To cite this article: Tumisang Precious Sedumedi & David A. Winter (2020).
I Killed My Children: Construing Pathways to Filicide, Journal of Constructivist Psychology. DOI: 10.1080/10720537.2020.1805067
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10720537.2020.1805067
Abstract
Following George Kelly’s notion of sociality, this study attempts to construe the construction processes of filicidal fathers in South Africa. Semi-structured interviews scheduled according to Experience Cycle Methodology phases were employed with four such fathers.
Kelly’s diagnostic constructs were used in the analysis of the interviews, offering insight into the pathways of construing which may lead to filicide-homicide. Methods of assessment and treatment are suggested which might be effective in reducing the risk of recidivism and enabling a revision of the construct system which might lead to the development of constructive alternatives to violence.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 8 August 2019 – Accepted 22 April 2020
Introduction
Filicide refers to the killing of a child/children by his/her parent (Friedman et al., 2005). Risk factors have been identified as young age, low educational status, poor support, unemployment, financial problems, intimate/marital relationship issues (Marleau et al., 1999), rejection (McKee & Egan, 2013), and resentment of the child (d’Orban, 1979). Other contributing factors include traumatic childhood experiences involving parental separation (Koenen & Thompson, 2008), death of a parent (Kauppi et al., 2010), and abuse (Lucas et al., 2002). Abuse of alcohol and drugs might also contribute to filicide (Bourget & Gagné, 2005).
Resnick (1969) identified specific motives for filicide. Altruistic filicide, in which the
child is killed to relieve him/her of real or imagined suffering, is mostly committed by mothers (Eriksson et al., 2016), and is often concomitant with suicide (Friedman et al., 2005). In acutely psychotic filicide, the psychosis instigates the filicide (Eriksson et al., 2016). Unwanted child filicide appears to be rarely committed by fathers, but, when it is, may be motivated by jealousy toward the child (Wilczynski, 1997) or questioned paternity (Adinkrah, 2003). Accidental filicide, which might be caused by abuse or neglect (Friedman et al., 2005), has been associated with histories of childhood abuse in fathers (Eriksson et al., 2016). Spouse revenge filicide, which is intended to punish or hurt one’s spouse, has been reported in studies of men who commit filicide in retaliation (Wilczynski, 1997).
There is insufficient information on paternal filicide (Bourget & Gagné, 2005), not least in South Africa, where the current research was conducted. More than 1000 children were reported to have been killed in 2009 in South Africa (Mathews et al., 2013), just under half in their homes (Abrahams et al., 2012).
Exploring filicidal fathers’ construction processes, including the lived experiences and meanings of events prior to the filicide, while drawing upon previous work on social constructions of masculinity (Hearn, 2007), and the personal constructions of perpetrators of violence1 (Winter, 2003, 2007; Winter et al., 2007), might provide insight into the modes of construing which may lead to filicide.
Personal construct theory
Personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955) is used in this study to provide insight into the psychological processes of filicidal offenders by examining their constructions and associated anticipations at a personal, family, and social level. As indicated in Kelly’s (1970) Experience Cycle, the individual uses bipolar constructs to anticipate an event, invests himself/herself in this anticipation, encounters the event, experiences validation/invalidation of his/her construction, and if the construction is invalidated may engage in constructive revision, developing a new construction which will form the basis of another Experience Cycle. Diagnostic constructs which enable the clinician/researcher to adopt what Kelly (1955) termed a credulous approach and show sociality with his/her clients/ participants, glimpsing the world through their eyes and providing a formulation of their predicaments, may be used to elucidate the individual’s construing processes (Winter & Procter, 2014). We shall now consider how such constructs may be applied to understand acts of extreme violence.
Most one-off offenders, who constitute the majority of paternal filicidal offenders,
seem to show submergence, in which they are relatively unaware of negative construct poles and prior to their violent act only construe their future victims in an idealized manner (Houston, 1998; Howells, 1983). The very positive construing of the victims and relationships might be tight, involving unvarying predictions (Kelly, 1955), which are particularly susceptible to invalidation. One way of dealing with invalidation and the anxiety associated with finding one’s world unconstruable is what Kelly (1955) termed constriction, delimiting one’s perceptual field to avoid apparent incompatibilities in construing. Violence may therefore be regarded as a constrictive act (Winter, 2003) if it is seen as an attempt to remove permanently a source of invalidation, as in those filicidal fathers who, as described by Marleau et al. (1999), murder their partners as well as their children. The invalidating incidents concerned may involve the partner leaving or wanting to leave the offender (Kauppi et al., 2010) or being suspected of infidelity (Adinkrah, 2003), which might be experienced by the offender as threatening, in Kelly’s (1955) sense of involving awareness of a possible comprehensive change to one’s core structure, perhaps including constructions of what constitutes appropriate behavior in a patriarchal society (Izugbara, 2004).
Such incidents are also likely to provoke guilt (Kelly, 1955) and shame (McCoy, 1977) in dislodging the man from, respectively, his and others’ view of his core role as, for example, the head of a family. Therefore, the offender might employ extreme violence to protect his sense of self by eliminating such ‘negative emotions’. However, in the case of one-off violent offenders, with a previous pattern of over-controlling feelings (Megargee, 1966), this violence is itself likely to induce further dislodgement from their core roles.
A further emotion that has been associated with awareness of invalidation of constructions (Cummins, 2003; McCoy, 1977) is anger, although it is questionable whether, as McCoy suggests, it is necessarily a precursor to hostility, in Kelly’s (1955) sense of, extortion or manipulation of evidence to validate invalidated constructions (Horley & Johnson, 2008). However, as Doster (1985) has described in relation to partner violence, hostility might be part of a vicious cycle of abuse. Here, there is heightened tension, involving a construing of an increase in invalidation of predictions; eruption of hostility and violence, in which the couple increasingly impose on each other invalidated constructions; reconciliation, in which the couple draw upon constructions which attracted them to each other; and return to everyday roles, in which the couple reenact their usual roles with each other.
The decisions taken by filicidal fathers may also be usefully viewed in terms of Kelly’s (1955) Circumspection-Preemption-Control (CPC) Cycle. In this cycle, the individual successively goes through the phases of circumspection, which involves a multidimensional construing of a situation; preemption, in which one construct is chosen; and control, in which one pole of this construct is selected as the basis for the decision.
Procter’s (1981) extension of personal construct psychology to the construing of families is of particular relevance to this study as it focuses on the family members’ construal of themselves and each other and their anticipations of their families. Lack of sociality (the construing of each other’s ways of construing to enact roles with each other (Kelly, 1955)) may lead to conflict (Hallschmid et al., 1985), as may people construing from opposing poles of constructs or of what Ugazio (2013) termed family semantic polarities. Despite their individuality in construing (Procter, 1985; Procter & Ugazio, 2017), family members have to negotiate a family construct system, which entails common constructions which govern their interaction with each other (Procter, 1981).
In the current study, in view of some of the work discussed above, paternal filicide is viewed in terms of the offender’s construing of, and relationships with, not only his children but also his partner. The study aims to explore the offender’s construing processes in making the decision to kill, and the painful lived experience of killing on his relationships and sense of self in which the ‘killer self’ is dislodged from the ‘non-killer self’, and the difficulties involved in attempting to incorporate the two incompatible selves to develop a new acceptable self. It addresses the main research question of: how did paternal filicidal offenders view and make sense of their worlds before, during, and after the filicide?
Method
Participants
20 possible participants were purposively identified from various South African
newspapers, but six had committed suicide and eight were awaiting sentencing.
Of the remaining six offenders, four gave consent. Table 1 presents the participants’ demographic information.
