Theories about stalkers
“Persistence only proves persistence – it does not prove love.” – Gavin de Becker
A lot of the bewilderment felt by victims of stalking is the confusion when trying to grasp how stalkers think. Compounding that confusion is competing psychological and psychoanalytic jargon that tries to explain the mental states and intentions of stalkers. Even if psychoanalytic theory is abandoned by many clinicians today, it still contains many insights that can help people understand the perpetrator. In most cases, victims are on their own, and the more they know, the better. There is help from mental health professionals and law enforcement, but ultimately what people must do is to do their own research for themselves and to take action to develop boundaries.
One of the major contributors to this subject in the past decades is J. Reid Meloy, PhD. The theoretical influences in his books include Kernberg’s angle that psychopathy is an extreme form of narcissism. Heinz Kohut is another influence who felt that narcissism can be healthy but is pathological if it prevents people from having a normal life. For victims the value of this knowledge is being able to detect pathological people who endanger their boundaries and to quickly move away from them before a deep attachment is made. Trying to divorce a narcissist, for example, increases the chance that they will be emotionally dysregulated because of how attached they are and how it can make them desperate and vengeful, endangering the target. Meloy warns of the consequences of these relationships, but he tries to maintain a scientific stance that is less judgmental of people stuck in these pathological disorders. Psychoanalysts, psychologists, and counsellors are supposed to control their judgmental reactions, especially during therapy. This is the restraint for mental health workers, and scientists, but for possible victims, they must be more judgmental to protect themselves.
Modern relationships and motivation
The statistics are all over the map for gender differences in stalking. In the Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization, summary, “the lifetime prevalence of stalking by an intimate partner was 9.2% for women and 2.4% for men [in the United States].” Regardless of gender or those who don’t conform to normative gender roles, as long as a person has a motivation, that’s what matters most to a victim. In The Psychology of Criminal and Antisocial Behavior, there are five types of motivations: the “rejected, the intimacy seeker, the incompetent (suitor), the resentful, and the predatory.”
Debra Pinals in Stalking, says that “the dramatic emergence of stalking behaviour was in part due to increasing instability in relationships…Stalking has its roots in situations of social, cultural, and interpersonal disjunction, but persistent stalkers also have specific psychological vulnerabilities or mental disorders that lead them to behave as they do…The commonest form of persistent stalking is by rejected partners following the end of a relationship. Given that serial monogamy has effectively replaced one partner for life as the norm for intimate relationships in the Western world, the opportunities for asymmetrical, conflict-ridden partings have greatly increased. Similarly, the changing roles of women in the domestic and work spheres has challenged less flexible and capable men, and some have responded with various types of harassment including stalking.”
Teen Convicted In Decapitation Killing Gets Life In Prison: https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/07/10/mathew-borges-lawrence-decapitation-killing-sentencing
Mirror transference and envy
For Meloy, “narcissistic fantasies both fuel and excuse the stalking behaviour.” In childhood “narcissism becomes pathological when normal development does not occur, largely because of negligent or inadequate parenting. A deficiency then resides in the self-structure of the individual’s personality, which will be evident in the futile attempts through the years to interact with others in ways that compensate for this lack of parental devotion – a formidable task that inevitably ends in failure since the development window closed long ago.” Psychoanalytic theories on primary narcissism focus on the child’s grandiose self which, as the child grows up dysfunctionally, takes imperfections in the self and increasingly blames the outside world for them. A lot of the lies and deflection people see from narcissists is from that. This is why they resist accountability so consistently. In the child, the need to get confirmation, affirmation, admiration in the “gleam of the mother’s eye”, as Kohut describes, can become a habit that is transferred to authority figures, and celebrities as a parental replacement in what is called in self-psychology, a mirroring transference. Reactions from others act like a mirror that confirms the status of a narcissist. This transfer of attention to cultural models is also facilitated by the disappointment that narcissistic children have when they realize that their parents are not as perfect and omnipotent as they seemed in childhood. TV celebrities, powerful people, and successful others still have a mystery to them that parents no longer have.
Healthy parenting involves optimum frustration where children are gradually allowed autonomy to make their own choices, but also to take on their own responsibilities. Healthy children learn to parent themselves and regulate their own self-esteem with self soothing. Narcissists and psychopaths did not achieve this development. “If attention and admiration are not provided, or are excessive, a narcissistic disorder may develop.” People are healthier when they can regulate themselves. The opposite side of self-regulation is addiction, including being addicted to reactions from others. Like all habits, repetition strengthens them and allows them to go very far.
Extreme cases of mirror transferences are documented like that of Mark Chapman, the assassin of John Lennon. “The other person is experienced as part of the self…and must be controlled…Although Chapman initially idealized Lennon and identified with him – along with the adolescent angst-filled fictional character Holden Caulfield [from Catcher in the Rye] – over time he began to see Lennon as a phony who advocated a simple, peaceful life but lived a life of glamour and materialism. His adoration morphed into hatred, and eventually into violence. The borderline contradictions in Chapman’s behaviour, moreover, were striking: a few hours before he shot Lennon in the back, he asked him for an autograph, and Lennon obliged.”
The FBI Crime classification predicts that a “fusion of identity occurs when an individual identifies so completely with another person that his or her imitation of that person becomes excessive. The person emulated is endangered when the imitator feels his own identity threatened by the existence of the person he has patterned his life after, or when the offender feels the person he has imitated no longer lives up to the offender’s ideals. The person this offender chooses to imitate usually is perceived as someone of higher status.” Here if we understand identity threat, it’s a stressful survival response that happens when an external source of self-esteem cannot be relied upon, like not being able to find a drug when one is caught in craving. The danger happens when there is an emotional dysregulation event like this, which in these extreme cases is higher than what normal people feel. Stalking and a subsequent violent response is acted upon as a violent way to regulate emotions. In other cases celebrities are attacked because that is the only way the offender can attach themselves permanently to a life path of a famous person. They will always be linked.
Regulating emotions with schadenfreude
Reid explores another angle of envy in The Psychopathic Mind, based on the need to regulate emotions, and finds a “rage toward that which is idealized but cannot be possessed. But a product of this split-off envy and greed is a compulsion to ‘put something over on someone.’ In other words, envy is the destructive motivation for behaviors that initiate [a] sequence that leads to conscious feelings of exhilaration and contempt.” If the narcissist or psychopath can’t have those attractive qualities of the target, it’s better to destroy the object so the pain of envy stops. This is called schadenfreude. “It is an aggressive taking in and throwing out, incorporative and eliminative cycle that begins with the conscious thought ‘I must have’ and ends with the conscious thought ‘it was not worth having.'” This ties the narcissist or psychopath to aggression or violence to maintain repeated confirmations of their superiority to regulate their emotions.
It explains the eerie feeling that targets have when they meet some of their fans and competitors. The flattery is insincere. It’s like they want to annihilate you, put on your clothes, forget about you, and continue where you left off, enjoying a better life. If you get away, then they must stalk you because they don’t have the skills to self-soothe on their own.
Meloy says, “the fixated stare of the psychopath is a prelude to instinctual gratification rather than empathic caring. The interaction is socially defined by parameters of power rather than attachment…Condensed sexual and aggressive instincts communicated through the eyes of the psychopath will induce not only fear but shame in the perceived victim. The individual subjected to such a stare may feel physically caught by it, yet ashamed and not wanting to be seen…It is sadistic as in ‘casting a spell,’ but is passively receptive to the fascination of the victim, who is at risk of metaphorically being turned into stone or salt, connected with the myth of Medusa, and the biblical story of Lot and the destruction of Sodom…The absence of modulated emotion warns of behavior devoid of empathic constraint and suggests the functional prevalence of the reptilian cerebrotype.”
Envy in a psychopath or narcissist is very extreme and is connected with mental illness, but as artists have long known, it’s not only the mentally ill that exhibit this toxic emotion. Everybody has some envy.
The danger of success
“Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn’t that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.” ~ Marilyn Monroe
A lot of the reason why people don’t push for success is because they are afraid of it. For those who grew up in the 1970s and 80s, they were exposed to Abraham Maslow who created a pyramid of needs that people seek as they achieve each foundational success. In the Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Maslow observed this phenomenon of fear of success and why people don’t try to self-actualize. He says that in the comparison with the successful we might become a little jealous or envious. We might react to the successful with projection as if they were trying to make us feel inferior and “hostility is then an understandable consequence.”
Notorious B.I.G. – “Mo Money Mo Problems”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUhRKVIjJtw
Arcade Fire – Creature Comfort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzwicesJQ7E
Elton John – Candle in the wind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYU3F8uUGiw
Pop Smoke, 20, Shot: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8020843/Rapper-Pop-Smoke-20-shot-killed-home-invasion-robbery-Hollywood-Hills.html
If you gain worldly success, you have more money, and more temptations than ever before, leading to problems like addictions. The pressure to achieve more success leads to more stress and more addiction. You now become a target for enquiring minds looking for scandal. The envious enjoy seeing the successful fall into shame which can bolster their own low self-esteem. The problem with schadenfreude is that it isolates targets. Successful artists feel they need bodyguards and disguises to be able to function in life, but just those behaviours show that their normal life is changed forever. As I often wrote about, that sense of play in intrinsic motivation; it has to be guarded. Doing things for others and being more inauthentic just increases stress and life can fall apart because it’s now only about one thing, external success. The audience demands a constant stream of artwork at the highest levels of quality, and the audience themselves start demanding the artist make art just for their tastes. A kind of lifestyle art. Artists can lose the chance to make art the way they want to and lose control of their lives. For an artist who continues on the same path, putting all of your emotional eggs in one basket is risky. How long will it be when that style becomes boring and is abandoned, along with the star?
For example, if success disappears, and it was the only thing an artist had to feel happy, it can lead many back to addiction, depression, accidental overdose, or suicide. Bono, for example, wrote the song, Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me, about the unhealthy relationship fans had with their artists. Fame is lethal for artists, because the audience want to see your personal life for imitation purposes, and as time passes they may feel that they are so far away from their talent and will never achieve the success of the imitated artist, they may feel that projection of inferiority, as Maslow pointed out, every time they see them or hear them. The artist may appear as if they are taunting the audience with their success when they keep succeeding, and some artists even taunt the audience in just this way to bring on the envious energy because they feel omnipotent. The successful artist’s problems look ridiculous to the average person who is striving with less. Even worse, if the successful stay successful, the envy and the desire for schadenfreude builds in the audience. Just like Jesus died at 33. Bono: “[The audience] want their money back if you’re alive at 33.” The audience loses interest in the art and focuses more on envy of success. People can blame the paparazzi, but they are fueled by the general public that consume their media and magazines.
This sends a signal to the successful that we have to be perfect people in order to keep success. People become ambivalent about their once adored stars. If they make personal mistakes or release a subpar artwork then that’s the excuse to trigger the schadenfreude to go from private to public. That is a big challenge for artists. Can they adapt and reinvent themselves? Should they become a philanthropist and support a cause to improve their image? Many fail to do so. If the successful artist loses their privacy and if they mess up their life while they are popular, because remember they are human, they are open to criticism and ridicule from millions of strangers, which creates even more stress and isolation. When the artist dies by addiction, or suicide, the audience switches back into loving the artist. If they are dead and the audience is still alive, there’s nothing to envy. A cheap form of superiority is enjoyed when the envious pressure is lifted after the artist passes away. Then their art and its qualities return back to prominence. This is especially so, because there won’t be anymore artworks. Scarcity increases value, especially if the artist dies young at their peak.
Amy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJKIwNtLgwk
Whitney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4fWVb9l2hs
Maria by Callas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xmsGzhhDGE
U2 – Hold me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me – Live in Mexico City: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxngIpxYLdM
The 27 Club: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club
Arcade Fire – Flashbulb Eyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iek6wujR8Fk
Arcade Fire – Joan of Arc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcWTfXLAIWQ
David Bowie – Fame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypgq0qdgVZA
Jimmy Kimmel Mean Tweets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imW392e6XR0
Idealization
Like the FBI description above, of a celebrity’s failure to meet the ideals of an offender, the pattern of disappointment originally found in parents, it becomes inevitable that anyone else who is idealized will be treated the same, because we are all human. Part of the attractiveness of people is the mystery. We don’t have all the details of their lives and people naturally hide their weaknesses. Fashion and advertising hide natural deficiencies and create the sense of a heaven existing “over there” where we are not. That sense of lack, and that feeling that we are never in the right place, is a powerful motivator even for normal people.
On the other side of the mystery, when people gain success, they are susceptible to flattery from narcissists who are motivated in this distorted way. As soon as targets show human frailty, hypocrisy, or imperfections, their shame acts as a narcissistic wound to the predator who lost an object that they could boast about and identify with. Some of the behaviours to hide weaknesses, or the temporary successes people attain, unintentionally attract these predators who want to figure them out, and at the same time to figure themselves out. Yet social proof and fame are fleeting. Disappointment is inevitable. Even famous people, when encountered in real life, appear just like anyone else. Like an ignorant idol worshipper, seeing the God bleed is a shock. Idealization is an exaggerated need to associate with successful others to divert some of their pleasurable attention onto themselves. Their presence is like that “heaven” we are trying to reach, that is so much better than where we are. When people give positive attention to celebrities, VIPs, and powerful people, naturally some of that siphons off onto people in proximity to the star.
Drowned World / Substitute for Love by Madonna: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rsdGjNWiIw
Robert Pattinson Talks the Effect of Fame on Relationships: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vct9CyAp4LE
For Charles Rycroft, idealization also serves “as a defense against the consequences of recognizing ambivalence and purchases freedom from guilt and depression at the expense of self-esteem.” Another way of saying it is that all of us idealize at some point. It’s how we make goals for ourselves. We don’t like the uncertainty of reality so we look for an escape that, unfortunately, is still in reality, so we constantly hit imperfection again and again. We still need to change our environment to improve circumstances, but by seeing only the good to avoid the bad we can falsely feel we are on the right path, but reality is inescapable and we may lose the good for the perfect. Idealization becomes a problem when it’s used unconsciously as a desperate need to escape a current reality. The mind becomes credulous and is willing to accept all kinds of fantasy to feel better and to motivate action.
As we get closer to our object of desire we always find some flaws in our model that destroys the illusion of a promised land. If the model is surpassed, flaws can be seen much easier. This is like an underdog beating a champion. There is celebration at first, but there also is a sense of deflation after the win because if we are able to defeat them, then they really weren’t as great as we made them out to be. They can’t be a model for us anymore. The heavenly plain that was so intimidating becomes mundane. New models and new objects have to be targeted afresh to regenerate that intense pleasure of the chase, and the possibility to share in the light of another’s success again.
Girardian Primers:
Totem and Taboo – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gsmvn-totem-and-taboo-sigmund-freud.html
The Origin of Envy & Narcissism – René Girard: https://rumble.com/v1gsnwv-the-origin-of-envy-and-narcissism-ren-girard.html
Case Studies: Dora and Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu2dt-case-studies-dora-and-freud.html
Love – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gv5pd-love-freud-and-beyond.html
Psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gvgq7-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud-and-beyond.html
Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v1gvuql-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-2.html
Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 7: https://rumble.com/v3ub2sa-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-7.html
Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 8: https://rumble.com/v50nczb-object-relations-melanie-klein-pt.-8.html
Devaluation and control
Idealization can be very forceful. When the narcissist finds ideal qualities in others they can create a “mutual admiration society” where the conversation is constantly redirected so that only the positive qualities are talked about. The narcissist can then associate themselves with these qualities so the idealization “operates along the lines of Kohut’s mirror transference,” creating a feedback loop, as Elsa Ronningstam observes. This is why the narcissist keeps moving their attention away from people and situations who provide none of that feedback, and attack those unpleasant people or details that interfere. Like a juggler keeping the balls afloat, the narcissist is associating with what is culturally rewarded in society and if they find adequate models, they can bask in their light for longer. But if they can’t achieve it, less successful people are forced into the role with curated conversations and topics. The results are damaging to their new models because they are idealized beyond all reality, and disappointing details will surface even faster because of how average they are. The brain measures what might be with what is. If all a person can do is live in the imagination of what’s ideal, then when the negative details of reality continually interfere with consciousness, it will be a repeated shock. This is why the devaluation keeps coming back.
Though devaluation is not just disappointment with reality, there’s also a desire involved that happens after the disappointment. It’s the need to control reality. Devaluation is now used as a tool to control, and to condition the perceptions of others. For example, victims often experience smear campaigns if they escape an abusive relationship. Devaluation is used to make the victim believe they cannot do without the manipulator. When victims are devalued in the eyes of others, they will reject them, cutting the target off from resources for help and independence. Now some constructive criticism is healthy and natural, but if a person is continually idealizing and devaluing, then they are sending the signal that they are not that in touch with reality. If they were in touch with reality, why are they constantly surprised by it? Those narcissistic fantasies that Meloy talks about keep trapping the perpetrators and moving them towards disappointment and devaluation.
Anger
When the anger over an envied person or situation is brought to consciousness, most people respond with embarrassment, or an attempt to close the gap with goals and projects. In the situation of psychopaths and narcissists, the absence of conscience reveals the “lack of developmentally appropriate superego formation…Psychopathic anger is…contaminated by an attitude of righteous indignation that betrays the felt ‘specialness’ and entitlement of the grandiose self.” Rationalization is used as a defense…”they had it coming.” Stalkers have a score to settle.
“The psychopath’s conscious intent is to put something over on someone by using anger as an affective and effective controlling mechanism of the other’s behavior…First, there is a goal conflict with the actual object. Second, the psychopathic individual intends to influence the other through the use of deception. Third, the deceptive act is carried out. And fourth, the psychopath experiences a conscious sense of exhilaration, a contemptuous delight, if the deception is successful…Contemptuous delight of the psychopath restores his pride. The manipulative cycle both enhances his narcissism and protects his vulnerability. It is necessarily repetitive because the threat of intrapsychic rupture within the grandiose self is always present…Bursten described this as a purification process…The psychopath will repetitively navigate this unconscious affect-impulse-defense triad (envy-greed-devaluation) through the conscious pursuit of behaviors that result in feelings of exhilaration and contempt. Envy is commonly assumed to be a derivative of [an] infant’s hatred of the actual object as actively withholding supplies. This hatred creates wishes to destroy the object, which, in turn, would eliminate the envy.”
The problem with all this repetitive behaviour for the narcissist or psychopath is boredom and emptiness, because “there is nothing fresh or novel about a familiar and devalued object…Boredom motivates an attentional search for something of interest within or without.” Meloy quotes “Zuckerman [who] described the psychopath as a sensation-seeker, needing higher levels of sensory stimulation to reach comparative levels of cortical arousal in the nonpsychopathic individual…The psychopathic individual, as a variant of the narcissistic personality, is most vulnerable to chronic feelings of boredom because he or she aggressively empties the world of meaningful relations to ward off feelings of envy and greed. Ironically, this need to devalue is only matched by the hunger for direct instinctual gratification through narcissistic supplies from without; when these are unavailable, ‘their world becomes a prison from which only new excitement, admiration, or experiences implying control, triumph, or incorporation of supplies are an escape.” This neatly describes the cycle of abuse, where abusers have to constantly move between rewards and punishments to relieve the boredom of a relationship. Then they may chase a different relationship to increase intensity, and sometimes return back to the old relationship when there is no other object. Things or relationships that had boring details can be partially forgotten which renews a new sense of mystery to motivate another attempt at the old relationship. If you’re developing yourself after a toxic relationship, you are also making mystery and making yourself interesting to those who knew you in the past. To avoid being isolated by their toxic devaluation of everything, narcissists and psychopaths have to continually find new people, especially those who can’t get away.
The Cycle of Hurt – Doves: https://youtu.be/g-eW37F8-2o
Finding an easy target – Empathy and low self-esteem
When victims are recovering from the abuse they experience from a manipulator, there is always the question, “why me?” Pinals says it bluntly: “Stalkers’ understanding of rights is not individualistic; it is a [double standard].” Yet when victims are ensnared, they usually think there was some empathy in the person when they first met them. Meloy describes what he calls,”malignant pseudoidentification…the process by which the psychopath consciously imitates or unconsciously simulates a certain behavior to foster the victim’s identification with this individual, thus increasing the victim’s vulnerability to exploitation…The goal of the psychopathic character is to increase the [target’s] genuine empathy for the individual’s plight through pseudoidentification with the [target’s] narcissism…The victim’s felt quality of perfection is enhanced, and a strong empathic bond is developed with the psychopath through his imitation and simulation of the victim’s narcissistic investments. The victim will oftentimes be deluded into thinking that the psychopath shares this feeling of identification and bonding…Individuals who deny their own narcissistic investments and consciously perceive themselves as being ‘helpers’ endowed with a special amount of altruism are exceedingly vulnerable to the affective simulation of the psychopath…The presentation of tearfulness, sadness, longing, fear, remorse, and guilt may induce in the ‘helper’ a strong sense of compassion while unconsciously enhancing the ‘helper’s’ narcissistic investment in self as the embodiment…of goodness.”
I’m a Liar – Henry Rollins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awY1MRlMKMc
Stalker Psychology – Sam Vaknin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol2RM135ZHI
What’s the frequency Kenneth? – REM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWkMhCLkVOg
In The Psychology of Criminal and Antisocial Behavior, there are many characteristics of victims that can be quite different, including narcissists and psychopaths abusing each other. The more recognizable category the authors describe is the reassurance-oriented victim. The targeted characteristics of this type are people who have a fear of being alone, a fear of rejection. They also have low self-esteem based on a lack of status or physical good looks. They tolerate abuse because they don’t believe there is a better alternative. There’s less effort required to trap a person who traps themselves, and whether they have low self-esteem, or high self-esteem as with helping-professionals, victims tolerate more than they should, and become precious and rare resources for the abuser. If they get away, then victims must prepare to be stalked, since they are the abuser’s main emotional resource.
Identifying the manipulator
Meloy identifies a way out of the trap for empathic people. “The [target] who has analyzed the narcissistic roots of his own empathic responses will feel little or no compassion during this outpouring of emotion by the psychopath. Second, the psychopath will recompensate much too quickly, leaving the clinical observer with the impression that the play has ended.” By seeing their own feelings of increased self-esteem happen in real time, empathic people can detect the manipulation. “Oh! They’re buttering me up!” You are not going to get those nice warm and fuzzy feelings without the psychopath wanting something in return. When empathic people set healthy boundaries, the narcissist or psychopath loses the benefits they were looking for, and controlling behaviour can reassert itself showing who they are. Even with this knowledge, intelligent people can be caught by these simulations, so it’s not a shame if one discovers they have been duped. Most manipulators have practiced the art since childhood.
A common experience of shame for being duped happens when victims sees old photos of the manipulator. An image of an upstanding member of the community with lots of friends and networks. It’s jarring! Whether it’s an ex-intimate partner, or a co-worker or boss in a corporate photo, the private self of the manipulator and their sanitized image for everyone else looks like a split personality. Yet it’s anything but. It’s a carefully constructed strategy for success, that is of course evil, but that evil is protected by the self-interest of networks and friendships that depend on upon the narcissist or psychopath from being caught. Their self-interest blinds them. They don’t want to see. Not only their self-interest is in danger. The act of holding people accountable is very unpleasant. It’s much easier to go along to get along.
“The psychopath, in brief, has no capacity for empathy. But there is an exquisite capacity for simulation and imitation of other’s narcissistically invested self-concepts, whether they be expressed through ideation, affect, or mannerisms. The adeptness and social facility of such simulation and imitation appear to correlate with the psychopath’s intelligence.” Once they are found out, victims have to increase their self-esteem by making choices for themselves that a good parent would do for them if they were their child. Boundaries are erected, law enforcement is engaged, and a new life is pursued with a higher self-esteem. Self-esteem changes from a mental state that is only for special and important Others, and instead becomes a requirement for our own survival. Self-esteem also becomes independent from others, since so many people’s criticism, flattery and affirmations are a manipulation for control. We have to affirm ourselves.
Erotomania
Comorbid with many other disorders is Erotomania. Here stalkers are fixed on an idea that they’ve had a relationship with a celebrity before, or that the celebrity loves them. If the celebrity is married to someone else, the spouse in the fantasy is actually preventing a reunion with the celebrity. Disorders that can be connected with erotomania include, paranoia, schizophrenia, and the Cluster B personality disorders, which can grossly impair their ability to test between their wishes and reality. Hoffman in Psychotic Visitors to Government Offices, found a life pattern of these individuals:
“The story of frustration, unsatisfied ambition, the wish for security and freedom from want, the desire for love and affection. Over a period of years these unsatisfied needs exist, and remain unsatisified…One may search the stories of their lives without finding much cause for happiness or satisfaction. The recurring theme in their life histories is that of frustration, loneliness, failure.”
By aiming their affections towards celebrities these individuals set themselves up for more rejection and failure, leading to a possibility of violence. Robert Hoskins, the Madonna stalker for example, told her bodyguard that “if Madonna did not marry him, he would ‘slice her throat from ear to ear.'”
In another example, Dawnette Knight was in the belief that she had a relationship with Michael Douglas. She sent threatening letters to Zeta-Jones “describing in detail how she would kill and dismember her.”
The difficulty with these cases in prosecuting is the insanity defense. Each case has to be looked at individually and certainly there is mental illness involved, but at the same time, the defense has it’s problem due to the extensive premeditation and planning involved in these cases.
For victims there aren’t any concrete actions I can tell them on how to litigate, because stalkers will investigate those methods of escape so they can devise new ways to stalk. They will even read this blog post looking for information, or read conversations in forums and Facebook to glean what victims are doing to protect themselves. As long as old methods of defense are used, new methods of stalking are invented. Victims have to be creative and continue to apply new boundaries each time an old one is circumvented, and get help from others such as law enforcement. Staying isolated only helps the stalker.
Victim Blaming
In the end for victims, their isolation can continue when others disbelieve the stories or believe that the victim must have done something to bring on the stalking. This is a way for people to live in the belief that the world is a safe place, and that if we follow certain rules, nothing will happen to us.
“Individuals have a need to believe that they live in a world where people generally get what they deserve. The belief that the world is just enables the individual to confront his physical and social environment as though they were stable and orderly. Without such a belief it would be difficult for the individual to commit himself to the pursuit of long-range goals or even to the socially regulated behavior of day-to-day life. Since the belief that the world is just serves such an important adaptive function for the individual, people are very reluctant to give up this belief, and they can be greatly troubled if they encounter evidence that suggests that the world is not really just or orderly after all.”
If there is any blame victims share, it is how they may be attracting stalking behaviour by all having some good qualities that are envied by the perpetrators. Wealth, fame, talents, empathy, resources and good looks. Victims have what stalkers want…A life.
World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day: https://wnaad.com/
Stalking, Threatening, and Attacking Public Figures: A Psychological and Behavioral Analysis by J. Reid Meloy, Jens Hoffmann, Lorraine Sheridan: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780195326383/
The Psychology of Stalking: Clinical and Forensic Perspectives by J. Reid Meloy: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780124905610/
Stalking: Psychiatric Perspectives And Practical Approaches by Debra A. Pinals: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780195189841/
The Psychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics, and Treatment by Reid J. Meloy: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780876683118/
Disorders of Narcissism edited by Elsa Ronningstam (excerpts and paraphrases from Paulina F. Kernberg): https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780765702593/
A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis by Charles Rycroft: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780140513103/
The Analysis of the Self by Heinz Kohut: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780226450124/
The Psychology of Criminal and Antisocial Behavior: Victim and Offender Perspectives by Wayne Petherick, Grant Sinnamon: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780128092873/
Hoffman JL. Psychotic visitors to government offices in the national capital. The American Journal of Psychiatry. 1943;99:571-575. doi:10.1176/ajp.99.4.571.
Stalking and Psychosexual Obsession by Julian Boon, Lorraine Sheridan: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780471494591/
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature by Abraham Harold Maslow: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780140194708/
Deceit, Desire, & the Novel – René Girard: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780801818301/
Understanding and Treating Pathological Narcissism by John S. Ogrodniczuk: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781433812347/
Breiding, M. J. (2015). Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization—National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, United States, 2011. American Journal of Public Health, 105(4), e11–e12.
The 7 Biggest Lies We Believe About Success by Chris W. Dunn: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/280317
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/