The Schizophrenic/Psychiatric Mirror:
My Reflection on the Co-dependent Dynamic
By Patricia Lefave, D.D. (P), B.R.P.
The two extreme poles of co-dependent dysfunction are Aggressor (sociopathy) and Victim (schizophrenia). The Aggressor doesn't know how to stay out of other people's boundaries. The Victim doesn't know how to keep other people out. This is always about boundary violation and the imbalance of power, with one side struggling to usurp the other's power, and the other side fighting to retain, or regain it.
The Aggressor is usually in a position of "authority" and makes the rules for others. In this relationship, the Victim always has her experience, perception, and feelings invalidated by the Aggressor. This relationship represents the generic power struggle of dysfunctional opposites. Though the details change, the "play" remains the same.
In every one of these events, there is at least one person operating covertly and involving a group of people. The Aggressor is motivated by the desire for power and the control of others. The Victim is motivated by a search for understanding and resolution. The Victim is always isolated, psychologically, and sometimes physically, and is prevented from telling the group anything about herself, and what's going on from her perspective. She is also prevented from asking the group any questions about what they are doing, or what they "think" is going on.
The two "sides" of this relationship mirror each other almost perfectly, except for the switched roles. The group perceives the Victim as the aggressor and the Aggressor as the victim. The Victim actually understands more, not less, than both the Aggressor and the group. But this is a mutual error in perception. It is the failure of either side to identify the problem which keeps it recycling.
The Victim fails to see her consciousness is higher than that of the Aggressor because the Victim is relating as equals. The Aggressor also fails to see that, but it's because he is relating to the Victim as a "superior" to an "inferior." The co-dependent relationship between the polarized extremes of dysfunction is the problem. The Victim is actually the most logical of the pair. The Aggressor represents anti-logic, the exact opposite of logic. The groups that get involved don't see either the Aggressor, or the Victim, as they really are, and that is the beginning of the mystification process. The group is led by the Aggressor to believe the reality between him, and the Victim is the opposite of itself.
The group then tries to make both the Victim, and the Aggressor fit the group's belief system. So the group acts out, based on their false beliefs about what's really going on, many of them joining in the abuse of the victim, simply because an opportunity to do so has been presented to them. It also allows them to use the Victim as a surrogate for their suppressed emotions which can't safely be expressed in the original circumstance. Sometimes the Victim represents a parent, or spouse of the Aggressor, or the group which supports him, who might leave, or harm them, if they were to express such anger directly.
The rule that keeps this recycling is the No Blaming rule. The first person to instruct the victim in the use of this rule is the Aggressor, who created the rule himself, in order to blame his victim's perception of reality, and emotional reactions to him. By doing so, he avoids accepting responsibility for his own distorted thinking and behavior. The Aggressor blames his victim for blaming him, which is against the dysfunctional rules. But when he is the one doing the blaming, he sees it as justified. In other words, the Aggressor creates the No Blaming Rule, and then exempts himself from his own rule! That keeps the infinite loop of the Aggressor's reasoning a closed system, and he remains forever "right" within it. He has so completely deluded himself that nothing penetrates it.
The only hope the Victim has of penetrating that mindset, is to become completely aware of the paradigm from start to finish, including the manipulation of the group, and then, detached from the relationship with the Aggressor, expose the whole thing as the non-sense that it is.
Because the group doesn't see the truth about the Aggressor, the members accept his version of events, and reality is turned around, becoming the exact opposite of itself. Everything that is being said is actually true, but the truth teller and the liar are switched in the minds of the group members. This is how the paradoxical trap is created and sustained. It is this trap, understood in the end by only the original pair, that makes the Aggressor smile at his victim, for he has "won" his "game", and that's what he believes makes him a "superior" human being.
Everyone else involved is often smiling and quite amused also. It's usually because they have been deceived by the Aggressor, and, having accepted his version of "reality", have entered into what is now a group delusion. The Victim is now seen as an "inferior" person, or lunatic, who has no "real" idea about what's going on.
Sometimes, the individual in the role of the Victim knows who it was that started the routine. Sometimes, she does not know, can't make sense of the group event, and is simply overwhelmed by the strain of the group's acting out, verbal and psychological abuse, and the refusal of the participants to communicate directly. Either way, the starting point is not within the brain of the Victim. But, even if the group has become aware of the truth, she is then treated as expendable. All of those involved tend to avoid responsibility for their part in a group behavior that is as regressive as an old fashioned witch hunt. Just as the witch can prove her innocence by drowning for the mob or her guilt by surviving the water torture, only to be burned alive at the stake instead, the "patient" can be crazy and admit it or crazy and deny it. Either way, once labeled, you're GOING to be the witch, or the ‘schizophrenic,’ and there is no escape from your pre-determined fate.
The Victim sometimes goes "mad" trying to reason with the Aggressor and trying to get everybody else involved to hear what she is saying as "real." She looks for logic in the Aggressor's thought processes, or tries to get the Aggressor, and the group that supports him, to just leave her alone, since they refuse to listen to anything she says anyway. They talk about her like she's not there, because they are projecting their own ignorance, the Aggressor's version of reality, and their lack of conscious awareness about what is really going on, onto her. The Victim does not even consider the possibility that the group members consider themselves to be "hidden" while they behave in such a way, since that wouldn't make any sense. That's the victim's error.
Logic has nothing to do with this. This is about POWER, used without reason. The Aggressor is anti-logical to perfection. His only purpose is to obtain, and keep, power and control of others, including the group he has manipulated. The only real difference between the two protagonists is the spirit that motivates them.
The Victims often seek mutual solutions, so "we" don't understand the thinking processes of those who value "power over others" as a goal. That's the Aggressor's idea of a life "solution." Relating to him is like speaking two different languages while using the same words. The words are identical but the meanings (two) are the opposite. The Aggressor's goal results in mutual losses but he is unaware of the future outcome, because he thinks in terms of adversarial opposites, not complementary opposites. He "wins" by having someone else, lose. It's the rush from that, which he's really after. It's his "fix". This is the Aggressor's "game". Once exposed, from start to finish, the "game" is over.
And once this is fully understood, the Victim is no longer confused by either the Aggressor, or the group that enables him. The Aggressor is disempowered by the revelation of his, no longer "hidden", agenda. But the Victim will have to spell out the obvious, pedantically, to the Aggressor, and all of those who support him, as if talking to small children, because they are all now so self deluded, that unless she understands that she is, indeed, talking to the brainwashed, who are absolutely convinced that they understand it all perfectly, none of them, aggressor, or group members, will ever be able to get past the psychological deafness that is impairing everyone's perception of reality about the entire event.
Seeing the truth of this will set us all free. It breaks the co-dependent relationship because the Victim, now often "diagnosed" as the "schizophrenic"(higher consciousness) who is motivated by a search for resolution, becomes aware of her own error, and with that awareness, comes the simultaneous awareness of the Aggressor's, or sociopath's, error. In reality, they are mirrored perspectives of the same problem. At that point, the meaning becomes clear to the "schizophrenic", the confusion starts to go, and everything begins to click into place. The breakDOWN then starts to become the breakTHROUGH.
Having had my own experience defined as an imaginary disease process, do I believe all the people who got involved in this, including the psychiatrists, "plotted" to do me harm? No. It's much more frightening than that. They are operating robotically to a stimulus/response pattern as they've been trained to do, just as cults and dysfunctional family members are trained to do. None of them are "allowed" to question the "authority" at the top of the pyramid. All you psychiatrists and mental health professionals please focus on the following:
When you tell the victim that she must NEVER blame "others," you are repeating and reinforcing the aggressor's instruction to the victim. The Aggressor does that because he will not accept responsibility for his OWN distorted thinking and behavior, and, instead, he blames his Victim's accurate perception of him and APPROPRIATE emotional responses to the violation.
Definition of Blame: “To hold accountable."
Why are we all so frightened of holding the guilty accountable, even verbally? Blame is not vengeance. I'm not advocating identification with the Aggressor. I'm not advocating doing to him, as he has done to me. What I'm advocating for is exposure and psycho spiritual detachment from the Aggressor. That's a very big difference. However, we can never detach from something we aren't "allowed" to see, can we? In these situations, which are so severe that an individual's ego identity breaks down under the pressure, you psychiatrists, and many others, are failing to see the supportive role you are playing.
The victim "thinks” she's a victim because SHE IS A VICTIM. The Aggressor simply denies it. What we all need to do is stop REACTING like the victims and the group enablers, the Aggressor expects us to be. Victims don't CHOOSE to be victims. Aggressors choose that role FOR us. And to those of you who like to say, "Really, there are no victims," I pose a question. Are there no aggressors either? After all, the roles go together and you can't have one without the other. If it's true that there are no victims or aggressors, psychiatrists need to get to all the police stations in the world as quickly as possible. All the police are suffering from the same delusions that I am.
Unless the mental health profession accepts the reality of this, you will continue to blame the victims for telling the truth AND excuse the aggressors for lying about what they, in fact, do. Psychiatry is a major part of the problem. None of us are totally to blame NOR totally blameless. All of us are to blame SOMETIMES. If psychiatrists stop thinking in such a polarized way, you'll stop creating such judgmental extremes of "diagnosis."
I believe the majority of psychiatrists are sincere in their desire to help people, and have been thoroughly convinced that they are seeing "diseases." Like members of any cult, they are True Believers, determined to "save" the lost. No understanding that comes from "outside" the Faith is of any value to them. They are devout in their beliefs. Anyone who rejects the Faith gets shunned so that she can't tell the faithful anything they don't want to know, nor ask them any questions they don't like.
There is nothing harder to penetrate than blind faith, no one more difficult to reason with, and nothing harder to escape than those who are certain of their "superior" understanding and who become determined to convert me to their Faith, for my ‘own good.’ Psychiatry has enabled and supported both sides of this metaphysical, co-dependent "illness" by refusing to see that the whole thing is based upon a Bait and Switch con game, that it's about POWER, and that logic has nothing to do with it. They have manufactured "insanity" as their "product", and then they manufactured a "treatment" for their own creation. And they are coming up with dozens of brand new "mental illnesses" all the time, and the "treatments" to go with them.
The redefining of human problems, or unwanted emotional reactions as "mental Illness," gives psychiatrists unquestioned power and control. That is the point of the label. And that's why it doesn't really matter what diagnosis is given. It's not about diseases. It's about political control. This usurping of power is the problem in the first place. The circle of insanity has been made escape proof.
Just for the sake of argument, use this as a hypothesis: The mental patient is a human being exactly the same as the psychiatrist or any family member. If you were the one totally controlled, do you think you would feel frightened, angry, frustrated, or hopeless? If that went on long enough, do you think your brain chemistry might change? Do you think you might consider murder and/or suicide as the only way out? By the way, I'm not sanctioning that as a choice. I'm talking about the reality of it, out in the open, in an attempt to defuse situations with that potential outcome.
Once all these "insane" people start acting out, because they can't get out of psychiatry's tautology by talking it out, we should be well on our way to creating Hell on Earth. For, as we have seen, presented to us in the language of psychosis, which is our collective nightmare, we are all being controlled by "The Alien Nation". We are alienated from the truth about both ourselves and others. We humans are the "Martians", little people, green with irrational envy, trying to enslave the Earth to do our bidding, in order to make ourselves feel bigger, and better, about our unresolved pain, isolation and loneliness. This is the truth we aren't "allowed" to talk about because that would be complaining, or "whining" about it, and what's dysfunctional rule number one? No One Must Be Blamed. Therefore, no one can escape the Cycle created by Rule No. 1: The Dysfunctional Tautology.
But the bright side is, if Psychiatry is left in control, operating as it is now, there should be lots of employment opportunities for those who want to go into law enforcement or the military. Or, maybe we could all just wake up and create a new reality by facing the old reality of this together, and finally learn to stop playing this crazy game for good!
Patricia Lefave, D.D. (P.)
© 2003, Patricia Lefave