I think I better understand my narcissist father tried to control me, later [View all]

tried to destroy me: his wife/my mother.

My parents were both enhanced intellectualists. My father was a medical doctor and my mother graduated from two premiere independent women's colleges, Barnard and Wellesley, with a BA and MA in 1950, which was rare.

My father came from a small town in PA and my mother came from Brooklyn.

There were conflicts. While my father desired to have a wife more for status than for love, he also wanted a housewife who would raise his family. (This was in the early 50s.) He wouldn't let her seek employment after we were old enough to fend for ourselves.

Natually, there were arguments and underlying the topics were my father wanting my mother not to argue with him and to do whatever he wanted without question. Plus my father's attitude was black-and-white, while my mother's was shades of grey.

When I realized that my father often employed poor judgment (even as a child), I resisted and argued.

I suppose my father thought that made his domicile "unstable" with a 2 to 1 advantage. (I often argued better than my mother.)

My point: My independence (so to speak) made it more difficult to control my mother as it looked as though she had a passive ally. He couldn't have that. Plus, in his mind, my readiness to argue made me unmarketable for future marriage prospects.

And consistently, my father berated me, threatened me, tried to manipulate me, employed my sister in his efforts to control me, and more.

One can also make an argument that this was a Freudian Transference of Hostility where he attacked me instead of his wife/my mother.

Not that the pain and outrage have meaningfully lessened, but I can now see the bigger picture. It was personal, yet not personal.

And no, I still have not forgiven him.