I’ve been thinking about this question and so if it’s not inappropriate to answer your own question: I think something moderately sophisticated is going on with what we may call in general, habitual tactics.
Like snowberry pointed out it starts early. I believe what happens is that by accident or chance our minds discover certain patterns of behavior that lead to certain outcomes and that this to some degree must necessarily be unconscious otherwise it wouldn’t work as well.
Ok lets demonstrate with an example. First lets look at snowberrys example where a child learns that when a parent denies them, going to the other parent may work, even though they are defying the first one. Now if they were conscious of the concealed element, defiance, then they may not be as ready to do it and so it would happen much less often if at all. The way the hidden element is concealed is with something like anger. The anger manifests quickly and repaints or disguises the minds motives. It turns desire & defiance into a feeling of victimhood and retaliation. So the mind then believes it is acting justly and out of sincerity when in fact it is still primarily motivated by desire. But that’s not really manipulation, that’s just disobedience aided with a little bit of self deception in the form of getting irrationally upset with the first parent in order to justify going to the other. It may become manipulative if they then go on to ask that parent for things knowing they will be denied for some reason that I can’t imagine right now. But such things do happen.
Lets think another less juvenile example which implores the aspect of both manipulation and self-deception. A person might taunt somebody or abuse them in some other way on a consistent basis. The purpose of this is revealed in its effect or outcome which is the outcome of the victim being at the mercy and under the control of the abuser. A secondary outcome is the victim will be constantly paying attention to the abuser and so the abuser satisfies their need for acknowledgment and to feel important. But the primary outcome again is that the victim will be impeded in some significant way and so the abuser will be able to maintain an upper hand. A tertiary motive might be that the victim is either knowledgeable of or in proximity to the knowledge of something sensitive about the abuser and so the abuse may keep the mind of the victim clouded enough to serve as a kind of smokescreen. Keep them on their toes so they don’t notice, kind of thing. Even if it seems contradictory to the motive of attention seeking.
However in the mind of the abuser, unless they are true psychopaths or sociopaths with a very bad streak and no shame or remorse, they will not consider those things things as their real motives. The mind will have done it’s job before hand of repainting the motives in a justified way. So for example, the abuser might tell themselves that they are doing it for the victims own good because they need to be kept on a leash for whatever reason they have rationalized. They may also tell themselves that they deserve it to take care of the moral implications and they may tell themselves that all kinds of things. The mind is incredibly apt at justifying just about anything. It can justify torture and murder and crimes against humanity so it’s not that much of a task really. Once it’s rationalized its motives as just, it gets saved like a file in memory and then just repeats.
Now when the true motives are revealed to the abuser somehow, you will get a notable bad reaction. But a reaction doesn’t prove anything because nobody wants to be framed in any way whether true or false. However sometimes the reaction ends up being a counter tactic. Which still doesn’t prove they are conscious of it all and being deliberately manipulative and abusive. It may just be that they are very tolerant and compromising and willing to accept being framed without denying it. Regardless, the counter tactic is often them switching roles in a defensive way from abuser to victim. So they might make you look like the abuser who is terrorizing them, presumably by framing them in a false light as an abuser and pull out that big bag of self pity and defensive tricks. Another counter tactic might be in the opposite direction of creating a more severe consequence. But because this is too crude and obvious the mind will throw a curve ball and frame it as such: If this is what you think I’m doing or If this is what you think I am then that’s exactly what I’ll give you. And then they simply ramp it up in the hopes that you will not just regret the confrontation, but that you will also wonder if you were wrong to begin with. Another counter tactic still, is they may even try to convince you that that’s what’s been going on all along. That your reactions indicate the false light that you see them in and so that’s why they have been doing it as a just form of retaliation for framing them in that poor way in your own mind. Basically the mind can do all kinds of tricky acrobatics and even when it runs out of trick it has easy quick ways of obscuring things, like secret agent trowing a smoke bomb before evading capture.
There is also a case where a person can go to some extra lengths to frame the situation in a way where they are a victim being abused by you. They may for example purchase something as a gift to you and make it seem as if you manipulated it out of them because you spoke about a certain item.
But the list is basically endless. In my experience it can eventually reach a point where the manipulator is so good at this that they are able to consistently set you up in no win situations where no matter which course of action you take, they have you checkmated. So it’s up to you to pick which defeat is preferable and ultimately they succeed in making you look like a bad guy. It takes an enormous degree of stamina and probably faith in God to eventually work all this out and reveal to the manipulator your perception of the situation in which case, they just get dirty and nasty. They take it as a declaration of war.
In all of this no where does the abuser/manipulator think they are doing anything wrong. The mind constantly cleans up with rationalizations and justifications and the conscious entity, the person, is fooled by their own minds in a long learned campaign of self-deception and thus outward deception and manipulation and abuse.
I cannot exaggerate how prolific this is in people. Some more than others. Women more than men. The older people more than younger people. Etc. But still, everyone. I even catch myself doing it.
I am saying, this is not some obscure isolated conspiracy theory. I am saying that in my experience with lots of different people in different settings, this is going on constantly. But nobody talks about it which must mean that nobody knows.
Now in certain schools of thought, which I won’t mention, this is talked about but not in detail. It is simply referred to. And in those schools of thought it is mentioned, as I have said, that this is actually a very big problem in the world. In fact, it’s the problem of problems and it has a name and it is called the ego. And this kind of manipulation and abuse is just one aspect of it. It runs havoc in all areas of life, especially for the person themselves. Almost like a virus which destroys its host.
I believe the ego is a collection of accidentally learned mental patterns which serve the minds identity. Like a cluster or tricks basically. But I need to stop now this is getting long. I’ll think on it some more to get the description down.
As far as how conscious we are of this, I think the answer to the question is that we are necessarily not conscious of it because again if we were it wouldn’t work. It necessarily takes the form of unconscious patterns. So I guess the answer to the question is we can deduce it’s mostly not very conscious if at all.
To be completely honest, I believe the ego or mind identity which takes the front seat in a human beings life from a certain age until its collapse which is a rare event and one I have not seen in myself, has the ability to manifest things for it’s own end on a supernatural level. But that takes the discussion into a whole different arena. Even still everything else I said is rational.
What’s been most peculiar to me is that I have demonstrated to myself now several times that there seems to be some aspect which is aware of what’s going on and so for example I’m quite certain that many people reading this would reject it in some strong way. Maybe even take offense and likely begin painting me in some convenient light or under some convenient label. I discovered this by accident at first an it wasn’t pleasant. It really is as if the knowledge of the truth and the ego is somehow an allergen which consistently causes a reaction which leads to it’s rejection. The most common seems to be labeling this or myself the author as something or someone evil. It’s remarkable. Or crazy or foolish if it’s less intense but whichever it must lead to the permanent segregation of the knowledge and the author and I have made real enemies just by talking about my interests such as this. If it’s one on one which this is not, then almost always they take it very very personally no matter how well you put it. Ok let me stop speaking
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