Remember the bizarre butler in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show?". He was hunchbacked and extremely weird -- clearly he would never have been able to make it in the world, though he had a central role in his master's castle. He was a perfect example of a "family dog", the crushed incompetent who is totally trained to be the family's support system -- or to be up in the garret or in the basement, like they used to do in earlier times.
HOW DID THEY GET THIS WAY?
Here the family seems grimly determined to create a "slave-robot" who is completely under their domination and dominion. From the very beginning, they made it crystal clear to the individual that any move towards self-expression, self-manifestation, self-development, self-commitment or self-liberation would result in instant abandonment. The mother would give the individual "THAT LOOK" or its equivalent that made it unmistakable what would happen if the infant "stepped out of line one iota".
The individual quickly learned to harness all of their resources in a "red alert" -- "battle stations" self-inhibition process to stop any and all activations of annihilation. The resultant is the development of a "self-checkmating" process that utilizes everything the individual has to keep themselves convenient, in control and contributing in the manner demanded by their family. And because of the extremity of the family's functioning in general and towards them in particular, they had to keep themselves at a near-death state to comply, in a complete capitulation-coercion situation.
The message from the family was "YOU ARE OURS,PERIOD!", and they mounted a total organized assault for purely selfish (as opposed to hatred or lethal) intentions. It was, in effect, an inhumanely exploitative process and purpose, the motivations for which are probably different for each (nowadays relatively quite rare) case of this sort.
In this process, the "family dog" gets blamed for everything bad, and they get no credit for any positives they bring to their battering parents. They are subjected to perfectionistic standards of performance and there is a total lack of compassion towards them. In addition, the "family dog" was used as the complete accountability-avoidant dumping grounds for all the family's anger, despair or any other upset over anything and everything.
The "family dog" was allowed to have no joy because they could do no right, and because they were the cause of all evils, and they must atone continuously through punishment. As a result, the "family dog" feels that they have to offer themselves to be beaten to "pay for their sins", and to prevent total mayhem from the "crazies in control". They thus became the family whipping post, punching bag, lightening rod and scapegoat as well. They "kick the family dog", so to speak.
The parents systematically applied negative expectations and punitive power ploys to the individual in such a manner as to produce an "I can do no right!" experiential history. Yet at the same time, they were totally dependent upon and exploitative of the individual, and they made it overwhelmingly apparent that they would disintegrate if the "family dog" should ever leave them. They also massively guilt-induced the individual so that the "family dog" feels personally accountable and responsible for every negativity in this miserable family. The net effect of these patterns was that the "family dog" experienced extremely confusing and continuously contradictory contingencies throughout their childhood.
To make matters worse, they effectively reality-scrambled the "family dog's" perceptual system by intrusive-abusive confusion-inducing interventions to prevent individuation and initiative. The result is that the "family dog" has a perceptual disorder that prevents them from conceptualization and interpretation. They are extremely concrete-minded and cognitively simple. They also can't predict outcomes, and they end up confused by and afraid of the world due to "avalanche expectations". They end up catastrophizing and catastrophe-avoiding all the time. In addition, they were also held in place by intense punishment and self-punishment implants any time they moved out at all. They were chronically kept in utter ignorance and isolation, and they were allowed only a small space, imprisoned in a cell, in effect. It was a "helpless servant"-generating program.
WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?
The pattern that results is one in which the "family dog" is a masochistically over-responsible, super-sacrificing and self-mortifying nobody. They are completely socially blind and they are terrified of being on their own. They feel lucky they can connect with anyone, and they are super-adoring and pedestalizing of their parents. They got and get verbal castration for not being devoted enough, and they buy it.
They are delusional about their parents, and they are terrified not to trust them because they are all they have ever known and they are abjectly life-and-death dependent upon them. They have been beaten into submission and unquestioning acceptance of their parents' authority out of sheer massive dependence and security-starvation. When they do connect with someone outside the family, it is invariably a narcissistic, demanding, arrogant, irresponsible, infantile tyrannosaurus type of individual. After all, it's all they understand.
They want to suppress themselves as totally as they can so as to not be a bother or to cause any more pain, misery, trouble and evil in the world. They have terrific guilt feelings if they even think of starting to go out into the world. And if they do venture out, all they encounter is more exploitation and abuse because they can do so much non-reciprocated output without even thinking of complaining. Whether they stay with the family or go out, they end up in a horrendous "Chinese buttermilk" situation with a straw stuck up their nose that the environment sucks them dry from, and they end up a super-somber walking cadaver.
HOW DO THEY FUNCTION?
The result of all this is that they are a severely handicapped, mentally incompetent, confused, befuddled, self-distrusting, self-disgusted, and totally capitulated semi-human individual who lives by their family's command, and who dares not initiate anything. They are thoroughly encoded and encased by the family, and they can't relate to the outside world at all.
They are fear- and guilt-dominated to the max, and they are effectively identityless. They have no personhood outside their role in the family as the slave-robot and punching bag. They are completely fused and identified with the family in their servant role, seeing themselves as an organ in the organism. They have no ability to cope on their own, and they are hopelessly dependent on their family for their survival and meaning.
HOW CAN THEY BE HELPED?
Intervention in this extremely unfortunate situation requires a total push environmental therapy program. It also requires the protection of the authorities to deal with the family's reactions and counter-moves. The general idea is to reconstruct a human being from what has happened to them. A key component of the process is the training them to experience that they have the right to joy and love in their life.
They need milieu therapy -- a live in treatment center for handling all their extremely deep and complex needs. They have to be trained in ALL skills in living, from the bottom on up in a protected environment. The "success ladder" approach needs to be used, in which they are given behavior modification programs for the simplest skills and gradually moved up the ladder of skill development.
It requires the assignment of a Big Brother or a Big Sister constant companion and guide in the initial phases of the process to assist them through the myriad overwhelming complexities of life on their own. They also are needed to serve as the emotional replacement for the family and to comfort, explain, teach, nurture, protect and love them. Over time, this special support figure can be weaned away.
There also has to be a great deal of emotional therapy around their self-worth, self-evaluation and the profound grief, guilt, fear and anger that their experiential history has caused. This needs to be done in both a therapeutic relationship and in the milieu and with the special companion.
When the individual begins to emerge in his or her own right, their uniquenesses need to be sought out, validated, appreciated and developed. As they begin to show self-sufficiency and self-commitment, they can gradually be weaned from and then graduated from the program to a half-way house setting, and from there to more and more independence.
In the meantime, the family needs either extensive therapeutic intervention or, if that is not possible, the "feed the lion" approach in which they are given non-threatening tidbits of improvement and much hand-wringing disturbance about how "bad" the individual is, so they don't devastate the individual and/or the treatment center. The individual needs extensive insulation and protection from their sabotage efforts until they can deflect them themselves.
WHAT IS THEIR PURPOSE?
They have been through such a dehumanizing and incompetencing experience that their horizons are not terribly high, so to speak. However, they are in effect an innocent, and they have a sweet joyfulness about them once they have been liberated from their program. They therefor have joy as their contribution by their being the innocent they are. They can also join and identify with meaningful undertakings as a very cooperative and loyal employee or member, so as to have a full life.
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