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Originally Posted by cinderella
Woody, I agree with what you've said here. You're prob right about having used choriform for a while, and this one time it backfired. The analogy Scoote made above - about breaking a precious object, and being scrared to death over it, is a good one. What, in my opionion, would most of us do in that situation? I know I would try to hide the fragments of the broken object, then act as if nothing had happened - and that's exactly what I think Casey did - she broked it (the child), then tried to hind her crime. In doing so, however, I think she had to have had help - I can't see her taking the body into the woods, digging a hold, and burying it, all by herself - someone else had to be involved...the boyfriend, a family member?
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I think she could.
Honestly, this trial has been pretty mind-blowing for me to watch...because, having grown up with a narcissist, an awful lot of it felt familiar.
I've heard a lot of people say Casey is a sociopath. I'm not sure if she is (not being a mental health professional and never having met the woman), but she sure feels like a narcissist to me.
The videos and phone calls from jail....when everything is about her...what she wants, how she's being victimized, no one understands her....her, her, her. It's as if her child is an afterthought...not the important part of all this. For Casey, the tragedy is not that Caylee is dead...the tragedy is what's happened to her...how she's been victimized.
Her tears in court....seemingly feigned, or at least very minor, when talking about Caylee....real and visceral when they're talking about her.
Narcissists can love their children (and other people), but it's a weird, twisted kind of love that exists only so long as the other reflects well on them or meets their needs...and can be shut down in an instant when the other becomes a liability or an inconvenience.
I kept flashing back to sitting across a table from my mother, as a young adult in college, having a cup of tea and listen to her calmly discussing how she had frequently thought and fantasized about killing my sister and I, and then herself....but then saying that she didn't really want to kill herself...she wanted to live and be single and not a mother...and she didn't know how she could kill us and get away with it....so she just did "what she had to do"...and kind of started thinking of us as roommates that she couldn't kick out instead.
And then she laughed...in genuine amusement at her own cleverness.
Don't underestimate what narcissists can rationalize, and do, when it suits their own needs.
Having said that....I believe that narcissists can be made. I also believe that the children of narcissists can either become enablers/targets of narcissists...or narcissists themselves. I do the one; my sister does the other. I struggle not to attach to and enable narcissists. My sister rationalized dumping her daughter at age 5, her son at age 13, admittedly on their father (thank goodness) and rarely seeing or thinking about them again...and will tell you with a straight face that she's a good mother who "delighted in raising her kids" (her words). She can say it with a straight face because she believes it herself.
I believe that Casey may very well have been abused, molested, victimized in her own family of origin. She may have had a hellish life that we don't know about. I'll give her that benefit of the doubt.
I just don't think that's an excuse for what she did.