healthmedicinet

What is the definition of wound collector or wound collecting?

            The definition is actually a work in progress but in essence, and for the moment, it is: Wound collecting is the conscious and systematic collection and preservation of transgressions, violations, social wrongs, grievances, and slights of self and others, for the purpose of attenuating, nourishing, fortifying, or justifying a malignant ideology, furthering hatred, satisfying a pathology, or for exacting revenge. 

What kind of people meet this criteria? 

            Anyone who, because of a personality disorder or character traits (e.g., insecurities, paranoia, fear, xenophobia, or due to emotional instability), inflexibly seeks to collect wounds and slights for a purpose that usually has negative social consequences or is self serving. This can be anyone from a spouse, to a terrorist, to a mass killer.

Give us examples of wound collectors we might recognize? 

            First let me say that most wound collectors we won’t recognize because most of us experience them on personal level and they are generally not well known to the public. However, we have all run into someone who habitually brings up grievances, be they slight and accidental, and we know how irritating these individuals can be. In a larger sense we have all been exposed to wound collectors on a national or international level, we just weren’t aware. Here are some:

            – Adolph Hitler, in his book Mein Kempf, managed to list all the collected wounds he and others had accumulated, with particular emphasis on Jews.

            – Ted Kaczynski published his list of wounds, known as the “Unabomber Manifesto” in the New York Times and the Washington Post decrying technology and the industrial revolution. 

            – Usama bin Laden, his 1996 fatwa, is nothing less than a collection of wounds dating back to the time of the crusades which he used to justify the killing of Americans. This document demonstrates clearly that for wound collectors there is no statute of limitation on suffering.           

            – Anders Behring Breivik, the convicted Oslo mass killer who riled against Muslims in Western Europe and multiculturalism in his writings, before he set off a bomb killing six and then systematically murdered 69 children, is an example of a wound collector.

             – Christopher Dorner, is the most recent wound collector to become notorious. In February 2013, he went on a shooting spree in California after publishing his pedantic manifesto (a collection of wounds and slights as well as ranting) going all the way back to grade school.

            – Jim Jones of Jonestown, Guyana fame was similarly a wound collector. He kept tabs on those around him and or society in general, particularly those that did not appreciate his divine grandeur.

          So we see wound collectors in cults, certainly in cult leaders, and definitely in people who lead or join hate groups. But we also see it in those with personality disorders such as the Borderline Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and especially those afflicted with Paranoid Personality Disorder.

Can a Nation or a State be a wound collector?

            I suppose yes, if we look at the various pogroms in history against minorities such as Jews, Armenians, Palestinians, Roma, Kurds, Tutsis in Africa, etc. and so forth. These heinous events were based on wound collecting, practiced by leaders or those in power who often fanned the flames of hatred using those wounds they had collected. Hitler of course was the worse of these, but not the first or the last.

What is the opposite of a wound collector?

            Someone who forgives, who turns the other cheek, who accepts life with all its vicissitudes. A good example is Nelson Mandela, who had every reason to collect wounds but didn’t because he realized that to do so would be too caustic on his own soul and counterproductive. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King likewise rejected wound collecting even though they were truly victimized throughout their lives. Mandela, Gandhi, and King rejected that toxic yoke that comes with wound collecting and instead looked forward, not backward – they didn’t hold grudges.

When a spouse or a family member is wound collectors, how does that play out?

            Not well because there is no forgetting, there is no forgiveness in close and frequent proximity. Spouses who are wound collectors make life difficult for their partner; when something goes wrong, they bring up things from the past, sometimes from years earlier, and of course that is not conducive to a healthy relationship. Children who grow up with a parent that is a wound collector know that at any moment, a torrent of past wrongs will be brought out pushing the child further and further away all for the sake of the parent being right or demonstrating just how inferior the child is. We often see this with very narcissistic parents who indulge in belittling children with all their past mistakes or failures because it makes the narcissistic parent look bad.

What if you are victimized and bullied and you remember these events, does that make you a wound collector?

            No. Circumstances can drive you to recollect the times you have been bullied or attacked but that is not wound collecting. Wound collecting is different. It is an inflexible way of life, it is how you deal with life and other people, it is pervasive, and it serves a purpose that is usually toxic or pathological.

            Those are the most frequent questions that I have been asked. To shed further light on the subject, here are some other common features I have found with wound collectors:

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