Poll for the Armchair Psychologists

[dcsmyth1]

Some good stuff here on JA, including her diagnosis


http://kristinarandle.com/blog/jodi-arias-essays/

 

[SMK]

Some good stuff here on JA, including her diagnosis


http://kristinarandle.com/blog/jodi-arias-essays/

One thing I would differ with from this site: The idea that her driving an hour and a half to confront a woman shows aggression and assertiveness. It might show that, but to me it also seems manic and abnormal:

Someone with a solid sense of self I believe would not be inclined to do this, but would break up with the man believed to be cheating.

 

[human]

Some good stuff here on JA, including her diagnosis


http://kristinarandle.com/blog/jodi-arias-essays/

Excellent! Certainly makes the case that she is not BPD which I had finally thought she is. Lol

I still 100% believe that her childhood holds the answer. The fact that her parents do not testify to abuse means nothing.

As a teacher, I saw over and over again how parents vilified their own children and did not look to their own behavior at all. The child was at fault.

Jodi did not arise out of a vacuum.

If one reads about the families of alcoholics,there are roles that children play. I forget what they all are, but there is the perfect child, the clown, and the source of all problems.

I wonder if this type of categorization happens in all dysfunctional families?

 

[human]

Searching for links, but so far, it says that children in dysfunctional families share common characteristics.

Interesting . As it says, one is not condemned forever if s/he comes from a dysfunctional home. Where I live, we have incredibly high rates of alcohlism. To me, it is normal that alcohlism is all around. Apparently, that is not true elsewhere

http://voices.yahoo.com/adult-children-alcoholics-acoa-13-characteristics-5654488.html

 

[human]

This one talks about the correlation of ASPD and alcohlism in the family.

http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Psychological Chracteristics of Children of Alcoholics.pdf

 

[Night-owl]

One thing I would differ with from this site: The idea that her driving an hour and a half to confront a woman shows aggression and assertiveness. It might show that, but to me it also seems manic and abnormal:

Someone with a solid sense of self I believe would not be inclined to do this, but would break up with the man believed to be cheating.

Yeah, that's no normal way to handle the situation, for certain. If you know someone is cheating, the healthy thing to do is just break up with them. If you THINK someone is cheating, you ask about it, but you ask your partner. Driving over to someone's house to call them a 'ho is an excellent way to find yourself in the ER trying to explain how a nail file ended up imbedded in your thick BPD skull.

 

[dcsmyth1]

Just as an aside, I think ASPD may be a poor name. The term 'antisocial' conjures up images of introversion and shyness with lay people--traits that I don't think are common in antisocials...

 

[thefragile7393]

Just as an aside, I think ASPD may be a poor name. The term 'antisocial' conjures up images of introversion and shyness with lay people--traits that I don't think are common in antisocials...

It is a poor name in a lot of ways I agree. If you dig deeper into the meanings of antisocial, you can see that it.fits in a lot of ways. Ted K, for instance, fits the very definition of the disorder...he was antisocial to the extreme.

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[thefragile7393]

It is felt by some that some of Freud's women patients were sexual abuse victims.

He dealt with the wealthy class, so to think or admit any of those people could be sex abusers was not even possible.

So Freud came up with his Electra and Oedipal complexes, for some.

I do not know if you all have heard of Bakelite. Is it the first plastic?

Anyway, the grandson of the inventor killed his mother.

She hated that he was gay, so she had sex with him to try to change him. There is a book about it. The very rich are a strange lot as well, it seems

I can't stand that dude...OT and would get.many tomatos in psych circles but he was just sick to me....even though some of his theories I can ascribe to. As a person...bleh. Or maybe I am personalizing it too much.

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[thefragile7393]

Yes, you can attract a partner who has the same negative traits as a parent in order to confront the issue (and overcome it) as an adult too .. all incredibly subconscious of course, it would be more obvious if Arias had drug addiction issues, but her addiction to Travis may qualify, of course we do not know if Travis' mom had other personality disorder issues, or even if that is what was going on .. wish we had a fuller picture of both their childhoods, also it would be interesting if we had more IM's and texts between the two of them so that we could understand their dynamic better.

So true...an ex husband who was like my mom.

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[thefragile7393]

Excellent! Certainly makes the case that she is not BPD which I had finally thought she is. Lol

I still 100% believe that her childhood holds the answer. The fact that her parents do not testify to abuse means nothing.

As a teacher, I saw over and over again how parents vilified their own children and did not look to their own behavior at all. The child was at fault.

Jodi did not arise out of a vacuum.

If one reads about the families of alcoholics,there are roles that children play. I forget what they all are, but there is the perfect child, the clown, and the source of all problems.

I wonder if this type of categorization happens in all dysfunctional families?

I am not totally convinced. I have met families that just had...I don't know, seemingly from birth, similar issues. I can honestly say they were your average family. Arguably they were not the norm...what I continue to see is exactly what you have mentioned-the kids (or adults) are the way they are because of abuse-or more commonly-neglect, an emotionally toxic environment, mentally abusive. Because of the rare cases of this happening is why I hold out anything until more is known...maybe thats being too nice.
I have a huge empathy for those families I encountered because they taught me so much and turned what I thought I knew about child psychology and psychiatry on its head. It taught me to be less judgemental.


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[human]

Here is an easy explanation of the roles played by children in dysfunctional families. It goes on to explain that there may be more roles and a child may be one one day and other role another day.

I do not feel it is judgmental in the negative sense whatsoever. For instance, if one is diagnosed with an illness, it is good to know so proper treatment can be given.

Same with toxic homes. We can help children because we know they are not merely a bad seed.

We can talk to them about how difficult it must be to not know what your parent is going to do at any given moment. We can build strategies with them. Most of all we can let them know we care and care about them.
http://lightshouse.org/lights-blog/the-four-dysfunctional-family-roles#axzz2Vq2Ej2ai

 

[SMK]

Here is an easy explanation of the roles played by children in dysfunctional families. It goes on to explain that there may be more roles and a child may be one one day and other role another day.

I do not feel it is judgmental in the negative sense whatsoever. For instance, if one is diagnosed with an illness, it is good to know so proper treatment can be given.

Same with toxic homes. We can help children because we know they are not merely a bad seed.

We can talk to them about how difficult it must be to not know what your parent is going to do at any given moment. We can build strategies with them. Most of all we can let them know we care and care about them.
http://lightshouse.org/lights-blog/the-four-dysfunctional-family-roles#axzz2Vq2Ej2ai

Yes, and these 4 roles that children in dysfunctional families play (or have thrust upon them, according to their nature ) are often not seen: Not by the family, not by outsiders, nor by the role-playing children themselves, for even they are an interested party in holding the false family together.

Not seen, I say: Until much, much later. It takes therapy or reading or years of reflecting and much insight to realize, "Hey, I was being scapegoated. They designated ME as the black sheep, instead of dealing with their own issues. And I took the ball and ran with it, to my own detriment. But then, I was only 13...."

So I agree, not enough info has come to light about what went on in the Arias household to know who she was, what may have gone on all those years, etc. Clearly, there was no stereotypical abuse in terms of broken arms, broken skulls, cigarette burns, violent rape - but what of subtle scapegoating, twisted family dynamic and role playing: I know from my own family of origin that the latter can be even more malevolent and deadly: Because subtle but persistent toxicity can take decades to be fully seen, fully known...

 

[human]

I think I wrote on here earlier that the majority of the civilly committed sex offenders ( those that have served their sentence but are judged too dangerous to be released) have been emotinally abused, rather than sex abuse.

Emotional abuse is mandated to be reported. Good luck with that. Really hard to prove.

Obviously, I agree that we have no clue what the family interactions are and were in Ja's family.

 

[SMK]

I think I wrote on here earlier that the majority of the civilly committed sex offenders ( those that have served their sentence but are judged too dangerous to be released) have been emotinally abused, rather than sex abuse.

Emotional abuse is mandated to be reported. Good luck with that. Really hard to prove.

Obviously, I agree that we have no clue what the family interactions are and were in Ja's family.

I am not a therapist, but I think it can be inferred backwards: Where there is smoke, there was fire in the past, so to speak. Of course, that in itself has the danger of being misinterpreted or abused: But if a family functions well, you will not find the children playing out strange and self-destructive roles. In my own family including siblings and cousins, those that had pleasant (but not perfect) homes and parenting turned out to lead normal lives. Those of us who had chaos and conflict had that show up consistently, in our lives.

 

[2Hip2BSquare]

Does anyone have any background info on Jodi's paternal lineage?

We see so
Many from her mother's side of the family rallying, but the father seems isolated. To the point that you would think they have been separated for years. The father seems to lack affect like Jodi.

Anyone know about his family life when he was growing up?

 

[OEJ]

Yes, and these 4 roles that children in dysfunctional families play (or have thrust upon them, according to their nature ) are often not seen: Not by the family, not by outsiders, nor by the role-playing children themselves, for even they are an interested party in holding the false family together.

Not seen, I say: Until much, much later. It takes therapy or reading or years of reflecting and much insight to realize, "Hey, I was being scapegoated. They designated ME as the black sheep, instead of dealing with their own issues. And I took the ball and ran with it, to my own detriment. But then, I was only 13...."

So I agree, not enough info has come to light about what went on in the Arias household to know who she was, what may have gone on all those years, etc. Clearly, there was no stereotypical abuse in terms of broken arms, broken skulls, cigarette burns, violent rape - but what of subtle scapegoating, twisted family dynamic and role playing: I know from my own family of origin that the latter can be even more malevolent and deadly: Because subtle but persistent toxicity can take decades to be fully seen, fully known...

I think it was probably along these lines rather than the straight-forward physical abuse. If the baby-sitter is to be believed, Jodi was acting out as young as 4 and 5. She said she could hardly go the bathroom without an "incident." Jodi self-reported there was a lot of yelling in the household. Lots of yelling means to me the parents didn't have the tools to parent effectively and there was a lot of stress.

Lots of stress and yelling means the kids are stressed and hostile and are being neglected emotionally.

By 16, Jodi's problems hadn't been adequately addressed, and she turned to men to meet her considerable neediness.

That didn't work out because she needed intensive therapy by that point. She had already built her internal construct for coping, so she was going to have to tear that all down and build something better which she wasn't willing to do.

 

[SMK]

I think it was probably along these lines rather than the straight-forward physical abuse. If the baby-sitter is to be believed, Jodi was acting out as young as 4 and 5. She said she could hardly go the bathroom without an "incident." Jodi self-reported there was a lot of yelling in the household. Lots of yelling means to me the parents didn't have the tools to parent effectively and there was a lot of stress.

Lots of stress and yelling means the kids are stressed and hostile and are being neglected emotionally.

By 16, Jodi's problems hadn't been adequately addressed, and she turned to men to meet her considerable neediness.

That didn't work out because she needed intensive therapy by that point. She had already built her internal construct for coping, so she was going to have to tear that all down and build something better which she wasn't willing to do.

Absolutely: I never thought she was criminally abused or neglected, but rather that there was a toxic family dynamic. Agreed, she was likley as unable as she was unwilling.

 

[SMK]

Does anyone have any background info on Jodi's paternal lineage?

We see so
Many from her mother's side of the family rallying, but the father seems isolated. To the point that you would think they have been separated for years. The father seems to lack affect like Jodi.

Anyone know about his family life when he was growing up?

I wish I could find it; would really be illuminating.

 

[lil_buddy]

Can Transference mean a person could transfer their childhood hopes of the ideal parent they never had onto another person?

I am not sure. Maybe.
I think of transference more like transferring emotions.

For instance, you could transfer your anger at your parents for not measuring up onto someone else...