So I have this character she's a contract killer and torturer. She's a dominatrix style super villain but she's also the love interest for the MC and I'm trying to think of ways to reform her and it seems therapy is the best route I just don't know how someone would go about treating her. She has a fucked up back story where she was the victim of human trafficking and was slowly molded into a cold blooded killer. She survived by escaping into a personae (she's fully of aware of who she is she just doesn't answer to her real name) and reinventing herself. She's not capable of embracing any semblance of normalcy. She treats all men in her life as subservient(the MC is the only exception and is the only person allowed to touch her) and she has to be top dog with other women. She fears being cuffed, and closed in a confined space and she's easily triggered when someone calls her by her real name and will respond with something like "Don't call me that, that's not my name anymore." doing that is a real touchy thing like her reactions range from shock, to sadness, to even frustration but she always will try to leave if her real name is used. She will never say "That happened to me back when I was-" but she never just says "That happened to me." She always has to distance herself from her trauma's in some way. She also never wears regular clothes she's always in something authoritative and leather. Part of her personae and she's pretty deep into it. This is because she can't admit she feels remorse for being a killer because to her it's all she's good at. She was basically molded into a guard/enforcer to keep the other girls in line and she at first hated it but adopted a "you or me" outlook and eventually she didn't need to be threatened she just started torturing and killing for her own amusement and that's when she became how she is now. She also will have a panic attack if the subject of seeing her parents is brought up because she's terrified of them knowing what she's become. She is desperate to preserve their memory of her as an innocent child and doesn't want them to know she became total psycho. She's not the type to open up about her trauma she'd really be uncomfortable with a support group meeting. She'd probably come off as unsympathetic and would get annoyed if other women started crying after telling their ordeals and would explain with "What's the point of crying we can all guess what happened crying's not going to change anything." and in a therapy session would probably try to maintain some form of control. She also uses money and expensive things as a security blanket and her home is built like a fortress which is very telling since being in control and powerful is a big thing for her. Another issues is she's arguably suicidal and is very self destructive always putting herself in dangerous situations. She doesn't seek help because in her mind what could she possibly say to the families of the girls she killed and tortured girls who were once like her. It haunts her but she'd never apologize because for her it's like "I wasn't a victim I was but I stopped being one when I did what I did and sorry isn't going to bring them back." My question is would she be considered legally insane? Also how would someone like this be treated like professionals? Because being carted off to the psych ward would really set her off in ways that could potentially make her worse. I mean is someone this guarded and defensive unusual when it comes rape victims because it's hard to get her to admit it happened to her personally and how would a professional approach her case? What are some other psychological issues she could have?
Well PTSD can give one a fair share of denial and disassociative to the things that caused the trauma to begin with. While your premise is kinda walking the lines of a classic serial killer built from being a victim, that in turn becomes the monster they swore never to become as a result of being a victim to begin with. Though this is in the most severe of cases, and has plenty of tell tale signs of them leaning into the dark spiraling into a violent person. Most notably becoming colder, torturing small animals or peers as an adolescent, and then projecting their full rage and morbid fantasies on people that fit a set of criteria (like looks, or personality, etc.), followed by hunting and killing these proxies. Though most in this category don't typically go after the one who caused them to become this way in the first place out of love, or some other deeper meaning the have with that person. Anywho, as far as treatment goes, it would take a long, long time in therapy to get somebody that hardened to start to break down enough to show the fragile side (the scared abused child beneath the psycho bonkers evil bitch), and try to show them that it is not their fault for what happened to them. And to tell them that they have been doing the horrible things as a result of trying to mask their own inner pain by burying it beneath a mountain of hate anger and rage. And by extension killing and torturing others as way of trying to find some kind of connection to them, and possibly try to have them understand how they feel though she herself cannot or will not express her underlying feelings in a healthier manner. So your best bet is hundreds if not thousands of hours speaking with a mental health specialist that can dig through the mantle at the surface and get to the true her hiding scared from the world she perceives to be a cruel and unforgiving place, and therefor must be treated as cruelly and unforgiving as she was.
She would not legally be insane, as her fears show that she understands right, wrong, and consequences. I'm not sure how human trafficking would lead to her becoming a killer, as that is not how they operate as a general rule. Victims chosen for the sex trade are graded and then 'brought in line' or 'indexed' by various means depending on the quality of the subject's physical and mental attributes. Torture is very seldom used as it will create unpredictable mental traits. Generally rape in the tool used, although threats to family/loved ones, drug dependence, or simple dependence/isolation tactics generally suffice. In organized crime violence is the privilege of the trusted or the duty of the expendable. The instant someone commits a serious or high-profile violent act they pose a potential threat to the organization, so they must be a trusted cog or a throw-away who knows nothing of importance. Sorry to meander.
Thanks the idea is that the guy who made her the way she is did it as like his own way of passing time it was like an experiment to him to see if if he could get her loyalty and after he obtained it he kept wanting to push it to see how far he could go with her. As far as his rank he's not well he wasn't in charge but he was at that point mentored by the boss who put up with this odd behaving because the kid was like a son to him well the guy was his sociopathic mindustry game playing step son. The idea is this guy used someone she cared about as leverage and because of how obsessed he was with her like psycho romantic stalker obsessed he never really let anyone else have her unless his step dad put his foot down which was rare. The reason for the step dad putting up with his step sons psychotic man child behavior (let's just say the son was already killing animals as a teen and showed some even more serious red flags in early childhood) is that his step son made up for it by being very smart and perceptive. Though i don't know if the step son even would have position since he was pretty young back then himself.
