Psychologist: The Need to Control Others Can Trigger Confinement

Jakarta (ANTARA) - Psychologist Samanta Clara Elsener, S.Psi, M.Psi, Psikolog, has stated that the need to fully control and dominate another person can be a factor driving someone to commit acts of confinement and torture against a victim.

“The need for control and power is the most classic trigger. Perpetrators often feel powerless, like failures, or insignificant in their real lives or past experiences,” Samanta said when contacted by ANTARA on Wednesday.

According to the central board member of the Indonesian Psychology Association (PP HIMPSI), this feeling of powerlessness can drive a person to seek extreme ways to gain control over another as a form of compensation. In such conditions, the perpetrator attempts to place themselves in a superior position by regulating various aspects of the victim’s life.

Samanta explained that besides the drive for power, acts of torture can also be influenced by a diminished ability to feel the suffering of others, or a loss of empathy. She said this condition can arise from various factors, ranging from the accumulation of severe stress, substance abuse such as drugs and alcohol, to disorders in the parts of the brain that regulate empathy.

“A person can go as far as torturing someone because their brain no longer responds to another’s pain. There is a process of emotional desensitisation or the death of empathy,” she said.

According to her, the victim sometimes becomes a target for emotional release because they are perceived to represent a figure or experience that hurt the perpetrator in the past. “Sometimes the victim becomes a symbol of someone the perpetrator hated in the past. The perpetrator unleashes an accumulation of anger that has been suppressed for years onto the current victim,” she stated.

Samanta made these remarks in response to a case of alleged confinement and abuse involving a woman in Bandung Regency that has drawn public attention in recent days.