Karen Kellock

THE CONTAGION

OF MADNESS

This time I’m going in with eyes wide open:  I won’t make the same mistakes again.  This time I’ll see the signs and no hearts broken-- I won’t be blind and lose my way (a sin).

Research  (NIMH Grant) with Dept of Psychiatry  at the College of Medicine,  University of California Irvine 1979

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GOSSIP AND ISOLATION

The zvengali will gossip and slander you constantly to neighbors, the workmen or anyone who will listen.  This is his way of keeping your self-esteem down by isolating you and maintaining the tie to him, the cad with equally low self-esteem.  You must continue doing good (utterly clean and neat housekeeping, yoga, prayer, fasting and other self-improvements) while this is going on.  The only help at this point is GOD so spend time with him and forget social service agencies who will only mess you up and even deprive you of your home.  Speak only to closest friends tried and tested in the muck and mire.

HOME ASSIGNMENT FOR THE CONTAGION OF MADNESS:  READ PSALMS AND PROVERBS and you will know everything about human nature and the  differences between evil and righteous people, what to expect  and Who to call on (GOD) to help you.

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 The foregoing illustrates how sex sin creates obsessions:  It's  all about brain hormones, how perception works and how the modern female loses power.

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GOSSIP AND ISOLATION

The zvengali will gossip and slander you constantly to neighbors, the workmen or anyone who will listen.  This is his way of keeping your self-esteem down by isolating you and maintaining the tie to him, the cad with equally low self-esteem.  You must continue doing good (utterly clean and neat housekeeping, yoga, prayer, fasting and other self-improvements) while this is going on.  The only help at this point is GOD so spend time with him and forget social service agencies who will only mess you up and even deprive you of your home.  Speak only to closest friends tried and tested in the muck and mire.

HOME ASSIGNMENT FOR THE CONTAGION OF MADNESS:  READ PSALMS AND PROVERBS and you will know everything about human nature and the vitally important differences between evil and righteous people, what to expect  and who to call on to help you.

*******

Stop making yourself sick to avoid painful reality.  True peace comes only when the issues have been resolved--not when repressing anxieties down.  Self-delusion lowers self-esteem to the point that we feel deserving of the painful and sick situations we’re attached to while blinding us to (what should be) obvious signs of our destructive patterns.

Due to the prevalence of covert double standards in our culture we’re forced to accept the taken-for-granted premises and labels of reality.  They are seen as “reality” because they are covert and  thus  more dangerous and insanity-producing than the obvious double standards which are widely discussed.  Covert standards are not veiled in myths and legends of “human nature” but are seen as “reality—and growing up is accepting this reality”.  Their destructive nature is veiled by subtle communication devices which  as traumatic discriminations  make one feel personal blame.  The danger grows as women are not permitted to discuss  covert double standards which drive aggression inward and make them sick.

When caught in a painful situation like this a female  feels she's going crazy but can’t pinpoint what the problem is.  And so she  starts to   agree it's she who is bad or mad rather than the paradoxical cultural assumptions.  Personal recovery comes with  seeing the UNIVERSALITY of these problems along with clearly defining the signs--since cultures hang together through blindness.

Once seeing the signs one realizes that what was seen as "painful reality" was really just  a distortion based on manipulations and labels.  At this point the situation of attachment becomes an absurd movie, while simultaneously the  situations  thought to be absurd were actually healthy.    To regain your power of discernment we'll contrast  health and sickness and the contradictory ways both are labeled for the sake of manipulation.  It all falls in the context of RELATIONSHIPS, or Human Systems Theory.  How we see ourselves is defined against the ground of "others" in the system and this starts the problem.

Attachment creates blindness, so that the victim himself becomes the creator, victim and perpetuator of the system.  The system is addictive like alcoholism as anosygnasia sets in:  one is killing oneself while being unable to see he’s killing himself.   Women continue to regress with their wild vacillations between appropriate anger, fear, guilt and shame--and thus gradually lose hold on all reality and a sense of who they are.  They’re victims of living in an adulterous generation who tells them they must adjust to the dominant male view upon penalty of social exclusion (the worse punishment).  And so  we have a majority of manly women or shaky ladies ashamed of the feminine role in the home.

 A woman adapts to the dominant view only by denying her own healthy reality and self-expression.  Because denial prohibits self-affirmation she desperately needs the approval of men who feel superior to her. Then she's  victimized by her need to be validated by the superior class who must first decode whether her words are “appropriate” to them.  When a "superior" group labels an "inferior" one the latter feel to  blame and insanity sets in.

The fact that to decode all this we must become sign seekers truly defines this as an adulterous generation thinking it's reality is the only one--so that those who disagree are labeled deviant.  Female neurosis comes from adaptation to absurd situations unnatural  to her which demand she truncate parts of self to cope —making her seem or feel sick.  The adaptation is lost vision and self-delusion and this is insanity.  An adulterous generation is filled with blatant contradictions maintaining itself through  blindness.  Recovery and joy comes from releasing ourselves from submerged patterns and making our taken-for-granted reality (our mundaneity) absurd once more.  To get to the point of a permanent new vision one must first recognize the fear of delusion (years or decades) and then acceptance of the new reality.

Making your mundaneity absurd will emotionally release you from situations keeping you sick while allowing you to get on to destiny:  the maximization of full potential.  This is true health in contrast to neurosis characterized by repeating the same destructive cycles, getting stuck in ruts and being compelled to act them out recurrently.

LOVE

To be healthy is to love.  Sickness and disease results from the manipulation and abuse of love and what it means to be loved.  We must know the signs of the difference and in regaining our powers of discernment (which are obvious to clear minds) we will begin to self-actualize and become ready for true, consistent love.  This entails coming into the light of self-esteem—a healthy female behavior which gets punished since women are controlled by their esteem in the eyes of others. 

Low self-esteem becomes insanity from knowing the situation is impossible while being incapable of leaving it.  Women are taught to be hungry for love so their identity is hinged on relations with men, the superior class who validates them.  Taught to expect nothing more but conditional love from this class they perceive love's legitimacy only by way of indicators.  Then their low self-esteem  blinds them to what should be obvious to those with high self-esteem.  These phony superficial indicators are crucial hooks when the profound signs of respect  are missing or contradictory.

Love is based on respect but disrespect and manipulation happens naturally when women refuse to confront these contradictions and continue in delusion.  The sexes will regain healthy interactions only when they know the signs of true love. Paradoxically, ladies lose it through the same strategies used to attain it.  We’re only concerned with the male ego not the females crucial to health.   Women's liberation has not helped this situation  since it still sees the male reality as superior and exemplary--and as women become manly to be "superior" they get meaner then men, having borrowed something unnatural to them.  To be healthy women must be LADIES proud of their femininity--not sheepishly ashamed of their tender qualities: love of home, nature, children and animals. 

THE  CULTURE  IS  BECOMING  HYPER-MASCULINIZED:  CRUEL  AND  BRUTAL

Must Assert the Feminine to Make it Work (or She Too Becomes a Jerk)

True love is based on mutual vulnerability and lasting love is impossible unless women respect themselves as men respect themselves.  In short, they must become True Ladies in the traditional sense to have what they want.  Without mutual vulnerability between two lovers of equal self-esteem love soon turns destructive.  Because of the differences in the psyches of both sexes, premarital sex instantly puts her at the disadvantage—she is no longer invulnerable but at his mercy, having lost complete control and her leverage.  Don’t give him an edge if you want to keep your hedge (of protection for God’s election). Since women don't use chastity to gain the power they need, they instead become Sam Rage: the manly stage of thinking it's liberated to be furious--but female wrath becomes a cage.  It is far more honorable and just to return to chastity (denying sex) to get the power you need--and that is not being a whore as the feminists say  but rather a True Lady (before whom  the man is weak-kneed).

See the signs and you’ll be confirmed in what you already knew, were subconsciously aware of  or were blindly using as a manipulation yourself.  Most can see blatant contradictions in others while being blind to their own.   Let’s start with these terms:

CONDITIONAL  AND  UNCONDITIONAL  LOVE

Both sexes need love but have different notions and expectations of it due to differing backgrounds particularly with the mother.  For both there is anxiety about maternal loss—the unconditional love necessary for survival.  Later when this turns conditional, the sensed rejection produces  insecurity and loss of identity for females and being  afraid of love for males. 

Male Template:  Since unconditional love is the male’s first experience with the opposite sex they expect only unconditional from then on.  But, rejection by this first love object makes him terrified of commitment, only to be smashed.  His sexuality is affected by the degree to which a female is like his mother—and the incest taboo restrains total sexual-emotional commitment.  For him to safely feel the kind of total respect once felt for his mother means he must degrade the female to distinguish her from the mother. 

Female Template: For the girl the mother’s rejection produces lifelong identity-insecurity and need for approval ending in identity-through-vicarious-participation, or living as an extension of another.  She’s caught in painful vacillations between the all-consuming need for male love and approval to raise her status, to feelings of  inauthenticity when she does achieve his love.   Since her first experience with the opposite sex was the conditional love of her father, she expects nothing more than that.  As a consequence any interactional problems are read as personal blame and all energy resources are consumed to change the man to bring unconditional love.  But men only expect unconditional love (no demand that he change) and are compelled to test that devotion by cruelty while being unable to give unconditional love.

The case becomes even more complex.  Men can’t give unconditional love and tend to vacillate emotionally because they must—in response to their cultural identity of autonomy, independence and invulnerability to hurt—deny their feelings of love and warmth.  Making oneself vulnerable to hurt (an absolute requirement for love) is impossible without risking the loss of an autonomous identity.  Though both sexes have equal needs for love they have difficulties realizing and sustaining it.  Relationships turn destructive due to the sick cyclicity formed by  the interaction between male inability to commit vis-a-vis the female over-need for commitment and identity-through-men.  And so females stay in destructive situations to change them rather than the healthy response of walking away gently.  Since they don’t insist on respect but rather continue to mal-adapt, the respect necessary for  love is lost--for people manipulate those they do not respect.

NEUROTIC  RELATIONSHIPS

The male identity interacts destructively with  the female's by legitimating for both the inferior female identity.  Women learn from infancy to identify with, attract, catch and keep a man who they easily become obsessed with in the process.  Their culturally-conditioned female need for commitment, attachment and  devotion  all bring her heightened obsession which reinforces and validates the male’s desire for autonomy and his inability to commit himself fully. This results in an escalation of the worst characteristics of both:  women become more vulnerable and men more disrespectful, controlling and manipulative.

Sickly Cyclicity. The male vacillates for his identity against the defining ground of the female who becomes far less attractive as she reacts with growing desperation to her “ground” the increasingly ambivalent male.  The interactional hardening of identities is revealed by their separation at which time his façade of autonomy and ambivalence—and possible infidelity—loses its reason for being since it only existed to deny commitment in the first place.

he passive-aggressive male was so nice on the outside but inside  became a haunted house as she cried

When the male class is seen as superior by both sexes the lopsided state of vulnerability preventing love instantly sets the scene for manipulation: the superior one controls an area of which the other becomes increasingly and desperately out of control.  The relationship becomes more destructive as the male continues to lose respect for the already  “inferior” female.  As she subordinates her own identity she loses respect  for herself and becomes more incapable of confronting the contradictions keeping her down.  To  gain love and respect she must be a lady defined as a mature woman with high self-esteem and self-respect--for ladies are loved and neurotics are used.  The male loss of interest spur her regression to levels justifying his insensitive manipulations, all the while losing the devotion and fire keeping love alive.  In The Contagion of Madness are the patterns and consequences of manipulation.

STING-SHOTS  AND  FLIP-FLOPS

Signs of Manipulation

These two patterns are instant indications that one is manipulating the other:  sting-shots, or messages sent for desired reactions and flip-flops which are reality switches, mood swings and cycles.

Why We Need A Fence Against the Dense:

Sting-shots are statements made for the sole intention of manipulation and control by pushing buttons bringing on desired feelings or behaviors.  There are several examples:  bringing up past transgressions at timely moments, exploiting the other’s worst fears and jealousies that maintain a level of panic known to be successful in tightening attachment, hinting to test response rather than asking outright, making jokes and innuendoes about sex to stimulate or test response, making comments about other women at timely moments to provoke a reaction from a jealous wife, presexual courting behaviors as opposed to post orgasmic statements showing emotional withdrawal (come-here, go away relationships), wild accusations to compensate for one’s own guilty conscience, general guilt-tripping and moral, intellectual and emotional degradation of the other, the silent treatment (more powerful than words) in the form of not talking, not writing, not waiting, not attending to, not calling and not having sex, and nonverbal communication in the form of dress, neatness, housekeeping and mental or physical symptoms.  Behavior is monitored more by disattention of nonattention than by anything else.   Most shit-shots are intended to decrease the self-esteem of the other since this will hold the relationship together and since higher self-esteem would place it (the only perceived solution to low self-esteem) in jeopardy.

Flip-flops  If sting-shots arouse anxiety and the desired response by stinging, flip-flops arouse anxiety and maintain attachment by terrifying. The chapters below describe various cycles brought on by one “flipping” to another tape in their cycle, triggering the other’s reaction to their cycle.  The only way to adjust to a vacillator is to become part of the problem since any adaptation becomes itself vacillatory (schizoid). The two cycles intermesh like the cogs in two wheels.  Those with low self-esteem do not choose mates as much as they choose actors whose cycles and flip-flops synchronize with their own.

Flip-flops maintain attachment by recurrent reactivation of infantile fears of maternal (universal) rejection.  When the one vacillates suddenly in his emotions or commitment the female reacts with terror and labels it “desperate love” and “undying loyalty”.  This is the infantile reaction to early rejection: instead of hating the rejecter and thus facing the possibility of reprisal by total rejection of the needed parent (and therefore death), the infant turns this anger and hatred inward, takes the rejection to mean personal fault, blame or unworthiness and develops lower self-esteem since he is now the enemy.  He then attempts to disprove or change the rejection by over-pleasing and over-caring for the rejecter.  The more profound and recurrent the rejection the more attached the infant is to the rejecter since his decreasing self-esteem brings fear of death if he is alone.

MISLABELING  OF  LOVE

The most destructive form of abuse is the mislabeling of love and what it means to be loved, simply because this abuse involves continuous sting-shots and flip-flops.  A child who is intermittently beaten up will be told he is loved far more than a child from a loving family: He will adapt to cruel abuse by associating the two together.  In adulthood such attachments are maintained by continual sting-shots and flip-flops surrounding the misassociation with indicators of love.  These are initially captivating (since they must be pleasurable) but ultimately devastating as they are blinding:  money and financial dependency, gifts, sex and intermittent attention, words and the like—strategically doled out or threatened with withdrawal in order to hold destructive relationships together.

 EVIL CHAOS DESCRIPTION AND SOLUTIONS ARE IN THE BOOK:

The Contagion of Madness

Champion Guides Nine by Karen Kellock Ph.D.

*******

This time I’m going in with eyes wide open.  I won’t make the same mistakes again.  This time I’ll see the signs and no hearts broken.  This time I won’t be blind and lose my way (a sin)

Stop making yourself sick to avoid painful reality.  True peace comes only when the issues have been resolved not when repressing anxieties down.  Self-delucion lowers self-esteem to the point that we feel deserving of the painful and sick situations we’re attached to.  It also blinds us to (what should be) obvious signs of our destructive patterns.

Due to the prevalence of covert double standards in our culture we’re forced to accept the taken-for-granted premises and labels of reality.  They’re seen as “reality” because they are covert and are thus are far more dangerous and insanity-producing than the obvious double standards which are widely discussed.  Covert standards are not veiled in myths and legends of “human nature” but are seen as “reality—and growing up is accepting this reality”.  Their destructive nature is veiled by subtle communication devices which hurt far more as traumatic discriminations  seen to mean personal blame.  It is made far more destructive as women are not permitted to discuss these covert double standards which drive aggression inward and make them sick.

When caught in a painful situation like this you feel you’re going crazy but can’t pinpoint what the problem is.  So you begin to agree with those around you that it’s you who is bad or mad rather than the paradoxical cultural assumptions.  Personal recovery arrives from seeing the common nature of these problems and from the clear deliniation and explanation of the signs, since cultures hang together through blindness.

After you know the signs you will suddenly realize that what you thought was painful reality was simply a distortion based on manipulations and labels.  At this point the situation of attachment becomes an absurd movie to you.   Simultaneoulsy, the behaviors and situations you thought were absurd will are actually healthy!  To regain your power of discernment of the difference one must see the contrasts between health and sickness and the contradictory ways each are labeled for the sake of manipulation.

When one is attached one is blind—he is the creator, victim and perpetuator of the system.  It is just like alcoholism as anosygnasia sets in:  one is killing oneself while being unable to see he’s killing himself.   Women continue to regress with their wild vacillations between appropriate anger, fear, guilt and shame: and gradually lose hold on all reality and a send of who they are.  They’re victims of living in an adulterous generation who tells them they must adjust to the dominant male view upon penalty of social exclusion (the worse punishment).  And therefore we have a majority of manly women.

A woman adapts to the dominant view only by denying her own healthy reality and self-expression.  Because denial prohibits self-affirmation she desperately needs the approval of men who feel superior to her.  She is victimized by needing validation through the superior class who must first decode whether her words are “appropriate” to them.  When a superior group labels and inferior one the latter sees it as personal blame and insanity sets in.

We must become signseekers, truly a sign of an adulterous generation which thinks their reality is the only one so that those who disagree are labeled deviant.  Female neurosis comes from adaptation to absurd situations not natural to her which demand she truncate parts of self to cope—making her seem or feel sick.  The adaptation is lost vision and self-delusion is insanity.  An adulterous generation is filled with blatant contradictions which maintain themselves through forced blindness.  Recovery and joy comes from releasing ourselfs from submgerged pattenrs and making our taken-for-granted reality (our mundaneity) absurd once more.  To get to the point of recognition and acceptance of the permanent vision while realizing the pain he’s been in (through the solar plexus or gut) he must first become a sign-seeker which I’m here to give you.

Making your mundaneity absurd will emotionally release you from situations keeping you insant while allowing you to get on to destiny:  the maximization of full potential, to continue your personal evolution.  This is true health in contrast to neurosis characterized by repeating the same destructive cycles, getting stuck in ruts and being compelled to act them out recurrently.

LOVE

To be healthy is to love.  Sickness and disease results from the manipulation and abuse of love and what it means to be loved.  We must know the signs of the difference and in regaining our powers of discernment (which are obvious to clear minds) we will begin to self-acutalize and become ready for true, consistent love.  This entails coming into the light of self-esteem—a healthy female behavior which gets punished since women are controlled by their esteem in the eyes of others. 

Low self-esteem becomes insanity from knowing the situation is impossible while being incapable of leaving it.  Women are taught to be hungry for love so their identity is hinged on relations with men, the superior class who validates them.  Taught to expect nothing more but conditional love from this class, they perceive love only by way of indicators.  Then low self-esteem  allows blindness to things which are obvious to those with high self-esteem.  These phony superficial indicators are crucial hooks when the profound signs of respect and love are missing or contradictory.

Love is based on respect but disrespect and manipulation happens naturally when women refuse to confront these contradictions and continue in delusion.  The sexes will regain healthy interactions only when they know the signs of true love and that ladies are losing it by precisely the same strategies they are using to attain it.  We’re only concerned with the male ego not the female which is just as important to health.    True love is based on mutual vulnerability and lasting love is impossible unless women respect themselves as men respect themselves.  In short, they must become True Ladies in the traditional sense to have what they want.  Without mutual vulnerability between two lovers of equal self-esteem love soon turns destructive.  Because of the differences in the psyches of both sexes, premarital sex instantly puts her at the disadvantage—she is no longer invulnerable but at his mercy!  Don’t give him an edge if you want to keep your hedge (of protection for God’s election).

See the signs and you’ll be confirmed in what you already knew , were subconsciously aware of  or were using as a manipulation yourself—just as blindly.  Most can see blatant contradictions in others while not seeing our own.   Let’s start with these terms:

Conditional and Unconditional Love

Both sexes need love but have different notions and expectations about it due to differing backgrounds particularly with the mother.  For both there is anxiety about maternal loss—the loss of unconditional love necessary for survival.  Later when this turns conditional, rejection produces lifelong insecurity and loss of identity for females and being hurt and afraid of love for males. 

Male Template:  Since unconditional love is the male’s first experience with the opposite sex they expect only unconditional from then on.  But, rejection by this first love object makes him terrified of commitment, only to be smashed.  His sexuality is affected by the degree to which a female is like his mother—and the incest taboo restrains total sexual-emotional commitment.  For him to safely feel the kind of total respect once felt for his mother means he must degrade the female to distinguish her from the mother. 

Female Template: For the girl the mother’s rejection produces lifelong identity-insecurity and need for approval ending in identity-through-vicarious-participation, or living as an extension of another.  She’s caught in painful vacillations between the all-consuming need for male love and approval to raise her status, to feelings of inauthenticity when she does achieve his love.   Since her first experience with the opposite sex was the conditional love of her father, she expects nothing more than that.  As a consequence any interactional problems are read as personal blame and all energy resources are consumed to change the man to bring unconditional love.  But men only expect unconditional love (not demanding that he change) and are compelled to test that devotion by cruelty—yet they can’t give unconditional love.

The case becomes even more complex.  Men can’t give unconditional love and tend to vacillate emotionally because they must—in response to their cultural identity of autonomy, independence and invulnerability to hurt—deny their feelings of love and warmth.  Making onesself vulnerable to hurt—an absolute requirement for love—is impossible without risking the loss of identity based on healthy autonomy.  Though both sexes have equal needs for love they have difficulties realizing and sustaining it.  Relationships turn destructive due to the sick cyclicity of male inability to commit and the female over-need for commitment and identity needs by association with men.  And so females stay in destructive situations to change them rather than the healthy response of walking away gently.  Since they don’t insist on respect but rather continue to adapt, the respect necessary for  love is lost.  People manipulate those they do not respect.

NEUROTIC  RELATIONSHIPS

The male identity interacts destructively with that of the female by creating and legitimating for both the inferior female identity.  Women learn from infancy to identify with, attract, catch and keep a man who they easily become obsessed with in the process.  The culturally-conditioned female overneed for commitment, attachment and undivided attention and devotion in love all bring her heightened obsession which reinforces and validates the male’s desire for autonomy and his inability to commit himself fully. This results in an escalation of the worst characteristics of both:  women become more vulnerable and men more disrespectful, controlling and manipulative.

Sickly Cyclicity. The male vacillates for his identity against the defining ground of the female who becomes far less attractive as she reacts with growing desperation to her “ground” the increasingly ambivalent male.  The interactional hardening of identities is revealed by their separation at which time his façade of autonomy and ambivalence—and possible infidelity—loses its reason for being since it only existed to deny commitment in the first place.

When the male class is seen as superior by both sexes the lopsided state of vulnerability preventing love instantly sets the scene for manipulation: the superior one controls an area of which the other becomes increasingly and desperately out of control.  The relationship becomes more destructive as the male continues to lose respect for the already  “inferiof” female.  Out of necessity she loses respect and esteem for herself as she subordinates her own identity, feelings and self-respect and refuses to confront contradictions and insist on the respect of others.  For in order to gain love and respect she must be a lady which is a mature woman with high self-esteem and self-respect.  Ladies are loved and neurotics are used.  The male loss of interest spur her regression to levels justifying his insensitive manipulations, all the while losing the devotion and fire keeping love alive.  In this book are the patterns and consequences of manipulation.

STING-SHOTS  AND  FLIP-FLOPS

Signs of Manipulation

These two patterns are instant indications that one is manipulating the other:  sting-shots are messages sent for desired reactions and flip-flops are reality switches, mood swings and cycles.

Sting-shots are statements made for the sole intention of manipulation and control.  They are intended to push buttons bringing on desired feelings or behaviors.  There are several examples:  bringing up past transgressions at timely moments, exploiting the other’s worst fears and jealousies that maintain a level of panic known to be successful in tightening attachment, hinting to test response rather than asking outright, making jokes and inuendoes about sex to stimulate or test response, making comments about other women at timely moments to provoke a reaction from a jealous wife, presexual courtin behaviors as opposed to postorgasmic statements showing emotional withdrawal (come-here, go away), wild accusations to compensate for one’s own guilty conscience, general guilt-tripping and moral, intellectual and emotional degradation of the other, the silent treatment (more powerful than words) in the form of not talking, not writing, not waiting, not attending to, not calling and not having sex, and nonverbal communication in the form of dress, neatness, housekeeping and mental or physical symptoms.  Behavior is monitored more by disattention of nonattention than by anything else.   Most shit-shots are intended to decrease the self-esteem of the other since this will hold the relationship together and since higher self-esteem would place it (the only perceived solution to low self-esteem) in jeopardy.

Flip-flops  If sting-shots arouse anxiety and the desired response by stinging, flip-flops arouse anxiety and maintain attachment by terrifying.   The chapters below describe various cycles brought on by one “flipping” to another tape in their cycle, bringing on the other’s reaction to their cycle.  The only way to adjust to a vacillator is to become part of the problem since any adaptation becomes vacillatory (schizoid). The two cycles intermesh like the dogs in two wheels.  Those with low self-esteem do not choose mates as much as they choose actors whose cycles and flip-flops synchronize with their own.

Flip-flops maintain attachment by recurrent reactivation of infantile fears of maternal (universal) rejection.  When the one vacillates suddenly in his emotions or commitment the female reacts with terror and labels it “desperate love” and “undying loyalty”.  This is the infantile reaction to early rejection: intead of hating the rejector and thus facing the possibility of reprisal by total rejection of the needed parent and therefore death), the infant turns this anger and hatred inward, takes the rejection to mean personal fault, blame or unworthiness and develops lower self-esteem since he is now the enemy.  He then attempts to disprove or change the rejection by over-pleasing and over-caring for the rejector.  The more profound and recurrent the rejection the more attached the infant is to the rejector since his decreasing self-esteem brings fear of death if he is alone.

MISLABELING  OF  LOVE

The most destructive form of abuse is the mislabeling of love and what it means to be loved, simply because this abuse involves continuous sting-shots and flip-flops.  A child who is intermittently beaten up will be told he is loved far more than a child drom a loving family.  Cruelty He will adapt to cruel abuse by associating the two together.  In adulthood such attachments are maintained by continual sting-shots and flip-flops surrounding the misassociation with indicators of love.  These are initially captivating (since they must be pleasurable) but ultimately devastating as they are blinding:  money and financial dependency, gifts, sex and intermittent attention, words and the like—strategically doled out or threatened with withdrawal in order to hold destructive relationships together.