A Trisonance: Identities of Women Whose Mothers Were Murdered by Their Fathers

Abstract

The current qualitative study aimed to examine the narrative identities of women bereaved to intimate partner femicide. Eleven adult Israeli female offspring whose biological mothers were murdered by their biological fathers were interviewed for the purpose of this study. Due to the uniqueness of their loss experience and circumstances, participants’ identity is narrated as a “trisonance”: They are not like their fathers, their mothers, nor as society perceives them. This very particular route for identity reconstruction as a means of psychological survival is discussed in light of the literature on identity construction and bereavement and derives recommendations for practice.

Mitigating Loss and Trauma: The Continuing Bonds Experience of Daughters Bereaved to Intimate Partner Femicide

“…The literature on bereavement to IPF is relatively scarce (see Pitcho-Prelorentzos et al, 2022, 2023, and although studies emphasize the intense reactions and psychopathology associated with traumatic loss (see Barlé et al, 2017;Boelen et al, 2019;Heeke et al, 2019), there is to date no conclusion regarding the role of continuing bonds in such loss (Root & Exline, 2014). Therefore, our results contribute to the theoretical and clinical understanding of the restrictive effect that traumatic components have on loss components in cases of extremely traumatic bereavement, and in IPF bereavement in particular.…”

“…Furthermore, the bonds with the deceased mothers should be interpreted with consideration of the research context. It is possible that negative cultural and social perceptions associated with domestic violence (Kaplan & Herbst, 2015) and homicide losses (Levy, 2013;Mahat-Shamir & Leichtentritt, 2016) in the Israeli context may restrict the bereaved daughters' dialogue with others (Pitcho-Prelorentzos et al, 2023), but also their inner dialogue with their mothers, as they share the culturally endorsed values that see IPF as a taboo. As a result, the commonly used means for continuing bonds are restrictively utilized.…”

“…On the other hand, being predominantly restoration-oriented (tendency toward avoidance of the ongoing bond) endangers losing the mothers forever, which may also affect post-loss adaptation and induce feelings of rootlessness and abandonment. Such balance seems to provide the study's participants with the most-suited path in their post-loss journey, as they manage to maintain a bond with their deceased mothers and successfully survive the primary and secondary challenges involved in losing a mother to IPF (see Pitcho-Prelorentzos et al, 2022, 2023). Furthermore, the bonds with the deceased mothers should be interpreted with consideration of the research context.…”

“…Keeping this in mind, practitioners should aim at enabling their clients to talk about their loss in order to integrate the overwhelming tragedy into their life stories. Emotional and cognitive elements should be addressed in terms of finding meaning in one's loss (Neimeyer & Sands, 2011), as well as the gradual processing of painful emotions such as anger, guilt blame, and shame; some of which are the result of the bereaved internalized negative social perceptions of IPF incidents (Pitcho-Prelorentzos et al, 2023). Another practical recommendation for clinicians is to encourage familial mourning as a means to help bereaved offspring bond with their mothers, as many participants stated that their families did not talk about the mothers after the murder and in light of the fact that continuing bonds are highly affected by a socially validating environment (Mahat-Shamir et al, 2020).…”

“…These accounts were accompanied by a dissociative tendency to protect themselves from the overwhelmingly traumatic and disenfranchised experience (Pitcho-Prelorentzos et al, 2022). Another study emphasized the complex process of identity formation in this population, due primarily to the disidentifications with each of their parents stemming, in turn, from their biological relationship with both the victim and the perpetrator of the socially taboo crime of domestic homicide (Pitcho-Prelorentzos et al, 2023).…”