Is there a typical background/childhood of an emotionally abusive man?

[Proudnscary]

I have a vested interest in asking, but it's not for myself. It's a close colleague who is beginning to confide that he's been controlling/manipulative for years. I suppose I'm trying to see if he fits a 'type' that I may or may not present to her...?

I'm sticking my neck out next to thisis. I'm sorry, Proud, this is a bit of a thread diversion.

I find it impossible not to associate long-term abusive behaviour with personality disorder. The more I learn, the more aware I become that the abusive mindset is strongly dictated by "old brain" instincts; there's a lack of "front-brain" thinking. We're all programmed to feed, fight and fuck - but a million years of evolution has taught us the value of social bonds, give-and-take in the community, and so forth: the sharing & caring moderators.

We socialise children from toddlerhood. In teaching them not to hit and steal, to share and to look after others, we show them what to do with the newer parts of a human brain. We continue, through childhood, to help them evaluate social situations, learn to interact and develop a set of moral values.

In some people this process gets interrupted. Some studies of people with personality disorders have shown abnormalities in the old-brain to new-brain communications. It's unclear whether the abnormalities are genetic or developed. They look similar to anomalies noted in autism-spectrum disorders, although symptoms are different.

I wonder whether there are two distinct, yet connected, sources of such disorders. When incompletely socialised adults bring up their own children they will, inevitably, fail to help them develop the full set of social & moral skills: they can't teach what they don't know, or provide nurturance they don't comprehend. If the brain anomalies are genetic, some children will inherit them. Even if not, the parents' impairments will impair the child's development.

Thinking like this leads me to theorise that some abusers can retrain themselves - they can learn, in later life, to activate the 'social' pathways of their brain - while others may be literally unable to, lacking the mental capacity to do so. There's a problem, of course, in that most abusers would choose not to bother, whether equipped or not, since abusing gets them what they (think they) want.

The term 'Personality Disorder' gives us a very useful shorthand to describe people with rigid, two-dimensional personalities. Since it's also the term used for a set of clinical diagnostic tools, we have to be careful to stress that we're talking about a human phenomenon, not a psychiatric diagnosis. With that in mind, I'm sorry to say I think they're widely prevalent in all our societies; perhaps it's just another expression of patchy evolution. Unlike fully-socialised people, those with disordered personalities follow predictable patterns of behaviour and communication. There are odd-seeming gaps in their comprehension of life.

I agree with Dr Bancroft that it's fairly futile to get them to change. Life's short, and there are socialised folk you could spend your time with instead.

Ramble over

No need to apologise, Garlic - v v interesting post.

I will say my friend has cottoned on and toughened up a lot. But I feel she has dumped her vulnerable and despairing feelings into inappropriate compartments of her life. Sort of behaving irrationally in other areas, in desperation to gain control. I know, I know I'm not making sense!

Thanks for all your support. G night x

Anecdotally, my own experience seems to match what others are saying above.

All the abused people in my family had a narcissistic parent (usually their mother), and both parents modelling an abusive relationship.

All the abusers, while they didn't necessarily have parents in an abusive relationship, all did have a highly passive and caretaking mother, and experienced some form of neglect (birth of younger sibling who they resented, death of father, wartime deprivation). I see all of them as reacting to that deeply embedded feeling of neglect by demanding never-ending comfort, nurture and perfection from a partner who they choose to be as close in character to their mothers as possible (a nurturing care-taker; a co-dependent).

Blimey puppy you have summed up my entire existence in one post!!!!!!

This is why I disagree with Adam Jukes' theory that it's lack of maternal nurture that forges abusive men: in my anecdotal experience, the abusers I know had very nurturing mothers, and that, combined with them transforming a childhood deprivation into an overblown sense of entitlement, makes them crave more more more unconditional nurture of the type they got used to expecting from their mothers.