Read One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway for Free Online

however, quickly proved capable of adapting to his new surroundings. After just a few days he decided he liked coming to the nursery at the centre and thought itwas ‘stupid to go’ at the end of his session. He showed pleasure in mastering new skills and was able to accept praise. The staff at the centre concluded that it was not a question of individual psychological damage in Anders; that is, damage that could not be undone by putting him in a new and positive care setting. He had considerable resources to draw on. It was the situation at home that was undermininghim. The general conclusion was that Anders had been made a scapegoat for his mother’s frustrations.
    The psychologist at the centre talked to his mother and carried out some tests, and found a woman who lived in her own private, internal world and had an underdeveloped sense of how to relate to people around her. Her relationships with those close to her were characterised by anxiety and shewas emotionally marked by depression and by being in denial of it, said the case summary at the end of her time at the centre.
    ‘She is threatened by chaotic conflicts and shows signs of illogical thought when under pressure. Mentally she has a borderline personality disorder and functions very unevenly. Given a structured situation for living she can function well, but she is vulnerable in acrisis.’
    Wenche’s behaviour towards Anders could change rapidly. One minute she would be pleasant and kind, only to start shouting aggressively at him the next. Her rejections could be brutal. The staff at the centre heard her yell at her son: ‘I wish you were dead!’
    Anders’s mother was soon a topic of conversation among the staff.
    ‘Even in a clinical setting, she spoke uncritically about heraggressively sexual fantasies and fears, and her attitude to the male staff was very ambivalent,’ wrote the psychologist Arild Gjertsen. At times she was very flirtatious. But he also noted that she became more composed as her time at the centre went on.
    The families being evaluated were usually discharged after the four-week observation period, and were then supported by the child welfare andchild psychiatry services in their own locality. The Breivik family’s sessions at the centre led the specialists to conclude that family life was harming the children, particularly Anders, so it was recommended that social services look into the possibility of fostering.
    ‘The whole family is affected by the mother’s poor psychological functioning. The greatest impact is on her relationship withAnders. There is a duality to this relationship, in that on the one hand she ties him to her symbiotically, while on the other she rejects him aggressively. Anders is the victim of his mother’s projections of paranoid aggressive and sexual fear of men generally. Elisabeth escapes some of this, not least because she is a girl. For her part, Elisabeth goes too far in the precocious maternal roleshe adopts towards Anders.’
    The conclusion was that ‘Anders needs to be taken out of the family and into a better care setting because his mother is continually provoked by the boy and is locked in an ambivalent position, making it impossible for him to develop on his own terms.’
    Mother and daughter were probably better able to live together, the centre thought. But Elisabeth’s progress, too,should be carefully monitored, as there were some danger signals, such as the fact that she had few friends and tended to get very wrapped up in her own fantasies.
    The Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reported in a letter to the local child welfare office: ‘The profoundly pathological relationship between Anders and his mother means early intervention is vital to prevent seriously abnormalityin the boy’s development. Ideally he should be transferred to a stable foster home. The mother is however strongly opposed to this, and it is hard to predict the consequences of enforced