What about Whitney?

 

There are credible reports that Amber Heard regularly abused her sister Whitney. So why did Whitney testify in Amber’s defence, and apparently perjure herself on the stand for her? And against Depp, who had been good to her?

This is not surprising. It is the usual case, when one has been abused in childhood. Nineteenth-century French “alienist” Auguste Tardieu reports the experience of a Dr. Nidart, called to testify against the parents of an abused girl:

What Dr. Nidart discovered, to his evident puzzlement, was that Adelina would invent stories of what had happened to her, in order to cover up the crimes of her parents against her own person, imagining falls and accidents, rather than allow others to know the horrible truth of what had been done to her. As we shall see, her parents had kept her literally hermetically sealed off from the real world outside, and in a pathetic, heartbreaking gesture of tenderness toward her own tormentors, she wished to protect them ... from the world.

This is probably why Freud abandoned his original “seduction theory” of the cause of mental illness, in favour of the Oedipus complex. After being so certain of the former, he never explains what made him abandon it for the latter idea, that the sexual molestation was all imagined by the child. Except to say that patients did not stay in therapy when he propounded the seduction theory. True or not, they would not hear this criticism of their parent. 

Freud developed a contempt for his patients.

This phenomenon is obviously also related to the well-known “Stockholm syndrome,” a tendency of hostages to take the side of their captors over time.

But why does this happen?

The best explanation, it seems to me, is that we have a God-shaped hole in our psyches. We are born with a craving for certainly. Every child seeks truth and right; no child, as the founder of Boy’s Town observed, wants to be bad. When this is not satisfied by an awareness and acceptance of God, the psyche must latch onto something. As Chesterton wisely said, “Those who do not believe in God will believe in anything.”

Narcissists ultimately believe in themselves as God. A narcissistic parent or older sibling will do what they can to impose that belief on those around them, impressionable others in their power: a child or a kid sister.

Among the things they will inevitably do is to seduce their charge into some form of immorality. This becomes a test of their true allegiance. Once accomplished, it holds the victim more completely in thrall. The helpless little fly can now no longer hope to appeal to the true God for aid, or to the concepts of right or justice, or to the world outside. Everything depends on the approval of the parent or sibling, who holds their secret.

The child, even once an adult, will then commonly sacrifice their own interests for those of the narcissist, and will desperately defend their false god against all comers.

The cure for mental illness, as a result, is true religion. AA has it right: one must acknowledge and submit to a “Higher Power.” Those who do get well. Those who do not do not get well. Jung said the same.

And do not think of the Whitneys as mere helpless victims. There is good reason why the prohibition on idolatry is the First Commandment. It is the sine qua non of all morality. One is morally culpable for idolatry. It is the one unforgivable sin, the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. If worshipping yourself as God is the worst sin possible, worshipping another as God is only marginally better.