Joe Jackson, the father of music legend Michael Jackson died this week, nearly a decade after his son, the most famous victim of addiction after Elvis Presley. Michael Jackson's illness and his suffering were the direct product of a tyrannical father who cast a long and sadistic shadow over all his children.
It isn't necessary here to recount the litany of humiliations, punishments and cruelties that Joe Jackson meted out on his children, instead it is important to understand what motivated his behaviour. He could be described as a typical narcissistic parent whose own needs outweighed that of his children.
Joe Jackson was a former boxer and a failed blues musician; two careers that rely heavily on acclaim and attention, ideal careers for a narcissistic individual. He saw in the nascent musical talent of his children a way to live out his dreams and fantasies and pursued musical success through them relentlessly.
In emotionally healthy families, parents also have ambitions for their children and wish for them success and achievement. However, emotionally healthy parents are able to detach from the child and not see their achievements as an extension of the parent's own ambitions. Joe Jackson was unable to accept that his own dreams of stardom were not going to be fulfilled and for him this was an unbearable truth.
In the mindset of the narcissist, being happy for the achievements of others or proud of the achievements of others is all but impossible. To be eclipsed by ones own child becomes an unbearable experience, and so one of two strategies tends to emerge. Either the narcissist parent will push their children to ever greater levels of perfectionism and then brutally punish any failings or shortcomings, or they will seek to sabotage the child's natural development.
Joe Jackson saw Michael and his siblings as an extension of himself. In his view the children were there not as independent human beings in their own right, but as vehicles for their father's agenda. This is the means by which narcissists destroy their children, either through control or criticism. They grow up emotionally crippled and have to see solace in dysfunctional relationships, addiction and other harmful behaviours.
The various eccentricities and extreme behaviours exhibited by Michael Jackson, his Peter Pan-esque retreat into the a surreal and infantile world, were the product of a childhood denied. Michael Jackson's addiction to opioids were ostensibly the product of an injury he sustained while filming an advert for Pepsi. This cover story was accepted by the newspapers and television after he died, as it was a more palatable story to tell about the causes of addiction.
In reality, the truth that we are so often desperate to escape was that Michael Jackson's suffering was the result of his childhood and the power of his tyrant father.
If you're in recovery and you're reading this because there has been a tyrant in your life, contact the Living Room Cardiff here.