I very much enjoyed you deep dives into Marinette and Adrien. I come at this from a lot of self-teaching and school of hard knocks, so hearing from someone in the field about it is a look into a world of wizards. 🤣
Do you have thoughts/analysis about Chloé and her upbringing(or lack thereof) the pampering/isolation/how she ended up a a mini version of her father's estranged wife/etc?
I know I've seen replies on other posts, but not a full on breakdown I don't think.
Don't knock on the school of hard knocks! Most of my psychology knowledge was self-taught before I started my degree and it was really useful in putting everything from class in context and understanding how it manifests in practice. Classes were better at teaching me the proper terms for things, though. As well as teaching the theories themselves and placing them in their historical context.
Chloe isn't a character I spent a lot of time thinking about so I don't have that many fully formed thoughts about her. I might have more to say if you have a more specific question (in general I work better with more specific questions).
Well, I guess there's the bit about her having the controlling-punitive attachment, like I noted in my analysis of Marinette's attachment style.
We know from Maledictator that deep down Chloe doesn't think highly of herself, and she obviously doesn't think highly of others in general, so the disorganized attachment definitely fits.
The controlling-punitive subtype is characterized by a role-reversal between parent and child, where the child tries to manage the parent through hostile, coercive, commanding, or humiliating behaviours. It's really easy to see how this applies to Chloe's relationship with her father.
Calling Andre's parenting style "absent" would be a compliment. While we don't know how things were like exactly when Chloe was a baby, assuming Audrey demanded Andre deal with it ("it" being baby Chloe) seems pretty reasonable. However, I can't imagine Andre was enthused at dealing with all the difficulties that raising a baby involves considering he can't even be bothered to deal with a teenager. So the most likely possibility is that he dumped Chloe on his employees (possibly Armand) for most difficult things and didn't interact much with her.
While a frightening or frightened caretaker is a very common root issue to cause disorganized attachment, it's not the only one. Another possibility is neglect or emotional unavailability on the part of the caretaker, which Andre definitely fits.
So as a kid Chloe learned that the way to gain the attention and care of her caretaker is by being controlling, throwing tantrums humiliating her father and making demands of him.
It's not hard to see why. Imagine for a moment Chloe had Zoe's personality as a kid, if she was sweet, supportive and didn't like making a fuss. The outcome of that would be a father who only rarely pays attention to her or her needs. Who would act as caretaker for her even less than we see in canon, because such a sweet and unproblematic child makes it easy to put her out of his mind and focus on more pressing matters.
Although, if we go by the relationship we see between Andre and Zoe in Grendiaper, then he would pay more attention to her when he could use her as emotional support. So in this route Chloe would probably develop to be her father's emotional caretaker, as that would be the strategy that gets her more of his care and attention. Of course, that would also earn her Audrey's scorn.
She had literally zero incentive to act that way, especially when her mother modeled for her that the way to get what you want (and attention) is by being forceful and domineering and putting everyone down.
That didn't change as she grew up. Andre folds like a napkin whenever Chloe throws a tantrum, and if the tantrum doesn't work then a few threats do the job. The hotel employees are all obligated to take the abuse quietly and do what Chloe wants on pain of being fired. If anyone external tried to tell her no, she could just threaten them with her father's power.
While there's a lot wrong with Behaviorism, it's true that on a basic level people act in ways that are rewarded while avoiding acts that would be punished. Chloe is constantly rewarded for acting the way she does by getting what she wants. Why would she ever stop?
Sure, some people may not like her, but they're just losers she can ignore. What do they even know? They're not rich or powerful or important in any way, shape or form.
Or at least that's what Chloe tells in an attempt to minimize the hurt she feels over it.
Because her real core desire is to get attention. She wants people to acknowledge her, and not just in any way, but acknowledge her as exceptional.
Except... she doesn't know how to do that. Not in the way she truly wants. She's aware enough to realize that her current behaviour isn't getting her that, but she doesn't know what to do so she does get that. And in the meanwhile her current attitude is getting her pretty far in giving her an approximation of what she wants, so why change?
Her father's neglect isn't the only thing incentivizing this behaviour. Andre had shown multiple times that he wants to be seen as a Manly Man In Charge. A Provider for whom his wife and daughter depend on and adore for all that he does. Of course, he doesn't actually want to do anything difficult to achieve that, like providing actual care or emotional support. It's an ego thing. He wants to gain all the praise without actually doing anything.
This is what Chloe's controlling behaviour towards him plays on. She constantly undermines that self-image, and the only way for him to repair it is by giving her what she wants. If he tries telling her "no" or placing a boundary, she doubles down on attacking that-self image and keeps escalating until he gives in. And of course, there are times she rewards him by playing into his ago, such as hiding behind him or praising him for doing what she wants or giving her gifts.
(Of course, that's not some conscious malicious manipulation on Chloe's part, as she was a little kid when she learned to behave like that. It's more that she picked up on that kind of behaviour working to get her what she wants and kept on doing that.)
Andre shows that he feels helpless against Chloe, which is actually something that often happens in parents to kids with this attachment. When looking at the facts that feeling is blatantly absurd, considering that Andre is the one who gives Chloe any power she has.
The reason he keeps bending to her whims despite feeling helpless is because the only power she has is her capability to hurt his ego. By taking the path of least resistance and giving in to her demands, he gets an immediate fix to the ego wound as well as an inconsistent reward (and as any gambling addict could tell you, that unpredictability makes the dopamine rush from the reward all the stronger). Standing up to Chloe is not only hard, but makes the ego wound worse and deprives him from getting that reward at all.
The emotional math here is heavily skewed in favor of giving in, at least for someone who cares more about his ego than his daughter.
This creates a (nash) equilibrium where both feel miserable and helpless to change it, because their situation may suck, but any other option sucks even worse.
it's a situation where neither Andre nor Chloe have a reason to change unless some external factor gets involved.
Which is exactly what we see in the show. Chloe starts to change when she get some positive acknowledgement from an authority figure, and Andre starts to shut down Chloe's behavior once he gets a new daughter to act as a better source of ego boosts.
