Read other letters about this article

• Monday, October 6, 2008 03:42 PM

  Why people torture is what interests me.

  Even Philip Zimbardo (The Lucifer Effect) has no adequate explanation of why some people are vulnerabe to becoming torturers and others are not that takes into account their childhood training. Alice Miller is one who actually addresses this.

  I also believe that childhood training that makes one able to become a torturer can also produce victims. Abuse is always about power, whether it be parental power, pedagogical power, institutional power, or power at the highest levels of government. Mere democracy never protects against abuses because minorities/weaker populations can always be abused by the majority/stronger population. Only a mindset that is culturally liberal and acknowledges a duty of care will reject torture.

  I believe that the victim/abuser are either side of the same causal "coin," if you will. Physical abuse, emotional/psychological abuse (such as humiliation), and sexual abuse all have one thing in common: They require that the perpetrator learn obedience to authority at an early age. They require either a power distance between the child and the authority or some other factor that creates an inability to say NO or to resist.

  Institutionalized authority generally rejects resistence by victims because victims who resist challenge the authority of the status quo by challenging their abusers. The purpose of the abuser to the system is to keep order. Thus master must control his slave, a husband should control his wife, a woman should control her children, older siblings are required to control younger ones and so on. Currently, the minions who are torturers for the Bush Administration are doing the clear will of that administration and The People by controlling "terrorists." None of this happens without the approval of the powerful and the complicity of the obedient populace. Just as your neighbor cannot beat his wife or child until they scream without your complicity not to report the abuse or the police's complicity not arrest, or the courts complicity not to punish.

  Here are two links.

  First, some writing of Alice Miller:

  http://www.naturalchild.com/alice_miller/political.html

  Second, an interesting examination of dissociation:

  http://thesecularspirit.com/text/torture.html

  To go on a bit, a culture that acknowledges a duty of care does not shrug off the exploitation of anyone based upon the notion that market forces should prevail or that some amount of exploitation is somehow permissible for particular populations, such as young girls who wander into the world of sex work due to vulnerablities of age and previous circumstances (usually abuse).

  —AKA Smith Read AKA Smith's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel