Psychologist: The Need for Control Can Trigger Confinement and Torture
Psychologist Samanta Clara Elserm, S.Psi, M.Psi, states that the need to fully control and dominate others can be a significant factor driving individuals to commit kidnapping and torture against victims.
According to Samanta, the urge to possess absolute power often arises from feelings of helplessness, failure, or feeling insignificant in real life or through the perpetrator’s past experiences. “The need for control and power is the most classic trigger. Perpetrators often feel powerless, failed, or small in their real lives or past experiences,” Samanta said on Thursday.
The central official of the Indonesian Psychological Association (PP HIMPSI) explained that feelings of helplessness can drive someone to seek extreme ways to gain control over others. In such situations, perpetrators attempt to place themselves in a superior position by regulating various aspects of the victim’s life.
“To compensate for that helplessness, they seek extreme methods to absolutely control another person’s life. Kidnapping is a form of total control because the perpetrator determines when the victim eats, sleeps, or even breathes,” she noted.
In addition to the urge to power, Samanta stated that acts of torture can also be influenced by a decline in an individual’s ability to feel the suffering of others. This condition can cause perpetrators to become increasingly detached from empathy towards victims.
She mentioned that the loss of empathy can be triggered by several factors, including the accumulation of severe stress, substance abuse such as drugs and alcohol, and impairments in the parts of the brain responsible for regulating empathy. “A person may resort to torture because their brain no longer responds to the pain of others. There is a process of emotional desensitisation or the death of empathy,” she said.
Samanta added that, in several cases, acts of violence can also be triggered by long-held anger. Victims, she said, sometimes become targets for venting because they are perceived to represent someone or an experience that previously hurt the perpetrator.
“Sometimes the victim becomes a symbol of someone the perpetrator hated in the past. The perpetrator vents the accumulation of anger that has been suppressed for years onto the current victim,” she explained.
Samanta’s statements were made in response to the alleged kidnapping and abuse case involving a woman in Bandung Regency, which has drawn significant public attention in recent days.
Samanta emphasised that acts of kidnapping and torture are not only related to physical violent behaviour but also reflect patterns of control, a loss of empathy, and the perpetrator’s failure to manage psychological wounds and suppressed emotions.