[katyseagull]

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Don't go for the "parents seem nice and normal" thing.

Remember the unabomber? His brother, the LESS socially maladapted one, lived in a ditch for a couple of years. Parents didn't seem that abnormal.

In the book Whoever Fights Monsters, by Robert Ressler, the guy who started up the FBI VICAP(Vicious Criminal Apprehension Program) and coined the phrase, "serial killer," wrote about Ed Kemper, whose mom was a quite normal lady, seemingly. Kemper wound up killing her. Ressler, describing Kemper's upbringing, said his mother made her house virtually a "factory for producing serial killers", to paraphrase.

Just like the story of a couple, the story of a family is one that outsiders can never really know, though it might seem perfectly apparent. Most people know not to air out their dirty laundry in public, but there is plenty of dirty laundry about. Putting on a front is an elementary survival skill in life even for harmless people with quite ordinary lives. That we can walk by people's strange and varied lives unsuspecting is no surprise. The world would find ways to punish them severely if we couldn't. All anyone is necessarily doing by putting up a socially acceptable front is following the path of least resistance in a landscape of stark alternatives.

[/ QUOTE ]

I hear what you're saying. After I wrote my post I sat there and pondered it for a minute. I mean you know what they say about strippers. How a lot of them have had some kind of abuse in their past? But really, who knows what happened with that girl. You would not believe how spoiled and shallow she was!

Nevertheless, don't you think it's possible for very kind, responsible parents to raise a narcissistic little bum? I mean I've known plenty of families where all but one sibling turns out really great. I still think people make their own choices and go against their parents values all the time.