therapists
of any kind who are trained in these issues. And yet, child abuse is a
pandemic.
The above is offered courtesy of St. James the Elder Theological
Seminary, a distance-learning ministry at http://www.child-to-adult-victim.com.
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