The writer, Naomi Klein, wrote a whole book, Doppelgänger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, weirdly, I gather, centering on me.
I have intentionally not read it yet, and I had hoped not to have to do so.
But I may have to; because I uncovered such a stunning conflict of interest — the Klein family, and extended family’s, interests, awash in Pharma money directly tied to vaccines.
I have tried til now to stay above what seemed to me to be simply an out-of-the-blue mean-girl eighth-grade level one-sided spat (with textbook stalker qualities thrown in). I did not wish to have someone else’s preoccupation with me in that context, impose itself into my consciousness. But the money trail I uncovered, forces me to speak.
Old Fashion Claxton Fr...
Buy New $24.95 ($0.52 / Ounce)
(as of 01:36 UTC - Details)
Old Fashion Claxton Fr...
Buy New $24.95 ($0.52 / Ounce)
(as of 01:36 UTC - Details)
Like many women (and men) in public life, I have had stalkers before. Indeed, his expertise in counterstalking was what led me to hire my now-husband Brian O’Shea to make my stalkers at that time go away.
I know from having been targeted by stalkers before, that this disorder has five standard ways of progressing. It is not unusual for this disorder to lead people who suffer from it, to project onto the target of their attention the notion that the two of them are in an intimate relationship that does not exist; to cyberstalk them online; to observe their public appearances; to spread rumors about them; to track their behavior; to imagine that the subject is already part of the stalker (“my Doppelgänger”, she calls me), and that the target will eventually be forced to merge into the stalker to “complete” him or her.
Given what I have lived through in the past, I wanted no part of any writer’s obsession about me in my consciousness. Imagine the red flags it would send up to all if a male intellectual insistently described a totally unrelated, very different female writer as being in fact his own projection — his own “doppelgänger” or personal double; spent hours ruminating about her and watching her videos, and then went public with this preoccupation.
I do not know that Ms Klein has undiagnosed (or inadequately treated) erotomania, which is the term for this kind of obsession. But the evidence of an unhealthy preoccupation, that keeps crossing my unwilling path, is concerning. I keep being startled by reporters contacting me to ask me, for instance, about intimate things that Ms Klein claims I said to her that I do not believe I would ever have said, or about conversations she claims that we had, of which I have no memory.
I had an upsetting exchange with a Swedish reporter, who is covering both Klein’s book Doppelgänger and my book, which is no doubt a rebuttal of hers, Facing the Beast: Courage, Faith and Resistance in a New Dark Age.
The reporter said something like this: that Klein believes that when I was cancelled and deplatformed from Twitter, I ceased, in effect, to exist. “But here you are,” the reporter said, with something of an amused flourish, gesturing at my face on the Zoom screen; I was obviously alive at that moment, speaking to her, outside of Klein’s imagination.
We both then spoke spontaneously spoke about that phase in child development that takes place from about a year and a half to two years old, when a child thinks that if she or he does not see the caregiver, that that person has ceased to exist.
J.R. Watkins Pain Reli...
Check Amazon for Pricing.
Sigmund Freud discusses this issue in his book Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works (1920), in describing the “Fort-Da!” game his grandson played — throwing away a toy and retrieving it. The child’s discovery that people and things continue to live a life apart, when the toddler cannot see them, is a revelation to the child.
Psychologist Donald Winicott points out, in “Playing and Reality,” that “transitional objects”, such as Teddy bears, that allow the child to let a parent leave and have a life of her own, and then return, represent an an important part of the development of a healthy persona. Healthy children, and then healthy adults, can treat others as separate people and not as extensions of their own selves. This is what came to be called “object relations theory.”
As child psychologist Melanie Klein pointed out, “splitting” the love object into two “selves” is part of human development, but for most people it is a process that resolves. A child’s development involves “splitting” the caretaker into “good” and “bad” mirror images of each other. “Central to object relations theory is the notion of splitting, which can be described as the mental separation of objects into “good” and “bad” parts and the subsequent repression of the “bad,” or anxiety-provoking, aspects (Klein, 1932; 1935).
Infants first experience splitting in their relationship with the primary caregiver: The caregiver is “good” when all the infant’s needs are satisfied and “bad” when they are not. Optimally, as the child continues to develop, he or she becomes intellectually capable of considering the mother, or any other object, as a separate whole, not a split-off, “bad” part of the child’s self; rather, as an individual with good and bad elements integrated.”
But trauma can interrupt that process. There is something in trauma therapy called “The Splitting Defense Mechanism”. This is from the counseling website BetterHelp:
“What is the Splitting Defense Mechanism?”
“Splitting is a common defense mechanism. It refers to the tendency to “split” people, things, beliefs, or situations into one of two extreme categories: either good or bad. It’s a defense mechanism because it can be helpful in some situations. It’s the brain’s way of making sense of complex situations to decide where danger may lie so it can help us avoid that option. However, in many other situations, it can be an incredibly limiting and even damaging mindset.””
I am uneasy being seen as living in a “mirror world” and as having no existence apart from a projection emanating from this person totally unrelated to me.
Norelco Philips Multig...
Buy New $32.98
(as of 01:36 UTC - Details)
The denial of the separate personhood of others is typical of narcissists and of borderline personalities, and also of sociopaths. Denying the separate personhood of others is also, we all know, or used to know, the kind of “othering” that can lead to sexism and exploitation, on one end of the spectrum, and all the way to rape or slavery or even genocide, on the other.
This brutal “othering” in general is part of the warning I have been giving about the dehumanization and violence inherent in recent language changes and language practices. If I don’t really exist, why not “other” me to death, at least reputationally? Why not say anything about me?
If I live in a “mirror world” of MAGA screamers who are defined as hateful, instead of in America along with Klein and her friends with whom some people simply disagree, why not just wipe out, incarcerate, or quarantine-camp us, the “mirrored” others? Our “world” is not a real world but a simulacrum. Our personhood is not as real as Klein’s and her friends’.
As a rape survivor, my PTSD is most triggered when people treat me as if I don’t exist — that is, as if I am not a separate person worthy of dignity for my own sake, as opposed to being seen through the lens of some exploitation or use they can make of me. Why is that so upsetting? Because that denial of my personhood, that use of me, regardless of my will or reality, was exactly how my rapist treated me.
“Othering” is dangerous. And the language of projection that denies the separate personhood — even the legitimacy of the world — of the “other” — can also lead to danger. Psychological “splitting,” as described above, can also be dangerous.
The most dangerous stalkers, as Brian O’Shea informed me — confirming what security specialist Gavin de Becker, whom I had consulted long before in relation to yet another stalker at that time, had told me then — tend to become more and more graphic and detailed about the kinds of violence they will do to the targets of their obsession. General threats are not as important.
