Thank you for going on NewsNation and speaking the realities of trying to survive a "relationship" with an abuser. Yes, please continue to use public cases to help keep the focus on and explain the complex, multi-faceted issues of trying to survive and escape an abusive partner. Grateful for all the work you're doing to save lives. Please let us know what WE can do for you to help spread the knowledge, support your work and help with prevention and intervention of this horrendous abuse of women and children.
I think this is incredibly important analysis. It is hard to comprehend the completly distorted ‘thoughts’ & behaviours abusers can implant in the victims mind. This is still not nearly well enough understood by the police or lawyers & judges, often causing further distress & punishment to the victim. It has recently been recognised that it can result in suicide and certainly Cptsd, ie lasting trauma
Definitely Emma … it helps people understand the victims decision making in cases where the perp’s abuse is seen as a one off or acceptable/something she was ok with
I really hope that you'll lend your sane voice and advanced insights to high profile cases of abuse and coercive control.
The first time I got even an inkling of what captor bonding/Stockholm syndrome was happened by accident because I became a fan of film and TV director Agnieszka Holland in college.
In digging up all Holland's works, I saw an old film she directed titled Angry Harvest about a Jewish medical student forced into hiding during the Nazi occupation of Poland (watch with caution: https://m.ok.ru/video/2661919361734).
In the film, the protagonist escapes a train bound for a death camp and, while injured and nearly driven mad with grief over losing her husband and young son, is "rescued" by a lonely middle aged Polish farmer who, in exchange for hiding her, soon turns her into his sexual hostage.
The film had a profound effect on me, particularly the sickening and painful process by which the victim "succumbs," begins to accept her fate and even develops dependence on her captor because, while in hiding, she has no other human contact and faces certain death if she attempts to escape.
I also remember the massive disconnect between the farmer's delusions that he's being "nurturing" and simply engaging in "courtship" (horrifyingly accurate since, according to forensic research, most rapists apparently think their victims "want it" and will fall in love with them) contrasted against the victim's complete entrapment.
(Substack limits word count for replies so continued)
Anyway, I think my point is that wider sociopolitical power dynamics have a lot to do with the behavior of domestic and sexual abuse victims. Cassie Ventura clearly felt mortally entrapped in her relationship with Sean Combs.
Well said. Coercive control is systemic; it occurs in all levels of human interactions, i.e., in relationships, communities, and systems. And it can co-occur across one or more settings as we are integrative people. I experienced coercive control from my then ex-husband and a cult at the same time. He successfully divorced me for unreasonable behaviour because I was in that group. Cults use very similar tactics to recruit and retain their victims, but try saying that to a court! He went on to coerce my dying mother into leaving him the large majority of her estate. I knew I had absolutely no chance of challenging this behaviour in court, as our criminal justice system does not (yet) recognise coercive control in cults.
Sounds like you were surrounded by evil on all sides with the added mindf*ck of the two sides appearing opposed to each other while being effectively exactly the same brand of evil.
Thank you for sharing this interview Emma. The more mainstream your work and the language of abuse becomes, the more women can be helped. Tying it to current events will help people to apply what they know intellectually to what is physically happening and that is a powerful connection which is often missed in the confusion of being with someone who switches their charm and terrorising on and off at whim. They deliberately keep us confused and wrong footed and exhausted so we can’t just up and leave. It is also common that they move in to our homes and we can’t leave and they won’t leave. We are intellectually and physically trapped and you explain it all so well. Your suggestion of making a plan while remaining safe will be a lifeline for many.
I think it would be helpful to distinguish between Domestic Violence and Domestic Abuse - as you do in your book - because, again, those terms can be confusing. I had no idea I was being abused because my ‘partner’ never hit me. I knew that I was unhappy and had no autonomy and that he was ruining my life with the implied ‘Do as I say or else’ behaviour but his threats of suicide kept me trapped for years. He put on such a great performance with family and friends (in the rare occasions I was allowed to see them) and I would cling onto that false hope and put on my best performance too. My mother even commented that he couldn’t be as bad to me as I had made out as I was so nice to him when we were there. None of us understood this was a survival strategy. The fawning of the fight, flight, freeze or fawn, the tending and befriending, all keeps us safe and can avoid the punishments only we will see.
Emma, I love the way you use simple phrases to describe coercive control. "Do what I say or else" is very impactful.
I met the wonderful Charlotte Proudman yesterday at the Bath Literature Festival. She was speaking about her new book, "He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court." Charlotte said how important it is to use short and impactful phrases in the courtroom to grab people's attention.
I am currently using "violent men kill sick women" in discussions with my MP on the proposed Assisted Dying Bill here in the UK. I have been raising the importance of understanding that women can be coerced by their abuser into believing they are worthless and a burden, and leading them to agree to an assisted suicide against their wishes.
I see you advised the Royal Commission into Family Violence in Victoria, Australia. The cult I was recruited into whilst experiencing domestic abuse is based in Victoria. They have recently opened a parliamentary inquiry into the recruitment methods and impacts of cults and "organised fringe groups," which is amazing. I have been in discussions with the MP, Chris Couzens, who was behind its instigation. They encouraged me to make a submission.
My concern however is that the team doesn't understand the fact that one of the many push factors into these coercively controlling groups can be domestic abuse, as in my case. I was seeking community, healing, and acceptance. And just like domestic abuse, once you are in, it is very difficult to leave such are the tactics they use. It is another psychological prison.
Siloed responses to legislation, including subsequent health care, can leave victims like myself feeling invalidated. The impact of my cult membership is far-reaching and intertwined as it is leaking out into familial relationships and friendships. My adult daughter is not speaking to me, aided and abetted by my abusive husband, because I was in a cult. I am considered to be the abuser. She got married two weeks ago and didn't tell me. It f.....ing hurts. We are integrated people after all. It is so complex..
You are not the abuser. Having gone through domestic abuse you were then prayed upon by a cult as you very reasonably looked for community and healing. Your ex then used this new harm that was done to you to paint you as the bad guy, severely impacting your relationships with you children. What a horrible series of injustices.
Yup.....And I am shouting out about it....including to Charlotte Proudman and my MP. You were mentioned as being an enormous help by me and then a woman who came to speak to me after Charlotte's talk yesterday.. Your writing and Salford's MSc in psychology of coercive control, has led me to my PhD research which is focussing on the impact of co occurring systemic coercive control on the health of women born in the 1950s.... It is basically looking at the WASPI cohort who have also experienced a series of horrible injustices over a life time..
The classic protection racket. As a college media intern, I found myself suddenly beset by "rescuers" in the midst of prosecuting a violent workplace stalker. Long story short, I ended up having to report two of these "heroes/allies" to the police for making threats after I declined the quid pro quo that came with the supposed heroics.
For good measure, the head of SWAT who arrested the original stalker made a pass. When I tried to tell someone at work about the eerie situation, she snapped in irritation, saying "Oh yeah, everyone wants you. Get over yourself."
So I stopped trying to gather allies and sought alternative means of support, though instead of joining a cult, I fell into the other typical trap of dating someone I'd just met in order to have a bodyguard on hand and perhaps a "place holder" as an excuse to decline the sudden rash of heroics.
In retrospect, I can see that it's probably just dumb luck the guy I dated then didn't turn out to be dangerous. But I can totally understand why abuse survivors reportedly have a 50% (or fifty-fold? Old stat and I'm not sure) increased risk of ending up with a subsequent abuser after leaving an earlier abuser. When the justice system and social context refuse to adequately support and protect victims (and furthermore blame them), too many survivors may end up falling "out of the frying pan, into the fire" and into the clutches of wolves in heroes' clothing.
But, as the Roman poet put it, "Who will protect us from our protectors?"
It’s great that you were able to educate about these dynamics.
I think that further explanation of the trauma bond is useful in helping people understand the physiological aspect of abusive relationships. It’s like being brainwashed. Like cult mind control.
Understanding how the nervous system works and the impact of dysregulation on one’s ability to think clearly is also important.
I successfully healed from a coercive relationship with a doctor (not romantic but emotionally abusive and in a toxic hospital culture) largely through the education I got from Irene Lyon, a nervous system expert.
I also learned a great deal from Dr. Ramani Durvasula on narcissism.
The physiological aspect of these relationships is real, powerful and largely not understood.
Thank you, this is immensely helpful to read. Yes please to doing this type of writing and commentary again. It's so helpful in terms of making the link to my own experience, with many ah ha's.
Yes!!!! I would like to see you do more of this, Dr. Katz! I did it here with Jonathan Majors and Meghan Good's relationship on the heels of his obvious abusive past: https://youtu.be/n5-m0SnbuvU?feature=shared when someone who has an elevated visibility and respected expertise speaks on these things, we get people to listen. We NEED people to listen on this. I appreciate you so much!
Thank you , I am currently in family court myself and the perpetrator has submitted messages between us which are seemingly loving /sexual. I read your post to help me hopefully describe what has happened to me. It helps me understand my situation better. I have also read your book and it is really insightful, it is helpful for me , to read about normal people in every day life , high profile cases are a good read but for myself as a normal person, I really resonate with the people from every day life with different/similar backgrounds to myself. Thank you for this.
Another good read along these lines is award-winning psychology professor, researcher and author Jennifer Freyd's Blind to Betrayal which creates an almost mathematical algorithm to explain why people with very real social, economic, racial, gender, etc., vulnerabilities can become more susceptible to coercion and gaslighting. Not because they're weak, crazy or defective but because the deck of social power is grossly stacked against them.
If you know the story of Jennifer Freyd (the original coiner of the DARVO acronym "deny, attack, reverse victim and offender"), her humanistic and non-blaming view of survivors makes perfect sense. Her parents actually launched an entire pseudo-science front group called the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in order to combat Freyd's private contention that her father had molested her and her sister as children and their mother had covered it up.
I consider Freyd to be in a sort of lovely "club" with advocates like Dr. Katz (and others) who, in their thoughtful, studious, painstakingly nuanced, authentically intellectual and humane ways, are incredibly brave and badass in combating abusive and illicit power in all its forms. I think of this as the new political underground resistance in an age when science-- for better or worse (too often worse)-- can form the basis of law and policy that effect the lives of millions.
Speaking of "club" members, late French political philosopher Tzvetan Todorov wrote something beautiful about Holocaust survivor and historian Primo Levi in the introduction to Hope and Memory. To paraphrase, Todorov writes that, though the subjects Levi delves into are dark, the "light" comes from Levi himself for having the courage to do it.
We're in very strange times regarding free speech and intellectual freedom where it's becoming increasingly dangerous to expose any of the methods of illicit power. But more risk, more light. So thank you.
Absolutely, Emma. These cases get so misrepresented in the media and Cassie’s behaviour could easily have been interpreted as “it can’t have been that bad because she still said she loved him”. In the UK we have a charity called Level Up which seeks to change the language around the reporting of domestic abuse cases and coverage of women who have died because of abuse.
I think the more this is discussed the more people will understand why women behave the way they do. I have recently read that women calling the police to report DV are being arrested themselves because when they realise the police can’t/won’t help, they channel their anger towards the officers in attendance. If you can, listen to this podcast by Louise Tickle:
Thank you Dr. Katz for all you do. I would love to learn more about coercion and violence as they apply to current events. We all need to learn more. It’s time-out for victim blaming.
Thank you for going on NewsNation and speaking the realities of trying to survive a "relationship" with an abuser. Yes, please continue to use public cases to help keep the focus on and explain the complex, multi-faceted issues of trying to survive and escape an abusive partner. Grateful for all the work you're doing to save lives. Please let us know what WE can do for you to help spread the knowledge, support your work and help with prevention and intervention of this horrendous abuse of women and children.
I think this is incredibly important analysis. It is hard to comprehend the completly distorted ‘thoughts’ & behaviours abusers can implant in the victims mind. This is still not nearly well enough understood by the police or lawyers & judges, often causing further distress & punishment to the victim. It has recently been recognised that it can result in suicide and certainly Cptsd, ie lasting trauma
Definitely Emma … it helps people understand the victims decision making in cases where the perp’s abuse is seen as a one off or acceptable/something she was ok with
I really hope that you'll lend your sane voice and advanced insights to high profile cases of abuse and coercive control.
The first time I got even an inkling of what captor bonding/Stockholm syndrome was happened by accident because I became a fan of film and TV director Agnieszka Holland in college.
In digging up all Holland's works, I saw an old film she directed titled Angry Harvest about a Jewish medical student forced into hiding during the Nazi occupation of Poland (watch with caution: https://m.ok.ru/video/2661919361734).
In the film, the protagonist escapes a train bound for a death camp and, while injured and nearly driven mad with grief over losing her husband and young son, is "rescued" by a lonely middle aged Polish farmer who, in exchange for hiding her, soon turns her into his sexual hostage.
The film had a profound effect on me, particularly the sickening and painful process by which the victim "succumbs," begins to accept her fate and even develops dependence on her captor because, while in hiding, she has no other human contact and faces certain death if she attempts to escape.
I also remember the massive disconnect between the farmer's delusions that he's being "nurturing" and simply engaging in "courtship" (horrifyingly accurate since, according to forensic research, most rapists apparently think their victims "want it" and will fall in love with them) contrasted against the victim's complete entrapment.
(Substack limits word count for replies so continued)
Anyway, I think my point is that wider sociopolitical power dynamics have a lot to do with the behavior of domestic and sexual abuse victims. Cassie Ventura clearly felt mortally entrapped in her relationship with Sean Combs.
So well described. Thank you very much.
Well said. Coercive control is systemic; it occurs in all levels of human interactions, i.e., in relationships, communities, and systems. And it can co-occur across one or more settings as we are integrative people. I experienced coercive control from my then ex-husband and a cult at the same time. He successfully divorced me for unreasonable behaviour because I was in that group. Cults use very similar tactics to recruit and retain their victims, but try saying that to a court! He went on to coerce my dying mother into leaving him the large majority of her estate. I knew I had absolutely no chance of challenging this behaviour in court, as our criminal justice system does not (yet) recognise coercive control in cults.
Sounds like you were surrounded by evil on all sides with the added mindf*ck of the two sides appearing opposed to each other while being effectively exactly the same brand of evil.
I'm glad you made it out alive.
Thank you for sharing this interview Emma. The more mainstream your work and the language of abuse becomes, the more women can be helped. Tying it to current events will help people to apply what they know intellectually to what is physically happening and that is a powerful connection which is often missed in the confusion of being with someone who switches their charm and terrorising on and off at whim. They deliberately keep us confused and wrong footed and exhausted so we can’t just up and leave. It is also common that they move in to our homes and we can’t leave and they won’t leave. We are intellectually and physically trapped and you explain it all so well. Your suggestion of making a plan while remaining safe will be a lifeline for many.
I think it would be helpful to distinguish between Domestic Violence and Domestic Abuse - as you do in your book - because, again, those terms can be confusing. I had no idea I was being abused because my ‘partner’ never hit me. I knew that I was unhappy and had no autonomy and that he was ruining my life with the implied ‘Do as I say or else’ behaviour but his threats of suicide kept me trapped for years. He put on such a great performance with family and friends (in the rare occasions I was allowed to see them) and I would cling onto that false hope and put on my best performance too. My mother even commented that he couldn’t be as bad to me as I had made out as I was so nice to him when we were there. None of us understood this was a survival strategy. The fawning of the fight, flight, freeze or fawn, the tending and befriending, all keeps us safe and can avoid the punishments only we will see.
The world is lucky to have you and we need you.
Emma, I love the way you use simple phrases to describe coercive control. "Do what I say or else" is very impactful.
I met the wonderful Charlotte Proudman yesterday at the Bath Literature Festival. She was speaking about her new book, "He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court." Charlotte said how important it is to use short and impactful phrases in the courtroom to grab people's attention.
I am currently using "violent men kill sick women" in discussions with my MP on the proposed Assisted Dying Bill here in the UK. I have been raising the importance of understanding that women can be coerced by their abuser into believing they are worthless and a burden, and leading them to agree to an assisted suicide against their wishes.
Thank you Sue. You are so right. Your phrase 'violent men kill sick woman' is very impactful. I too have huge concerns about the Assisted Dying Bill.
And thank you too.
I see you advised the Royal Commission into Family Violence in Victoria, Australia. The cult I was recruited into whilst experiencing domestic abuse is based in Victoria. They have recently opened a parliamentary inquiry into the recruitment methods and impacts of cults and "organised fringe groups," which is amazing. I have been in discussions with the MP, Chris Couzens, who was behind its instigation. They encouraged me to make a submission.
My concern however is that the team doesn't understand the fact that one of the many push factors into these coercively controlling groups can be domestic abuse, as in my case. I was seeking community, healing, and acceptance. And just like domestic abuse, once you are in, it is very difficult to leave such are the tactics they use. It is another psychological prison.
Siloed responses to legislation, including subsequent health care, can leave victims like myself feeling invalidated. The impact of my cult membership is far-reaching and intertwined as it is leaking out into familial relationships and friendships. My adult daughter is not speaking to me, aided and abetted by my abusive husband, because I was in a cult. I am considered to be the abuser. She got married two weeks ago and didn't tell me. It f.....ing hurts. We are integrated people after all. It is so complex..
You are not the abuser. Having gone through domestic abuse you were then prayed upon by a cult as you very reasonably looked for community and healing. Your ex then used this new harm that was done to you to paint you as the bad guy, severely impacting your relationships with you children. What a horrible series of injustices.
Yup.....And I am shouting out about it....including to Charlotte Proudman and my MP. You were mentioned as being an enormous help by me and then a woman who came to speak to me after Charlotte's talk yesterday.. Your writing and Salford's MSc in psychology of coercive control, has led me to my PhD research which is focussing on the impact of co occurring systemic coercive control on the health of women born in the 1950s.... It is basically looking at the WASPI cohort who have also experienced a series of horrible injustices over a life time..
The classic protection racket. As a college media intern, I found myself suddenly beset by "rescuers" in the midst of prosecuting a violent workplace stalker. Long story short, I ended up having to report two of these "heroes/allies" to the police for making threats after I declined the quid pro quo that came with the supposed heroics.
For good measure, the head of SWAT who arrested the original stalker made a pass. When I tried to tell someone at work about the eerie situation, she snapped in irritation, saying "Oh yeah, everyone wants you. Get over yourself."
So I stopped trying to gather allies and sought alternative means of support, though instead of joining a cult, I fell into the other typical trap of dating someone I'd just met in order to have a bodyguard on hand and perhaps a "place holder" as an excuse to decline the sudden rash of heroics.
In retrospect, I can see that it's probably just dumb luck the guy I dated then didn't turn out to be dangerous. But I can totally understand why abuse survivors reportedly have a 50% (or fifty-fold? Old stat and I'm not sure) increased risk of ending up with a subsequent abuser after leaving an earlier abuser. When the justice system and social context refuse to adequately support and protect victims (and furthermore blame them), too many survivors may end up falling "out of the frying pan, into the fire" and into the clutches of wolves in heroes' clothing.
But, as the Roman poet put it, "Who will protect us from our protectors?"
It’s great that you were able to educate about these dynamics.
I think that further explanation of the trauma bond is useful in helping people understand the physiological aspect of abusive relationships. It’s like being brainwashed. Like cult mind control.
Understanding how the nervous system works and the impact of dysregulation on one’s ability to think clearly is also important.
I successfully healed from a coercive relationship with a doctor (not romantic but emotionally abusive and in a toxic hospital culture) largely through the education I got from Irene Lyon, a nervous system expert.
I also learned a great deal from Dr. Ramani Durvasula on narcissism.
The physiological aspect of these relationships is real, powerful and largely not understood.
Really helpful, thank you
Thank you, this is immensely helpful to read. Yes please to doing this type of writing and commentary again. It's so helpful in terms of making the link to my own experience, with many ah ha's.
Yes!!!! I would like to see you do more of this, Dr. Katz! I did it here with Jonathan Majors and Meghan Good's relationship on the heels of his obvious abusive past: https://youtu.be/n5-m0SnbuvU?feature=shared when someone who has an elevated visibility and respected expertise speaks on these things, we get people to listen. We NEED people to listen on this. I appreciate you so much!
Thank you , I am currently in family court myself and the perpetrator has submitted messages between us which are seemingly loving /sexual. I read your post to help me hopefully describe what has happened to me. It helps me understand my situation better. I have also read your book and it is really insightful, it is helpful for me , to read about normal people in every day life , high profile cases are a good read but for myself as a normal person, I really resonate with the people from every day life with different/similar backgrounds to myself. Thank you for this.
Another good read along these lines is award-winning psychology professor, researcher and author Jennifer Freyd's Blind to Betrayal which creates an almost mathematical algorithm to explain why people with very real social, economic, racial, gender, etc., vulnerabilities can become more susceptible to coercion and gaslighting. Not because they're weak, crazy or defective but because the deck of social power is grossly stacked against them.
If you know the story of Jennifer Freyd (the original coiner of the DARVO acronym "deny, attack, reverse victim and offender"), her humanistic and non-blaming view of survivors makes perfect sense. Her parents actually launched an entire pseudo-science front group called the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in order to combat Freyd's private contention that her father had molested her and her sister as children and their mother had covered it up.
Before FMSF was disgraced and disbanded, they managed to gain enormous sway in academia and the media by using junk science to argue that repressed memory of childhood sexual abuse was false and unreliable. You can read about the saga here: https://news.isst-d.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-false-memory-syndrome-foundation/
I consider Freyd to be in a sort of lovely "club" with advocates like Dr. Katz (and others) who, in their thoughtful, studious, painstakingly nuanced, authentically intellectual and humane ways, are incredibly brave and badass in combating abusive and illicit power in all its forms. I think of this as the new political underground resistance in an age when science-- for better or worse (too often worse)-- can form the basis of law and policy that effect the lives of millions.
What an amazing comment. I'm honoured. Thank you so much.
Dr Elizabeth Dalgarno, who has her own Substack definitely fits into this 'club' too.
Speaking of "club" members, late French political philosopher Tzvetan Todorov wrote something beautiful about Holocaust survivor and historian Primo Levi in the introduction to Hope and Memory. To paraphrase, Todorov writes that, though the subjects Levi delves into are dark, the "light" comes from Levi himself for having the courage to do it.
We're in very strange times regarding free speech and intellectual freedom where it's becoming increasingly dangerous to expose any of the methods of illicit power. But more risk, more light. So thank you.
Absolutely, Emma. These cases get so misrepresented in the media and Cassie’s behaviour could easily have been interpreted as “it can’t have been that bad because she still said she loved him”. In the UK we have a charity called Level Up which seeks to change the language around the reporting of domestic abuse cases and coverage of women who have died because of abuse.
https://welevelup.org/about-us/
I think the more this is discussed the more people will understand why women behave the way they do. I have recently read that women calling the police to report DV are being arrested themselves because when they realise the police can’t/won’t help, they channel their anger towards the officers in attendance. If you can, listen to this podcast by Louise Tickle:
https://www.tortoisemedia.com/listen/hidden-homicides
Having said all that, I know you are far more experienced than myself however, our reporting is very much aligned with America’s.
Thank you 😊
Thank you Dr. Katz for all you do. I would love to learn more about coercion and violence as they apply to current events. We all need to learn more. It’s time-out for victim blaming.
Yes I’d like more posts like this in addition to your other posts.