Learning from Lizbeth

 Have you read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy Bundle: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson (Knopf; 1 edition, May, 2010)? Have you seen the Swedish movies based on the books? This marvelous series features Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth has been systematically badly abused and has experienced profound trauma. Much like many of our clients, she is strange, difficult, hostile, and quirky.  Yet, also like many client,, she is compelling and very likeable.  The pull to root for her was so strong that, when I saw the first movie, the entire audience burst into applause when she achieved revenge against one of her abusers. In our sympathetic engagement with Lisbeth, we can learn a lot about trauma.  

How has Lisbeth been shaped by her experiences? How do they make sense for her given her life experience? 

• She is strong, resourceful, and has many skills and strengths. She learned many of these skills to survive her traumatic experiences.

• She is fiercely independent. She refuses to take help from any one. Even when she is in the hospital she hates to call the nurse because she wants to take care of everything herself. To her relying on others means that they will use it against you.

• Lisbeth is very private. Even with the person who is closest to a friend (Miriam Wu) she does not want to reveal anything about herself. To her, giving someone knowledge is giving them power they will probably use against her. 

• She is covered with tattoos and piercings, and she presents herself as other, as an outsider. Her presentation pushes people away. 

• She participates in sex in an anonymous, unconnected way, then disappears from that person’s life. 

• She is fiercely protective of her mother even though her mother played a role in the story of her own abuse. 

• She is available for connection, but is very skittish. The guardian who treated her well earned her respect and love. But she put him through many tests, then left his hospital room and didn’t come back when she thought he was dying. 

• She assumes people will treat her badly. When (in the third book) some policemen are actually respectful to her, she assumes they have ulterior motives and are trying to trick her. She doesn’t talk with them. 

• She forms a strong connection to a man, but cannot trust it. When she sees him on the street laughing with another woman, she immediately assumes that she was crazy to think he would ever want her and assumes that he was just using her. 

• She goes to extremes. She doesn’t check out her experiences with him. She refuses to ever talk with him again and runs away. 

Do any of these things sound familiar and remind us of our clients? 

Why do we come to root for her so strongly? Why is she such a sympathetic character?  What are the lessons for us as treatment providers?  First, I think the story gives us a sense of her history, the context, and the adaptive function of her prickly and off-putting behavior. When we know where it comes from, we feel, “of course, that makes sense that she’d do that” and it bothers us less. Similarly, when we give treatment staff more information about a client’s history and involve them in discussions about how difficult behavior are adaptive for that person, they are less likely to be irritated by the difficult behavior and take It personally.  Similar to many clients (at times) she is protector of the vulnerable and the helpless and has a strong sense of morality.  Amidst the flurry of repelling behavior, it is often hard for us to see how clients are protective of others and have a strong sense of right and wrong.   

If you read these books (and I highly recommend them) maybe we can use them to deepen our understanding of our client’s reactions.

Learning from Lisbeth TSI