Circular Dysfunction:

A Personal Example
By Patricia Lefave

I was set up 'secretly' for a psychological attack which is referred to alternately as; a 'game, a joke, an intervention' or nothing at all.
The one who started it operates with a hidden agenda of domination.
I, of course, assumed the person who did this was sane and has good intentions, as most people likely would also. (Otherwise I would have to assume everyone to be 'mad' with evil intentions first, until they prove to me otherwise, used as my normal premise of thought.)

My protagonist then also set up a group to act out on his behalf by suggesting an alternate reality was/is taking place between he and I.
They too assume his sanity and good intentions.
The protagonist then plays the 'two sides' (me on one and the group on the other) off against each other and he enjoys himself watching all the chaos and confusion he has created.
I think he enjoys watching a group attack his chosen target, knowing the most likely outcome, since he has seen this done before. He knows that this hidden agenda gives him some very real power over others.

He watches as the group justifies itself and its own behaviour, year after year, by blaming me, the victim for making them do it...but wait! It gets even better, for the entire group is about to make an agreement together to completely DENY anyone has done, seen or heard anything at all.
'Nothing happened' they claim to all who ask, including me, nor have any of them seen or heard anything about this at all. They are just totally mystified officer/doctor as to why I would 'claim' anything did...mystifugginfied I tell you. Why even my ex family physician was mystified wasn't he?
So the Psychiatric Faith begins its hunt for ‘hidden meaning.'
All focus is now shifted and redirected onto me, as the individual who has complained about being harmed by all those innocent, mystified 'others.' Reality itself is now well on it's way to becoming perceived by almost everyone as the exact opposite.

Now you will see, there is no 'victim' there is only that liar (me) 'claiming' to be a victim. 'It is about their righteousness' as is stated within the 'secret' training of the one who has orchestrated the whole thing.

Since the victim, me, is now perceived as the one who is 'out of touch with reality', an explanation for what I 'think' that I see hear and experience must be found in order to explain it all successfully to the whole group in ways that won't make THEM feel frightened or uncomfortable. Reality must now be completely turned around to make that outcome the New and Improved Reality.
The premise is chosen: Since none of this really happened as perceived by me (who of course only "thinks' I am a victim,) it must all exist nowhere except within my own mind. Therefore, I must be 'mad'. (Whew! What a relief for the whole group, the members of which were afraid that they might be seen and understood by me as they really are but as they successfully had deluded themselves I was too stupid or unconscious to know anything about.) Now all that was necessary of course was to get someone in 'authority' to proclaim officially that the problem lies within me (now to be known as 'the sick one') so that the whole group could then be understood to be the 'sane' and normal ones.

That was actually accomplished quite simply by proclaiming everything this now 'identified' patient, said, did or felt to be signs of my own inherent madness, related to nothing at all in concrete reality. Doing so allowed the entire group involved to sidestep responsibility for both their behaviour as individuals as well as their behaviour as a group. So they then closed ranks and covered the whole event up, bonding with one another by means of their agreed upon deception. 'We will not say anything to her about it at all and that way, she will just have to think she imagined the whole thing.” This they announced once again in my presence, for they knew I could not see them or hear them from six feet away.

When as the targeted 'sick one' I protested the treatment or tried to explain what was actually happening or get any questions answered, group pressure was applied to intimidate me into silence. Mocking and ridiculing was employed in the dysfunctional tradition and even death threats were uttered as attempts to silence me, including a threat to kill “your boyfriend:” whomever that may be, or more correctly perhaps, whomever the one uttering the threats thought that might be. While trying to silence me though, the group members never stopped talking about me and what a crazy, sick, or terrible person I was to everyone they knew. This too of course was understood by the same group members to be a 'covert' operation. As long as they don't ever say anything directly to my face in an equal human way (and two or three feet away does not count in that definition of 'directly') then I can not possibly know all that is going on around me, as I have been defined as 'less than' and of course delusional and paranoid which means everyone can now 'correct' my perceptions for me. The group delusions of 'concealment' were, and still are, very strong indeed.
Very soon, back when it was growing, the alternate versions of reality were spread everywhere; in fact, there were now so many versions of it that no one could say for sure WHAT had happened and of course that is just the way the individual who started it all planned for it to turn out too. I believe, that is the result he expected right from the start. As it was analysed by a university professor from Columbia, who took the same 'training,' she thought that the saying applied, “You can fool all of the people most of the time.”

After much group pressure and no supporters on my side, as the targeted victim I finally broke down under pressure and was driven into psychosis, an altered state of consciousness much like a permanent nightmare from which one can not awaken. I had predicted it would happen if I could not get this so called 'game' stopped but of course since there WAS no 'game' and it was all just in my head, what could be stopped? I could no longer make any sense of what was happening which everyone else denied was even there. Not being able to 'make sense of things' was of course a 'symptom' of my inherently defective brain, since no one else had any problem with it. My being driven into madness now proved I was mad in the first place. My laughter when I realized that was also now more proof of my madness since I was laughing for 'no reason', at least none that my assessors could see and what THEY see and understand is all that matters. I was then bestowed with a shiny new psychiatric label of my very own and offered a disability pension for my 'disease.' They had saved me from myself. Hallelujah for the Psychiatric Faith!
For all intents and purposes this game that made 'no sense at all' was now over; mission accomplished for the one who started it all in the first place. Because of the faulty premise of belief, I, the target was now permanently trapped in an infinite loop that had been created when an alternate version of reality was accepted as the real one by the whole group. I also knew that unless they really saw it all for what is was, there was no way out for me, or for anyone else just like me, who was trapped in the same group dynamic.

So "Game boy" had set his goal first and he had reached it. He now had 'total control.'

Or did he?

As his successfully isolated victim I believe in giving credit where credit is due. So I decided to let the whole world know how very clever and superior he really was. I wanted his genius at obtaining power and control recognised. Such cleverness should never go unrewarded. Clearly shouting it from the rooftops was in order here. I decided to help him get some real recognition for his abilities. I really wanted him to Get It. Yes I surely did. And I still do.


So anyway, once officially labelled, I decided to sort of dive into the 'anti logic' of the group game (as I thought of it, a mirror image, or reversal of logic but not really logical at all) even though my friend in San Jose thought that calling it 'anti logic' was just 'nonsense' and was not at all shy about telling me so. So I said to myself, ('cause that is what I am forced to do as I am not 'allowed' to talk to them DIRECTLY) 'You want to talk around in circles so you don't have to see anything? OK let's go. What's that other old saying now? If you can't beat them join them. I am joining your thought processes so that I will fit in OK. Here we go....

First, let me then accommodate your beliefs for you by co-operating with them so that no one else need feel at all threatened by my awareness which you so generously offered to 'reduce' for me.

For years I have watched like an object as various groups of people stood a few feet away from me and posed the question, “Why doesn't she ever say anything about it to anyone?”
Putting aside for the moment the instruction to me from some of you professionals not to speak of this in public, let me ask you the next obvious question...”say anything about WHAT to anyone?”
You tell me nothing happened here and nothing is happening now either. One of the twelve steppers just straightened me out on that yet again, by denying that she and others in these groups are talking about me. This belief that this is so, is MY flaw because 'really' none of them are talking about me at all and if I think they are this just indicates my 'self importance.' She got a little smirk on her face as she straightened me out saying, “you are just not that important.” One of the other same group members tells people that I 'think' I am some 'big deal' or something. She has even called me 'the big deal' like it is my name and another member of the same group has informed others that I am 'supposed to be some big brain or something' but she 'does not see it.' (of course these are just more of my character flaws or hallucinated conversations you know. Otherwise my saying they were doing what they are doing would just be a fact, wouldn't it? Those who are hiding in plain sight (from themselves) can't have that.
So my answer to the often repeated question above must be answered in two different ways to satisfy the groups observing and assessing my character for me:

Question “Why don't I ever say anything about it to anyone?

First answer: Because according to all of the experts assessing me nothing at all happened so what could I possibly have to say about a non existent experience? There is obviously nothing TO say about anything. That means then that I am as sane as everyone else who is denying anything happened here.

Second Answer: I know, because psychiatrists and many others have told me so, like just today for example, that people are not standing in little gatherings, a few feet away from me in various places , asking that same question over and over again because that is all just my imagination. Therefore, I do not say anything about it as no one is even really wondering why I don't say anything. I am simply mad and my 'belief'' that people are talking about me in front of me like I am not there is just one of the manifestations of my madness. So in compliance with psychiatry I ignore everyone who is really NOT there anyway and really NOT doing anything like that.
So short form, if you are one of the people who is wondering why I never say anything about 'it', it is because IT has never happened.
On the other hand, if you are one of the people I am merely hallucinating into existence who is asking me why I never say anything about it, it is because I know YOU are not really there and have never wondered anything at all, since you don't exist.
Let us just hope then that both the existent and the non existent people talking about me like I am not there, and which I know nothing about in either case, are all happy with my answers.

God forbid I should understand this better and be more in touch with reality than any of them. If you can just keep up calling me either self important or delusional for knowing about you, then hopefully you will be able to maintain the group delusion of superiority and concealment indefinitely and manage to keep the infinite loop of dysfunction and the delusional reversal going without anyone forcing you into self awareness against your will.
To quote from my imaginary protagonist's training, “what you do with problems is hand them to someone else.” Like to me for instance.

I would like all of you psychiatrists and others to read Deikman's, The Wrong Way Home. In it, you will find a very good description from ex cult members of the processes used in breaking them down. In parts it reads eerily like my own psychosis. I think this may well be because this group described is either the same one, or perhaps the one which trained it's leader, who then split off and 'recreated' the group in his own terms, as he was accused of doing. The leader was also revealed as focused on studying the occult, which was true of the 'other' leader as well, and was also true of Adolph Hitler. 'Occult' of course MEANS, "hidden; not understood by humans."

I would like to suggest to you presumed 'humans' that what is 'occult' to you is not necessarily 'occult' to me.