Hidden True Crime - Duggar Déjà Vu? Criminal Psychologist Analyzes What’s Really Happening in the Duggar Family

Episode Date: March 29, 2026

In this episode, Dr. John, a clinical and forensic psychologist breaks down what is really happening in the Duggar home, as well as other families like them... how shame, parenting styles, and religion can all come together and leave a family in complete disarray. Sponsors: Brodo: Head to https://Brodo.com/HTC for 20% off your first subscription order and use code HTC for an additional $10 off. Rocket Money: Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at https://RocketMoney.com/TCP About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. Hello, Hidden Gems. It is Lauren and John, the Hidden True Crime duo officially. And we have a very special show about the Duggers today. We have a lot to talk about ever since Joseph Dugger was charged. We released an episode earlier today or I did. We have been waiting and waiting and hinting at John joining this episode for a long time. We want to ask him some questions about family systems.

We want to ask you about the Michelle Dugger video because I gave my two cents without talking to you about it. and now I have questions. So I actually hope we can start there, the Michelle Dugger paparazzi video and a bunch of other stuff. So we're, and by the way, if anybody's wondering, yes,

we are co-host, but we're also spouses. So it's not that weird. We're like sitting this close on the couch. Yeah. Right. That's true. A lot of people probably don't know.

Yeah. We're spouses. Well, someone didn't realize the other day. So I was like, oh, no, I'm not like sitting this close to my ghost. host. How you doing, sweetheart? I'm good. Glad to be here. This is a, so this is a,

this is going to give us an opportunity to talk about these type of family systems. When I say that, I mean, family systems that tend to be more authoritarian, family systems that tend to be more religious-based, right? There's a number of layers here that we want to unpack. And we've, we've talked about these types of families a lot, but I think this is going to really open the door to a more in-depth discussion of these types of families. So I want to do that. And I think people know, people are used to kind of me opening with a question that, that really will provide some focus. So if you want to understand this family system and the Dugger family system and the Frankie family system, so this is going to be not just about the Duggers. This will be about the Duggers, but it'll be,

I think our discussion is going to be much broader in terms of looking at these types of family. systems. Okay. So I'm not going to really, we'll drill down a little bit on the Dugger specifically. But the question, so the thing I want to start by looking at is blanket training, right? Like, you brought it up in some of your early episodes, right? It's so important. So if you, if you want to understand the Dugger family system, number one, and the, in the Frankies too, because they used blanket training. We need to understand blanket training. If you really want to understand this, you have to ask the why question. And we're a why Donnet channel typically, not always, but often, most of the time.

And the question I want to pose is, why would a parent gravitate towards blanket training? Right? That's the question that's really going to unlock our understanding of this family system. the words why are some parents naturally interested in blanket training and some are right what is what's that distinction and where does that lead us on this discussion right that that's what we want to know that's what i want to talk about but okay let's do this before we do that i know you wanted to i just watched this video like i know i want to talk about michel douger well not only did you just watch it i just like gave my own you know opinion on it and thoughts on it

And I want you to take this further, though, because I'm not the psychologist in the relationship. I'm just the, I'm just the, I don't know what I am, the opinionated. The opinionated one. No, you're, well, you're the journalist, right? So, I mean, the journalist. And you've been hanging out with me for so long that sometimes I feel like you, you, at the very least offers strong psychological opinions. Yeah.

You're making money doing right now. No, I'm not. I am protecting children. No. What were they doing in the interview? What was your, what was your son-in-law doing? Your son-in-law was doing something way worse. Your son-in-law was doing something definitely worse.

Can you do, can you do an interview? Can you do an interview? You cannot be here. Is this private property on the road? Okay. The road is private property. property? You have no business being here. Okay. You are, you are interfering with children. No, I'm not messing with the children. This has nothing, this has nothing to do. This has,

this has nothing to do with the children. This is your, you guys are being investigated for the children. I'm here for press. I'm here for press, mom. Mom, I'm here for press. Can I ask you some questions? You will not ask me anything. You will have to talk to someone else. Can I you any questions mom any questions can we talk to your daughter can we talk to your daughter please don't stand back there i don't want to reverse and hit you miss we literally are just doing interfering with children i'm not interfering with any children out there shame we came to just interview your daughter who was just recently arrested you are not we just came to interview your daughter who was recently arrested yes we did leave right now please thank you ma'am we'll leave i

I just wanted you to know that's what we're doing. So let's start with your impressions, right? Because I think that'll help lead into my impressions. I think what you were arguing was that she was angry, but her anger was controlled. Yeah. So people are online for the most part. The Internet kind of disagrees with me a little bit. I mean, I agree with a lot of the people and what they're saying, but then I just, not everything.

I noticed that she wasn't yelling. People are like, oh my gosh, she's yelling. She's losing it. I'm like, no, actually, I feel like she's still keeping her like dougar sing songy, sing songy keep sweet voice. But her eyes showed more anger to me. Like her eyes like wide and angry and she's going up there knocking on the window. And it's very like, oh, man, like she's there on a mission.

and she's clearly feeling something. I don't know what it is, but I thought anger, frustration, anxiousness, maybe paranoia. And her voice, to me, didn't, again, I think she probably could yell a lot louder. And I feel like it was still controlled. I also just wanted to point out other things with the reporter

that, you know, this reporter clearly was recording the house. This reporter looks to be on a public street too. So it seems legal to do what he was doing. But she wouldn't be the first public figure necessarily to, like, lose it when she feels like her privacy is being invaded by the paparazzi. Okay. And I think it's fair that she went up recording with her phone because what else is she going to do? She sees this guy filming her house and she's going to go confront him. Yeah, but that's not indispensable.

I know. I know. So I just like trying to see like both sides to this. To try to set the stage, that's not indescendable. Was the reporter intrusive probably? I mean, we don't know how long he was out there. Right. Right.

I don't know. Like, was it annoying? And I hated that he called her mom. Yeah. Mom. Mom. That was condescending. So here's the, here's the important point.

Okay. So what I would say is to some degree, I mean, just on the surface, right, to some degree, this video gives us a snapshot of the Dugger family system writ large. This very, very small video opens the door to understanding the darker family. It opens the door to understanding Blanket training. It opens the door to understand an authoritarian families. And I'm not saying the darker family necessarily fits. I'm just saying I'm making some inferences based on this video that may or may not fit this family.

Obviously, I don't know. I have to sit and interview this family, right? There's a lot I'd have to do to make, you know, a full of sense. assessment of this family, but... Do you have me the water, babe? I can't reach it. Thank you. That was my water.

It's mine now. We can share. Marriage. I need a little, thirst quench, too. Thank you. No, okay. It's going to get really intense.

Don't put it so far away. Oh, okay. Here. Thank you. Um, so let's, let's break down some of the elements of this, this video, right?

Yeah. Like, let's start with this whole notion of, well, one thing she says is you're making money, right? That's interesting. You're making money, right? This is a family. Huh, I missed that. This is a family that had a show on TLC for years, right? Years and years and years and years.

Who monetized it, right? This is a family. And their kids still do. that's their living. They learned, you know. They probably still get royalties, right? You're making money, right? That's fascinating. Because this is a family that I, when we're going to talk about, we're going to talk about large family systems later on.

This is a family that's effectively a corporation. The way I would describe this family, this is a corporation that made millions of dollars by monetizing what their children said and did. In other words, their family life, by taking their private family like and making it public, like they made a lot of money. So isn't that interesting?

That she's blaming somebody else. That she's saying you're making money. When true, by posting this video, maybe he made a little, I don't know, but he probably monetized it to some degree. Absolutely. But that's projection. Right? That's classic projection.

That's someone who's saying, well, I made money on our family for years and years and years and years, and I have no problem with that. But you, you're sitting out here, tell me me, and she came out. Making money on our family. You're making money. Right, you're making money. You're trying to make money on me and our family now.

But I did it for years and years. That's okay. But it's not okay for you to do this. Is it because she's protecting children? Well, we're going to get into that. If your morning coffee just isn't hitting the same lately or you're on that second or third cup throughout the day, trying to power through, I feel you.

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all under 50 calories. And it's made from scratch, no concentrates, no shortcuts, which you can actually taste. Shop the best broth on the planet with Broto. Head to brodo.com slash htc for 20% off your first subscription order and use code HTC for an additional $10 off. Once again, that's brodo.com slash HTC for 20% off your first subscription order and an additional $10 off if you use my promo code HTC. So the next part of her video, she said, so that's the next claim she makes. She says, you're interfering with children, right? You're interfering. Let's think about that. let's think about that. This is a family that exerted iron-clad control over their children for years and years and years.

This is a family that demanded obedience, compliance, right, that was based largely fear-based. Yeah. Right? For years and years. And a family that used, as far as we know, or at least they believed in the principles of the Institute of Basic Life Principles, right? They believed in the IBLP, which IBLP, which implements Blanket training

as a core moral approach, a core moral approach to parenting. So this is a family that presumably was using Blanket training, right? If you want to talk about interfering with children, let's bring in Blanket training. Let's bring you. Blanket training is not interfering with children. It is disrupting development. It is fundamentally altering the life trajectory of a human being, of a child, right? So if you want to talk about interfering with children, guess who's interfering with children?

It's not the reporter. Chusha. Could that be more projection, right? Yes. Okay. So you have those two components, and then you have this most interesting, this final. component, which is she says, for my count, she says, shame three times. She said shame on you. She says shame on you twice and shame. Like shame. You should be ashamed, right?

Shame. Shame. And you know that when we've talked about these types of families, shame and secrecy are always a part of this equation. Yes. Always a part of this equation, right? So here you have her, is this more projection? Right? She's talking about shame. Why is she talking about shame? Why is she trying to shame him? Why is she trying to place the onus of shame onto the reporter? Perhaps this is another type of projection. Perhaps the real shame is the shame she feels and she experiences because of all the dysfunction in her family and because the fact that now there's a second child who's being charged or implicated, alleged,

in crimes involving children. Now this is becoming a pattern. So who has the shame? Yeah. Is it Michelle Dugger or is it the reporter? Right. And she wants him to feel it somehow, but she's feeling it. And so you're right.

I think there is some touch of anger here. This is breaking the role of the obedient, perfect wife. We'll talk about that. in this discussion as well in the sense that she is angry. She's not, as you point out, she's not completely keeping sweet. I don't think she's over the top angry. No. But here's the, here's another point.

Your wife can get a lot angry. Oh yeah. That's what I was like, oh yeah, Michelle. No, you would have run off that reporter in two seconds, no doubt. No, I don't know if I thought. That's not true. I just wouldn't have gone over there. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And that brings up our final point, which is, Because we're going to talk about this. I'm just going to introduce this idea. But in authoritarian parenting practices. So when I say authoritarian parent practices, I mean parenting practices that are overly controlling, right? Parenting that's very strict. It's rule-based. It involves a high degree of control.

So generally speaking, authoritarian parenting practices would be described as high control, low one. warmth. High control, low warrant. Right. Sounds like Ruby Frankie. And I think when you look at her behavior here, that's what you're looking at. There's no warmth. There's no like if there was some warmth.

So there's another type of parenting practice called authoritative, which is more of the ideal. That's the sweet spot between control and warmth. So authoritative parents generally, they implement. structure, but they're also connected to their kids through emotion. Right. So you have high control and high warmth. That's the ideal approach to parenting. And so it's not hard to imagine, for example, that a more authoritative parent might have walked out to that reporter and said, is everything okay? Right. Right. To be a little warmer and say, to be everything okay, you know, I feel like you're kind of,

you might be overstepping your bounds here. Right. Like to be a little more empathic. What is it you're looking for? Like you don't. Or just to have an exchange. Right. You're not coming out looking for battle. So what you're seeing. Like knocking on the door and being like, she.

And not only that coming out with her phone, right? Recording. Yeah. And so I get that. But like what you're right in front of her face. What you're seeing here is high control and low warmth. Hmm. There's no attempt to negotiate the human side of this interaction.

No matter how angry she is, I mean, maybe if she's so angry that she can't find any degree of empathy or warmth, you could argue, okay, let's give her the benefit, right? It still isn't good communication. Right. This is not, so if you want to, so already from this one minute video, right, we've landed on all these elements of this family system. Yeah. Yeah.

And so it's remarkable how you can take, it's remarkable how you can take these. little snapshots and make inferences about families. And I think this is a great example of that. And so I think our discussion is going to involve, it's going to revolve around a lot of the elements that I just brought up. Shame. Shame, right. The way she says it, for shame, or what is she, that's, yeah,

that wasn't a yell. That's why the way she says shame is not a yell, but it's. Right. So it's definitely intense. So let's move from this video into the family system. And as I said at the beginning, we want to answer this question about what's the appeal of blanket training to some parents, right? And so I think we have to begin at the beginning, which is what's defined what blanket training is. So would you, you want to take that?

What is blanket training? Yeah. No, yeah. We've talked about it a lot on a hidden true crime where you sit a baby. or toddler as young as six months old on a blanket and give them toys and if they start to crawl off the blanket, you punish them. And that can be swatting or spanking or a.k.a. hitting. Yeah. And until all of a sudden you make the child submissive enough that they never leave said blanket. And, you know, it's not a playpen with sides of the blanket and the child

stays on it. So in other words, it's like you're breaking their spirit a little bit. That's why referred to it like you know animal training a little bit let's be honest um it's well we're gonna we're gonna talk about that actually so and it's the other thing to mention it the practice is associated with michael i have my own water now the practice is associated with mark michael and debil's book to train up a child and i haven't read the book but are you familiar with the book yeah and i'm also familiar with the pearls we interviewed our friend shelly uh when josh dougar was convicted and she talked a lot about the influence the pearls have on this culture. Yeah.

And part of what she was part of too. So it's, it's, it's, it originates apparently or it's popularized by, by this book by the pearls to train up a child. And so it becomes within that book, apparently, it becomes sort of a moral tenant of the Institute, right, the IBLP, right? The IBLP. IBLP, right. And so, but let's, so let's think about this from a psychological standpoint. So from psychologically, the psychological principle driving blanket training is called operant

conditioning. Operant conditioning is the framework developed by BF Skinner to explain human behavior. Operant conditioning is essentially about consequences. So the way operant conditioning works is you have a behavior and then you have a consequence. And the consequence then is designed to shape the behavior. So, for example, in blanket training would be an example of what Skinner would call positive punishment. So you have in operating conditioning, you have reinforcement and you have punishment. And reinforcement is generally speaking designed to increase behavior.

Punishment is designed to decrease behavior. So here you have an instance where if a child is exploring the bull, blanket, right? And it starts moving to the edge. And all of a sudden, the parent grabs a ruler or a spoon. A lot of times our understanding is that in the, like with the Frankies, there's been discussions there that they used wooden spoons. So the child gets close to the edge and then you hit the child with the wooden spoon. Right. So what's occurring is you're adding in an adverse stimulus, the hitting, the wooden spoon, to try to decrease a behavior. So because you're decreasing the behavior, that's a punishment.

And because you're adding a something, you're adding the actual physical punishment, you're adding a stimuli into the equation that makes it positive. So I know a lot of people get confused about negative punishment, right? Negative punishment is a common term. But this is an example of operant conditioning. It's an aversive situation. So it's sometimes called some people's, refer to it as aversive conditioning.

But here you have a classic case of a behavior, which is exploring the blanket, followed by a consequence, which is punishing the child with a physical punishment, right, and with the goal of preventing that child from exploring that blanket anymore, or moving off the blanket in the future. So you have punishment, it's positive because you're adding something to the equation,

whether to subtracting it, right? So in that sense, so just to clarify, an example of negative punishment would be when you remove a stimuli. So for example, if an adolescent is glued to his or her cell phone endlessly, negative punishment, negative punishment would be you remove the stimulus, which is the cell phone as a consequence of that child being on the phone all the time. And the goal is to decrease that behavior. So if you remove it, the goal is to have the child interact less with the phone. And then eventually you may give that phone back, right? But the goal is you're trying to shape behavior through negative punishment. Got it.

So this is an example. You mentioned earlier, it's like training an animal. Well, ironically, that's exactly what most animal trainers do. they engage in this framework of operant conditioning. So one of the classic Skinner experiments was pigeons and giving them rewards and taking rewards away and looking at their behavior. He counted, you know, Skinner was the ultimate behaviorist. In other words, he didn't believe, he didn't think that the mind really played much of a role

in human behavior. He saw the mind as a black box that was irrelevant, that you could, you could, you could know everything you needed to know about human beings by just observing their behavior, measuring it and shaping it through a series of rewards and punishments essentially. Chat GPT might also agree. Yeah. But anyway, nonetheless, go on. So you have, you know, as I said, it's something it's called aversive conditioning for a reason, right?

Which is because when those conditions are in blanket training, when those conditions are too aversive, they can have a really negative impact on behavior. Yeah. Have you ever looked at your bank statement and thought, wait, what am I even paying for right now? Because I've definitely had that moment where I realized there were subscriptions I completely forgot about. And just quietly, they were charging me every month. That's where Rocket Money has been extraordinarily helpful.

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that curiosity is dangerous, right? Yes, thank you. And that safety really depends upon absolute compliance. Yes, that's what, curiosity is like not a thing. Don't be curious, not even as a toddler. Don't question anything. Yeah. And I think this is where it becomes particularly problematic in the sense that you have what I would call a developmental mismatch in the sense that a one-year-old child or younger, they are hardwired.

From an evolutionary standpoint, they are hardwired to explore their environment. That's how you develop your plan. Right. They are hardwired, right. They are biologically hardwired to crawl to test. to test boundaries, to find novelty. That's how they learn. Yeah.

Right? That's how you, that's essentially how you develop. How you develop. So in other words, I think the simplest way to put it would be, in other words, there's a creative component to children. The children are by definition creative because that allows them to learn and understand the environment. And obviously, that's going to pay off down the road.

Right. But so what you're doing is, what you're doing is you're really trying to, you're trying to stunt that. Right. If that's a normal part of human behavior, then you're trying to stop essentially, you're trying to deter that type of behavior. Right. Do not be human. Do not explore a sense of self, right? Like if you're stunting that, aren't you, the entire sense of self?

And not only are you stunting that, but you're moving things. And again, this would get to that video a little bit. You're moving things from the internal world to the external world. So you're learning not to develop kind of a complex internal sense of self or an internal moral compass. That's not all shifting to the external. You're learning that what matters is what authority figures or parents or people outside of you or religious doctrine is telling you to believe and do. Yeah.

Right. And so, Mm-hmm. And so you, you, in these, in blanket training essentially, you, you have, you have this sense of obedience in the family that's organized around fear. Mm-hmm. It's organized around hypervigilance. Uh-huh.

And it's organized around external control. Yes. Rather than in healthier families, typically you have families that tend to organize more around open communication. Trust. Exchange. Yeah. Trust.

Healthy dialogue back and forth. Right. And internal control. The goal of healthy parenting is always, or I shouldn't say always because obviously we know family systems that are really dysfunctional. But the goal is to develop a complex, autonomous, independent sense of self for a child so that they can grow up to face the demands of the world in a healthy, resilient way. Right. So one thing you're doing here with- Internal control versus external control.

One thing you're doing here is you're removing any sense of resilience. because the children that are learning blank and trading are focused on the external. They're focused on parental obedience, right? Compliance. They're not developing that internal sense of conscience, for example. That's really important. They're not developing a sense of resilience that they can somehow meet the world in different ways. They can adapt to the world.

What they're learning is there's one way to meet the world. And that is through obedience. It's through fear. Yeah, exactly. Obedience and fear. External control. That helps me process that. External control versus internal control.

Because as a parent, you're right. Like, do I want to control my child sometimes? Sure. But I don't. I just try to teach him how to make his own choices and think for himself. Yeah. And so what the child is, learning is the child is getting rewarded. If we go back to Skinner's ideas, the child is getting

rewarded for obedience. The child is now going to associate love with obedience rather than curiosity. Yes. Rather than resilience, right? All the things that I think many parents hope to instill in their children, this is doing the opposite, right? And there's something else that's interesting, I think, when you think about Blanketrain. And there's something else I think that's really important. And that is, I talk a lot about Murray Bowen. He's a family systems guy. I really like Murray Bowen a lot. And his whole idea is that he's got two basic ideas.

Well, he's got to, I take it back. The most fundamental ideas in Bowen are anxiety in the family and differentiation. So according to Bowen, every family has anxiety that they have to manage and negotiate. The more anxious the family is, the more likely. they are to become, say, authoritarian to manage that anxiety. Not always, but oftentimes, right? And so you, you, in those types of family systems, there's this other component of Bowen, which is differentiation, which means differentiation to Bowen means you develop

a healthy, autonomous self separate from your family. Right. And so in many ways, the more there is, the more there is, the, the more anxiety there is and the more a family pushes against that. In other words, they try to control that anxiety or overly control it. The harder it is for children to differentiate. And blanket training becomes the perfect metaphor for that. Because if you see the blanket, if you see the blanket as a space in which the child is confined, then you have to see the world as being a really narrow island on that blanket. Right. Whereas in a normal family,

you might say, no, the world is, this blanket is a very small part of this world. Right. I want you to get off the blanket and go explore the living room and the kitchen, right? Like, explore the whole home because that's the real world. Yeah. Right. And so in Bowen's family system theory, you're trying to control that anxiety by controlling the space in which that child moves.

by, I mean, literally and metaphorically. Yeah. Rather than letting that child roam free and really discover their own interest and develop an internal sense of self, you're limiting that child to a really small world and space, right? Yeah. The idea is that blanket training becomes a metaphor for really rigidly controlling a child's, every part of a child's life. Their emotions, their cognitive development, their intellectual development.

their physical development. It becomes a perfect metaphor for that. But there's something else that's interesting here too. And that is that the child's physical body, the child's actual body in many ways, and I don't know if Bowen would agree with this, but I'm going to make this observation, not just a blanket,

but the child's body becomes the space and the place where anxiety gets managed in families. So by controlling the physical movements of that child and the amount of anxiety, and you know, you know, we've had a one-year-old, right? One-year-olds can be cantankerous. And two-year-olds and three-year-olds. And three-year-olds, right? Children can be hard.

They can be emotional, right? And for some parents, that's difficult. For some parents, some parents see that as reflecting negatively upon them. If they can't control their child's behavior, then somehow they're deficient. Yeah. Right. And so the child's shame, right. The child's body literally becomes the place where this anxiety, there's a battle to control the child and to control the anxiety and the family.

So if you imagine a family with 19 children, right? I can imagine. Right. Thanks to the Duggers. If you can imagine a family with. Thank you, Jim Bob and Michelle for giving me that picture. If you can imagine a family with 19 children, imagine trying to control. through blanket training.

I don't know if all the children were subjected to blanket training. Yeah, we don't know. But imagine a family system where every child was given blanket training, and therefore there was an attempt in the family to manage the anxiety that must have been enormous in such a large family through the specific site of that child's body. So say that one more time. So you're trying to control all the anxiety. I'm saying it's a literal interpretation.

It's a literal way to try to manage anxiety in a family. No, I know. I could tell this was important. So trying to control the environment or the anxiety in the family through controlling a child's body. Is that what you're saying? Maybe another way to think of it as another way to think of it. Maybe an easier way to translate this would be to say, yes, the body, move, so let's think of it like this. The movement outside of that blanket would be considered to be

rebellion. Right. And so the body is symbolic of rebellion in the sense that if you transgress those limits of the blankets, now you're rebelling against the family. And if you're rebellion against the family, now you're creating much more anxiety in the system. And if you're creating much more anxiety in the system, then you're upsetting the balance of the system. Healthy family systems manage anxiety through communication, through openness, right? They invite anxiety to some degree. Is what it is. Yeah. Right. But family systems that are less healthy are going to use blanket training to literally try to suppress any type of anxiety, to suppress any type of autonomy, right? It's you're trying, you're, you're, think of it as, so I mentioned that the

your families of corporation. Let's also think of this as an army. So there's a lot of pictures, right? It's almost like military in the sense that this family dresses on. I've seen pictures of them all dressed in red. Every one of their names, that was a good picture. Everyone in their name starts with Jay. Yeah. Right. It looks like a small military unit, right? And that's my point is like blanket training becomes a metaphor for having the soldiers all march in unison. I know. Some people think the J name thing, like, isn't that big of a deal. Because, like, I get it. It can be cute. I have a few children all with the same name.

But I think in this situation, it's more than that. I just think it's, you know, all the J names can be just, I mean, it just shows conformity. I mean, you know, whether you think it's cute or not, it's conformity. It's conformity. And, I mean, let's be honest, 19 J names. Well, then to have like a Joy Anna and a Johanna. I mean, okay. And where does it originate?

Is it because Jay is for Jim Bob? Yeah, not Michelle. Or is it Jay from Jesus? I think that, I mean, I don't know. I don't know why Jim Bob should change Michelle's name to Jushell, but, you know, she is Michelle still. Or mom. So let me, before we move on from blanket training a little bit, I'm going to talk about some of the downsides of blanket training. So there hasn't been a lot of research on blanket training, by the way, because it's unethical.

You can't, like, put a child. It's not supposed to be a thing. You can't, well, you can't put a child in a lab and punish them with the wooden spoon. No, I know. It's not a thing unless you're the Frankies or, you know, or your Jim Bob and Michelle. There's no, there's no researcher that, there's no researcher that would be allowed to perform research on blanket training because it's physical corporal punishment. So the research, because of that, I can only refer to the research on corporal punishment,

but the research on corporal punishment is pretty clear that the children that are involved with corporal punishment have worse outcomes. When I say that, I mean that they're more aggressive. They have more mental health problems. They have worse developmental outcomes. And they struggle with longer term emotional regulation. So I think... Although the goal is conformity and obedience in the short run, right, in the long run, that becomes a bit of a problem. So typically families that are more authoritative in approach, that means that they have high warmth and high structure or, you know.

What do you mean by high structure? High warmth. Oh, just, yeah, just high control. Structure, control, just limits. Limits, okay. The families that are a bit healthier in these regards or that do better, that are not authoritarian, they tend to have children that have better frustration tolerance, more cognitive flexibility. So that's another downside of corporal punishment that the children tend to be more rigid, which makes sense. Because as I said, they're kind of confined to that one. they're literally a metaphorically confined to the map, to the blanket.

Yeah. That's their world. Children raised in more open families, less authoritarian families tend to have more empathy. They tend to engage in creative reflection and exploration more. So in other words, they're more, they tend to be more open to experience. And they have better language for their emotions. They're able to communicate better. So those are some of the downsides, I think, of corporal punishment.

Oh, and as we mentioned, too, there's this idea of that children raised in more open families tend to have more of a sense of internal controls rather than getting everything, getting all of their moral precepts and, you know, basing all of their behaviors on external demands. I mean, so we're just like really learning why the Duggers are such a cluster. Oh, we're just getting started. But I can't. I mean, that's like so that it's important to know by the way. Because I mean, my ultimate question is like how is this happening again in the same family as I call it Dugger Dajavu? But go ahead. At my bank, I was literally getting pennies using wallfronts. Cheching. There's this much that I'm getting an interest and I didn't have to do anything.

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I mentioned that we should answer a question. That's actually what our child always, you promise. I'm like, no, I didn't. You're like, I didn't. But. Let's move a little bit more towards, so we covered blanket training. It's an operant conditioning principle developed from B.F. Skinner, which is used for animal training.

as you pointed out correctly. Let's talk about some of the underlying psychological elements of this. I've already touched on some of them, but let's go a little deeper with this, which, by the way, is going to start carrying us over into authoritarian parenting practices. So there's going to be a lot of overlap in terms of why would a parent engage in blanket training? It's going to be very similar to answering the question, why would a parent want to be authoritarian or develop authoritarian practices and parenting children, right? And the first psychological reason is anxiety, that many parents just, with children that they feel are out of control, right?

They don't like the messiness of children. They don't like the unpredictability of raising children. They don't like all the noise. they don't like when they're in public. You know, you and I have been in grocery stores many times where, you know. I'll just never forget the tantrum that happened in the Grand Canyon. Oh, my gosh. Like near the lookout points and all these tourists.

Sorry for ruining everybody's day that day. Yeah. Yeah, right. Right. John just wouldn't be quiet. No, just kidding. Our child. Bad joke.

And so I think anxiety shows up in a lot of ways that there's this fear of public, like you just met, like there's a fear of public embarrassment. Yeah. But the child is somehow going to reflect on you. And so there's, with anxiety, I think, it's not just the parents own struggles with anxiety, but it's their perceptions of how others are going to react to their child. Yeah. And they want to control that.

They want to manage that. So anxiety is a big part of it. And we've already covered that in the context of Bowen and family systems to some degree. But just from a, psychological standpoint, right? Managing anxiety would be a big reason that parents resort to authoritarian practices and or blanket training. Another would be ideology. And ideology in the sense that a lot of parents that would use blanket trading or authoritarian practices, they see early obedience as being morally necessary. Right. And that ties back to the pearls. Yeah.

That ties back to the notion that this is a moral system. To the Jody Hildebrand, to Ruby Frankie, to the pearls, to the Duggers. If you know, you know. Yeah. Yes. Moral. There's another. Moral obedience.

Right. Necessary. Yeah. That it's morally necessary. And maybe I would add spiritually too, right? That there might be this spiritual religious component that ties in with the moral part. But there's, let's, let's. So that's, those are two.

There's another one that's perfectionism. There's this high perfectionistic culture in a lot of these families, right, to appear perfectly to the world, right? If you think about the Dugger's show, or if you think about the Frankies, Ruby Frankie would set up scenarios where she would tell her children how to act and behave so that they would appear one way, whereas behind the scenes,

we know obviously very different. behaviors were occurring. Yeah. Right. So there's this public persona split. And a lot of that is based on, I mean, public, private persona split. And a lot of that is based on this idea of perfectionism, that there's a real need to kind of regulate the family image.

And as a matter of fact, the cousin, the cousin, the cousin, Amy, the cousin Amy talks about that very idea. I love Amy. She's my favorite. She says, when an image. Image is protected over truth, right? Image, that's perfectionism. When an image is protected over truth and silence is chosen over accountability,

it creates an environment where abuse can thrive. Yes, thank you, Amy. Exactly. That was so good. Will you give that? I'm going to read it one more time. That's right here. Yeah.

Oh, I can see it. Okay. It says, when an image is protected over truth and silence. is chosen when a, sorry, when an image is protected over truth and silence is chosen over accountability, it creates an environment where abuse can thrive. Oh, you want to back? I mean, I'm going to need to refer back to this. You wanted the water back to him. Yeah. Okay, so that's going to bring us into shame. And that shame is going to be, shame is often very closely aligned with perfectionism. So there's shame. If you can't control it try, right? There's shame around being seen as weak.

indulgent or moral, right, immoral, like morally weak as a poor parent. And this gets into the idea that off some parents will tie their children's behavior into their own sense of self-worth. If they can't control the child, then they must somehow be defective. That is shameful. Yeah. Right. And so you have shame.

Shame's another psychological component. Control is obviously a huge one. That's another one. oftentimes among parents that it would engage in blanket training and or authoritarian parenting practices, there's a strong preference for hierarchy. There's a strong preference for authority and authoritarianism. That could be because they grew up at homes like that. Oftentimes it's because that's what they know.

That's what they relate to, right? And so, but there's this other thing. There's this guy, a rotter who developed a very, very famous scale in psychology called the locus of control scale. It's actually Roders, i.e., meaning internal external, Rotter's internal external locustive control scale. It was developed in 1966. It's a really well-known classic scale. I'm very fascinated by this whole external internal control thing. So keep going. That was like a, that helped me. And so, but, but the point is, it's not just, it's not, control is not just learned in your environment. Rodder is more interested in

a lot of psychologists have been more interested in external, internal, as a personality variable. Is it is something that's more about temperament and personality, right? So nature, temperament. Some people are more close-minded by temperament, and some people are more open-minded. In fact, there's in the big five personality factors, one of those, to me, one of the more important ones is called openness to experience. So some people are high and openness to experience, mean they want to explore and want to create.

And some people are low. It means they don't want to explore. Is it just me or do most of the criminals we cover have low openness to experience? Could that be like a thing where we're made to scale on like likelihood of being a criminal and like if low openness to experience is like up there? Low is up. So one of the one of the instruments. Because like I've noticed this all the time. One of the instruments I give is called the Neo.

and it's it's based on the big five personality factors and the reason I give it is exactly for that purpose is to look at openness to experience in my in my in the number of the across a large number of evaluations I've done where I've given the Neo every single one of them has scored low on openness to experience so I agree I think it is a major factor in terms of criminality. You know, I've just learned by myself in covering crime. Another thing, criminals are always low on like openness to experience, but also unlike a really good sense of humor.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, a good sense of humor indicates some degree of resilience. And it indicates some degree of creativity because humor is changing context. It's playing with context. And if you're, if you see the world as absolute. you're not going to see the world as contextual.

So comedians, that's what they do. They essentially play with context. They change context, right? That's why things are funny because they're rearranging that. Makes sense. Creativity. Another psychological variable I would add would be religious extremism. So families with high religion or high degrees of religious extremism, we'll talk about this in a minute.

I'm not, by the way, denigrating religion. No. There's a difference. Yeah. Religious extremism and religiously extreme families, rules become framed as non-negotiable and in many cases divinely mandated, right? Yeah. So obedience becomes a part of adherence to a divine order. Yeah.

Right. And so you don't want to, and I think that's part of the pearls. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's tied into it's tied into this idea of obedience to a higher authority. Whether that's a parent,

whether that's God, right? There's there can be a religious component to that. Yeah. So I think underneath all of this as we start moving away a little bit from blanket training and authority,

and parenting. I want to talk a little bit more about authoritarian parenting, but the underlying commonality is that you have punishment and suppression as opposed to openness, right, open communication and creativity. Yeah, openness to experience creativity. Yeah. Let me see if I have any other thoughts. I have some notes about authoritarian parenting. I think A few thoughts, further thoughts I would have on this area is that in authoritarian homes, because there's so much emphasis on control, and because the emotional and physical closeness as seen as related to obedience, what happens is, and this is really important for the Dugger case, by the way, or the Dugger situation. conflict becomes hidden. Oh, right? Conflict, it becomes hidden and suppressed rather than discussed openly.

So there's some potential, if you think about this idea of suppression or overly rigid obedience, there's this, there's this potential. and this is where this is going to be completely relevant to the Duggers, of course. There's always this potential for rebellion and escalating conflict. So if you can't give voice to, let's say, let's say, for example, you have an adolescent that's, you know, with emerging sexual feelings and impulses, right? If you can't give voice to that and sex is seen in a very rigid kind of fear-based manner, then now you're setting up the conditions in this family for some type of rebellion. Yeah.

Right. And if that becomes a conflict and you can't discuss it, then you're probably going to act that out. Okay. So, right. So the more closed the system is, and that's the other thing I didn't mention is that the systems like this are very closed. What I mean by that is information doesn't get in and out of this system. They don't allow information into the system. they control that information.

Yeah. So, for example, like in one of the videos you played, there was talk about dating versus courty. Yeah. Right? Like, they're not going to know. The Duggers aren't going to know what normal dating looks like because the ideology is based around courtship.

Right. And it's very tightly controlled. Courtship. Right. So this is a very closed family system that it kind of keeps things confined secrets, right? Yeah. It keeps ideas confined to the family.

Yeah, no creativity. Yeah. Don't even think about dating on your own. You don't even have to worry about it. So the rules are important. And a family effect, the rules become very important because it helps stabilize kind of the family's emotional field. And disagreement is seen as disloyalty.

Which means that, as you pointed out, there's a lot of conformity, right? There's very little autonomy. And just as a quick note to the research on authoritarian parenting generally shows it's not linked to great outcomes. It generally shows that there's a higher risk among the family members of anxiety, not surprising, right? Depression, aggression, poor emotional regulation, lower self-control, and weaker social. and emotional intelligence. Yeah.

And part of that, by the way, is there's a psychologist's name is John Gottman. He's very famous for his work on, he's got the thing called the Love Lab up to Seattle. But he's done a lot of research on families as well. And Gottman has this idea that he calls emotional coaching, which is the same thing as let's call it emotional expression. Yeah. Families that engage in emotional coaching and open emotional expression are much healthier than families that don't.

So an authoritarian family that doesn't encourage open expression of emotions is going to struggle a lot more than a family that doesn't. Gottman's research is very compelling on that issue. And again, that would be why you see some of these negative outcomes, like more anxiety, more depression, or aggression, because they have no vehicle through which to express themselves and to express their emotions. So sad.

Yeah. Yeah. And so you can see, I think I'm, starting to build these layers. You are. You are. You can see how this is going to crescendo to where we're trying to go. Layer after layer. Which is actually also a sad thing. It's just like it's layer after layer after layer buried, you know? Your sense of self is just completely buried by all this stuff. And that, so that will bring us to this idea of parenting styles, specifically authoritarian parenting.

And I should mention just as a caveat, by the way, there's a lot of variability in parenting styles. So there's basically, there's three parenting styles, according to the research, authoritarian, which we talked about, authoritative, which is high control, high warrant. We talked about that. So that's the middle one. And then there's another one called permissive parenting. It used to be called laissez-faire parenting, which these are the parents that basically

just let their kids run wild. There's no rules. So that's high warrant. That's high warrant. Hippy parenting, exactly. I mean, I can't, yeah, okay. That's high warmth and low control. Right.

And so they all, you know, they all have their issues, of course, but authoritative is generally considered to be the healthier one. Okay. Because it combines structure with connection. It's combined structure with emotional connection, whereas authoritarian pairing is basically just all about structure and control and rules, right? And then permissive is about no rules, but lots of love, lots of warmth. Let's bring the next layer and let's add religion to the mix.

So when you add, I think the important point about bringing religion into this analysis is that religion is not the problem. No. Religion is not the issue, right? No, it's not. In many ways, faith can be protected. Yes. And there's research by a guy named Robert Beaver, who's actually shown that religion can actually increase family resilience and can make them healthier because it gives them a shared

sense of purpose and a shared sense of meaning, right? So these are families. These would be more authoritative families where children would have a voice about their religion and their spirituality, right? and where the family can rally or bond around kind of shared purpose and shared meaning. And a big part of religion, as you know, has to do with forgiveness, right? And so forgiveness becomes healthy. Yes.

Right? And many families, however, that are more punitive or authoritarian, that forgiveness is given lip service but rarely implemented or relied upon. Put a pin in this, though, because let's talk about forgiveness or, for things like harming children. Because that's where it seems to like that's, you know, forgive the sin. When it's like, no, that's what you don't forgive. Like, so can we or we can talk about that now, but you say that, you know, like you have to have forgiveness in healthy family.

In a family, you'll see things that like you don't forgive enough, right? There's not forgiveness. You have to be perfect. Right. Unless you commit a crime against a. child, then let's make sure all of their wives forgive them and see it as a sin and move forward. Like, oh my gosh, it drives me crazy. How much of that goes back to impression man, right?

Like, saving face. I don't know. I mean, yes, it's, but. Stand by your man. Even when they have committed severe crimes against children, that's, you are supposed to be a Christian and forgive, but not, you know, if you, you know, heaven forbid went on a date with someone, you know, without letting your parents know. Make it make sense.

So the problem isn't, thanks for that little. I'm not going to get into that too much, by the way. I guess. But. Michelle Dugger would say, shame. Okay. So religion becomes a problem. Let me try to amplify this point. Religion becomes a problem when it's fear-based, authoritarian, and perfectionistic, rather than warm, containing, and flexible. So in other words, religion isn't the problem. Religion becomes a reflection of the larger family culture, right? It becomes a reflection of the larger family parenting practices. Religion doesn't create those practices, but it becomes a, an element within those practices. So in other words, a family that's healthier and has more open communication, they're more likely to use religion in a healthy way. Whereas a family that's more

authoritarian, they're more likely to use religion in more of a fear-based punitive fashion, right? So that's, I think, that's I think where religion is important in the discussion, that in the Dagger family, right, presumably where there's a large religious component, it's more fear-based. this family doesn't appear to be healthy enough to really use religion in a particularly resilient or healthy fashion. Yeah, in a more faith-based way, hopeful way. Maybe another way of putting this is that religion really intensifies whatever family structure already exists. So if the family structure is rigid, religion isn't going to solve that problem. It's going to make it worse.

Yeah. If the family structure is more open and more inviting, right, religion will be seen as a part of a healthy part of that family culture. Yeah. The other thing I want to get into with this is going to lead us into a discussion of sexuality, human sexuality within the context of all the, so we're going to continue. If we're going to talk about the doggars and what's going on and we're going to talk about this. Let's continue to build these layers here. I see number three, sexuality conflicts. Right.

Let's talk about it. So, you know, some of the symptoms of rigid religious families we've already covered. We've covered the perfectionism, right? We've covered the shame-proneness. I've covered the potential for rebellion. So you have in overly religious and authoritarian families, I think there's always this possibility of rejecting. some of the family values, right? Because the because the child didn't have a voice. Yeah. Because the child had no expression or no voice was just the child was just another J.

Yeah. Right. The only way you can reject those family values is in a very quiet manner, right? You, you, one way you can reject them is by acting out sexually, right? Like you, but the point is, The point is there's a bit of a double life going up. That what you feel and what you experience is different than what you're being subjected to. It's different than the family culture. You're living in. Wow. So in many cases or in some of these cases, there's actually not only is the rebellion,

but there's actually a real anger. There's actually like a type of rage that goes towards the authority figures. And that would be, by the way, we'll talk about this a little later, but rage towards a parent, rage towards some siblings, right? Like, it's, so you have this underlying situation where the family culture, because it's such emphasis on obedience, is actually setting kids up to reject it in passive, passive, passive aggressive ways. Right.

Wow. So you're developing kind of this, this. this double life. This is helpful for me. You're developing this double life behind the scenes that then is going to potentially, right, I think that's what we're seeing in the Dugger family, potentially lead to these detrimental behaviors or abusive, if taken too far. So it could be little things like the parents say no cell phones, right?

And then a child gets a burner phone and uses it, right? That could be, that's rejecting family values too. Sure. That's for that's rebellion. It could be little things, but it gets to the extreme, right, when it involves harming other human beings. Yeah. Right. Harming vulnerable children. That's acting out to the point where you're telling the family system, I disagree, right?

But you're not doing it directly because you can't do it directly. You can't express yourself openly on that point. It was anger too. Anger and. Yeah, for sure. Right. Anger becomes a part of it because it's such an authoritarian. based system.

I mean, human beings in general like to feel some measure of freedom and autonomy, right? So when you suppress human beings freedom and autonomy with and demand strict obedience, we're going to rebel. There's a very high probability people are going to rebel eventually. And sometimes some people have to do that to a passive, aggressive way. Yeah. So we've got all these layers. When you throw in all the other components,

as we talked about, and when you saw sexuality into this equation, you know, so we're, we're making our meal, right, and we put in our ingredients, and now we're going to throw in, we're going to throw on some sexuality. Oftentimes in these types of family systems, sexuality is, is fear-based, right? It's shame-based. It's held, it's secret. There's a lot of secrecy around it. And so in that sense, I think sexual feelings and sexual impulses are treated as if they're dangerous. And they're treated as if they're impure, right?

That gets into purity culture a little bit. And they're treated as if they're identity threatening. That if a child in a system that has a lot of secrecy and fear and shame, around sexuality, they're going to see any sexual impulses is dangerous. And they're going to be afraid. They're going to be afraid that if they express that, then somehow their identity and maybe even their survival in that system will be threatened, that they will be abandoned or thrown out of the system for having these sexual impulses. Within that type of family culture, a lot of times authoritarian parents will approach sexuality through rules and through prohibitions

and through punishment, right? If you do this, you're going to get punished. Again, that gets back to operand conditioning. And fear, fear of consequences, right? If you don't follow these courtship rituals precisely, we're going to punish you. Right. We're going to right. And again, this goes back to blanket training. These types of systems are largely based upon operant conditioning, which I discussed earlier in the sense that

everything, most behaviors are shaped by the consequences. Right? As opposed to a broader perspective where morality is not

completely rule-based. Yeah. So in these types of systems, you have, you're going to have, to reiterate, you're going to have a lot of secrecy, a lot of shame, you're going to have distorted boundaries, right? You're going to have poor boundaries. There's poor sexual communication. You're not going to be able to talk about sexual matters in an open way, right? Because it's shameful, because it's not encouraged. And because of that, you're oftentimes, you're going to have impaired empathy, right?

Impaired empathy. Right, because you're negating by not being open about a very important element of human beings, right? You're negating that. You're not allowing open discussion or emotional expression around something that, you know, Freud thought. Is part of being human. Part of being human. Freud thought that, in fact, the whole Freudian, at least the early Freudian system, is all based upon sexuality. All of it to a point where I actually, like, yeah, go ahead. But yeah, no, we're not going to talk about Oedipus.

No. I thought that's where you're going for me. I'm like, oh, no, we don't have time. We're not going to talk about Oedipus. Keep going. Talk about Freud. You thought everything was about sexuality. I'm going to really, forgive me here, but I'm going to really oversimplified Freud.

envy. The basic Freudian idea is that humans, so Freud was influenced a large, to a large degree by, you know, the scientific ideas of the day, which like Darwin. And the basic Freudian idea is that we're all instinctively and hardwired to reproduce, which means that we all think about sexuality and sex to some degree. And the Freudian idea is that society, especially Victorian society, which is when Freud was writing, society doesn't want to do that. No. Society is going to suppress that. And when you suppress that to a large degree, it's going to show up in dreams or it's going to show up through in behaviors, right? Passive aggressive behaviors like committing sex offenses, for example, right? that that one way or the another, it's going to show up.

So suppressing a fundamental element of human behavior for Freud is unhealthy in the sense that, right? Like not just in those ways, by the way, not just in dreams, but in terms of anxiety. You're going to be more anxious. You might be depressed. You're going to, you'll start having, like for Freud, you'll start exhibiting a lot of symptoms. And he said, at least initially, he changed, of course. his ideas evolved. But his whole idea was, if you suppress that instinct or instinct in general,

you're going to have problems. Right? And so that's what, yeah, that's what you have in these types of large family systems. And you assess a lot of sex offenders. I don't even think I explained in the very beginning of this. You're a criminal forensic psychologist, clinical psychologist.

And when it comes to criminals, you mostly focus on those, or you've done most of your evaluations with sex offenders. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason for that, by the way, is because... Probably should have led with that. Sex offenses are more common. The legal system has a harder time dealing with sex offenses than it does, say, with murder.

Murder is much... Murder is different in terms of adjudication because a lot of murderers, there's so much overwhelming evidence they'll either acknowledge guilt like Chris Watts immediately, right? Pretty black or white. Right, it's black or white. You did or you didn't. Whereas with sex offenders, it's more complicated. And punishment for sex offenders is more complicated.

And evaluating sex offenders is more complicated. And so the legal system really puts more demands on forensic people to evaluate sex offenders because they're harder to place within the system. Makes sense. So, but I think the main idea. idea I want to promote here is that in a family. So it's not just the discussions of sex or the sexual behavior that matter. It's the family culture. And whether the culture approaches this issue with curiosity and openness. In other words, whether the culture is meeting

issues around sexuality with safety or whether they're meeting these issues with shame. Yeah. That's what's determinative. We've gone from blanket training to authoritarian parenting practices to human sexuality. Right? And we're going to, our next step is going to be looking at it. Religion. Right.

Well, religion became over sexuality. So me, the big question is, is not necessarily, the question is not, was this family religious? Or were the parents overly strict, right? In terms of dealing with sexuality, the question I think is, does the child learn that sexuality can be understood and discussed and integrated versus something that should be feared, hidden and judged. Right? That's the fundamental question.

So the question is not, how are these parents, are the parents too strict? Are they religious? Right. The bigger question is not that. The question is, how do we approach this issue

within the family culture? Yeah. Do we approach it with openness and understanding, or do we approach it with judgment and fear? Yeah. So that's going to bring us

into the last layer of this discussion. I don't know. Are you guys still with us? I'm still with you. Okay, you're still with me? I've been with you for 10 long years. Actually, technically, yeah, 10, right?

Happy. Yeah, 10 years. I know. Well, it's going to be 11 that we were together soon, but we're, been a good 10 years, good decade. I don't, it's, it's, oh yeah, it's definitely the best decade of my life. Yeah, and you know what? it's crazy, it's gone so quickly.

I know. Like it does not feel like we, right? It's gone really fast. It's gone so fast. It's so fast. We were just babies. Yeah. So the last component of the discussion is going to be large family systems, right?

And so again, I want to point out that this doesn't necessarily apply. So all of this analysis could be applied to the Dugger. but I'm presenting it in a way that's more theoretical. It complied to any family, right? So large family systems are interesting because you and I, you have had an interest in like polygamy, right? Let's clarify that. An interest.

Large polygamous family. Right, not in like. No, you have it right. That didn't. That was not. as a subject. I surprised that one after our first year together. I'm like, by the way,

I'm like, by the way, yeah. I have an interest in, yes, in looking at large look. In large family systems where polygamy is oftentimes a

component. Thank you. I was really well-worded. Thank you. So the the Dugger system is obviously a large family system, but it's not, it's not polygamy. It's not polygamous, right? But I, but I think my point is it's hard to find systems as large as the doggers that are not necessarily. It's impressive. Yeah. It's why they had a reality show for so long. It's why they had a reality show. We all just like look at them. Like they're like, you know, as I said, it's, it's almost like a corporation. Yeah. And how does this work? And speaking of that,

So I think in thinking about the psychology of large family systems, it's, to me it's interesting because in particular, it's interesting because there's so many layers, right? Like one of the things that happens, when you have 19 children or 15 or 12 even, I don't know where the number begins and ends, but.

Well, when it comes to Dugger's 19. That parenting, So parenting and parenting styles get distributed throughout the systems. In other words, it's not, so in the darker family, you've got Jim Bob and Michelle at the top. They're the parents, right? But because there's so many children, they can't engage in all the parenting practices that a typical parent would because they just can't, there's just not time and space to do it. Yeah. So in larger family systems, a lot of times what happens is parenting gets mediated through the older siblings.

The older siblings will take on the parental role simply because the parents can't do all of it. And when that happens, there's oftentimes there's a very high risk for parentification. And that's when a child essentially not only takes on the role of a parent, but takes on all the emotional and caution. and intellectual baggage that their parent might take on. The problem with that is the children, let's say it's a 10-year-old or an 8-year-old or a 12-year-old that's kind of in the parent role. They're not, they don't have the emotional intelligence and the resilience to take on that role. Not only they do not understand the obligations of parenting, but they simply don't have

the capacity to really carry out that role. Frontified children, it's been some of the research has shown that they, they tend to have more problems than children that are more carefree, let's say. Children that aren't parentified are allowed to be right more freer or autonomous. Like they're allowed to be children. And the other thing that's interesting in these large family systems, there's a, there's a psychologist named Robert Plowman. He's done a lot of research on siblings and sibling systems.

and he has this idea that's called non-shared environments, non-shared environments. And what that means is that, and so this doesn't necessarily apply to large families, but it applies to every family. The children will have different experiences of their family based on the way they were treated by their parents, based on the way they interact with their siblings.

So if your parents treat you differently than say your siblings, you'll have a very different experience. Yeah. But when you, when you, so that could be true in a family of two children. But when you take that and you multiply it exponentially. By 19. The chances for very different realities in a family increase tremendously, right? So this idea of non-shared environments means in the Dugger family, for example, you could have one child that has an experience of the family being heavily controlled. Right. They can have an experience where that child thinks that there was nothing but authoritarian, right? Thoratarian practices and obedience that was demanded. And then you could have another child, probably a younger child, that has the perception that they were emotionally neglected. Right.

Right. That there was no control that are very little control that they didn't get enough attention, especially from the parents at the top. Yeah. Right? in the corporate hierarchy. Jim Bob and Michelle are, you know, they're the president,

the two, the president and the whatever, the two presidents of the family, two leaders, CEOs, co-CEOs of the family, that they'll feel, oftentimes these different siblings, depending on age and birth order and all that,

so they'll feel, some children will feel neglected in that system. Yeah. So, Yeah, I hear that all the time. You know, sibling saying his experience wasn't my experience. I don't know. And because of that, you get what I would call many hierarchies.

In other words, you have systems within systems in the family. That makes sense. And because of that, you have really big disparities in terms of discipline and communication in particular, right? And like all of these disparities in discipline and communication can lead to potential problems. Underneath all of this, though, you have a family culture that's largely based on suppression. Yeah.

Right? It's based on punishment. Again, getting back to the idea of operant conditioning. So you have that as a guiding cultural principle in the family, but you have all these variations. Like in a family with 19 kids, I mean, I can't even imagine. So family therapists will typically do genograms, right? Oh, yeah. You've shared those with us. I've shared genograms with you guys.

I can't even wrap my mind around the dugger. The genogram for the Dugger family system. So a lot of times, you know, family theorists, we talk about alliances and coalitions. And like. Right. And so here you have like, you have an probably have an unending number of coalitions and alliances. And the other thing you get, by the way, is you're going to get different, you're going to get different. you're going to get different versions of supervision.

This is really important. Okay. Right? Depending on what children are supervising other children and depending on ages, you're going to get a lot of different types of supervision. Some children may be more strict and some won't, right? Absolutely. Some will have really controlled supervision and some will have weak supervision.

Yeah. Some will enforce strong boundaries and some won't. Yeah. Right. Some might be more open about certain things and some are going to be more secretive. Yeah. And depending on the older child, the hut above them, whether or not they're taking care of them or not. Yeah.

Right. Exactly. And so I think these ideas are important. So if we're going to understand how a family like this can now have, and again, this is alleged, but now have two siblings with formal. One of them has been convicted, but another with has formal. charges. Yep.

These are the elements that are all starting to add up, right? The blanket training becomes a metaphor for how the family negotiates the world. Yep. Blanket training occurs in the context of authoritarian parenting

oftentimes. Then you add on the layer of religious extremism. Then you add on the layer of sexuality, then you add on the layer of a large, overly large family and all the dynamics that that entails. Like, in many ways, as I said earlier, you know, I used the metaphor of a corporation in the military. Like what I mean by that. So this is an enterprise. The darker family is an enterprise

that for a number of years, I don't, I'm trying to put this in a way that's not too strong, but that focused to a large degree on making money. Yeah. From the family system. Absolutely. Jill Dugger tells us as much in shiny happy people. You know, you can talk with that hand. You can't talk with this hand because it covers the mic.

So can you talk with one hand? You're being overly authoritarian right now? No, I'm being helpful. We don't want to re-record. Okay. So, you're just, I need to grab my paperwork. So the obvious question then, or one obvious question is,

if you go through all these layers and you build all this up, the question is, so I hope I answered the question about why would parents find blanket training appealing, right? But the question underlined most of this is how did we get to crimes? Yeah. And this darker family system, how did we end up with crimes, right? How do we end up with potential with one convicted sex offender and another person that's, right, that's going to be, that's been charged and could be convicted of sex offenses?

And like I said, you know, like we said, this is now a pattern. How do we get there, right? And so taking all of these elements and kind of stepping back, and looking at them. I want to propose a couple of ideas. So in the interview, you played it on one of your early shows on this issue. Jim Bob says to during an interview, I don't remember who the interview was the interview. Megan Kelly?

Okay, Megan Kelly. Yeah. Yeah. No one can forget the Megan Kelly interview. During the Megan Kelly interview, Jim plus says he referring to Josh. Yeah. He was after the. allegations surfaced about him molesting young girls, his sisters, and one other. Go ahead.

Jim Bob says, quote, he was just curious and went in and touched them. Apparently there were multiple victims. There were. Touched them, meaning his sisters, over their clothes. Did he explain why? I mean, was that a question that you asked? He said he was just curious about girls and he had gone in and just basically touched them over their clothes while they were sleeping. They didn't even know he had done it. Let's work with that hypothesis, right? Like, there is a guy. There's a psychologist.

The name is Phil Rich. He is wonderful. He's done a lot of research on juvenile sex offenders. He wrote a book called Assessing, Rehabilitating and Understanding the Juvenile Sex Offender from 2003. There's multiple editions of this book. This is the first edition in 2003. he proposes that there are 46 motivations for juvenile sex offending. And he clusters those into 10 categories.

One of his categories is what he calls sexual experimentation. Under sexual experimentation, he has, surprise, surprise, curiosity. So. Curiosity, heaven forbid these. Yeah. Curiosity is one of his categories. I'm going to read what he says about curiosity. This is Phil Rich, page 89.

Sexual experimentation involving curiosity is, quote, primarily to learn about sex and sex-related matters and ideas rather than engaging in sexual abuse for its own sake or as part of a conduct disorder, unquote. Now, what's interesting about this explanation is it's the most innocuous. Sure. It is the most tame explanation for community. Absolutely.

And it also happens to be, by the way, so when I interview adolescent offenders, sometimes before they've been adjudicated, oftentimes after they've been adjudicated, so they've already been charged and convicted. I always ask them, why? Right? I mentioned I do this with adults. Towards the end of every interview, I want to see what their level of insight and self-awareness is. So I ask every offender I ever interview, I said,

Why do you think you did this? And you know what 98% of adolescent offenders tell me? Because I was curious, John. They all say that. You know why they say that? Why? Because it's the most innocuous explanation. Because if it's just normal curiosity, right?

And it's something that every teenager has, then it's being normalized. So what is Jim Bob doing here? Normalizing it. He's normalizing it. He's minimalizing abuse. He's normalizing it. He's minimizing it. He's trying to skate around it, right? He's saying, well, this is just normal curiosity. It doesn't matter if he went in and touched a couple of his sisters over their clothes. And also over the clothes is minimizing it, right? So I'd like to focus on a few other categories by Phil Rich and kind of drill down a little bit deeper. So do I think it's curiosity? Probably not. There could be a component of curiosity. I think there is a component of experimentation and a lot. of juveniles that engage in harmful sexual behaviors. Okay.

However, I don't see that as the explanation most of the times. I don't see that as being the primary driver of a sexual offense. Here's a couple other categories. One of his categories is social skills deficits. And one of the elements, one of the motivators for social skills deficits is what he calls social competence or mastery. Let me just read, let me read this category. This is under social competence or mastery.

This is page 91, Phil Rich. Quote, to feel capable, so this is the reason why, quote, to feel capable in an area over which the juvenile has some control, demonstrate skills he believes are common in others, his age or older, and experience mastery over some part of his environment, even through coercion and force, if necessary. Wow. Wow. Experience mastery over some part of his environment, even through coercion and force, if necessary. The juveniles believe that sexual behaviors are, wait, you are, you are breathing loudly.

It's hot in here. Okay. Hold on. Let me be it. me read it again. Let me read it again. Do experience mastery over some part of his environment, even through coercion and force if necessary? Coercion or force if necessary to control and experience mastery over some part of his environment? Right. Assert himself, in other words. Well, yes. So this is an interesting one for the Dugger family, I think, because I do believe, I do believe the category of social skills deficits. I do believe this is a family that probably has some social skills deficits.

And I do believe that part of this could be this desire to experience some mastery or to demonstrate social competence. Right. So I think that one is interesting. Under social skills deficits, there's also one about feeling normal. Let me read this. So feeling normal.

Quote, to feel like everyone else or feel better about himself, the juvenile uses sex as a means to experience feelings like what he imagines a normal person must feel. Wow. Right? So it's not hard to imagine that that could be an element in the Dugger family as well, right?

Right. There's a couple others. So he has another category called relationship building. I'm going to read a couple of these because I think these could have relevance to explaining some of the underlying motivations. It's important to note, too, that Rich's motivations are not limited to just one. The explanation is always going to involve multiple variables, multiple motivations.

So under relationship building, there's one that he refers to as affection seeking, which is simply to receive affection. So, right, in a family this large, how much affection are these kids receiving? Yeah. That's a problem. Yeah. So it could be something as simple as that. Wow.

So I think these are some of the elements. I think that we start putting these together and they make sense. And to be clear, though, this is understanding the juvenile sexual offender, Joseph was not a juvenile. And he was, you know, a young adult. And then, of course, Josh continued to, you know, offend as an adult. But this is still very interesting. So the motivations for adolescence, by the way, are going to be very similar.

Yeah. The same motivations will drive adults, by the way, in terms of so. Thank you for just explaining that. Yeah. So another one that falls under relationship building is intimacy. I'm going to read this one, quote, to establish a strong and shared connection or feel close to another person. How much intimacy is there in the Dugger family?

How much are the kids experiencing immensity, right? Not a lot. All they do is read the Bible. Yeah. That's all Kendra and Joseph are talking about in their jail calls. This is the Bible. So, yeah. Another one is loneliness, quote, as a means to connect and engage with others.

Wow. Right. So when you start looking at these different motivations, I think you can see how they can apply to this system. Layers of motivation. Layers. Yeah. Layers of motivation in this family. But let's get to what I think is the most, let's get to what I think might be the most pertinent category.

And that is category one. aggression. This, by the way, is a category that I see all the time with juveniles that most people don't think about. Okay. So in aggression, he's got three elements, anger, power control, and domination, and revenge. Anger is pretty straightforward, right? I'm not going to read that, but I'm going to read the other two. So this is what Bill Rich describes as a potential motivation for an adolescent sex offense. here we go power control and domination quote to exert control directly or indirectly over another individual whether the actual victim or another individual over whom the offender exerts control through the victim wow in other words think about that to exert control over another

individually or indirectly whether the actual victim or another individual over whom the offender exerts control through the victim. In other words, the victim becomes a proxy to punish other people. And that brings us to revenge. This is, I think, the most interesting. If you think about this in terms of the Dagger family, this is the most interesting one because I see this all the time with adolescent offenders. Quote, to get revenge or retaliate directly or indirectly or perceived injustice, whether directed against the actual victim, or whether as a means of getting revenge against another individual connected to the victim. In other words, a parent.

What does that mean? What would the perceived injustice be? It would be not having a voice. Not having a voice. It would be not having a voice. It would be not having a voice. It would be not getting enough attention. This becomes a very attention-seeking type of behavior for many adolescents in the sense of

if they're in a huge family, and they're not, they don't have a voice because that's suppressed. Remember, blanket training. Yeah. And they're not getting enough direct attention from their parents. Yep.

Keep going. I'm reading it. Then a lot of times, it's not only anger and power, but there's this sense in which a sex offense is committed to punish the parents and to get their attention and to send the message to them, that you not only did you negate anything to do with sexuality,

but you didn't give me a voice. It's a rebellion. This is a classic case of wanting to be heard and expressing themselves passively aggressive through a destructive behavior. Wow. To get revenge directly or indirectly for a perceived injustice,

whether against the actual victim or as a means of getting revenge against another individual connected to the victim, in other words, the parents, by proxy, using the victim by proxy. Right, exactly. And that's the same with power, control, and domination, though, I want to point out,

directly or indirectly, whether the actual victim or another individual over the offender, the offender exerts control through the victim. Yeah, exactly. Those are two tied together. So, twice in one family.

I want to propose or hypothesize, that some combination of those elements I just read. So when you take all these together, everything we just discussed, and you layer them all together, and this is where you land. This is how, this is the why.

Blanket training becomes the metaphor for the family culture. Why there's a sex offense, I think you can find it within the Phil Rich. More than one sex offense. All right. Yeah. Okay, let's... Revenge, power, control, and domination.

All right. Let's wrap this up. I'm going to... I'm going to end with... I'm going to end with something that I think people are going to find a little surprising. When I was thinking about this case, so people know that I always like to think in literary, philosophical terms. I actually thought a lot about the German philosopher. Emmanuel Kant when I thought about this case because for a lot of reasons. But the first reason is that Kant had this idea that he called the categorical imperative. And the basic idea of the

categorical imperative is, quote, act upon a maximum that can also hold as a universal law. In other words, any moral behavior should be guided by our belief that what we're doing could apply to all individuals universally. And one of the ideas that, so one of the ideas that Kant had, I'm going to read this, quote, man is never merely a means to an end, but always an end unto himself. So what Kant meant was that dignity is intrinsically inherent to human beings. Dignity and respect should be inherent to every human being in and of themselves. And we should treat human beings not as a means to an end, but as an end in themselves.

Right. And I think that idea has really powerful implications in the Dugger case, in particular, or in the Frankie case, for that matter, too. Because it suggests that children who are human beings, right, should not be used as a means to an end. They should not be used to enrich the family. They should not be used as objects in the reality show. They should not be used as a way to stabilize, right, or reduce family anxiety. Family shame. Right, they should not be used as a way to reduce family shame.

So when children are used as a means for preserving order, preserving the family image, or for supporting religious extremism or religious certainty, then Kant would object, right? Kant would essentially say that that is immoral to some degree because you're not treating people with respect and dignity

and everybody should, in theory, be treated with respect and dignity, right? You're using the children as a means to an end. The Frankie family that too. They were props. I've also said this. Like, I think in the Dugger family, you have a bunch of props. Are these, like, are these real living, breathing human beings? Or are these just props in a reality show that's making millions of dollars? Right. Lins representing what the parent wants them to. Right. The reflection of parental desires and fantasies and parental

control. Yeah. So I think that's an important idea here that when we evaluate situations like this, or whether it's in our family or in another family system, like this idea of people having intrinsic dignity in and of themselves, I think that's important, right? And so I think it's ironic, of course, that Michelle Dugger in that video comes out and says,

you're interfering with the children, right? Like, isn't it conceivable that for years and years and years and years, she interfered with her own children so that she could profit or that family, so that the Jim Bob and Michelle could profit and use her children as a means to an end? Right. So for Kant, Kant would say that's immoral. I don't know. I wouldn't say that necessarily.

I don't know. I'd have to think about it more, but I like the idea of Kant kind of challenging that and challenging this idea of, creating commodities out of children. Yeah, I agree. To be used for any type of purpose that reality show or right or any type of monetization. There's another part of his ideas, cons ideas that I think are important to emphasize here too and that have relevance to the discussion.

And that is that one of his rallying ideas, one of his fundamental ideas, he wrote an essay called What is Enlightenment in 1784. So these ideas are not new, right? And in Latin there's this term, it's Saperi Ade. Saperi Aude, two words. S-A-P-E-R-E-A-U-D-E, S-A-P-E-E-R-E-D-E-E-E-A-U-D-A-A-D-A-D, and it means dare to know. Dare to know.

There was, he used that, he took that expression from the Roman poet Horace many years before, you know, before Christ, B-C, 20-C, roughly. But then he used it for his own ideas. And his idea, by the way, which he was quite radical back in his time. And keep in mind, this is the Enlightenment was a period where science and ideas were starting to minimize the importance of the Middle Ages. Yeah. Right. And so this is how, by the way, without the Enlightenment, none of us would drive cars.

none of us would have cell phones but the fundamental idea here is that dare to know right that that's what superi a mean dare to know another way to interpret it is have the courage to use your own reason have the courage to think critically have the courage to question right

and none of that is you don't see any of that in the Dugger family system you don't see right you it's the antithesis it's the opposite of blanket training. I think if there's a message from blanket training, it's shut up, be quiet. Don't challenge authority, right? Khan is saying none of that is going to make you healthier.

None of that is going to get to a place that's going to make you an autonomous, independent human being. I'm going to read another quote from Kant here. quote, Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incured immaturity. For enlightenment of this kind, all that is needed is freedom.

And the freedom in question is the most innocuous form of all. Freedom to make public use of one's reason and all matters. So what mattered to Kant was our capacity for reason and reflection and questioning, again, this Saperre-A-Dade.

dare to know, challenge authority, challenge received wisdom. Don't just accept orders from other people, right? And I think this is important in this discussion because obviously you can see the potential impact of a family system or a family culture or maybe even a broader society that just accepts that just is blindly obedient and just accepts things as they are, right?

And just accepts the word of authority figures. And part of Kant's job was to really challenge that and say, figure it out yourself. Yeah. And to that end, I'm going to end here with the epitaph on Kant's grave site, which I love because I think that's going to hopefully drive home some of these issues.

Here we go. This is from Kant. This is, he has two sentences on his epitaph. The moral law within him, the starry sky above him. Beautiful. And obviously, I think this idea of the moral law, so for Kant, the moral law is within. The moral law is found in our capacity to reason, which is what makes us human beings. It's what makes just because we have the capacity for critical thought,

and self-reflection, that's what gives, that's what makes us human beings unique. It also allows us to dare to know. It allows us to dare to know. And so I think what's interesting, if you think about this darker case, there's no moral law within. It's all moral law without. It's all external, right? And I think that becomes a real problem here.

That leads to a lot of problems in this family system that we're now starting to see, realized. And by the way, that doesn't negate. Notice that the other part of Kans epithetaph is the starry stagai above him. I love that. It doesn't negate spirituality. It doesn't negate the notion of God, right? It doesn't negate any of that. It just means that I think if we're going to really find, discover who we are and operate at the highest autonomous levels, I think in many ways, we need to find those internal controls that apply to us and our life experiences, rather than being told what to think and do. And so this idea of the moral law within is powerful.

I love that. Thank you. All right. Well, thanks, everyone. Well, I think, and there, let's go eat. Yes. Yeah, thank you. No, thank you.

I really appreciate that. Thanks for driving home. All my curiosity about this case and this family's past cases and trying to comprehend that you really help. So thank you. A lot of people sending questions, and I'm looking at them all, and you've answered them. Okay.

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