We have already seen from numerous other articles that I have previously published on this site that there is an association between the early life experience of interpersonal childhood trauma and the development of violent and aggressive tendencies which may persist into adulthood and even lead to a label of ‘antisocial personality disorder’ or, even, […]
In 1999 the U.K. government introduced a new concept in relation to personality disorders (which, as we know, are much more likely to occur in individuals who have suffered extreme and repetitive interpersonal childhood trauma) called DANGEROUS AND SEVERE PERSONALITY DISORDER (DSPD) and a treatment and assessment program was developed with the aim of ameliorating […]
As Alice Miller (1933-2010) states in her seminal book Free From Lies children learn by imitating their parents and much of this imitating is due to unconscious learning. To illustrate this Miller refers to a study in which mothers were observed holding and feeding their babies and, the ways in which they did so were […]
In the 1940s, at the request of the Office of Strategic Services (a former incarnation of the Criminal Intelligence Agency (CIA), a psychiatrist by the name of Walter Langer produced a psychological profile of Hitler, including details about his childhood. Below, I summarize the most salient findings. Adolf Hitler’s father was described as frequently intoxicated, […]
Research shows that the more ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES an individual suffered in their early life, the greater their risk of becoming the victim of crime and/or the perpetrator of crime in early life. ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES, as defined by the well known Adverse Childhood Experiences Study are listed below : – physical abuse – emotional […]
Are You Easily Provoked Into Angry And Aggressive Behaviour? After my mother threw me out of her house when I was thirteen years old and I was reluctantly taken in by my father and step-mother (which I have written about elsewhere in this site, so I won’t repeat the details), I was quickly labelled […]
Antisocial Personality Disorder And The Early Life Of Sufferers : According to Meroy (1988), those who go on to develop antisocial personality disorder as adults have frequently experienced a dysfunctional relationship with their mothers during infancy, including a failure to form a healthy emotional bond with her – this could be for a variety […]
What Are The Effects Of Repressed Anger Towards Parents? If our parent/s caused us significant psychological suffering when we were growing up, we may have built up a great deal of anger towards them, but we may, too, have repressed that anger and its cause (i.e. buried it deep inside our unconscious). This […]
Domestic Violence And Children : We have seen in other articles that I have published on this site that children who grow up in households in which domestic violence is prevalent (e.g. growing up in a household in which the father regularly beats the mother) are put at high risk of developing significant emotional and […]
Externalizing Behaviour : Have you ever smashed a piece of crockery or something similar out of anger or frustration? (I know I have.) If so, you were using what psychologists term an externalizing behaviour. Such behaviours are an expression of our negative feelings directed outward into the external environment. (Internalizing behaviours, in contrast, involve us […]
A study carried out at University College London (UCL) has found that when a child is continually exposed to domestic violence, such as the father regularly beating the mother, their brains are negatively affected in a similar way to how the brains of soldiers are affected by exposure to combat in war. As a […]
Domestic violence often involves a man physically abusing a woman on repeated occasions (although it can, of course, involve a woman assaulting a man or a partner assaulting a same-sex partner in the case of gay relationships). In this article, however, to save complications, I’ll use the conventional example of a man who attacks a […]
Image source: Bigstock Research has demonstrated that many serial killers have much in common when it comes to their childhood experiences. Below, I provide a list of the common characteristics they may sometimes share. It goes without saying, however, that people with many or even all of these characteristics will not invariably […]
Domestic violence can affect children in two ways: DIRECTLY and INDIRECTLY. Let’s look at each of these two categories: DIRECTLY : – the violence is DELIBERATELY aimed at the child with the INTENTION of causing him/her harm INDIRECTLY : – The child witnesses the violence in the household (e.g. sees the father beat […]
Child Psychopaths First, it is important to state that diagnosing childhood psychological disturbance is fraught with difficulties as, once the child enters adolescence, behavioural problems are very far from uncommon, especially irritability, mood fluctuations, boundary testing/defiance and breaking social rules. However, the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual) does list six conditions related to childhood conduct problems. […]
