The Inner Abuser

The "inner abuser," might take the form of a menacing tiger, a weapon, fire, a monstor, or the person who actually was abusive. Linda, a forty-year-old patient of mine introduced me to the idea of the "inner abuser." Following an abusive childhood, Linda ran away from home at the age of fourteen. Her freedom was short-lived, as she was kidnapped shortly thereafter. For one year she was raped daily and was emotionally-tortured. Her abuser, Charlie, threatened to kill her frequently. At the end of the year, Charlie sold Linda into "white slavery." She was a Mafia prostitute for the next year. Finally, at age sixteen, true freedom was hers, as she found a way to escape from her captives. She spent much of the next twenty years living alone in a mountain cabin without running water or electricity. Somehow, she maintained hope and even experienced joyous moments and joyous days.

When she decided, at long last, to return to civilization - to city-life - she found the going rough. Her emotions were out of control, she was often suicidal. Her immune system was crumbling and chronic fatigue syndrome set in. I met Linda in a mental hospital after she had attempted suicide. It was apparent right away that she possessed an unusual degree of insight, hope, and motivation. She was a complicated person who clinically fit the description of borderline personality. But she also experienced states of mystical rapture.

When Linda mentioned her "inner abuser," I asked her to close her eyes so that we might get to know this symbol on a deeper level. I asked, "Linda, who or what does the inner abuser look like? How does it present itself to you?"

"My God! It's Charlie. He's so ghastly looking, so frightening."

"How do you feel right now about him?"

"I hate him. I want to kill him."

"In your mind, go ahead and tell him how you feel. You're safe now, so you can tell him anything that you want."

Linda was surprised that her "inner abuser" was so real to her and that twenty years after the abuse, his face was as fresh in her mind ever. I asked her to draw a picture of Charlie and the next day she showed me her drawing. Charlie had a cruel face with many long scars. He had wild, long, black hair. The drawing depicted drops of blood and a knife.

Of course, this introduction to her inner abuser was not the cure. We continued to work on "Charlie" for months and probably will continue to do so for years to come.

What role does the "inner abuser" play? Psychoanalysis talks about people internalizing "bad objects." No, that doesn't mean that they eat knives! It means that they "mentally swallow" the person who attacked them. In some cases people "become" the inner abuser. They become like the very person who abused them. This could be seen at the extreme in the Nazi concentration camps. Some of the prisoners took on the personality of the guards, as a way of coping with the terrifying situation. These prisoners, in turn, hounded other prisoners. The inner abuser works in far more subtle ways. It continues to beat up on people from the inside. It continues to drive them to repeat the same painful experiences. For example, Linda needed to be re-hospitalized after she phoned an abusive ex-boyfriend. She got together with him, got beaten up and her life was threatened. It was "Charlie" all over again. Psychoanalysis was right about people "introjecting bad objects." However, it has proven wrong, in my experience, by trying to cure people by having them merely talk about these "introjects." The inner abuser must be experienced, re-lived, spoken to, imaged, and talked about.

The inner abuser "is" self-hate. It "is" self-loathing. One cannot simply pretend that Charlie was a bad guy who did some terrible things twenty years ago. Charlie continues to "live" inside Linda, continues to beat her up over and over again - sometimes driving her into real-life dangerous decisions, sometimes simply making her very depressed, sometimes wreaking havoc with her immune system and making her exhausted.