one part of the response

Dead prez was right. Only its not just skin color. It's BS passed down as abuse by weak human beings who can't face their problems. We have to fight the lies. But we have to fight it first in ourselves. or nothing changes

Candice Isaacs McCormick, R.I.P. 7/22/2010

Braveheart as Healing from emotional incest

England is the incestuous Mother. She can't stand her son Scotland to break away or find independence; she needs him. So she infiltrates the core of any love Scotland is about to embark on as an adult, inserting herself into the relationship so no real bond can be found between Scotland and its wives. Prima Nocte allows no real integration, no real growing up - the Mother will always be part of every relationship, part of what Scotland sees and remembers when they look at their wives. True love for the emotional incest victim is often murdered by the Mother's overpowering presence, which at first we are paralyzed to resist, even as we stand by passively while the murder takes place.

William Wallace represents the will, awakened by a direct and aware confrontation with the injury that has been perpetrated and accepted, unconsciously, for ages; the will to change is finally activated when a cherished love falls victim to the injustice we have tolerated and even participated in. Wallace becomes the true drive to separate, expressed as anger or rage even, directed appropriately toward its proper source in the incestuous parent. The nobles are the injured, non-adult self that prefers to crawl back into bed with Mom, rather than face the challenges of growing up as an adult, standing on their own as a unified Scotland, and incurring the Mother's wrath. Compromises like these are so easy for the emotional incest victim, for the Mother lives on in every relationship, every fantasy, every facet of our minds that wants not to face fully how injured and backwards we are. These parts of ourselves will compulsively sacrifice our will/betray William at any chance of crawling back into bed with Mother / the woman who we fantasize will take care of us.

Even when we think we have integrated, and are finally breaking away from Mother as an integrated whole, we find later that some part of us has subconsciously betrayed this intention through a bargain with the world to reestablish the old, incestuous relationship Mother initiated. The confusion this engenders within the emotional incest victim is captured on the face of William Wallace when he unmasks the Bruce, who made a deal to kill him for favor with England, and who personally struggles through the movie with his own enmeshment with a manipulative, selfish, domineering parent.


Wallace's relationship with the princess shows us that what seems impossible for the emotional incest victim is attainable - to experience love without having to sacrifice our true self in exchange for it. Any true love found must be approached with caution - shown by how on-guard and suspicious Wallace is every time he approaches her camp - as it will seem always at first to bear the needy and manipulative agenda of the controlling Mother. Through direct testing, however, we can uncover which potential loves share and support the quest for autonomy from our parents as a prerequisite to love.


In the end, the betrayal that succeeds is not a trap fallen for that is laid by an outsider (mother or lover), but by the unintegrated parts of ourselves which have adopted the agenda of being dominated. The weaker nobles, who have acclimated to living in bed with Mother, lay a trap when the two stronger parts of Scotland - Wallace and Bruce - are ready to unite. The forceful, uncompromising leader Wallace - who is also suspicious and guarded from real relationship must die, as eventually the emotional incest victim must go through a wrenching death of the incomplete identities he has taken on in order for the whole self to survive. The hallmark of this death truly approached will come as overwhelming resistance, from every facet of ourselves, urging us to abandon our principles and take the easy way out, swearing allegiance finally and forever to the Mother. The death must be walked to, however, and certain things we held dear abandoned, in order for the final unification of a new, whole self to emerge.

For Scotland, as for us, Wallace's singular, uncompomising adherence to the vision of and shape of freedom is essential to keep from falling into traps laid by an enveloping Mother, which may show up in even the slightest dynamics of relationship. In the end, however, Wallace's beacon of change cannot facilitate the internal healing Scotland or the emotional incest victim needs to stand as an integrated whole, once the possibility of freedom has been tasted. As a final step, after following an uncompromising Will through the first stages of battle, we must develop our Bruce, the broken part of ourselves that lives with an emotional connection to the wound opened by the tyrannical parent, which can chooose to embrace Wallace's force while remaining sensitive to the parts of ourselves that will continue to feel the pull back toward Mother's bed. This final integration allows Scotland, and the victim, to move forward tenderly, carrying all parts of ourselves forward in a healed, whole, and finally independent self.

suffering from what we can't see

Originally I posted then removed this article, but as it earned praise from the short time it was up here, I am going to repost, with a revised introduction.

Socially-sanctioned child abuse is a touchy subject, but one I feel it is important to face, because it holds the key for explaining and healing life turmoil for so many people who have suffered from it.

Sometimes addressed under the name "emotional incest" or "covert incest" (Adams), the dynamic refers to inappropriate emotional bonds between a parent and usually the opposite-sex child, which causes psychological and emotional damage on par with actual incest and child abuse, although no physical molestation occurs. Most writing on the topic has to do with mother-son violations, however it is perhaps just as prevalent between fathers and daughters, as this article below shows.

I encourage a read-through this, especially if you are a young parent, or if you suffer from general life chaos and repeated relationship problems for which you haven't been able to identify the root. And if this resonates, please do find a therapist experienced with emotional incest, and commit to yourself to work through healing from this dynamic in your life. It is painful, but wonderfully real and freeing work.



http://hugoschwyzer.net/2009/10/22/princesses-princes-daughters-and-dads-against-emotional-incest/


Princesses, princes, daughters and dads: against emotional incest
Published by Hugo Schwyzer on October 22, 2009
in Emotional and Sexual Boundaries, Favorite Posts 2009, Marriage and Parenting.

Our daughter Heloise Cerys Raquel (often abbreviated as HCRS) is almost nine months old, and continues to amaze and delight her parents. She’s standing and crawling now, and making ever more comprehensible noises. She’s a happy baby, prone to shrieks of delight and an enthusiastic wind-milling of arms when she sees a returning parent or other beloved care-giver. We have a nanny to help out some of the time, but most of the care is done in carefully orchestrated shifts shared among my wife, her mother, and me. (My mother-in-law moved in with us after we moved from Pasadena to West Los Angeles at the beginning of summer, and that has been a special blessing for all.)

In August, I posted “She’s got you wrapped around her finger”: fathers, daughters, and a variation on the myth of male weakness in which I noted the extraordinary number of folks who expressed to me their certainty that I would treat Heloise as a princess whose whims I could not help but indulge. I’d like to touch on another aspect of the father-daughter relationship I’ve noted. Becoming a parent for the first time in one’s forties has myriad advantages, not least that one has had the opportunity to watch a great many of one’s peers “do it all first.” (I have two high school friends of mine who are already grandparents, mirabile dictu.) And I’ve seen, a time or nine, an unhealthy triangulation occur with dads, moms, and their daughters.

While the dangers of physical incest and abuse are real, there’s a kind of emotionally incestuous dynamic I’ve witnessed between fathers and daughters, one in which dads seek from their daughters the validation and affirmation that they feel they are entitled to, but are not receiving from their wives. Little children adore their parents. Really, it’s a lovely thing to come home each day and be welcomed, as I invariably am, with gales of excited laughter and delight. (I’m the primary care giver for much of the weekend and most late afternoons and evenings; my wife handles the mornings, my mother-in-law and the nanny work splendidly in the gaps.)

My daughter’s love is an impressive thing to feel, especially as she’s gotten better recently at wrapping herself around my neck and squeezing me tight. No matter what has transpired during the day, no matter what I’ve said or done (or failed to say or do), Heloise seems to adore me. It’s a wonderful thing, and I eat it up with wonder and gratitude and delight. I’m told that her devotion will only grow more intense; many little girls begin to bond more intensely with their fathers in their second and third years of life, presuming that a dad is around. One looks forward to this. Of course, spouses aren’t the same as children.

My wife loves me, a fact of which I blessedly have no doubt. But she most certainly doesn’t have me a on pedestal, doesn’t think I’m flawless, and doesn’t greet me with shrieks of joy everytime I walk into the house. Eira engages with me as a partner, and she challenges me and pushes me and asks me for things; I do the same for her. In a good marriage, iron sharpens iron, and the more friction in the sharpening process, the greater and more enduring the heat. Anyone who’s met my wife knows that she’s a tall, strong force of nature. (This is a woman who can dress down Israeli soldiers on patrol and make them blush apologetically. If you know the men and women of the IDF, you’ll know how astounding that is.)

She loves me and she encourages me as I do her, but she doesn’t conceal her displeasure when she’s unhappy, and she doesn’t come rushing to me like something out of a Marabel Morgan book when I enter the house. Here’s the thing: I’ve seen men play their daughters against their wives, mistakenly believing that the way in which their daughters see them (as heroic and perfect) is the way that their spouses ought to as well. If a man hasn’t done his “work”, he may find himself looking at his daughter, gazing up at him with adoration, and he may start (resentfully) to contrast his girl’s fierce and uncomplicated devotion with the somewhat less enthusiastic reception he may be getting from his overworked and exhausted wife.

In most cases, this doesn’t mean the papa will turn to his daughter sexually, though it surely, tragically, maddeningly does happen more often than we like to think about. But he may find himself relying more and more on the affirmation he gets from his adoring baby girl. A wife’s affection needs to be earned anew each day; it requires a husband (I’m writing this, of course, from a heterosexist perspective) who can pull his weight in housework and childcare and the emotional maintenance of the family. Marriage is, as we are invariably reminded, hard work. Getting a small child to adore you is not anywhere near so difficult.

Many husbands do tend to think that merely being married (or living together) entitles one to expressions of devotion from one’s partner. They buy into a myth about men and women, one that suggests that it’s a woman’s job to soothe, to affirm, to encourage, and to manage her husband’s emotions. Think of the execrable bestseller by Dr. Laura, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. Dr. Laura often suggests that if a woman doesn’t validate “her man” well enough, then she’s to blame if he looks for that validation somewhere else. Men have needs, Dr. Laura insists, and the greatest need they have isn’t for sex, but for a woman’s affirmation and admiration. If they aren’t getting that from their wives, they will invariably find it from another woman.

Men’s capacity to self-soothe is just as great as women’s, and women’s need for affirmation is just as great as men’s. That ought to be a given. But Dr. Laura does speak for a great many people who have bought into this delusionary understanding of what it is that men are entitled to. And men who do believe that they are being deprived of what is rightfully theirs may indeed go elsewhere. And disastrously, for fathers of daughters, that “elsewhere” may be to their little girl.

Again, that doesn’t mean physical incest in every, or even most, instances. What it means is that a great many dads (and it wasn’t until I became a father to a baby girl myself that I realized how common this was) start to rely more and more on the simple intensity of their daughter’s love rather than doing the much more difficult work to remain connected with their wives. I’m certainly not saying every father of a daughter does this, but it is common — and if you ask the mothers of daughters, as I have, you’ll hear plenty of anecdotes about this.

Princess culture is huge for little girls, as surely anyone who spends time around children between three and eight knows. I’m convinced that some of this phenomenon is fed by fathers’ longing for validation. After all, princesses need princes; giving your daughter her princess fantasy is a way for a man to feed his own longing to feel like a handsome prince, indispensable and heroic and good. The gulf between the “handsome prince” in his daughter’s eyes and the loved but decidedly imperfect man in his wife’s eyes grows greater and greater.

All the more reason to do what more than one man I know has done, and spend one’s family time basking in a daughter’s affection — and then, after the kids have gone to bed, spending time compulsively staring at internet pornography. And of course, there’s almost no time spent actually engaging, face-to-face and eye-to-eye, with one’s wife. This doesn’t mean that we won’t let Heloise dress up as a princess if she wants to. (For her first Halloween, we think she’s going to be a chinchilla.) But it does mean that as devoted to my amazing, lovely, grace-filled daughter as I am, I’m very clear that in our relationship, validation needs to be a one-way street.

Plenty of daughters grow up with a sense that they are somehow responsible for taking care of their fathers emotionally, for being the good and understanding woman in his life (as opposed to the mother/wife figure, who is invariably cast as judgmental and cold.) To do this to a daughter is child abuse, and I am determined not only not to do it myself, but to be bolder at calling out other fathers of daughters when I see the signs of what can only be called emotional incest. HCRS may or may not choose to be a princess as she gets a bit older. But in her little games, I will not play the part of the prince. I’m a father, and that is something utterly and wonderfully different. And if I need validation, I need to go and get it from my equal, my peer, and my partner — the one who will make me earn that validation, as she should.