Estranged parents as stalkers

The research on stalking focuses on former or would-be romantic partners, with a lesser emphasis on friends and fans. I have yet to find more than the briefest note about family members as stalkers. But estranged parents’ obsessive pursuit of their children, the clinging to the pursuit as a way to keep the illusion of a relationship, the way they turn on their children when the illusion breaks, even the lack of insight into the effect they have on their children–it all fits the stalker paradigm. Here I’m going to be gathering quotes and resources to examine how the classic stalker paradigm applies to estranged parents.

Some quick notes before I begin:

• Not all estranged parents stalk.
• Stalkers who previously had a romantic relationship with their target escalate to violence a significant proportion of the time. Estranged parents do not. Based on reports from estranged adult children, physical assaults are uncommon and attempted murder is almost unheard-of. If you’re being stalked, your own knowledge of what your parents are capable of is a better measure than anything I could write, so don’t second-guess yourself; but based on my extensive anecdata, estranged parents don’t pose the same risk of homicide as romantic stalkers.

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The stalking cure: how to rehabilitate a stalker, by Elizabeth Day

“Normally a stalker has had an intimate relationship with the victim in which there tends to be abuse and control issues,” says Laura Richards, a criminal behavioural analyst and co-founder of the charity Protection Against Stalking. “When the woman leaves, the stalker cannot take the rejection and then they fixate.

“I call it the ‘angel/demon’ syndrome. When the stalker is arrested, he will often be very plausible in interview. He’ll say: ‘I love her, she’s the centre of my life, I didn’t realise I was upsetting her.’ Then, when she doesn’t behave the way he wants, it will be: ‘She’s a bitch, she’s not going to destroy my life.'”

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Researchers Unravel the Motives of Stalkers, by Jane E. Brody

Dr. Kienlen conducted the first preliminary study of the backgrounds and psychological profiles of stalkers. More than half of the 24 male stalkers she interviewed had evidence of what psychologists call an attachment disorder stemming from the childhood loss or absence of a caring and consistent parent or guardian, usually in the first six years of life.

Although the theory of attachment disorder has its critics, Dr. Kienlen and other experts in stalking believe it may be a ”predisposing factor” for stalking behavior by making it difficult for the person to establish and maintain healthy relationships. ”Their parents may have divorced and the custodial parent had little contact with the child,” she said. ”The parents may have had a drug or alcohol problem; the child may have been physically, sexually or emotionally abused or even totally abandoned.”

Dr. Kienlen said she had encountered three kinds of attachment disorders among stalkers. The ”preoccupied” stalker has a poor self-image but a positive view of others and constantly seeks their approval and validation in order to feel good about himself. When rejected by others, the person stalks to restore his sense of self.

The ”fearful” stalker has a poor self-image as well but also sees others as unreliable and unsupportive. The stalker tends to get caught in a vicious cycle of wanting someone to boost his own self-image, then rejecting the person for not being trustworthy, which prompts the person to stalk because he again needs someone to boost his sagging ego.

The ”dismissing” stalker thinks of other people as jerks and usually remains distant from them to maintain an inflated self-image. The stalker with dismissing attachment disorder who does form attachments become angry when a breakup occurs and may stalk out of revenge, to retaliate for being mistreated.

Most of the stalkers Dr. Kienlen interviewed also had extreme personality disturbances. The most frequent one encountered in stalkers was narcissistic personality disorder, which Dr. Kienlen said gave stalkers an inflated sense of self-worth and an intense need for other people to compliment and idolize them.

Other personality disorders experts frequently encounter in stalkers are extreme dependency, constantly needing the support, attention and approval of other people, and borderline personality disorder, having unstable moods and an exaggerated reaction to rejection and abandonment. Only about 10 percent of stalkers have an antisocial personality disorder, with an above-it-all detachment from other people that is most often encountered in criminals.

In 80 percent of the men Dr. Kienlen interviewed, there was also a precipitating factor, such as a recent loss that seriously upset them and seemed to have brought on their stalking behavior. The losses ranged from the break-up of an intimate relationship, a lost job and death of a parent to learning that they themselves had a serious illness.

”My theory is that in these vulnerable individuals, the losses damaged their sense of self-worth,” Dr. Kienlen said. ”To alleviate their grief or feelings of emptiness, they compensated by focusing on stalking. Sometimes the stalker blames the victim for the loss and stalks out of anger.”

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The Bogeyman: Stalking and Its Aftermath, by Sherry L. Meinberg

“Chapter 5: Personal Applications” is so useful that I’d quote it all if I  could.

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From the Eye of the Stalker: Personality Profiling of Self-Reported Stalkers, a thesis by Katherine S-L. Lau and Delroy L. Paulhus.

This section is going to be a mess while I read, make notes, and reorganize ideas.

Over the course of several studies, Lau and Paulhus confirmed that among their research population–college students–“borderline and psychopathic personalities were independent predictors of stalking.”

They describe psychopathic personalities as “antagonistic, with domineering, antisocial tendencies, and often have a past criminal history. They are aggressive and violent to people inside and outside their relationships, and the violence is often severe.” They’re considered to be most strongly characterized by a combination of “dominant and antisocial behavior.” The authors’ studies found  that psychopathy correlated highly with revenge behavior and revenge fantasies, but not with low self-esteem or high impulsivity. Psychopaths were motivated by a need to get even–they “respond to provocation with revenge”–and were willing to go farther than BPDs to get revenge. While both males and females with psychopathic traits appeared in the study population, psychopaths were overwhelmingly male.

Borderline personalities are “jealous, demanding, dependent, insecurely-attached, and fearful of abandonment. They rarely have criminal records and any violence is usually confined to the intimate relationship.” The authors characterize BPDs as a combination of “impulsive lifestyle and emotional vulnerability.” BPD correlated highly with anger rumination and  an inability to forgive, as well as low self-esteem and high impulsivity. They “ruminate and avoid reconciliation,” and stalk “due to their intense anger rumination and inability to ‘let go’.” Both males and females with BPD traits appeared in the study population, but BPDs were overwhelmingly female.

Our results indicated a parallel distinction between the Cobra [psychopath] and Pit-bull’s [BPD] stalking. Whereas the Cobra stalks purely to exact revenge, the borderline appears to believe that a relationship with the target of their pursuit is still possible.

Another description of female Borderline stalkers:

The Borderline Stalker. […] [T]his woman appears to have a self-esteem deficit linked to insecurity about relationships. Her fears about rejection and abandonment promote dependent behavior in relationships. Emotionally unstable and impulsive, her feelings toward others quickly fluctuate between extremes of love and hate, and she often disregards potential consequences. It may be this intensity of emotion that leads to rumination and difficulty ‘letting go’ of a relationship, whether real or imagined. This same inconsistency makes the behavior of borderlines difficult to predict (Flury et al., 2008).[….]

The parallels with members of estranged parents’ forums are manyfold. But first, a digression into the gender divide between BPD and psychopathy:

In studies, women are frequently diagnosed as borderline and men as psychopathic, an issue Lau and Paulhus discuss. My own understanding is that there’s an ongoing debate about whether men and women are diagnosed differently because of gender expectations. Lau and Paulhus used anonymous personality tests to distinguish BPD from psychopathy and still found that BPD was primarily female and psychopathy was primarily male, so my interpretation is that the two disorders are genuinely separate entities. Socialization apparently routes males and females into different disorders.

Which is fascinating. When you look closely, BPD is a parody of femininity: Define yourself by your relationships, because your job is to be pleasing to others; be dependent, because girls are too weak to look after themselves and besides, boys don’t like independent girls; rejection is a judgement of your ability to please, which is the whole of your being. Psychopathy is a parody of masculinity: Detachment is strength, your worth is determined by your ability to dominate others, destroy anyone who challenges you or they’ll have won.

(But I digress.)

Both sexes displayed both personality disorders, and both disorders predisposed people toward stalking behavior. A typology of female stalkers, with traits that are also applicable to males:

The Borderline Stalker. Whether labeled a Pit-bull or a borderline personality, this woman appears to have a self-esteem deficit linked to insecurity about relationships. Her fears about rejection and abandonment promote dependent behavior in relationships. Emotionally unstable and impulsive, her feelings toward others quickly fluctuate between extremes of love and hate, and she often disregards potential consequences. It may be this intensity of emotion that leads to rumination and difficulty ‘letting go’ of a relationship, whether real or imagined. This same inconsistency makes the behavior of borderlines difficult to predict (Flury et al., 2008).[….]

The Psychopathic Stalker. Whether labeled a Cobra or a subclinical psychopath this woman is likely to have had a previous history of antisocial behavior. This stalker type may then go on to commit further misbehavior during the stalking process (Palarea et al., 1999). Profiling the Romantic Stalker 25 She can be summarized as a callous, manipulative individual prone to antisocial behavior. Emotionally cold, she has difficulty with intimate personal attachment. She is likely to drive others away from her, but does not respond well to rejection. Although she may not experience as intense anger as the borderline stalker, she is more likely to exact revenge on anyone perceived to have wronged her. [….]

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Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream: A Forensic Psychiatrist Illuminates the Darker Side of Human Behavior, by Robert I. Simon