What goes on inside the mind of a broken person?

Or more specifically, one who is offered no way out of the situation they are in. Like so many hentai heroines, for example, who routine captured, beaten, and demoralized day after day. I've always thought about deconstructing that genre and character type.

♥♥II'GSJQGDvhhMKOmXunSrogZliLHGKVMhGVmNhBzGUPiXLYki'GRQhBITqQrrOIJKNWiXKO♥♥

I couldn't believe I actually knew something relevant to an OTC. This Goblins comic illustrates one thing way broken people react. Some just get tired of being broken, and decide to do some breaking themselves.

"Silent Hill always gives the best presents." -agentjr "Death feels like acoustic guitar." -helloween

Depends. Generally though there is a good deal of disassociation from the self. Either through fantasy, fiction or psychotic break. Most of the time you get justification. The mind adapts and constructs a plausible set of justifications for the actions that the body is taking.

A fundamental error about human consciouness is the idea that it is a bottom up system. For the most part the idea that we are essentially organic computers of immense complexity is inherently flawed. Instead of taking data from the environment the mind tends to trend previous experiences and use those to paint a picture of the current world based on what is assumed to be true. As a result of this tendency the mind has an incredible capacity to edit it's own perceptions.

You fall into new habits. Construct a new personality, all while maintaining the illusion that you are the ame person.

Or... you crack like an egg and retreat into la la land.

Generally speaking people who are the victims of organized brainwashing never really 'recover' because the recovery has already happened. They were traumatized into a state that required them to reconstruct themselves to survive. The person you are dealing with is for all intents and purposes a new person with the old person being broken down and incorporated into the new one.

edited 18th Feb '11 12:41:39 PM by Shrimpus

And if that doesn't terrify you, nothing will.

CAPS LOCK IS RAGE!!!

I don't know. It is strangely liberating to know that you aren't who you think you are and that at any time you can become someone new.

Even if it's forced against your will? What if you liked the old you? You never know what the new you might become.

♥♥II'GSJQGDvhhMKOmXunSrogZliLHGKVMhGVmNhBzGUPiXLYki'GRQhBITqQrrOIJKNWiXKO♥♥

There was a time when I would have wholeheartedly welcomed becoming someone else. Now, very much not.

edited 18th Feb '11 12:48:23 PM by Pykrete

Maybe you did, but if you find yourself in a situation where your current traits and values stop working for you, either you break or they break.

whoever wrote this shit needs to step on a rake in a comedic fashion

I wouldn't enjoy the circumstances. I doubt anyone would enjoy being locked in a closest for three months and beaten with electrical wire. But merely the idea that you don't have to be you is liberating.

Depends how you define 'broken'.

Holocaust survivors' accounts often include descriptions of fellow camp inmates who 'gave up on life' and stopped doing anything, such people typically died soon afterwards. I'm not sure if any recovery is possible from such a state.

For a less extreme form, many battered women would probably count. From what I understand, basically they accept their circumstances as right and just and become an Extreme Doormat, feeling ashamed for any independent action or thought or any failure to carry out orders (even impossible ones). Recovery is possible from this, mainly by realizing that they a) deserve a better life, and b) can actually escape the situation. But often if they come in contact with the abuser they slip back into old patterns to a certain extent, and it can take a lot of support to get the confidence necessary to avoid this.

If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.

Well said. But the only problem with conflating domestic abuse victims is that there is a symbiotic pathology to many of those relationships that doesn't really mimic the one sided destruction of a concerted mental assault. A true attempt at brainwashing will inflict unbearable trauma over a protracted period with no chance for the mind to renormalize. We all have habits of behavior and modes of interaction that surface in different situations (as anyone who has come home as an adult to their parents house and found themselves behaving like a higschooler again can attest to) but the goals of a true breaaking go deeper. It is about enforcing a new thought paradigm that can't be turned off,

Likewise the concentration camps were terrible places that forced some people into dissociative anesthesia but the threat to the integrity of the personality is not the same as it usually only requires a relatively few adjustments to the existing personality to ensure survival. Without an adversarial attempt to break the mind any changes will be incidental and will come on and off like a coat.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I've been there, to an extent.

Think Third-Person Person.

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! ~ GOD

Yeah, I can't think of a more useless character to fight the badguys than a hentai heroine.

♥♥II'GSJQGDvhhMKOmXunSrogZliLHGKVMhGVmNhBzGUPiXLYki'GRQhBITqQrrOIJKNWiXKO♥♥

Depends on whether your bad guys are allergic to vaginal secretions.

Just saying.... I've seen it happen...

EDIT: Though in all seriousness writing a dissociated character can be fun. As long as you can get yourself into the right head space to understand what would and wouldn't matter to someone in that state it can be loads of fun. Very dark and interesting stuff. Also, not actually always useless. Go go multiple personalities!

edited 18th Feb '11 6:19:22 PM by Shrimpus

Pre-epiphany (which occurred over in YF), I've actually been like that. For many years now. It had its pluses, including absolute mental and emotional stability... but the inability to understand others or shed an honest tear kind of... sucked. Post epiphany, I went through some rapid character development. Pretty crazy.

This said, I could easily write such a character. In fact, it would be hard for me not to.

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! ~ GOD

One of the things that is likely to happen is learned helplessness: they accept their situation as "normal" and not only stop trying to resist or escape, but don't try to take whatever opportunities out of the situation should they ever arrive. If they do get out of the situation, they're more likely than others to fall into and accept similar situations (ie. a child that grew up with abusive parents is more likely to become involved in an abusive relationship when they grow up, or to become abusive themselves)

Dissociation is also likely, as is psychological numbing, hypervigilance, and exhaustion. Personal experience is that these can interact in wacky ways — completely mundane things like louder-than-usual footsteps or a stranger walking behind you can freak you the fuck out, while watching an extremely violent beating or reading about a violent murder can illicit no emotional response whatsoever. Sometimes you feel too tired to do anything — not sleepy, but just want to stop thinking and shut down for a while. Emotional regulation can go out of whack too: you don't have wildly inappropriate emotional responses, like with schizophrenic people, but the degree to which you react to something can often end up too high or too low. A blunted or somewhat-blunted affect is also common.

edited 18th Feb '11 9:01:29 PM by Sparkysharps

"If there's a hole, it's a man's job to thrust into it!" — Ryoma Nagare, New Getter Robo

Also, keep in mind that we're repainting our memories as we like it - they're very flexible. There was a study that compared the memories of 9/11 after 5 years. Basically, the test persons were asked to write their experience down and after five years do the same. The same person often wrote totally different accounts of the day and didn't believe their memories differed from before even if they were shown the text they themselves had written and outright denied it's credibility. Altering your personality is as easy as pie in the same way. It's like growing - you don't even realize you changed for better or worse most of the time.