See article below, and: Vote! Make your opinion (or lack thereof) count!! Vote at Adult Christian Forum Thread 139419!!!. (Choices and link also given after article below.)
Why did Fritzl feel the need to dominate someone to such a degree? [/] Time and again, in his jail cell and in court this week, he has cited the influence of his mother, a woman of stern principles and iron discipline, whom he claims forbade him to have friends and sought to 'protect' him from the wild, wicked world outside. [/] 'My mother used to stop me having friends,' he told the court. 'I was not allowed to have any until I was 12. [/] 'I did manage to have one secret friend, but the friend bitterly let me down. I decided not to have any friends after that.'
Thinking, as he must have, that his mother loved him, he submitted himself completely to her will. Ever afterwards his notion of love was perverted. [/] For him, it meant an expression of absolute power - and recipients of this love would be expected to demonstrate unquestioning acquiescence. [/] Normal human relationships are utterly impossible for a man with such convictions. [/] People are not robotic and predictable, as he would like them to be; they are messy and surprising. They do not respond according to the rules. They do not fit with our preconceived ideas of what they should say or do.
[...] A control sadist like Fritzl, who is inherently terrified of this unpredictability, will create a different universe in which nobody says no, and nobody upsets the order which he imposes by his own will. [/] Fritzl did so in a literal sense, by building an airless and lightless dungeon beneath his house, and leading his second, secret fantasy-life inside it - a life he also shared with other living souls whom he reduced to objects he could manipulate.
That is the reason why he did not speak to Elisabeth for years and years, but always copulated in silence. [/] If he spoke, then she might reply, and that was dangerous, for it would remind him - and declare to herself too - that she was human and not an object or a thing required for his pleasure. It was essential for Fritzl that she should be deprived of vitality and reduced to an object, and for this to happen she had to be voiceless. [/] Literally, she was the living dead - which explains my nauseous sense that there are worse things than murder, and why we all shudder with contempt for this man and what he has done with his own offspring.
From a Daily Mail [U.K.] article, What kind of human being can this be?, more follows:
What kind of human being can this be? [/] By Brian Masters [/] Last updated at 1:27 PM on 18th March 2009For more than 25 years now, I have pondered, examined and attempted to comprehend some of the most baffling and sordid cases of serial murder. [/] I wrote a biography of serial killer Denis Nilsen, and covered the trial of Rosemary West. [/] But the Josef Fritzl case makes me wonder if there are not degradations of the soul more deeply squalid even than murder.
This man did not kill his daughter; but he did take her life while she remained living, thus condemning her to be witness to her own obliteration. [/] He is said to have raped her up to 3,000 times over 24 years - mechanically, indifferently, and in front of other members of his incestuous family in the cellar. He is said not to have addressed a word to her for the first nine years of her ordeal. [/] All this is unimaginably cruel, and yet we must consider what makes a man descend to such wickedness?
It is no good merely to weep and wail: for the sake of our own humanity, we are obliged to work out what manner of a man this is. [/] […] [/] But it is not the sadism which looks for gratification simply in the infliction of pain and contemplation of suffering; it is the sadism of blind selfishness.
Fritzl was determined to have his way at all costs. He was determined not to be thwarted; nor to be challenged or resisted. He even used the word 'kingdom' to describe his ghastly dungeon. Only he could enter his domain, and those inside were subjected to his terrifying rule. [/] Grotesque though it is to contemplate, we can hardly be surprised that his obsessive urge to exert control without any fear of reprisal led to incest. [/] For what weaker victim is there than your own child, who not only would be too frightened to argue, but would also be inclined to assume that all was as it should be, since it is the child's wish to trust?
As Elisabeth Fritzl emerged from childhood into puberty and adolescence, she would have realised the desperate trap into which she had been enticed by a father who so appallingly abused her innocence and trust. [/] But by then she would also have come to accept that it was too late to do anything but subject herself to his relentless abuse. Her thoughts must truly have been of blackest despair, that her tormentor was the one man on Earth she had once believed was inherently responsible for her happiness. […] [My ellipses and emphasis]
Poll Question: Blame Fritzl’s Mother For His Horrendous Abuse Of His Daughter? | Poll choices:
1. Yes. Visiting iniquity upon descendents. / 2. Yes. Freud was right. / 3. Yes. Fritzl permanently crippled emotionally. / 4. Yes. Extremely evil woman. / 5. Yes. Extremely misguided woman. / 6. Yes. Mother’s parents also to blame. / 7. Yes. All or most of 1-6 above. / 8. Yes. / 9. Possibly. Fritzl may be lying. / 10. Possibly. Not much known about her. / 11. Possibly. Father, others may be more to blame. / 12. Possibly. / 13. No. / 14. No. The wickedness of the wicked is upon him. / 15. No. She did what she could. / 16. No. Freud was wrong. / 17. No. Law of mother not to be kept. / 18. No. His insanity of unknown origin. / 19. No opinion. Important issues deserve much study. / 20. No comment. / 21. No opinion. / 22. This poll is worthless. / 23. This poll is of negative value. / 24. Other.
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