Great post!
Why do you think that David and Louise allowed a house full of human waste and filth that got worse over time? My theories are the following:
1.) She felt that she was too good to do housework.
2.) Wallowing in the kids own filth was added punishment for the kids.
3.) Her family may have believed "cleanliness is next to Godliness" and Louise wanted to rebel against her family.
As so many narcissists are neat freaks, her having no problems with a filthy house, I think was attributed to any or all of the above. I can't think of any other explanations.
Satch
As others have pointed out, not all narcissist are neat freaks. I would go further and say that there is a difference between being a neat freak and being a cleanliness freak. For example, a homeless person who comes to the support center where I volunteer is definitely a neat freak but not overly concerned with cleanliness. That is, her stuff always has to be in a particular order and she tends to straighten up public spaces (straighten the ketchup, salt and pepper in the middle of each table, square the ends of stacks of flyers, etc.) but she doesn’t bathe/shower regularly even though the shelter has showers, doesn’t seem to mind wearing dirty clothes, etc.
I don’t think either of the Turpins was much concerned with cleanliness, but they may have had “neat freak” aspects. I wouldn’t be surprised if DT’s desk at work was super-neat.
The cleanliness/neatness issue is complicated, as others have pointed out, by the “hoarding” tendencies of the Turpins. Hoarders sometimes lose the ability to control their own mess and they become disensitized to the level of mess and dirt.
You are probably right that they saw the children having to lie in their own filth as part of the punishment. They may also have been unable to see themselves as being the ones “responsible.” If a child is “bad” then the child is “asking for” punishment and therefore must “want” to be starved, beaten, tied up and forced to lie in his/her own waste. So they could actually blame the children for the filth, the stench, etc
What I don’t think was a big factor in the lack of cleanliness/order/hygiene is laziness or LT’s feeliing that she was “too good to do housework.” If that were all, she would have dumped the housework on the kids (especially the daughters) from the time J-1 was 5 or so. If cleanliness were a priority, she’d have punished the kids by making them scub every inch of their homes (think of Cristina Crawford’s account in
Mommy Dearest) not by having them lie in their own filth.
Mostly I think you are right though that there were several factors in play. I think rebellion or reacting against her family may be part of LT’s problem. And both she and DT may have become apathetic and depressed as their lives didn’t seem to offer the satisfaction they’d hoped. The torture and increased starvation may have been a way to get some sort of satisfaction (linked to signs of power) that had begun to ellude them.
