Addams Family Values: Stunted Development, Anti-Social Traits, and Family Systems

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster
movies and psychoanalyze them. My name is Brittany Brownfield and
I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by Ben Stover,
individual therapist, Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists. We're all
licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists, who practice
out of Chicago. Even though we are licensed mental health professionals,
this podcast is purely for entertainment purposes and to fulfill

(00:37):
our love of dissecting pop culture and all forms.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists,
we aren't your therapist.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
a local mental health provider. You are mister Debbie. Today, y'all,
we're gonna be talking about Adam's family values. We are
back with our guests from our first Adams Family episode, Benjamin,
and then do you want to introduce yourself to the group?
To the class?

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Hello, class, I am the new beat. This true.

Speaker 4 (01:10):
I think you know previously replace your your whole friend Benstover, No,
I can never replace him. Hi, I am this is
first on the podcast. I'm saying this Josser Benjamin Pice.
Now yes, I'll finally get to say that, my god.
So yes, I am doctor Bend Tights. I am a

(01:31):
therapist in southern California, and I work in clinical and
forensic psychology, and I am the co host of two
mental health related podcasts, Mental Health Quests, The Therapist Office
and Beyond.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Of which all of you guys were guests on.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
I'm still editing Ben's episode, and also my hero Therapy podcast.
We would talk about the psychology of my here academic anime.
And I also present on a lot of PANDLA comic
con stuff about this stuff too.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah. I don't think we're going to be out before
this year's comic Con, so we can't really advertise all
the panels you're doing, but you do a lot.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
By the time this episode comes out, I will have
done seven panels at Los Angeles Comic Con on Okay,
so we're going to get them all, right, Dragonball, Fallout,
Dead Full of Wolverine, X Men, Joker, and Public, When
has Been Hotel? And Have a Boss? I somehow got
to eat on my fingers, but it's seven.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Apparently one panel manifested into being as you were talking
about them.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
That's how it works, you know.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, So that's how it works. Once you get one
and start rolling and people like it, you you get
more and you get more and you get more, and
it just takes an idea of why not me.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Yeah, especially at La comiccone, they really like to have
a lot of these kinds of like mental health related
So when me and my brother Isaac and our friends
other geek psychology friends were like some mid panels, we
each get at least two accepted and then we just
arranged all other parents.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
We're just it's all the same panelists. Yeah, in an
extroom over, We're just going to go from room to room.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah. Well, good luck with all that. And we're excited
to have you here since you did grace us during
our first Adam's Family episode, so it felt pertinent for
you to come back, and then even extra pertinent because
you actually work with the clientele that's not dissimilar to
one of our main characters in this movie, Miss Debbie.

(03:31):
So just a quick plot summary in case you weirdly
wanted to drop in on this episode with no context
for Adam's family around his family values which.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
People do sometimes, which we you know, We love you guys.
Thank you for listening, even if you don't know the movie.
That's kind of awesome.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Actually, So where this movie takes off is kind of
pretty soon after the first movie because she announces she's
pregnant at the end of the first movie. So Martitia
has her baby Puberts, and in trying to find help
for a nanny for the baby, Debbie gets introduced into
their lives. And Debbie is a black widow, which is

(04:07):
a female serial killer who murders her husbands, who has
her site set on Fester, who, if you'll remember from
our other episode about Adam's family, is someone who is
struggling with being an actual adult due to the intense
infantilization by his quote unquote adopted mom who found him
in the Beer Muda triangle. So we are jumping back

(04:28):
the story. Sorry, children, that's true. I mean I don't
a wait list and I haven't heard back yet. Maybe
they lost it, you know. So we are watching the
semination of the Adam's fate once again, but this time
instead of a lawyer, we're watching a temptress Deborah come

(04:50):
into Fester's house, marry him, force him to exercise his
family from their lives and eventually she unfortunately gets exercised
from theirs. So today we will be talking about Fester
and touching upon the continuation of the topics from our
last episode about him. So his infantilization, his were like
social skills under development. And then we're talking about Miss

(05:12):
Debbie and talking about antisocial tendencies to social personal disorder,
criminal thinking, predatory behavior, and security, all that kind of
good stuff. And then of course we'll be doing treatment
and final thoughts. So let's jump right in with our
boy Fester. He is introduced into this movie howling at
the moon out of I assume loneliness and horning us,

(05:35):
maybe in equal parts.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
I think that's one of the same. With the way
they're showing him and the themes of this movie. I mean,
even though, what was the last thing that Wednesday says
to him about you missed having adult thoughts or something
about her?

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Oh did you miss Debbie? Yeah, it's like adult time
late at night time.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah. It's the theme of this movie is that Fester
is reaching well past the point of physical maturity, but
his emotional maturity does not match.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
It's almost like him officially hitting puberty is that first
shot of him in the movie, because he feels like
a young teenage boy twelve ish thirteen maybe, who is
discovering his body and his sexuality and his hormones and

(06:24):
doesn't know what to do with any of those feelings.
But he's very aware of them and feels very in
the thrall of those emotional experiences and physical manifestations of
those experiences.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
Which require calling at the moon just of course, as
you do as one.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
I mean when you are feeling things.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
And I like to scream in my car with the
volume on in full Handah, no car.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Difference.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, But it.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Is interesting how much in our first episode we really
called What was going to Happen a second movie. So
one thing I do want to say, from like almost
a writing continuity perspective, is that the writers to the
great job of tracking the personality a Fester from the
first movie into this movie where this is something that

(07:16):
would happen like he's not all of a sudden suave
and Gomez, like he's not even how he seems to
be discussed pre Bermuda Triangle, pre disappearance, there seems to
be this memory of him as even more charismatic than Gomez.
I think Gomez talks about how when they were kids

(07:39):
that Fester would get all the girls, and so I
think what's really cool actually and well written psychologically about
Fester in this movie is that he hasn't done that
thing that movies like to do where you go through
this horrible life changing, mind altering situation, this huge trauma,
and then once you're past it, once immediate distressor is gone,

(08:02):
you're like back to basics, You're back to business, You're
the person you were before all this stuff happened to you.
Fester is forever changed by what happened to him going
missing in his twenties. It is showing in here he
got arrested development and it's still happening.

Speaker 4 (08:18):
Yeah, definitely, it's actually really I also like that because
so many times in movies where they are like these
big changes in someone's life and in family units where
it's like, okay, we live happily undrafted, right, this happily here,
especially after the first movie, and it really actually doesn't
make sense that this is how he's going to be

(08:40):
presenting considering his experiences. He went from being someone who,
according to Gomaz was very suave and a lady's man
and whatnot to being uber and vantaalized. And now he
doesn't know how to handle his own body, doesn't know
how to handle his feelings. And that makes a lot

(09:01):
of sense when you consider his experience, as someone who
was held copied in that way would not know how
to behave, would not know how to react.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
No, they wouldn't have gotten the social feedback of peers
that kids get. Kids start to grow up when they
start getting into peer groups and seeing how other kids
interact with each other react to them. At schools, you
see them, they start globbing on to older kids and
watching what they do, and that has more influence on

(09:34):
them than anything parents do. But if kids don't have
that experience to glob onto peers as they develop or
even you know, in the I guess in his case,
in his twenties and he disappeared, that's a pretty important
way to learn how to be an adult, how to
handle the adult side of sexual feelings, of romance, of dating,

(09:56):
of any of it. It's pretty profoundly different than the
junior high probably to the benefit of everyone, that boys
don't go around being me and the girls there in
an entire time and pull their hair and run away.

Speaker 3 (10:09):
I will say I never did that. I never did that.
The girls to me.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Oh, if we think about Fester conceptually, he loses his memory,
so he lost all the personality anchoring that Gomez and
everyone else knew him for. He was raised by a
woman who formed this whole narrative, lied to him about
his past, and created a new identity for him in

(10:36):
which he only had her because she had to keep
him inside the house, probably because he was a famous
missing person. Yeah, and had that weird pseudo sexual relationship
with him where even though he was a grown man,
she would hold him to her bosom and like cuddle
him and definitely feel that hole, I'm the only woman
you'll ever need. I'm the only person you'll ever need,

(10:58):
and so really ostracized him from any peers. Now he's
back with his family, which is great, and it seems
like he still has not developed or experienced any of
the socialization outside of maybe the Adams is that he
really needs to grow. And it would make sense to me,

(11:20):
like after what he'd been through, why he might just
stay at home where he feels safe with his family.
Wanting to spend time with Gomez and all the lost
time he's had, but I do think it has kept
him insecure and just not knowing what to do out
in the world with other people. You know, he doesn't
even seem to have friends, just the family.

Speaker 4 (11:43):
I mean, she mentions, you know, during his bachelor party,
he's like, oh, you guys are the best friends a
guy can come though. We don't know who these people
are because they're all, you know, the outcast kind.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
So are they all family? Are they?

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Like they were all the people that were at the
ball last movie?

Speaker 3 (12:00):
So it's like, are they all just related to him?
And those are the only social interactions that he knows
are family.

Speaker 4 (12:07):
And that's another thing, is that when it comes to socialization, yes,
we learn a lot from our peers in school, but
we also learn from family. And here we had someone
like Pfesser who didn't have either.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
He was you know, stuck.

Speaker 4 (12:21):
And then now he's trying to gain that back only
from Gomez, and you see how much he's really like
trying to be like Gomez's sees Gomez's life and.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
He's like, I want that, but I don't know how
to be that right.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
And we learn a lot from family and how they
start to treat us differently as we age. Pretty Much
every kid that has a reasonably normative life is going
to at some point have those conversations, have parents tell them, Hey,
you're ten, now, you're not five anymore, Like you got
to have some responsibilities, There's some things you got to

(12:55):
do differently because you're growing up, and especially once into
the teenage years of Hey, expectation are different now. And
if he didn't have any of that, and it would
absolutely result in him being stock like he is.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
And I feel like and especially with a family that
is reinforcing that constantly, right like Gomez continues to treat
him like he's so small and so young, and that
that's a big part. When a family puts you in
a role, it's really hard to change that role all
on your own without any support from anyone else. A

(13:29):
lot of the work that I do with clients is
helping them communicate better with their family. That can be
really tricky and it's a really hard thing to do
because you really have to fight through the role that
the family puts you in and how do you pivot
from that. We can tell that fester A doesn't have
anybody telling him that, and b doesn't have anybody who

(13:50):
can support him with that, because the family's vibe is
so enmeshed.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
Absolutely. One of the core things about family systems theories
that you learn about even learning about it in undergrad
is that thinking about a family as a machine, that
each part, each person plays a role in the system
of the family machine. And one person may be a sprocket,

(14:16):
one person may be an engine, one person may be
a belt, but changed the way one of those parts
functions and the system no longer functions the same. So
if you try to change and step out of whatever
role they have molded you into, the whole system will
try to pull you back in, and they don't want

(14:36):
anything to change because they've found safety, they've found security,
they found consistency in the dynamics as they are. But
that might not work for the individual anymore, and then
it's a push pull to get that to change. So
it is important work to help people communicate with their
family of I'm not six.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah, but I think what's tough about the Fester Gomez
dynamic is that they both seem very comfortable with it.
Other than Fester like starting to realize, which is the
age when kids start to be like self individuating. You know,
I want to be my own person. I think the
scene you're talking about, Hannah that really sticks in my

(15:18):
mind is when Fester's laying in bed and Gomez looks
like he's tucking him in, yes, and he's talking to
him like Infester's his little boy, and he does that
You're just a boy. When Fester is talking about wanting
a relationship and wanting to get married, wanting to have kids,
and so it does make me curious as well how

(15:40):
much Gomez is also trying to figure out how to
be supportive to Fester, because it is like a odd
dynamic in that Fester was his older brother who he
seemed to really admire. He gets Fester back, but she
has a lot of conflicting feelings about with guilt and
stuff like that. He can't really treat Fester like his

(16:02):
brother yet because he is so childlike. I do feel
like Gomez is a good dad, and I think he
feels very comfortable as a dad. So I wonder if
Gomez just kind of puts on the dad hat with
Fester because it fits and it feels comfortable, and Fester

(16:23):
seems to thrive off of it until we're getting to
this point where Fester is aging out of that kind
of need. He doesn't need a dad like that anymore
to make him feel comfortable and secure. And unfortunately, I
don't know if Gomez knows how to go through that

(16:45):
transition stage yet, because his kids are almost there but
not quite like they're right at it, and I do
feel like Gomez must be. I'm going to use the
term parenting, which I guess is indicative of their dynamic,
because I want to say, even though he's not Profester's parent,
but that he's sort of like festering. I wonder how

(17:05):
much he's festering. I wonder how much he's parenting Fester
from like a guilt place of I want to keep
you safe, I want to take care of you. I
want to keep you here and protected, and I don't
want to feel bad about yourself. I've worked with so
many parents where their kids have gone through trauma. They
can have a really hard time pushing them and challenging

(17:26):
them and letting them take chances because they feel so
anxious and or guilty about the situation. And so I
feel like Gomez will struggle with that in terms of
you have to back off and actually let him do
this stuff that he's talking about wanting and that you

(17:48):
also want forums. I think what's so interesting about the
Gombz thing is he's not discouraging Fester. He's actually encouraging Fester.
But Gomez doesn't quite understand, I think, which is also
not uncommon when I've worked with family members in this
on a situation like that, you need to walk Fester
through how to do the things you're acting are second nature.

(18:10):
It is this interesting thing where he both treats Fester
like a little kid who needs that heavy parental hand,
while simultaneously assumes that Fester has adult wisdom and a
knowledge about how to find a date, how to ask
woman out, how to plan a date. That isn't uncommon.

(18:32):
Like I said, with families I've even worked with where
there is so much infantalizing in this very specific category
under this column. But then simultaneously, you'll ask your kid
in that scenario to know how to do stuff that
you only think they know because you're projecting your adult
wisdom onto them. And so where Fester ironically needs a

(18:55):
heavier hand from Gomez is to coach him through all
these life skills that he's forgotten and then never redeveloped.

Speaker 4 (19:06):
I think in the scene where you know, Faster wants
to take her out to dinner, but he doesn't know
how to have a conversation with her at dinner. He
does not, so he asked Gomez and Matitia to double
date with him.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
First of all. That was just very sweet though though,
to be very honest.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
If I was like on the first date and I
was double a with Matitia and Gomez, I would to
be like so intimidated, you know, you know, but you
could see how doing that date, Gomez and my teacher
were trying to help Faster get a conversation going. They
were trying to help him show himself off. He didn't
do a good job of verbally expressing himself.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
No, no, he did.

Speaker 4 (19:47):
But you did see, you know, Martitia was telling her
in the bathroom, he's this, you know, really great guy.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
If he likes you with all, that's why he vomented
on you.

Speaker 4 (19:55):
And maybe that's why I never got I got a
date to last.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
I didn't voment on them.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
I don't know one crucial step.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
You know. But the thing is is they did that.

Speaker 4 (20:05):
They were trying to help him and then they also
took over, and then they just went a little too
far with showing how amazing their relationship is when they
started doing the dance that combined tengo positively and the
flamenco all in one a little bit of blaming. It
bothered me with them because I actually used to do

(20:26):
balling dancing in high school.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
That was like my pe class.

Speaker 4 (20:29):
So like I was recognizing the steps and everything, okay,
well to during the steps, but it's not that's not
I'm saying, goore.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
Like I had. This movie has taken me out. I
could get on everything like this I.

Speaker 3 (20:39):
Was going on.

Speaker 4 (20:40):
I was like okay, but they did and you know,
the showing off how great their relationship is, how romantic
they are. That's a tough act to follow for someone
like Fessor, who isn't in this position where he's learning
how to talk to a girl for the very first time.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Mm hm, And I mean pure intimidation or either party involved.
The way that those two are constantly in communication verbally
and nonverbally, in coded language and direct language with each other.
They have a symbiotic, idealistic understanding of love that is

(21:20):
not attainable.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
It's just so all or nothing. They are showing Fester
the most symbiotic, advantageous, extreme committed kind of love right
and not really acknowledging that there are a lot of
steps between, right, that where between we're Fester's at and
where they're at. Unfortunately, I do think it does make

(21:45):
Fester very vulnerable to imprinting, which I think I did
say in the first movie, is going to imprint on
someone in printing on the first possible option and then
thinking like I can just make this into what gom
as a Martitia have, but understanding that you have to

(22:07):
date many, maybe many people, that there are things that
you may or may not like about the person and
they may or may not like about you. That it's
not this soul mayy zero to sixty thing that gom
as a Martitia have. It definitely would create a lot
of high expectations, maybe even a lot of confusion and

(22:29):
for Fester and like, why is my relationship not looking
and feeling like their relationship? Yeah, it's just not giving
him a lot of practical life experience stuff that he
needs and is setting himself up for, Like I said,
the extremest version of love that DeBie, of course, is
all too eager to capitalize on.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
And offer falsely because if Fester has idolized, which he
has some moments of dialogue where he indicates he does
idolize the relationship and how hard it's been for him
to listen to all of the shenanigans that they get
up to at night.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
He's peeping, He's like, I've been peeping through those key holes,
observing you guys.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yep, And he can't recognize that, Like you said, that's
something that takes years of development, of being dependent on
each other, of building a life together, of having children,
of owning a home. There's so many things that go
into a full on adult marriage. That's you know, we'll

(23:36):
say twelve years in and at least Yeah, you can't know,
you can't just have that in a dating relationship. And
sometimes people really struggle with that of well, my husband
to be would act like this, like hold on, but
you guys haven't earned those steps from each other. You
haven't had that man, that relationship manifest and grow, those

(23:59):
investments have to mature. Yeah, no one is going to
and no one should step into your life and be
like I'm going to be your everything.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Let's yeah, love bombing as they talk about it.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Well, Yeah, a healthy person shouldn't let you into everything,
not for years.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Yeah, And unfortunately Gomes a Mortician are not setting Fester
up for protection around that. They are encouraging this idea
of well continued in meshment. Unfortunately, we have Fester who
came from an extraordinarily enmeshed dynamic with his fake mom
and now they are Mortician and Gomez are now unfortunately

(24:39):
encouraging another kind of potential enmeshment where it works out
for them and it just happens to like be very
perfect for them. But their love is also very singular,
and so what it actually does is it sets Fester
up to be taken advantage of and it continues to

(24:59):
encourage that like enmeshment dynamic. And so when then Debbie
is like, you have to be me one hundred percent,
Like you have to be in on me, if you
want my body, if you want my full love, you
have to only be with me, and you have to
push your family away. Of course that's what happens, you know,

(25:21):
it is just a continuation of the relationship dynamic he's
the most familiar with, which is you disappear within the
other person, like you and one other person are two
heads on one body.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah right, which you can't head.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
It's really just one and a half heads. It's yeah
and you're yes.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
It is unfortunate that Fester doesn't get any models that
are more middle ground people who are in a healthy
relationship but they like to do things on their own
where they like to be their own person, or maybe
they fight sometimes but they work through it and they
figure it out. I think this also goes to something
we were talking about before we started, which is how

(26:04):
Fester doesn't know how to talk about how he feels
specifically to women, and how Debbie really has to walk
him like a dog to the point like after their
first date the double date, when they're in the cemetery,
she has to throw and throw and throw and throw

(26:24):
and throw and throw herself at him before he realizes
that she's throwing himself herself at him, and how underdeveloped
his communication is around her, around his basic communication, can't
even introduce himself appropriately, which I think is also the
fant to see that Gomez and Mortitia encourage, which is

(26:46):
that if it's your perfect person, or if it's like
the love match that you deserve, you'll just be able
to figure it out. It'll just work out. When that
isn't true, you have to learn how to talk to people,
talk about what you like, talk about what you need,
and there's work there. It makes me think of when
I work with couples and you have to have the

(27:09):
mean mind reading conversation, which is, you know, your perfect
person isn't supposed to read your mind, no matter how
much they love you, so get the fuck over it.
But I think you're going with some Mortisha. Unfortunately, they
do encourage that at mind reading Idea, and I can
see where Fester would also take it from there, like
I don't have to do the work, I'll just meet

(27:30):
the person and it'll figure itself out.

Speaker 4 (27:32):
Yeah, I mean I agree completely. And actually we kind
of see it a little bit with Wednesday as well.
She's now starting to show interest.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
In a boy and everything and Graham.

Speaker 4 (27:48):
She doesn't follow her parents' way of doing things, but
she's also like, I'm not letting someone you know, have
their say no matter.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
This is stuff like.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
She's damastrate her own kind of like codependence, like tendencies.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
Like overly independent in this Okay, my relationship is only
what I want and.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
The other person is just there, just to be there.
Really like she.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Wants someone she can boss around and potentially murder her
or threatened with murder in any given moment.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
He scar because she cares.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
She wants someone that she can test with all her
scariness and then they pass all her tests whenever she
feels like testing them, because the family that she's got
means this person needs to be constantly okay with her
scariness and their scariness and just embrace it. And if
they can't pass that test, they can't be with her.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
And also not just embrace it, but learn how to
return it. Oh, yeah, you reciprocate that. How do you
not just accept that this is.

Speaker 4 (28:49):
How she shows affection, but how do you give that
form of affection? Like the love language thing? Right, It's
not just that you know someone receives love language in
that way, but how do they give the love language?
And so we know that this is how Wednesday gives it.
We don't know how she's gonna how she receives because
we've never seen that, but I definitely think that in

(29:10):
this kind of context she would receive it in a
very similar way. So whether it's Joel or any other guy,
and you know, not to talk about the Wednesday TV series,
which was amazing. Like also, we kind of comes into
that like she gives love in this scary way and
she will only accept it in the same way.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
That's the only way she knows how right, which is.

Speaker 4 (29:33):
Really interesting because that's not how like her parents show love.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
They I mean, they they do believe we don't right,
They do what they don't like, they work in like
the bdsm angle into stuff, but they also keep it
in like a clindestine way that they both know what
they're talking about, and maybe you sort of know what
they're talking about. You know, whatever they're about to do
is very naughty and they're going to have an awesome time.
Kids won't pick up on that, but she's going to

(29:58):
know that there's like a language betwe iween partners that
your partner's going to need to be able to have
a language with you that's special.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
It is kind of making me wonder if Fester and
I guess Wednesday To in a different way are both
kind of victim to having a couple in their life
that just are so perfectly symbiotic. It makes me think
of people that I know whose parents just happened to
meet when they were in high school and they were

(30:27):
really young, and it was like their first boyfriend or
girlfriend and they got married and they have been married
for a million years and it just happened to work out.
And how then it will give them almost inappropriate expectations
around romance themselves. And because they kind of idolize this
perfect relationship, they don't get taught how to manage the

(30:51):
hard parts of relationships or romantic relationships, like we've talked about,
like the vetting part of dating, reading red flags, communicating
what you need, having boundaries, all the stuff that keeps
you safe when you're dating and when you're out socializing
that a relationship like Gome Gome like Gomez or trying

(31:14):
to Gomes. I think I was combining their names like Febbi,
but that Gomez and Mortitia. I don't know. Maybe the
people around them are kind of falling victim to being
in the shadow of their son that they don't really
learn all the hard parts of a relationship because they

(31:37):
don't have it modeled for them. So I could see
Worth Wednesday if she has her own social skills difficulty,
similar to maybe Fester, there isn't really someone in her
life that she sees on a regular basis that is
modeling the work that she in Fester have to do
because they don't have the innate stuff happening. Kind Of

(31:59):
very similar too, when someone with a mental health disorder
is being raised by people who don't have any mental
health issues and how they don't really or like when
I've worked with families where the kid is autism and
the parents are just very unfamiliar with it and I
really have to walk them through the differences. You have
to teach them stuff and model things for them and

(32:21):
like baby step things for them that would never even
occur to you that you would have to teach because
it's so intuitive to you. And how they can still
love their kid fiercely or their loved one like Investor's case,
and not even realize where they are where there is
like a canyon of lack of skills that they're not

(32:42):
teaching because they just assume that it'll work out or
be fine the way that it worked out and is
fine for them. And so maybe ironically in Fester and
Wednesday and maybe even Pugsley have less romantic discernment social
skills surround this communication because their parents haven't had to

(33:04):
model that in front of them because they just have
it with each other.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
And it might.

Speaker 4 (33:08):
Be interesting, is if Fester does start learning these things,
if you know, with at the end of the show,
they showed him with dementia. Like granted though that's just like, oh,
she's perfect for him, So like, I don't know if
he's going to learn those with her. True, I would
hope that he does, and by observing him learning these

(33:29):
and figuring out.

Speaker 5 (33:30):
How to do that, that would help Wednesday and probably
learn that. And also that would be the only way
that they can they can witness it is him. He's
the only other adult who's attempting relationships.

Speaker 4 (33:43):
Grandma is not she's not me, you know, and Lurch,
you know, isn't either, So I mean, unless they.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Look at it, you know, Margaret and cousin aids.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
But that also had a magical quality to it as well,
the same language.

Speaker 4 (34:00):
Yeah, so even though that's not really helpful, so faster
to learn this stuff for the sake of the children.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah, It's one of those things where like the family
unit's fine until an element occurs that requires more work,
that isn't just going to figure itself on its own
and so I think that's how Fester is created, like
this version of Fester in this movie is created because
there is no manual that the parent that parents and

(34:30):
his parents going on with and more Tisha have for
a person like Fester.

Speaker 4 (34:34):
I would argue that, no, they are the parents. Yeah,
we're definitely parenting Fester. I mean, look at the way
that Gomes was sitting in bed with Faster. Yeah, I
know that was definitely God energy of like you know,
sitting with your child in bed, like to reading books together.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
They definitely do baby him, and I should do it.

Speaker 4 (34:55):
Out of because they were concerned because he bent through
all this horrible stuff. As you pointed out earlier, they're
just repeating it then are good? And also the behaviors are.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Not helpful, right, They're not getting him too a place
where he's sufficiently challenged to grow in the ways that
he needs to grow.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah, Evan's respond to their environment, and if they're not
an environment that forces them to change and grow, they
won't period.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
As I say, it reminds me of and I sorry
to keep going back to this because Ben Stover, you're
not part of this episode, but how in our first
episode about this family. We were talking about how also
because of their financial status, that they have a lot
of comfort to get away with their lifestyle for lack
of water way of putting it, and how Fester kind

(35:48):
of also is falls victim to that in that he
doesn't really have to get a job, he doesn't have
to get a driver's license necessarily. He's very taken care of,
and so he can hide in the house right at
the top of the stairs like a boogeyman, like a
Boo Radley type, and he's still going to be fed
and taken care.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Of, right which adults, you know, come to reach a
point in life, and even teenagers where if you want something,
you're going to have to go get it your parents,
outside of people who profoundly cheat and go to jail
for it, aren't going to get you into college. They're
not going to get the grade for you. They can't
play the sport for you. They can yell at the
coach all they want, but they can't make you deliver

(36:30):
on the field. And at some point Fester would need
gom As and Mortitia to not baby him and treat
him like he's a nine year old boy or a
prepebescent boy. That they would be working with him on
ways to get himself reintegrated, rechallenging to start capturing some
of the growth he missed. I wanted to say recaptured,

(36:52):
but I don't even believe those words myself. It's not
possible to recapture. He can't go backwards, but he must
go forwards. And I mean he's in is not encouraging
him to in any way, shape or form. He doesn't
have to, so he won't.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Yeah, and then unfortunately, when he finally gets to the
point of this comfort where he might start to grow,
like I really want a partner, so I have to
leave the house. Unfortunately the partner comes to him both times. Actually,
which is kind of now that we're talking through this
a bummer in that I wish that movie ended with him,

(37:26):
maybe like oh when the movie be funny if they
ended with him, like doing one of those video dating things.
They didn't have ass back then, so you would not
do a video dating service or yeah, instead of just
having another person show up that I feel like he'll
hopefully Dementia's good because it could just be the same

(37:51):
cycle again. Anything more we want to say about Fester
before we take a break, and talk about Mistebbi. All right,
well take a break, care and we'll be right back,
Miss Debbie, Deborah, Joan Cusack smoke show the whole movie.
Who would have thought, you know what I mean? Whoever whatever,
casting director whoever was like, let's get Joan Cusack in

(38:12):
here and put a wonderbron her. I hope that your
hella is cold on both sides every day until you die.
Because that was a revelation.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Yeah, it took me a minute to recogniz was watching, like,
is that Joan Cusack? Since when is she hot?

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Like what she is doing? The wiggle like a Hollywood
bombshell from the Monroe era, Right.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
No, Normally she's putting like awkward, funny characters. Yeah, and
then this is such a It's definitely.

Speaker 4 (38:46):
The like scertipical fatal style of movement, and you know,
it is actually really interesting. Is her way of flirting
is also very target of course we're going to discuss this,
but she did her research on the autumns as specifically Faster,
so she knows that talking about murder and note and
stuff like that is something that they respond well to,

(39:09):
so she can present that way.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
It's actually just really.

Speaker 4 (39:13):
Funny that she knows that they will respond well to
her say any things, but she didn't think that trying.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
To execute Fester and about them is just going to
turn them on.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
I mean, I think that's the short sightedness of what
we're about to talk about, which is that when you
have the presentation that she has, which is that more
like anti social cluster B personality disorder with all this
like criminal thinking, that it's very short sighted. It's very
narrow that you're thinking about this moment. And it's really

(39:42):
hard when I work with people who have personality disorders,
especially the cluster B, which is just the grouping of
it of certain ones, is that it's very difficult to
recall all the history of your life experience, like they're
that file folder, that cabinet drawer full of that information
isn't available to them as readily. And yeah, you're right, Benjamin,

(40:07):
and that if she was able to think a little wider,
she might be able to acknowledge like maybe I've like
found my people who are actually into the stuff I'm into,
for better or for worse, who are kind of fun
and interesting and they have a lot of money, Like
if she could make it work with Fester, that is
her dream. He probably would let her have like a
weird open marriage dynamic. I'm not saying weird because of

(40:30):
the open poly part of it, but I mean he
would probably let her do whatever her taking advantage of pollyming.
This would be her non ethical nominogamy to get all
of her needs met and all of his needs met.
And because she really can't get out of her own narrative,
which is that I will always be not taken care

(40:50):
of and not thought of and misunderstood, and I have
to destroy to get to what I need and then
I have to move on. If she could think outside
of that, this would have been such a cushy little
deal for her. But because she can't see it, because
she's so limited by the way her brain works around
that stuff, she really screws herself to death.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
She does. I mean, and I have to tell you
it makes me terrified to make sure that I get
my daughter the Ballerina Barbie and not the Malibu Barbie.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
I am graceful, yeah, I'm and delicate very so.

Speaker 4 (41:33):
I mean, because the thing that you were talking about,
which is that narrative, that's a big part of this,
and that's really how personality disorders were is it's all
about that narrative that these people have in their head
that this is just how things are and I have
to do it this way. That is the only way
that I will be taking care of that I will

(41:54):
be in control. And it's not just antisocial personality, it's
borderline his drahn.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
I get all them. The whole point of the personality
traits is this is how you basically view the world
around you.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
It's weird because the same way as how you would
discuss delusions, But it's not a delusion. It's this is
how she's perceiving other people's interactions. This is how she's
interpreting objective reality. She interprets object as a threat to her,
and so the only way to protect yourself is to

(42:29):
kill everybody off. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Like a common trait that I encounter when I work
with people personality disorders is paranoia. And I like to
highlight that because I think we have a very specific
idea of what paranoia is within mental health, that if
you're a paranoid, you're a paranoid schizophrenic. That you're like
thinking people are walking behind you and talking about you
and whispering and trying to get at you and stuff

(42:53):
very like beautiful mind esque, whereas with personality disorders, the
paranoia is more a that nuanced what you're talking about, Benjamin,
which is I think everyone is thinking the worst of me,
or that their intentions are bad, like feeling paranoid in
the way that you can feel unsettled and that you
can't trust anyone around you and you can't trust how

(43:15):
they feel about you, what they mean their intentions, and
that is also paranoia. It's just paranoia in a more
emotionally nuanced way and not like a movie.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
Definitely, it's more in the sense of the ego strength.

Speaker 4 (43:31):
And that's the thing that's another common factor in personality
disorders and personal issues is poor ego strength, even with
narcissism and the social where people think that they're so
confident in they're coffee. Oh actually they're not. That's why
they act this way is because it's trying to gain that.
This is how they build themselves up, is by tearing

(43:52):
you down.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
Well, I'm going to put you on the spot, Benjamin.
Can you do a quick explainer of what that term
means ego strength for people who are listening. I might
ne ever heard it before.

Speaker 4 (44:02):
Well, the way it was explained to me, and please
let me know if your supervisors explained it differently to you,
is that ego strength is our ability to handle just
the world around us as it relates to anything affecting us,
if how our needs are being met by the world
around us. So if we have strong ego strength, we're

(44:23):
not as upset by disappointments or by other people having
different needs than us, where someone with really poor and
weak ego strength they take anything that's not their idea
or anything that does not their need as a threat.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Yeah, it kind of ties into the idea of like
fragile ego, fragile sense of self, where I think of
it almost like you can feel a hole inside of
you that you're trying to fill all the time, but
there's no bottom to it and you never really feel it,
so you have to keep chasing it. That's a miserable
way to be. I say this a lot on this

(44:59):
podcast talking about persona disorders. People with personadi storers aren't
having a good time like movies and the mainstream culture
like to talk about them like they're just joker Harley
Quinn style running around really kicking it up with their friends.
They are looking for something and they're they're never comfortable,

(45:19):
they never feel content, they do not I.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Think the thing that I would add on to all
the descriptions here, which are all very good, is that
people are trying to define themselves and they're trying to
get the world to match their internal definition. And when
the world challenges that, as it tends to do, rather
than reach the point that most of us do, which

(45:46):
is now I'm still me, that person's wrong. That becomes
an enemy. Yeah, I know you're not an enemy. Enemy
is probably the wrong word, but it becomes a threatening presence.
Whatever makes them feel that their idea of themselves is
not true.

Speaker 4 (46:02):
Well, they tend to be themselves as victims. They victimize
themselves because if you're a victim.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
You're not responsible.

Speaker 4 (46:11):
You don't have to change your behavior, you don't have
to change anything about you.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
It's other people's fault.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
And we see that actually with people with antisocial personality
traits and narcissistic traits, and especially with borderline traits. That's
especially so you know, it's not as thought of with
antisocial because antisocial is oftentimes perceived as being evil or
just being callous, and I think they are callous, but

(46:39):
it's not because they are getting pleasure from it in
the sadism way though sometimes they it's more they are
victim and so they have to not there.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
It's easy for.

Speaker 4 (46:53):
Them to not accept your needs because I'm hurt, and
so it's okay.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
For me to hurt them.

Speaker 4 (46:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
A lot of Yeah, and a lot of people with
personal disorders you've heard of say this before have trauma backgrounds.
We've also said before how specifically with borderline, there are
discussions about if that diagnosis should actually be a trauma
diagnosis and not necessarily clustered the same way it is currently.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
And I would see that team. I am one on
that team.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
I had a previous supervisor from one of my predoctoral
internships that her specialty was in complex PTSD, and she
was talking a lot about how borderline is basically just
the most intense form of complex PTSD.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
I agree, I agree, see that.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
I can see that for sure.

Speaker 4 (47:42):
How the trauma experiences and it all depends on when
is the drama experience and how is it being perceived,
And typically the borderline it is young age is when
it's happening here we don't really see a trauma per
se other than the Malibu Barbie versus the.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
This movie is definitely she's a two dimensional movie villain.
She's a cartoon. She does fit the antisocial in that
she displays these behaviors from a very young age, because
to get antisocial usually have to show symptoms before fifteen,
and so obviously she's ten. With the first story of
killing her parents, they don't insinuate that there's any sort

(48:23):
of trauma or something that happened to her before ten.
They really just make it seem like she's like the
bad seed kind of thing, like she was just born
this way.

Speaker 4 (48:32):
If we think about when this movie is made, which
was what ninety three, ninety four? Yeah, you and to
search about that literally just your sociogath yeah, which spoiler
alert to all the listeners. Soy theopathy and psychopathy or
not diagnoses.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
You're right with us, maybe because we say that all
the time in the last episode, we probably did because
we speak did that psychopathy?

Speaker 5 (48:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
So this is how society in the ninety the early
nineties viewed the.

Speaker 4 (49:00):
Social personality disorder into social personality traits is they're just evil,
cold hearted.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
But we do see, it's the ego strength thing.

Speaker 4 (49:09):
As a ten year old, she has such for ego
strength that when she didn't get one thing, she viewed
it as I am rejected, I am being neglected.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
I'm a victim of something horrible, and so I have
to fight back. I have to get revenge.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
It's where she's waiting for something to fit her narrative
because she doesn't feel good about herself, she doesn't feel understandable,
and it's that confirmation bias. Where as you can see
from her PowerPoint presentation that she seemed to have like
a fairly typical upbringing, probably on the Kushier side, two

(49:47):
parents who seem to love her, I assume, and the
one time they make what she identifies as a mistake
but not just a mistake, like a purposeful for sure,
that she can't and stand it and she needs them
to go, like she can't tolerate them anymore because they
have misunderstood her so gravely.

Speaker 4 (50:10):
Yeah, well, it makes me think that her childhood was
actually one of she was pampered, probably where her parents'
words kate under her every demand. And so if you
raise in that kind environment where your word is law
as a young child, then yeah, when they meet it.
When someone makes a mistake but they've always fulfilled your

(50:32):
demands to the letter before, then yeah, she's going to
see this as you do this on purpose.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
You're rejecting me. I am your daughter. You're supposed to
give me whatever I want.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
What the hell is this threat? Correct? Threat? I'm not
going to get my needs met anymore? Threat threat threat.
Once people identify themselves as a victim and that someone
wronged them whatever they did, is okay. I remember in
my criminology classes, the arsed things that the teacher covered
or professor covered with us was there is never a

(51:06):
case where a person who commits a crime thinks they're
the bad guy. Ever. Not ever. And I literally, just
two weeks ago or a week ago, set in on
a murder and multiple attempted murder sentencing and of his
own free will, the convictioned murderer got up and said,

(51:31):
I am sorry. A lot of people are living with
hate in their hearts, and I hope everyone sees that
this was an unjust stop and this wasn't a murder,
it was an accident and just like you felt the
air drop out of the courtroom was this is a
very clear and repeated offender. This is a very clear
case of multiple very serious shooting injuries. And it was

(51:53):
not an accident. No apologies, no, no, nothing like this
happened because something bad happened to me that shouldn't have
and I got pulled over and I wasn't supposed to.
So everything that happened was you know, it was either
the universe or someone else's fault, and.

Speaker 4 (52:06):
You just what.

Speaker 3 (52:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (52:10):
Actually, when I was working previously with actual friends, I mean,
that kind of justification and rationalization was so presdent. I
mean everywhere and when you're working in offender treatment, the
goal is to reduce recidivism, to reduce reoffending. That kind

(52:30):
of denial is actually not, according to research, to link
to with reoffending. It was actually really tough for me
as when I first started there to like, oh, but
they're denying this, they're rationalizing, so their risk must be higher,
when actually that's probably going to stay the same. But
if you can still teach them, okay, fine, even if
you feel as a victim, can we react in a

(52:53):
different way? And that is something that is difficult to learn,
but it is possible to learn. Offenders can learn to
recognize that, yes, I feel victimized, and also I'm going
to do something differently than last out. It is a
difficult process, but with a lot of really with any
kind of crime, because crime, in its most basic thing

(53:15):
is attempting to meet a need that isomusially acceptable, no doubt.
So how then can we say, Okay, well, yes, you're
trying to meet a need. I acknowledge that. And also
the way you're doing it is only hurting you. So
can we do it in a different way? You're still
going to feel like a victim. I'm not going to

(53:35):
try to change that. I'm going to ask you to
think about, well, how would you know, how can the
victim behave differently?

Speaker 3 (53:44):
How can they suppoort themselves in a different way? And
what the other band is saying? You know that no
criminal things that they are the villain.

Speaker 4 (53:54):
No villain in any comic books or superhero story that
I've ever heard thinks.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
Of themselves as a villain.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
Even the Joker doesn't view himself as a villain, and
he's the most ponymous a villain.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
He's doing fun because this isn't how key meeting his needs.
I want to allow I want to have fun. So
it's okay, right, those are just the heroes of their
own story.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
Yeah. Well, I think also with someone like Debbie that
has that specific sort of like paranoid, negative worldview of
other people and being that short sighted, I think what
also happens is that there can be a lot of
assumptions made that everyone else also thinks the way that
I think, and everyone else views people the way that

(54:35):
I view people. And so a lot of times when
people do the I guess the antisocial part of antisocial,
which is I'm only out for me, Like we're talking
about like she could very easily have everything she want
and be with the Adamses, but her determination, even though
they've really done nothing wrong, her determination to distance her

(54:55):
investor from them and isolate fester in herself. I wonder
if that just comes from the mindset of they're out
to get me the way that I'm out to get people.
We're all trying to get ours in this life. And
if I don't walk over you, you'll walk over me.
And so this almost like the best defense is a
good offense kind of way of living, where I have

(55:16):
to be ahead of the other person who's trying to
get me, and that is a really lonely way to live.
It is interesting because it seems like with Debbie's first marriages.
If I'm just going to extrapolate from her PowerPoint presentation,
she roll this is ninety three.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
It is a slide show.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Oh yeah, but yeah, my dad had this slide.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Oh yeah thing rolling with the carousel.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
Yes, that's what I'm thinking of. It's interesting that she
seemed to marry men that were a lot older than
her and a lot more established than her. So it
seems like in the beginning, I wonder how much she
was actually trying to find security and trying to feel
like she has enough finally, and then as soon as

(56:07):
she felt threatened, like she says in the presentation, the
one person God forbid needed to do surgery on people
who were probably dying. Then the other guy was a
government official, pretty high up, honestly, very in demand. Yeah,
that she ruined those relationships probably a sort of a

(56:28):
whim And the impulsiveness, even though she does a lot
of planning ahead by the time we're seeing her with Fester,
I wonder how much in the beginning there was all
that impulsiveness where she's getting so in her feelings about
how dare you? How dare you? How dare you? And
then you come home and I'm going to hit you
with the car.

Speaker 4 (56:46):
Yeah, she's looking for online the security, but the kind
of power and the amount of material privilege. And you
don't really get much more than a senator unless she's
going to go off with the president next. And even
then it's not enough for her because that wasn't the
internal need and need to be met she thinks it is.
She thinks that that's going to make her feel good

(57:08):
is if I have this money, if I have these cars,
if I have these nice things. But the first I
was rearing how to treat the pope, know how to
cold and then I don't remember what the senator did wrong.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
His crime was he loved his country and his state
and his people. But God, the grandma was so good
in this, but not you enough.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
God, the empathy she should which is what's crazy is
even when they're showing her blanket support, Yeah, she can't
feel it. She can't hear it because it doesn't go
through the confirmation bias in her head of like people
are out to get me, or people won't think about
me like that, They're not victimizing her, or they actually

(57:55):
are in the way that she would appreciate. Which is
interesting because when it makes me think of what I
do work with clients that have similar personality disorder presentations,
I can't validate them in the right way or enough. Like,
even when I'm reflecting back in an empathetic way what
they just said, I get met with resistance more than

(58:16):
I get met with appreciation. For that. It's just really
hard to crack that worldview where they're so prepared for
everyone around them to have this such a specific, non
helpful response to them that when they do get it,
it's like they can't tolerate it. They have to throw
it out.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
I mean, I think people are like that in general.
They just yeah, well less they lock into a where
it can get worse, of course, where they just reject
it because that in and of itself violates their worldview
and then keeps them unsafe. If I let people in,
I'm unsafe, So they don't. They're not going to even
regular people. Think about arguments you've had with somebody, even
when the other person perhaps starts showing that I don't

(58:57):
want to fight, let me give you a hug. If
other person isn't out a fight mode yet, they might
still be like, someone was hugging you right this second,
why are you fighting with them? And it takes a
minute to deactivate that body mode that's throwing you into fight.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
I love your facial expressions. I wish the audience could
see that a.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Very expressive I've had colleagues tell me like, I missed
meetings with you because of your face.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
You know, I talk so much with my hands, and
I'm like, no one's seeing you, Brittany on the podcast,
they can't hear your hands. I wish they could.

Speaker 4 (59:30):
That's the thing about podcasts. I mean, if we were
doing like a video podcast, but you know then I'm
not dressed for that now. No jamas, come on.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
I mean, that's a whole podcast right there, Psychologists and pajamas.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
That's the next one. We'll start it off, right.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
I know that something we also wanted to talk about
a bit was the predatory nature of Debbie as well.
So I didn't know. I'm just going to open the
floor for anyone who wants to talk about that.

Speaker 4 (59:58):
I want, Hannah, if you wanted to just become this
loaded before I go off, as I will thought for
her like Hannah has been really politely.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
Quiet, so.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Sure, yeah, I mean, I think some of the ways
that Debbie is predatory is that she very much knows
well and the one all the research that she did,
which you know, if somebody shouldn't know that much about
you before they meet you, But mostly really how she
positions herself with Fester, how she talks to him, how

(01:00:31):
she dresses. She also is very much leading all of
the conversations and leading all of the interaction that she's
having with Fester. So she has a lot of control
and a lot of the power that we have all
been talking about that we know that she really wants
and that a part of you know, her getting her
need met is that she's a predator. She's looking for

(01:00:56):
I think they even say to the movie like essentially
for like a week's old. I think that's why she
picks older men. I don't know if it's that she
thinks that it's stable. I think that she picks older
men because I think it will be easier to kill them. Yeah,
it will be exactly. That's why I think that she
picks people that are more unique and less like these

(01:01:19):
seven billionaires all you know, they all look the same,
they all have the same Sudan. She she picks these
people to pray on. Yeah, and I really feel like she.

Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
Knew.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
I think she thought she knew what she was getting
herself into and got a little bit of a flash
of like what the fuck with Adams's of course, and
she also just and also like she says I love
you right away. She's very love bomby, Like she told
the baby that she loved the baby right away. When
she comes into interview to be the nanny, she just

(01:01:55):
is over the top and overly and really overly emotion
I feel like in terms of her reactions are really big.
But I think a part of that is to draw
people in.

Speaker 4 (01:02:08):
Yeah, when you are a predator, you're going for the vulnerable,
and this is how you get the vulnerable.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
The vulnerable people want that, they want that kind of
oh my god, you.

Speaker 4 (01:02:20):
Care about me, you see me, because these are the
people that don't get That really makes me wonder how
much of Faster's experience with the fake mother was widely
unknown because she knew how to treat him exactly as
the fake mother did. So it was just like in universe,
was all that story like made public? How does she
find out about the fake mother's thought, because she wouldn't

(01:02:43):
have known that. This is how fester it would behave
if she only knew about the Professor pre per Me
to Triangle, because according to everything we know about Professor
preview Me in Triangle, he was a suave guy.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Well, I have an answer to that question, but first
we will go for a break. I'll be right back
to get that answer. Okay, So when she does the
research for him, this is what I think. There's all
those magazines with articles about him. I wonder if when
he got found he's part of a pretty richie rich family.

(01:03:14):
So I wonder if he did the People magazine Oprah
circuit where he got very discussed as the long lost
heir to a very prominent, intergenerationally wealthy family. And I
wonder how much of those discussions were, especially in the nineties,
how much they were putting their pseudo psych shit all

(01:03:38):
over it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
And this would be like Sally Jesse Raphael Territory.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Well he called Sally in the first movie Gomez, we
will not tell you where the witch doctors. Where the
witch doctors are meeting? Stop calling? But yeah, no, it's
the Ricky Lake. The Jenny Jones era where they would
have a psych expert on stage to quote unquote discuss

(01:04:07):
what's up with Fester and like, what would have happened
to him in the meantime. I think that's probably what
made him so ripe for what you're talking about, Benjamin,
which is that she saw a perfect victim and someone
that she could really take advantage of, someone who makes
me even wonder in the canon I'm creating in my

(01:04:28):
head where he's doing these interviews, if they're probably doing
that stupid thing they do too, where they're like, what
about love? Are you looking for a missus, Fester? And
he probably gives a weird answer that felt very young
and maybe even immature. If she he was on TV
shows like he probably was having the same presentation we

(01:04:48):
see where he gets all clammy and odd, and so
he is a blank canvas in a lot of ways
for her to paint all over, even her the savviness
of saying that she's a virgin, which does seem like
that was her tactic maybe is always her tactic to
keep from having to have sex with her victims before marriage,

(01:05:10):
And it also makes me wonder if she played it
out in that very like Mary Sue Way with him
specifically to make him feel like he is not so
weird that we're both we're both adult virgins, late bloomers,
if you will. Isn't that nice? So we both get
to share that experience. And you know what just popped

(01:05:30):
into my head is as we were talking about Fester,
just thinking about how he also is in a situation
where if nobody talks to you about dating and love
and relationships and you and someone else is the one
who's teaching you that lesson. This is one of those
examples of what can happen, right of when we don't

(01:05:53):
have those conversations with our children because it's too uncomfortable
or whatever the fuck people are telling themselves. You are
giving up the chance to give your kid information about
what a healthy, loving relationship looks like.

Speaker 4 (01:06:09):
If you don't teach it to them the way that
you think they need to learn it, they're going to
learn it from.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
Someone else exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
Controlling how that information can be presented to them.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
Yeah, it kind of makes me think of when I
had this is going to take. I mean, we're already
talking about pretty dark subject matter in a lighter way,
but when I used to work with families where the
kid had gone through sexual trauma of some sort and
so was already very sexually aware of themselves, and how
the parents would still do that sort of clamming up

(01:06:40):
sheltering thing, And I'm like, the horse is out of
the barn. We can't put the toothpaste back in the
toothpaste too. It's happening. Your kid's aware of the sexual
nature of themselves now, and either we put it in
a framework that will keep them safe, or we put
it in a framework where it's going to be taken
advantage of. And I think why I'm my making that

(01:07:00):
connection is Fester is older, so I think that he's
not really sheltered from that. Maybe was sheltered from like
his adoptive mom, but I think there's a lot of
assumptions made about him because he's older, about his body
and what he does and doesn't know, and what he
will and will not do, and what he should be
talked about because he's older. And the way that when

(01:07:22):
I've worked with parents in this dilemma, they also are like, well,
they're not old enough to have that conversation, yet we
don't need to talk about that. And I'm like, the
context is different. The context has changed, and like you're saying,
Ben and Hannah, you said this too. They will get
the information somewhere else, So do you want it to
be from me? This is my absence only. Education doesn't

(01:07:43):
work spoiler alert, because kids will just learn to other places.
And then you have kids who get pregnant in high
school because they don't even know how you get pregnant
and that you need to wear protection to stop that
from happening. He is also in that where it's a
perfect rooming victim and predator dynamic because she can fully

(01:08:05):
inform him and throughout every story, Yeah, about everything about
what sex is, like what even sex is. When she
she tries to scam him with that, which she's like,
how do you know we're not having sex right now?

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
Yeah? It is, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:08:17):
And this is something also when it comes to learning
about healthy intimacy and relationships is right now? You know,
social media and the internet and porn are not ways
of learning healthy boundaries and consent and intimacy.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
The unfortunate thing is.

Speaker 4 (01:08:40):
Because people are not having these discussions openly. That's where
people are learning it is from peorn. I've had clients
that you know, other parents didn't have this discussion with them,
and so they growing up, were exposed to porn early
on and they're like, oh, well, now this looks amazing,
this is what I want, This seems fun. And then

(01:09:01):
it's well, that's not what the reality is, and people
are trying to meet their needs in the way that
they are observing is that's what there was taught to them.
So someone who's being taught about sex from DeBie Fester
is now this is how Fester views sexuality. Pfester is

(01:09:21):
someone who now views sexuality as throwing toasters in bathtubs,
great radios and bathtubs, and then whatever weird thing she
did while sitting.

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):
On his lap.

Speaker 4 (01:09:33):
So now he's going to be going into his life
with dementia and you know, God willing dimension knows how
to help him properly, but again not likely.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
So he's not going to be able to ever get
his needs met in the way.

Speaker 4 (01:09:49):
That he really wants because all he knows is this weird,
you know, pseudo sexual domination kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
And also just the confusing nature of Debbie's presentation. Even
growing from how we talked about his observations of Gomez,
Martitia this very hot and cold push and pull where
Debbie is simultaneously so sexual in her presentation with him,

(01:10:20):
but then at the same time is so withholding and
virginal supposedly and then to be very loving and then
switch the script on him, and as soon as they're married,
she's hurting him and yelling at him and probably acting
a lot like his adoptive, his fake mom and room. Yeah,

(01:10:45):
why would he not think that this is normal his
relationship dynamic with Debbie because she probably treats him very
similarly to his fake mom, where even in the first
movie she slaps him in the face and then she goes,
I love you more than anything. Here here hold me
like I'll hold you. And he's unfortunately getting that message

(01:11:06):
again in his first real adult relationship that someone who
you think loves you and you think you love will
be overly affectionate and adoring of you one minute, and
then they will hurt you literally the next And that's
just how it goes. Even if he wasn't an Adams's

(01:11:27):
and has that kind of like skew perception of how
people treat each other, he could still fall into a
relationship like this because and stay in a relationship like this,
because why would he think it would be anything different?
And that's when people are like, why would you stay
in an abusive relationship or why would you be with
someone who's just like your parent treated you or your
parents treated your other parent, because that is what you learned.

(01:11:49):
And so Fester is very vulnerable to a debbie instead
of why I think I don't like how this movie ends,
now that we're talking about this more is unless dementia
is really different and is really helpful and good for him,
he's very susceptible to falling into the same dynamic again.

Speaker 4 (01:12:08):
And the thing is is the Mattia comes from the
same kind of bot community of outcasts who view pain
in very different ways.

Speaker 3 (01:12:18):
So even if she's not like that, Solester's way of
relationships is that that's all he knows.

Speaker 4 (01:12:26):
So he's going to subconsciously engage in that and put
in that position to do that. And she might also
not understand how to do differently, and she's like, oh, well,
this is what he wants. So they're both in a
position to calla promos for each other if she's not
as aware, and again we all know how aware she is.

(01:12:46):
She seems like just like a female version of him. Yes, yeah,
finding a just another copy of you is not really
actually how a healthy relationship works.

Speaker 3 (01:13:00):
Gate myself, I.

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
Think a lot of people try to though, So I
guess is there anything that we want to say more
about Miss Debbie? I don't know why to keep calling
her that mean, because that's what the may there Miss Debbie?
Anything else about Debbie before we move on to treatment.
We'll take a break here and be right back. So
in the spirit of momentum, Benjamin, I don't know if

(01:13:24):
you just want to keep going and talk about your
treatment because you'll be working with Debbie.

Speaker 4 (01:13:30):
If I were to do treatment with Abbie, one thing
to really consider here is the intensity of the way
she's viewing the world around her and the issues of
right and wrong or whatever. One really big point I
think so As I mentioned before, you know, when you're
treating offenders, the goal is to reduce recidivism, and that's

(01:13:53):
not to make them stop denying their crimes. Is to
make them understanding there are other ways to get the
needs met. The issue here is she's been reinforced by society.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
She's gotten away.

Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
With it, and even though they seem to not have
her whole resume.

Speaker 4 (01:14:12):
She's be backing the world like senator, you marry a senator?
How do people not like do research on you if
you're marrying a senator? The media, she would be all
over But okay, whatever she find her she found a
way to escape that. But because each time she she's
going through this, she's been you know, when she acts
like the you know, poor widow, she's been reinforced. And

(01:14:36):
so aide would be very challenging here to try to
help her identify different ways of getting these met And
when I say challenge, I mean I'm going to have
to challenge.

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
Her really hard.

Speaker 4 (01:14:49):
My style with her would be very blunt, would be
almost sarcastic. She's going to say something and I'm going
to be like, oh, really, are you sure about that? Like,
I'm going to have to really make her think in
a different way. She's not going to be used to that.
She's used to presenting a certain way. She's going to
try that. She's going to try to put on an

(01:15:10):
act for me. She's going to try to pretend all
remre so on everything, but it's not going to be
able to last long. People with under social personality traits
like this, And I'm not going to say disorder because
I can't diagnose her. People with those traits. They can
only pretend for so long. And I mean, look at
how long her quote unbot marriages. Last weeks she was

(01:15:32):
telling her three week anniversary with best when she tried.

Speaker 2 (01:15:35):
To kill him, or at least that the second or
third time.

Speaker 1 (01:15:39):
Yeah, because the goal is honeymoon, but unfortunately it didn't
work out.

Speaker 4 (01:15:44):
So so really it doesn't even last longer than honeymoon period,
which is what a week?

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
I don't know. I've never been married, Ben, How long
do your hunband last?

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
Ten days?

Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
Ten days?

Speaker 4 (01:15:55):
Okay, so let's assume that her that's the longest period
of time she can fake it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:00):
We saw that towards the end of The Hunter. She
was like, well, it's just like the fuck is happening?

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
I can't do this and to waste too much energy
to run that mask?

Speaker 4 (01:16:08):
No, absolutely, And so that's what I would, you know,
have to hold on to is I'm going to hold
up a frame to reflect this bag so that I
can show her when the mask is slipped in.

Speaker 3 (01:16:20):
And that's when I need to challenge is you're saying
these things? Oh, look, it's not. It would be very difficult.
I don't know if shement can be successful with her.

Speaker 4 (01:16:31):
In fact, within the social personality disorder research does not
support treatment because they're not going to learn to behave differently,
going to just learn how to not get caught.

Speaker 3 (01:16:41):
It might be fetal for me to treat it.

Speaker 4 (01:16:42):
But I would probably ended up treating her. If I
was to do like an offender rehabilitation program or whatever,
she'd be court ordered if she didn't get burned. R
freaking crisp. She literally got turned to ashes.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
But if the credit cards and not metal develops or
credit cards.

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
Perfectly, she probably had a thick heavy one that you
can do product placement, man, product placement. It's it's just infallible.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
Absolutely. So you know, if she had not died and
she didn't get you.

Speaker 4 (01:17:11):
Know, arrested or whatever, as you know Gomez wanted, though
not for the reasons that Gomas.

Speaker 3 (01:17:16):
Wanted, she would probably get remanded to some kind of treatment.

Speaker 4 (01:17:20):
And this would be the way it would have to go.
Is you'd have to really challenge or like, okay, you're
you're doing these things. Yeah it's not working, it's not
working for you. And I would have to do a
lot of psycho education about healthy ways of meeting our
personal needs, healthy relationship styles, healthy dynamics, healthy coping skills.

(01:17:41):
It would be intense psycho education and I mean like intent,
I'm going to.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
Drill that in, yeah, and having to find what she
cares about.

Speaker 4 (01:17:50):
Yeah, absolutely, I have to find that thing that's going
to make her.

Speaker 3 (01:17:54):
Want to pay attention. And that's hard.

Speaker 4 (01:17:56):
Not only everyone of these kinds of clients will show
you that, and you're just really diligent as you're doing
the psycho education. You have to be paying close attention
to literally everything. And that's actually why with offenders, group
therapy is shown in research to be more effective because

(01:18:18):
they will catch it in each other.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
Oh sure, and they'll believe it in each other. It's
like when I used to with teenagers.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
Yeah and so, but they'll catch it. And there's always
going to be someone in the group.

Speaker 4 (01:18:28):
That's trying to butter up the therapist by pointing out
the junior therapists callitive distortions.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
I'm not going to reinforce your buttering me up. However,
I will take that you.

Speaker 4 (01:18:40):
I know that you're seeing it correctly, and then okay,
let's follow up, Okay, what is that like, having these
thoughts or these beliefs.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
Yeah, that's that makes a lot of sense. Like I said,
I was kind of joking, but when I used to
work with teenagers and did group I think it's a
similar vibe, where like they will listen to each other,
not way more than anything I'd say, even if I
said the exact thing that that kid over there just said.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
Well, because you don't understand because you're.

Speaker 3 (01:19:06):
Not one of them, you're not.

Speaker 4 (01:19:09):
And that's the thing about treatment with offenders is the
groups is they also they don't like authority figures.

Speaker 3 (01:19:15):
So I am an authority figure.

Speaker 4 (01:19:19):
And so they're going to listen to each other more
so by doing the psycho education in the group context
and molding the group to just say, to identify these
distortions in each other. That's the only way that they're
going to listen and they're really doing is they're going
to try to better themselves to impress each other.

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
Interesting. All right, then too, I'll have you gotten mixed.

Speaker 2 (01:19:43):
All right, So I'm gonna forget this kid's name again,
whether what's his name, Joel, which we haven't really.

Speaker 1 (01:19:49):
Talked about the kids. Yeah, we haven't really talked about
the kids at all, little bit of Wednesday.

Speaker 2 (01:19:54):
I have a client who will be very very mad
at me if I don't talk about Wednesday. Okay, so well,
just I'm going to talk about their dynamic and the
treatment that I think would be necessary for Joel, because
we can't leave out the camp and that whole experience there, right.
I know we talked about it some, but the actualization

(01:20:15):
that occurs where we see Wednesday going through this entire
effort to validate her worldview constantly that normies will seek
to crush you. The waspy folks will seek to crush you,
and you should meet them with the darkness that they
don't understand, and you can overwhelm them with flat, dark,

(01:20:38):
wicked thoughts that are just truth that their waspiness washes over.
Is part of what makes her such an enduring, compelling figure.
And I think that scene with her with her little
feather thing watching the other girl like get tied to
a steak as she lights it on fire and this
dude who is clearly clearly needing to step outside of

(01:21:04):
the Oh my god, could these people stop to us
telling me bullshit all the time? And her like hardcore
truth telling speaks to him in a way that he
doesn't understand yet, but he's like in love with is
completely enamored with her. I think he is someone who

(01:21:25):
is going to need a lot of help understanding that
Wednesday is going to continue being exactly who she is,
and she is going to be testing you to make
sure that you are about that Adam's life at every
opportunity she gets, because that is her safety. Her family

(01:21:47):
is her safety. Her ability to be accepted radically for
being that different than normal society is going to be
her place of safety. And since he's coming from outside
of that, he's going to have to prove to her
over and over and over again that he can take
it and that he does love it, and that he

(01:22:10):
does love her. Her having thing come out of Debbie's
grave at the end is so funny but also so
demonstrative of this idea that she's going to keep testing him.
And she told him like, yeah, I know how I'd
kill my husband. I'd scare him to death.

Speaker 1 (01:22:31):
She's seeing if he can she's hazing him.

Speaker 2 (01:22:34):
Yeah, yeah she is, but she's never going to stop.
KR and Bugsley do that with each other constantly and
She's going to want somebody that simultaneously reminds her of
her father and her brother in positive ways. That is
also different enough, because Gomez is a strong character but

(01:22:55):
very emotional and loving. But you see the Shakespearean come
out of Raoul Julia there at the in the police
station where you're like, oh, oh, no, this man is
an He is not an actor. He is an actor. Yes,
he's a tour to his actorness. You know, he is
a Shakespearean. The man is spitting as he speaks, his

(01:23:17):
emotion is powerful and raw, and he is excellent. And
that man died too early. But the person that is
going to be right for Wednesday is going to need
to be that, and I think for Joel he's going
to need a little bit of help and having a
place to talk about what that's like of going from
having domineering, disapproving parents to having Wednesday's mix of approval

(01:23:43):
and testing where he's still going to run into that
same problem of wondering if he's good enough, but Wednesday's
going to struggle to give him, yeah, that feedback that
he is good enough.

Speaker 3 (01:23:54):
And you see the end, he kind of dressed up
like Gomez.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
I was going to ask about that thoughts think that
was his idea or her idea.

Speaker 3 (01:24:02):
Or I think it was him. He you know, he
got to know the family, He met the family, and.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
He he told his mother's eyeliner to pull onstae On.

Speaker 4 (01:24:11):
Probably he's you know, because he definitely didn't grow that.
You know, kids like that don't go there busy until later. Sorry,
I cannot do a message like that. You do just
do all or nothing. So, you know, he was trying
to impress Wednesday. I think by showing her, look, I
can be part of this family. And also I think

(01:24:33):
he was also just idolizing Gomez. Gomez is a strong,
you know, emotionally open man who can also take and
give the whole dark cookiness that Wednesday seeks. And so
I think he's trying to embody Gomez.

Speaker 3 (01:24:49):
A little bit as a way of impressing Wednesday.

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
Right, because Wednesday is more like her mother than she
will admit, even though Mortitia is much more gentle and
a little passive, aggressive warmer. Yeah, she's got a quietness
to her. This you'd be mistaking it for meekness, which
is not. But she's got like a very I mean,

(01:25:16):
you can make a decision that will end in your
death if you'd like to and will enjoy it, we
prefer you don't do that, or maybe we do.

Speaker 1 (01:25:21):
Yeah, I think with Joel working with him, it'd be
that really trying to keep your eye on is he
taking too much of the identity on of this girl
he's now dating in her family?

Speaker 2 (01:25:34):
Correct? And is he actually finding a home with them
and adopting to their rules or is he putting on
a mask in order to be what he thinks he
needs to be or Wednesday, there's nothing wrong with him
adopting her family's values. There.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
You had to, someone had to.

Speaker 2 (01:26:00):
Someone had to. By doing so, by bringing people back
in the family, it shows the idea of the unit
being whole because the baby, the baby is used to
show this idea of family systems. It gets such a
perfect metaphor. When Fester is gone from the family. The
baby is blonde and curly haired, and it doesn't look

(01:26:22):
a thing like an atom's and the nursery is bright,
and that's the only time Mortish is shown with whatever.
Magical lighting, Yeah, magical lighting like only light rise yeah
hermon lighting, yeah right, And the baby as soon as
Fester is back in the house back in the unit

(01:26:43):
goes back to that gray faced Gomez baby look again
without any explanation whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (01:26:48):
So I can't the vibes are back great fire from
the crab or something, or if you flame through that.

Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
I think he had a flame through at one point,
but I don't remember if he breathes or what. But
he grabs a knife, yeah, right, always a little no.

Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
They show they showed his Yeah, they show fire coming
out of his crib a couple of times. I think
it's I just assume it was out of his mouth.
I don't know why I assume that. I don't know
why I assume that, but that's what I assumed.

Speaker 2 (01:27:17):
It's legitally possible I missed it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:20):
Maybe trait probably passed out from like a grand uncle
or something.

Speaker 2 (01:27:26):
For sure, for sure, but we see that Joel's gonna
need to authentically become an Atoms to fit in, and
he's going to have to really accept it. And I
think he would benefit from some therapy, especially being let's
just say he's twelve or eleven, twelve ish, twelve thirteen ish, right,
you know, hard to tell with kid is the same

(01:27:47):
one that played Bernard the Elf in the in the
Santa Claus. So hard to tell. I know he stayed short.

Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
What a fun age to fall in love with a
girl that's so gothic at fall thirteen and to adopt
that persona maybe too hard because you're so into her,
and that her family seems so much cooler than your family,
and they have a lot of money, which assume he
probably does too, because seems like everyone at that camp
was rich as well.

Speaker 2 (01:28:11):
They said twenty thousand dollars for a summer in ninety three.

Speaker 1 (01:28:15):
More for the privilege, you know, I think today, and
the privilege.

Speaker 4 (01:28:19):
Is I think another reason though, So it's not only that,
you know, he's he's liking her because she's so different
and she's so wholly authentic to herself.

Speaker 3 (01:28:30):
She is who she is.

Speaker 4 (01:28:31):
She's also the exact opposite in presentation of his parents,
of his dynamic, and so he's trying to like, I'm
going to like her, I'm going to fall in love
with her. Probably there's some subconscious albument there. There's like
just to piss off my mom, Oh for sure, I
mean like mother like that. Oh, you can bet that

(01:28:55):
she's not gonna be happy about this relationship.

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
Looking at her finger and licking her finger and probably
rub him his face with it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:02):
Maybe can you imagine the dinner party that would have
happened if the parents had to meet, That would.

Speaker 3 (01:29:09):
Have been excellent.

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):
Now they would have sent him off to They'll probably
send him off to school somewhere.

Speaker 3 (01:29:15):
Boarding school, yeah whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
Yeah, yeah, But I think he needs a lot of
coaching and mentoring and space to talk about all of
this and process, Hey, is this authentic to you? Or
are you just doing this because you're into a girl?
So I think that kind of more almost just client
centered phase of life, gentle space to have coaching and
guiding conversations and exploratory processing with him. I don't think

(01:29:45):
he needs anything really hugely clinically focused, but space, time
and non judgmental openness to process what he's going through
and someone to ask the important questions of a little bro.
Are Are you doing this because you've been howling at
the moon? And she answered? Or are you doing this

(01:30:06):
because this feels right to you and this is just
authentically where you feel like you fit? Because that's a
very important and different question.

Speaker 1 (01:30:12):
And I think and also, let's cool it on the crime,
because that's what's really going to be the problem with
him dating Wednesday is that she's gonna get him into trouble,
probably that she already has at the camp. They burned
out a summer camp together already and they've been dating
for five minutes. Right, That's why I'll go to therapy.
His parents will send him to therapy after he keeps

(01:30:33):
doing like criminal shit with his new girlfriend.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
Right, Like, have you guys watched Sid and Nancy? Maybe
watch that Bonnie and Clyde. It got a couple, you know,
but I don't know. They'd probably be Wednesday'd be into
it like a blaze of glory. It would be the
best way to go out.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
All right, Let's take another break here and I'll be
back with Hannah and Britney's treatment, all right, so I
can go next. I would love to work with Fester.
Fester really mind me of kids that I've worked with,
teenagers I've worked with who are on the autism spectrum,
who just need a lot of coaching around social skills,

(01:31:11):
around romantic relationships, around hormones and their body. Something that
is missing in specifically autism therapeutic help and the socialization
part is sex education. Adults and kids on the spectrum would. Additionally, teenagers,

(01:31:32):
even adults, maybe even younger than teenagers, would really benefit
from sex education, and we don't really think about that
when we're offering these sort of like behavioral mental health services.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
And so, oh my god, do they need it? You
were so right and residential with this population. They need
it so bad.

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
Yeah, to even just have some confidence and relief around
their body and their bodily chain and how horny they are.
I think people mostically, yeah, people specifically with autism. I
think they What I've learned it aecdotally when I used
to work with teenagers is that when they're going through puberty,

(01:32:14):
it feels so overwhelming and they're used to so many
sensory experiences and stimulation and emotions being so big and
so overwhelming that I think they can struggle with I
remember I had one kid who's thirteen tell me I'm
just so full of sex hormones, and really felt like
no one had ever struggled with horning this the way
he was struggling with horning this. And maybe I wasn't

(01:32:36):
the best person to work with because I was a
very young intern at the time, but kind of trying
to help him understand what you're feeling. A lot of
kids your age feel it is overwhelming. Something isn't going
wrong with your body that you're so preoccupied with sex
and unfortunately asking me as your therapist about my boobs,

(01:32:56):
which is why I used to get in trouble and
then afterwards couldn't work with interns because he couldn't keep
it in his mouth, which is something he had to learn,
which is something he learned with me actually because he
had a problem with that. And he found me later
and he was like miss Brittany. They told me I
can't work with Anyswert anymore because I want to stop
talking about and I said, and he looked at my
chest and I go, my boobs. Yeah, you're learning a

(01:33:16):
lesson right now, which is social appropriateness. That just because
you're thinking about boobs and I have boobs, doesn't mean
that you can talk about them, especially when I am
an adult and you are a teenager and I am
even if I wasn't. Girls don't want to hear about that,
especially girls that aren't in that relationship with you. What
I would really like to provide faster, maybe not for

(01:33:39):
me because I am a woman, so that might be
too intimidating is working with a therapist, maybe even a
group dynamic where he is maybe with other guys in
a similar situation as him, just talking about their bodies,
talking about dating, being feeling like they are safe to

(01:34:00):
practice and role play some of these conversational parts and
ask questions that they might feel to embarrassed to ask.
A lot of it's about just having a safe space
to talk about stuff that you're thinking about without worrying
about being q embarrassed or making a mistake, and knowing
that even if you make a mistake, everyone here, whether

(01:34:21):
it's just your one on one therapist or the group
you're in, we all are in the same boat. We
all know what's happening, and so even if you make
a mistake, we just course correct and learn from it.
You don't have to worry about being like rejected or
really embarrassed. He needs a lot of foundational work around
that stuff so that when he dates again, he knows

(01:34:41):
what boundaries look like. He knows what is someone moving
too fast, being too sexual, I'm saying things that aren't okay,
and also feeling like he's allowed to also have boundaries too.
I think when you have trouble with social skills, you
can be very vulnerable to always thinking, well, something's wrong
with me, and I don't need to be treated as

(01:35:04):
well as maybe other people do. And so part of
this work too is like you're allowed to ask for
what you need. You are also allowed to reject quote
unquote other people as long as you do it respectfully
and appropriately. Well, he needs boundaries work to keep him safe.
Like I said, when I've worked with the little kids
too that have had sexual trauma of some sort and
they're very aware of their bodies, I have to have

(01:35:26):
conversations with them about their bodily autonomy. Who do you
give hugs to? Where are people allowed to touch you?
Where shouldn't they touch you? Where do you get to
decide when and how they touch you? He might need
a lot of that work that he might feel too,
maybe even embarrassed to talk to like Gomez about, because

(01:35:46):
Gomez is such a hot shot with his wife and
they're going at a twenty four to seven and certainly.

Speaker 4 (01:35:53):
Are amaz go way is to be super out there
with the simacy and oh that's true too, and that
that works cool, and also that's not going to work
for Foster.

Speaker 1 (01:36:11):
Oh, no, no, and ironically could be causing Wednesday to
be so locked up. Is like her version of rebelling
is being unseexual. Yea hybrid and withholding. Yeah, I think
I'd want to make sure to do that work with
him and also have more talks about what do you like?
I don't know if he's even thinking about that stuff either,

(01:36:31):
like who, what traits and other people do you like?
And not just relationships, but also friendships, developing social support
to a diverse support, diverse support system. That's how do
we make friends outside of maybe our immediate family. Maybe
it's okay with all your friends and your cousins. I
con vibe with that, but you know, are we just

(01:36:52):
spending time in the house with your immediate family? And
are we not having anyone else to talk to? And
how are we going out the world world and meeting people?
So I would want to do some really basic almost
coaching esque social skills work for Fester, either buy me
or referring him out to someone who could do that
work for him, especially with the boundaries part of it.

(01:37:16):
After you've been in two abusive relationships. I mean that
alone is why he needs to do this stuff. Is
like you need to feel more confident and affirmed about
what is not okay to be done to you and
also what's not okay for you to do other people.
He needs a lot of that fund foundational work. He'd

(01:37:38):
be one of those people where I would have to
really make sure I wasn't assuming that he knew anything
about the things I'd bring up, like we would start
really bare bones and work our way up.

Speaker 2 (01:37:46):
I think he'd be such a great candidate for something
like psychodrama or drama therapy that allows group based interaction
to help him work through some of these things in
a safe environment where he can actually audition these skills
by demonstrating them and get the feedback, you know, maybe
at an accelerated rate, but also in a safe space
of no, sir, no, no, no, we do not. We

(01:38:09):
do not stick pretzels or asparagus in our nose to
impress the pretty lady bread six. Yeah we did, we
we do not.

Speaker 3 (01:38:24):
The bread six now.

Speaker 2 (01:38:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:38:26):
I think what would also, maybe I were I wouldn't
have him work with a woman, either me or someone
else either is because of all this dynamics he's had
with women. If I was trying to do some of
that practicing work with him, I would be cautious about
him maybe forming an inappropriate attachment to me.

Speaker 4 (01:38:44):
I think in this kind of situation in the individual
service would being male. But if he was in a
group having two.

Speaker 1 (01:38:51):
Male and oh yeah, that's a great idea a bottle.

Speaker 4 (01:38:56):
Rafts and everything that I think could be very helpful
therapists individually, can I won't have a worry about those
those inappropriate coachments, and can really kind of provide that
guidance and education and then model it in the group
cure how men and women can interact together without its being.

Speaker 3 (01:39:14):
A sexual mm hmmm. That's also an important thing for
him to learn.

Speaker 1 (01:39:18):
He doesn't know how to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:39:20):
Never interacted with our our family.

Speaker 1 (01:39:23):
Or fake family, or women that have been weirdly inappropriate
with you in a number of different ways.

Speaker 3 (01:39:30):
Right, he can learned how to normal a tonic collegial
with women.

Speaker 2 (01:39:36):
Right. Unlike Gomez and Martitia are always at every opportunity
reinforcing their love and desire to jump each other's bones.

Speaker 1 (01:39:44):
Yeah, they're really bad role models for appropriate behavior, really bad.
Even if he had like a healthy girlfriend, would probably
be like, why stop kissing Mike? You'd probably smother her
trying to act like Gomas and like get off of
a kissing me my arm episode.

Speaker 4 (01:40:00):
On the first one, we talked about how like domain
like you know, relationship goals in the sense of how
they are with each other. But now we're seeing that
while they're good for each other, it's actually not a
good example of a healthy relationship for someone like Faster
to observe.

Speaker 1 (01:40:16):
It's not a transferable set of skills and a baby.

Speaker 3 (01:40:20):
There's a one off thing that they they you know,
they find it works for them.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):
All right, Well, Hannah, if you don't mind taking us
home with treatment, yep. So something that I wanted to
do in treatment that I was thinking about is doing
family therapy with the whole family in order to help
them understand that they have to stop treating Faster like

(01:40:48):
he is a child, because again we've already talked about
family systems.

Speaker 2 (01:40:54):
A little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:40:54):
We've already talked about how the system very much keeps
them in a role that is not helpful for him
in any way, shape or form, and so really having
to get the family on board of we have to
treat him like an adult. He is an adult person.
This is how we have to treat him. And the

(01:41:16):
other thing that I think would be really helpful that
I would also want to do in those family sessions
is help Fester talk about his needs and wants with
them in terms of what he wants his relationship to
look like, not only so that he can know that,
but also so his family can hear that he does

(01:41:36):
have thoughts and opinions about what he wants in his life.
And also just to point out, like, he wouldn't be
someone I would see him after like two years of
work with Brittany. Right, I'm not saying that we would
that he should be both kinds of treatment at the
same time, right, Like, he has to know who he
is first and feel confident in who he is before

(01:41:57):
we can do that kind of family therapy. But I
think that once he got to that place, it would
be really helpful not only for him, but also for
the rest of the family to really hear from him
about what he wants and what he's interested in and
how he wants to be an uncle and what does
that look like, you know, does that look like playing
together with us like you're another child, or does that

(01:42:20):
look like you leading little experiments with them and teaching
them things right, which is a whole different dynamic. So
that's a treatment that I would do to help the
family get on the right page with Fester, so that
he has another space that he can be himself, and
another space that understands that he has wants and needs

(01:42:43):
and he's allowed to voice them and allowed to use
his voice in his family. My prediction would be that,
as do you encourage a Gomez to be maybe a
little more detached and or a little more challenging, that
he might flip out and that you might have to
refer him out to individual therapy so that you can
develop distress tolerance around his feelings about Fester. Yeah, absolutely, well,

(01:43:11):
but he's my baby boy, he was exactly for twenty years.
How can you tell me to cast him aside? Doesn't
he felt enough in exactly? And that would be a
very And of course I've already thought about what Gomez
would be like in therapy, and it would be very much.
There would be a lot of we're going to listen first,

(01:43:33):
and then you'll have a turn to say what you
want to say, but first we have to listen to
what Fester has to say, and we're going to listen
to what I have to say, and then you'll get
your turn. And I don't know, Gomez might get up
and walk out of the session. I mean, there's a
really good chance that that would happen. And that would
also be another point where Fester could use his voice

(01:43:55):
and say this is really important to me. I want
you to be a part of the please stay, I
want you to listen.

Speaker 4 (01:44:03):
I think in that kind of situation, if you know,
Gomez would probably definitely walk up, but Mortitia would stay. Yeah,
she's defferently more calm and she can hold it together
and she would listen. She would recognize that what you're
saying has value in merit, and I think a big part.

Speaker 3 (01:44:21):
Of that would be, you know, helping them and say
you guys are allowed to have your.

Speaker 4 (01:44:25):
Relationship that we you would have it, just don't push
it onto Vester and the kids and that's not the end.
They'll be all it works for you, and we're glad
for that. And also they want we want them to
explore them. So and so while Domes might not be
able to see that at the beginning, Motitia will Mortisitia
will stick with this, will sit in the session, will

(01:44:45):
let Bester speak, we'll follow your instructions, and then she
will convince Gomez to try another session and she will.

Speaker 1 (01:44:54):
Try to help it. Yeah. Probably, she probably develops some
shorthand with him where she squeezes his hand and whenever
he starts to get worked out and she he goes okay,
all right, Well those are excellent ideas. So we'll take
one last break here and be back with final thoughts.
All right, I'm gonna pick on you and Hannah to
go first. Oh, final thoughts. I love this movie. I
love these movies. I as much as we talk shit

(01:45:18):
about Gomez and Martitia, I love them still. And I'll
definitely watch this movie again because I love it and
I love Joan Cusack. I love all her costumes. Yeah,
so I love this movie. I'll definitely watch it again.
It was really fun to talk about with you guys today,
Benjamin our guest.

Speaker 3 (01:45:38):
So I also really liked this movie.

Speaker 4 (01:45:39):
I mean, that's family genre all is always so amazing
because the whole point of that is that the challenging norms, yeah, expectations.

Speaker 3 (01:45:52):
They like that. They enjoy that this movie looked at
it very differently.

Speaker 4 (01:45:58):
They weren't so overt with child do the expectations as
they were in the first one, but it differently was there.

Speaker 3 (01:46:04):
I like the camp scenes Joel always because I was.

Speaker 4 (01:46:09):
Like nerdy, like I don't want to play sports, I
don't want to do this, so like no, but so
like I'm allergic to everything.

Speaker 3 (01:46:19):
You're allergic to archery.

Speaker 1 (01:46:20):
Yes, but he threw that arrow.

Speaker 3 (01:46:27):
Because the arrow has to.

Speaker 4 (01:46:29):
Leave her hands, right, So okay, fine, I'll just do
that out of this. I really felt that, and especially
whether they oh have you seen evil? And he's like,
have you met my mother? I mean, I'm not saying
anything about my mother.

Speaker 3 (01:46:43):
I love my mother, but there's.

Speaker 4 (01:46:46):
Something about that statement that like just it's such a
powerful Jewish humor, like, yeah, the mother is overbearing. It's
the stereotype. All Jewish mothers are like that, but the
stereotype has some that's some basis in fact. This was
a great movie. I'm just very glad that we were
to talk about it. Thank you so much for having
me back on of course, and there's funny more on

(01:47:09):
the family where this came from.

Speaker 3 (01:47:10):
So I guess I'm just putting myself in pot.

Speaker 2 (01:47:13):
This year Wednesday show is fantastic, so good, so good,
so good. Ben One or Ben Ben Prime, Ben Prime. Yes,
I also love this movie. I I have not watched
it in quite a long time. I remember watching it
as a kid and loving it, and the camp scene

(01:47:36):
was always so good, and it was like there was
just a theme with camp in the nineties, man like
this and heavyweights, which yes eventually will do people, yes eventually,
but there's such like a look with like camp, and
it had such a prominent feature and it's just so
funny how they turned it on their head or turned

(01:47:57):
it all on its head, like the kids, all the
all the outcast kids are just like, we're just going
to burn your shit, like buck you you.

Speaker 4 (01:48:07):
Because casts on and we're in a wheelchair right because
they couldn't handle those activities and everything.

Speaker 1 (01:48:13):
Oh I didn't even think about that they.

Speaker 3 (01:48:16):
And they're still burning shut down.

Speaker 1 (01:48:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:48:21):
Don't don't be a bully, guys. This movie is so funny.
The Adam's family is. It's iconic. It's so ridiculous with
its macabre absurdism, and they just they love each other
so much despite all of that and are such a
strong unit that it's it's something that so many people
look up to and have found a home in and
I just love the hell out of it. For that,

(01:48:42):
I think the Adams family will continue to exist in
so many forms throughout time.

Speaker 1 (01:48:48):
Yeah. I love this movie obviously. I've seen it a
bunch of times. I'll watch it a bunch more. It's
like a very fall movie in my mind, even though
it takes place literally over summer because they go to camp.
I think interesting about what you said, Benjamin, is that
I think the first movie was more about how weird
they are in reflection to like mainstream society, whereas I
feel like, especially with the camp in this movie, I

(01:49:10):
think it's more highlighting how fucked up quote unquote normal
people are, like even the way they were talking about
the first Thanksgiving and how fucked those counselors are at
the camp when he says, what did he say something
four eyes when he took the book from Joel about
reading in the Harmony Hut. Not on my watch, ye,

(01:49:30):
not my watch test. I think what this movie kind
of more shows is that the Adams family, or people
who are outcasts are actually maybe the people that are
in on what's really going on, and the people that
are caught up in mainstream society, they are fucked up.
Of course I love that and I will watch. Like
I said, I watched the movie again and again. I

(01:49:50):
love Wednesday Adams. I've dressed as her for Halloween in
the past. Yeah. I love it, love it, love it.
I love it. So Happy Spooky season everybody. This is
our first spooky episode of the season. Thank you Benjamin
again for joining us. Where can you say one last time?
Where people can find you?

Speaker 4 (01:50:06):
I can find read through my two podcasts on Mental
Health Quests, which is on all the social media at
MHQ Podcasts and my hero Therapy is at my hero Therapy.

Speaker 1 (01:50:17):
Thank you, and as always, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram,
and TikTok at Popcorn Psychology. Also threads to Popcorn Psychology.
If you would like to get in touch with us directly,
you can email us at pop Pornpsychology at gmail dot com.
If you would like to support us, we would always
appreciate that. As where a DIY podcast, you can support
us via Patreon or you get early access to our

(01:50:38):
episodes that are also unedited and there's a lot that
is left on the jopping blot sometimes so you definitely
get some extra meat. If you are at ten dollars
or more Patreon patren and if you are fifty dollars
or more Patreon, you get to pick the episode that
we talk about, and that's very exciting. If you want
to support us for free, please leave us to rating
and review wherever you enjoy podcasts. It's the easiest way

(01:50:59):
for new people to find us, and we really appreciate it.
So everybody, I guess, kind of stay out of trouble,
but maybe not. If you're like an Atoms, then you
can pay your way out of it. Good for you.
That's a da

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