Drunk, angry, abusive, argumentative, and physically violent toward his father.
Mark Kerrigan, brother to the figure skater Nancy Kerrigan had been, “… drinking Scotch and could be heard screaming in the background, cursing his elderly father, who lay supine on their kitchen floor, his pulse halted and his face turning blue.” This is an example of disinhibited impression management, frustration tolerance, and impulse control. Look at the title, “Drunk, angry, abusive, argumentative, and physically violent toward his father.” Now let me put this into perspective applying the MyDiscover Model.
Drunk: Alcohol is a mind and mood altering drug. When a person drinks, the first element to the brain that is effected is the cortical regions. These regions are responsible for impression management, frustration tolerance, and impulse control. The more a person drinks, the deeper the brain is effected. In terms of substance abuse, through these outer regions of the brain, the mind and mood alerting effects of alcohol produce the disinhibition effect. Given the reported fact that Mark Kerrigan lived in his parent’s home basement, it is a safe bet that his impression management was filtered through self-denigration. His alcohol abuse self-medicated his not good enough perspectives. Involved here is also perspectives of entitlement which is notable in most instances of domestic and elderly abuse.
Perspectives of entitlement include, superiority, centrality, and deservedness. These are sort of the filters through which Kerrigan viewed his personal self in relation to his social self, or the lack thereof. Playing on his mind-set was the desensitization effect. In other words, Kerrigan desensitized his perspectives of personal responsibility and accountability to claim his innate drive for competence and independence. As a result of his interpersonal isolation and enforced desensitization, he continued to abuse alcohol. It is just by fate that this is not a case of repeated DWI resulting in fatal car crash, for the same principles apply.
In his family setting he instigate power and control with the goal of manipulating his environment to fit his own distorted irrational needs. I would suggest that Mark’s goal was to dis-inhibit his sense of personal competence and social independence through his alcohol abuse which fueled his perspectives of incompetence and dependence. Validating his self-pity as enforced upon him under the wings of his sister Nancy, he strove to punish, intimidate, and ultimately eliminate his family system.
Not knowing what to do, I would think his family enabled him whereby his cycle of hostility and aggression as influence, not caused by his addiction mind-set. Through the principles of reinforcement he surrendered control, overwhelmed himself and created a red-out whereby he lashed out at his father whom I would think he blamed for his perspectives of unworthiness.
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Tags: Alcohol, domestic abuse, power and control, Violence
