On the Nature of Violence and Abuse

I was reading about serial killers in the newspaper today, and it set me to trying to explain what is involved in their act-out. And so I will start with a major assumption. Notice, this is writ large and there are many exceptions.

I have noted in many of my works that trauma to a carrying mother in the last trimester of pregnancy can damage the neocortical brain cells, the cells which, inter alia, control and shutdown feelings. They weaken the defense system. And they leave a mark or tag on the deep-lying brain cells; what I call the first-line. The mark is one of great impact since traumas to the fetus usually have a life-and-death urgency. A birthing mother who is heavily anesthetized seriously affects the baby who also may be profoundly drugged. He is fighting for air, for oxygen and for breath. He is terrified and that terror lingers on for a lifetime. It is the imprint; the first-line imprint. On this level lies terror, rage, deep hopelessness and helplessness.

The imprint leaves a residue of violent reactions which are only weakly contained. They add oomph to later imprinted feelings. So what should be simple anger at someone who insulted us, there is rage. Indeed, whenever we see these violent feelings and reactions we can presume that the first line is involved. Instead of feeling, “I would like to sleep with her,” there are attempts at rape. The imprint has left these powerful traces and at the same time has weakened the defense system. So being in a locked room produces terror, not simply fear. The first-line imprint is engraved by life-and-death experiences into constantly challenging control. So when we see impulsive act-outs we can be sure that the first line memories have left us with first-line reactions.

I once treated a rapist who did indeed hate his mother and by extension, women. But had he not had very early imprints I doubt whether he would have been a rapist. All this makes anger management superfluous. It is no different from those who have wild and weird ideas. The first-liner is pressured to concoct ideas that grow out of deep and painful imprints. It is a mental act-out as opposed to physical act-outs. Whenever we see someone into “booga-booga” we can bet there was serious early trauma. One case of a woman I saw who lost her mother when she was one year old, seemed to be making it well in life except for her strange belief systems. Those belief systems were the harbinger of a psychosis to come. When her husband lost his job she lost it. That added trauma pushed her over the top.

The trauma during womb-life provides the internal pressure for the impulse while that very same event also weakens cortical defenses. So the difference between wanting to have sex with someone and raping them is the difference of first-line. It is usually psychosis making.

And I might add that the difference between a slight headache and a migraine is the resonance factor; a current adverse event triggers off lower level pains and causes an overload and a symptom. If there were no resonance then the person might have an annoying headache but no migraine. On that lower level perhaps lives the contraction of blood vessels when there was so little oxygen during birth. And that reaction lives on in the imprint. When the adversity is bad enough in the present it can set off the original physiologic reaction. That is as true for migraine and high blood pressure as for acting-out violence; it includes the appearance of such serious diseases as muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis. All this might not be manifest were it not for “grandmother” pains that have lying around for possibly decades waiting for their summons.

There is also the possibility that later trauma, rape or incest can also produce violent act-outs but it is my experience that those cases are the exceptions. The serial killer is awash in first-line imprints. He may have wanted to kill his mother but without the first- line urgency he won’t kill women. If he undergoes serious continuous trauma with a violent mother he may later seriously act-out .

Remember those deep, remote memories are simply raw and vague impulses at the start. They are not embedded into specific scenes or images during childhood. They are what they are, undifferentiated forces. They become channeled depending on the life experience of the offspring. A seductive mother in a rapist I saw years ago, who constantly teased her son and drove him crazy, produced someone who could not control his impulses.

I should also note that most of these individuals are or have been on serious drugs; a sign that deep pain is driving them. And the drugs they take, ecstasy, for example, further weakens their defenses and exacerbates the problem, provoking feelings.

So in day-to-day life these people get in trouble because they do not have the mental power to contain feelings and then take drugs which further lessens control. I said before that anger management is useless because the source for the impulses lies way below cortical, cognitive processes. We cannot “manage” deep impulses; we need to feel them and experience what they are and where they came from. We need to connect what had been disconnected; the link between deep feelings and top level control.

The problem is that we are often not aware that there are deep-lying pains surging upward for connection so we go on “managing” them, thinking we have no choice. We do.