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1. 00:01 recently we as a species have developed a tendency when we are faced with an unpleasant fact an unpalatable truth what we do is we redefine words and then we feel good with ourselves we feel egoonic so many young people tell me that oral sex is not sex really then why is it
2. 00:29 called oral sex sex similarly many victims of abuse tell me that reactive abuse is not abuse really then why is it called abuse it's called abuse because it is abuse there is no excuse for abuse no form of of abuse is justified ever not even as a reaction to abuse so if you're
3. 00:59 abusing someone because they had abused you you're an abuser as well end of story not comfortable not nice to hear you hate me for saying this but your abusive behavior within an abusive relationship renders you an abuser too however today's
4. 01:20 video deals with the science of reactive abu ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab ab abuse what is it that we know about this type of behavior and is it linked to other forms of aggression
5. 01:32 emotionality cognitions and so on and so forth my name is Sandakn i'm the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited the first book ever on narcissistic abuse i'm also a professor professor of psychology reactive abuse is of course a
6. 01:49 form of what we call reactive aggression reactive aggression involves an emotional response and the emotional response tends to be targeted towards a perceived source of distress or frustration sometimes when the perceived source cannot be attacked
7. 02:11 directly the aggression is displaced onto other people and objects when the disturbing frustrating abusive traumatizing agent person object cannot be tackled directly that aggression is displaced and so aggression is we know today socially learned it's not innate
8. 02:41 you're not born with aggression aggression or at least aggressive behavior is socially learned and it is a reaction to frustration the frustration aggression hypothesis is a theory first proposed in 1939 by John Doalt and his colleagues and they suggested that frustration always
9. 03:02 produces an aggressive urge and that aggression is always a result of prior frustrations neil Miller one of the proponents of this theory noted later that frustration can lead to several kinds of actions but he m maintained that the urge to become aggressive
10. 03:24 um is more dominant when the thwarting or the abusive behavior or the frustrating behavior continues in other words the more you are exposed to abuse the more you are exposed to trauma the more you're exposed to fr frustration and thwarting and
11. 03:41 obstruction the more likely you are to become aggressive in 1989 the psychologist Leonard Burkowitis proposed that frustration the frustration must be decidedly unpleasant in order to evoke an aggressive urge so the frustration aggression or aggress aggression
12. 04:02 frustration hypothesis is the foundational cornerstone to explaining reactive abuse when we analyze the phrase reactive abuse we notice of course that there is a reaction what is a reaction it's a response to a stimulus but a stimulus can also inhibit
13. 04:23 action can prevent action for example the freeze response is a form of inhibition inhibition brought on by a perceived real or imagined anticipated or present threat to summarize a reaction could be inhibi inhibitory or disinhibitory a reaction
14. 04:48 could be action could result in action or could result in freezing there is something called reactive inhibition reactive inhibition is a part of a larger theory called Hull's mathematical deductive theory of learning and this kind of reaction is
15. 05:12 this kind of inhibition the reactive inhibition is a tendency for response magnitude to decrease with increasing practice or with fatigue hal's theory of learning predicts that reactive abuse is likely to decrease with time not to increase with time as the victim is
16. 05:38 exposed to additional abuse time and again as the victim practices reactive abuse fatigue sets in and desensitization the victim gets habituated gets used to the abuse and the incidence of reactive reactive abuse declines there is a distinction of course between reactive and
17. 06:07 endogenous um reactive is associated with or originates from um a stimulus or some situation we react it's a response to something external it's exogenous for example we could you could have a psychotic episode that is secondary to a traumatic or otherwise
18. 06:30 stressful event in your life and that is the example of a reactive u process in in your psyche in your in your psychology it would be considered reactive because it is the outcome of something that emanated mainly from the outside endogenous episodes are
19. 06:54 unrelated to any specific triggers they emanate and they come from the inside they are the outcome of totally internal processes which are divorced from reality and so reactive abuse of course is a kind of exogenous reaction it's an exogenous response it's a response to
20. 07:16 something outside there's an abuser there's a victimizer there's a trauma a traumatizer there's a perpetrator and there is a reaction which constitutes abusive behavior but still is responsive is a response to something there's a whole theory known as reactance theory
21. 07:38 it's a model of human behavior and it states that in response to a perceived threat um to for example threat to behavioral freedom or loss of behavioral freedom a person experiences psychological reactance or more simply reactance in other words reactance the theory
22. 08:02 postulates that abuse trauma all these experiences actually limit your freedom they're perceived as kind of suffocating incarcerating constricting the your behaviors the the menu of behaviors available to you is much more limited there is a restriction
23. 08:25 or threat to or loss of behavioral freedom and you react to this then this is known as reactance it's a motivational state characterized by distress anxiety resistance and the desire to restore the lost behavioral freedom or the restricted behavioral
24. 08:46 freedom according to this model when people feel coerced into a certain behavior they react against this coercion often by demonstrating an increased preference for the behavior that is restrained they may perform this behavior opposite to what to that
25. 09:06 desire this was first proposed by Jack Brem BHM in 1966 we can use reactance theory to make sense of reactive abuse the abuser restricts the behavioral freedom of the victim in highly specific ways the abuser for example makes demands or punishes for highly specific
26. 09:30 behaviors and then the victim reacts there is a reactance and the victim emphasizes these limited proscribed forbidden behaviors and actually enacts them when the abuser tells you don't do this you should not do this you're not allowed to do this your tendency is to spite the
27. 09:55 abuser and actually do it exactly the behavior the the abuser tells you if you behave this way I'm going to punish you this provokes you to behave exactly this way and this is reactance it may be perceived as abuse by an outside observer but actually it's the abuser
28. 10:15 that is setting the terms of this interchange and so reactive abuse to some extent is a response to a stimulus the stimulus being abuse but in some ways it's also a reactance behavior kind of defiant behavior it's a form of defiance and a third aspect of reactive
29. 10:43 abuse is that it may be a form of reaction formation in psychoanalytic theory reaction formation is a defense mechanism in which unacceptable or threatening unconscious impulses are denied and they're replaced in consciousness with their opposite so for
30. 11:03 example to conceal an unconscious prejudice an individual may preach tolerance to deny feelings of rejection a mother may be overindulgent and overprotective towards a child if you're a latent homosexual you would become homophobic it's like your conscious
31. 11:23 behavior denies the unconscious reality and this is known as reaction formation through the symbolic relationship between the unconscious wish and its opposite the outward behavior provides a disguised outlet for the tendencies that it seems to oppose reactive behavior can
32. 11:44 be conceptualized in these terms the abuser provokes in you aggression hatred negative effects this kind of emotions this kind of motivations these kinds of this kind of drive is alien to you you reject it you don't want to be aggressive you don't want to be hateful you don't want
33. 12:08 to be violent so you re you reject it but you reject it by actually engaging in behaviors that affirm these unconscious constructs or processes that the abuser has triggered in you it's a kind of inverted reaction formation in classic reaction formation the behavior
34. 12:33 denies the impulse the behavior denies the drive the behavior denies the the internal psychological processes it's the opposite of the unconscious impulse that is denied whereas in this type of reaction formation inverted reaction formation the behavior
35. 12:54 externalizes externalizes the unconscious impulse that had been triggered in you by the abuser it expresses it in a way so let's go back to Hal's theory of learning it's a mathematical system actually of learning mathematical system that conceptualizes learning analyzes
36. 13:18 learning and it is based on classical and instrumental conditioning it contains numerous postulates and corollaries to explain highly specific behaviors and so one of the most complex theories in psychology and there's a major emphasis on need
37. 13:35 reduction what the theory says is that learning depends on crucially need reduction first you need to reduce your neediness you need to cater to your needs or you need to suppress them some the the needs need to go away and only then you're open to learning learning is
38. 13:54 also associating with the associated with the building up of habit strength by contiguous reinforcement in other words if you're exposed to the same behavior time and again and again and again this creates a habit the habit becomes strong and this leads to learning and there is
39. 14:13 extinction events extinction of learning brought about by nonreinforced repetition of responses and forgetting as a process of decay with the passage of time clark Hull came up with this theory and so when we apply Hull's theory of learning to reactive
40. 14:35 abuse we see all these elements in play
41. 14:41 there is habituation there is exposure to abuse repeated abuse contiguous abuse unrelenting and unending loop of abuse this creates a habit the habit becomes stronger and stronger and there's learning involved ironically the learning is to not react so it reduces
42. 15:02 reactive abuse finally the reactive abuse becomes extinct not because of
43. 15:11 nonreinforced nonreinforced repeated responses but it becomes extinct because of habituation there is an something called reaction potential it's a probability that a stimulus will facilitate a particular response it is a multiplic multiplication of an organism's habit
44. 15:31 strength and drive strength the habit strength as I said is a hypothetical construct it reflects learning strength and it varies with the number of reinforcements the amount of reinforcement the interval between stimulus and response the interval
45. 15:47 between response and reinforcement etc etc this was all this described by the by in 1943 it's kind of adjunct behaviorism but habituation can lead to extinction this is where I disagree with Hull's theory of learning hal's theory of learning says the more habituated you
46. 16:09 are the more you learn and I say yes of course that's one possibility but it could also happen that the more habituated you are the more you get used to the stimulus the more desensitized you are to the stimulus and the habit causes extinction extinction of behavior
47. 16:31 behavioral extinction and forgetting so this is a kind of modification of Hal's theory is in his theory drive strength is the intensity of a drive um and it has it is related to the number of hours of deprivation of a need but this can be equally applied to
48. 16:52 reactive abuse the abuser deprivives you of your needs this enhances your drive the drive causes you to behave but at the same time you get habituated you develop a habit the abuse become becomes uh familiar it's it desensitizes you and then you give up on any kind of response
49. 17:17 it's not that you freeze as much as you avoid you shun the abuser you walk away you ignore the abuse and the frequency and incidence of reactive abuse declines that's a theory of behind reactive abuse i do not condone reactive abuse because it is abuse it's very easy
50. 17:39 to become a narcissist in the presence of a narcissist it's very easy to be develop psychopathic traits such as defiance and recklessness in the presence of a psychopath it's very easy to get infected it's contagious narcissism and psychopathy are contagious don't let
51. 17:57 yourself don't uh stoop to their level don't become them maintain your dignity your integrity and your identity by avoiding reactive abuse