Amy was an ACON

Amy Winehouse was an adult child of two narcissistic parents.

I've googled and explored for months and now I'm sure. Here's one of many articles that show how narcissistic and bizarre her childhood was. In her mother's account:

"Amy spent just three years at Sylvia Young's before she was asked to leave. Janis says: "The principal phoned up and asked me to come in and see him. He said, 'I think you should take her away.'

"He didn't want children who weren't going to get good grades and Amy wasn't going to. She was very bright but she was always messing around.

"The same day, I had to take the family cat Katie to the vet. I dropped off the cat, went to the school and then went back to the vet's. We had the cat put down. My joke is I should have had Amy put down and the cat moved on."

Sound familiar?

Yes, the typical malignant narcissist humor concerning their children.

See this forum discussion on the topic.

Amy was so starved for love, so profoundly sad, so angry, but she never once rebelled against her parents. She adored her narcissistic father Mitch (who only really reappeared when she became a celebrity and is now launching a singing career of his own) and her mother reports she said "I love you" to her the last time they met (this was somehow the most important thing to be said to reporters after her death).

She was so happy to finally get "love" and "attention" from them. But it wasn't real. It couldn't fill the black hole. Nothing can.

In a way, I admire the sincere and absolute self-destructive angst.

I've loved loved loved her from the moment I first heard her. This is my explanation of "why".

I love other sincerely self-destructive voices who speak up against their parents' perfect worlds, if not against their parents themselves, like Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain.

It's not THE right way out, I know. I just really really really relate to the self-destructive dark stuff.

That's where I started out as a teen. That's where I hid my rebellion. Dark religions, dark clothes, dark literature, dark music. Your fake shiny sparkly world is a lie. I'd rather drink myself to death.

I was just a pawn in his power games

Wow. Just realized this.

When I was born, the daughter of my mother and an unknown donor, a fact no one was supposed to know, my 'father' usurped me. My mother wasn't allowed to nurse me, feed me, bathe me, clothe me, spend time with me. He was the only competent one.

Nurture was all he had, and he wanted to show her that, although I was biologically her child, and she got what she wanted after so many years of begging for it, she could never really have me. I would be 'his' child where it counted - I would be taught to worship him alone. I knew at a very early age I wasn't supposed to love my mother if I wanted to please him - and she never once supported me in any tentative moves I made towards her at moments when it was clearer than usual that he was not a stable individual.

Everyone knew he was the most loving, caring, doting father. This proved he was my real father, and then some. But it also proved to her that she lost the battle he created.

I was his. Not hers. He won. Neener neener.

Then she died.

And it was then I ceased to exist for him, except as a target for abuse. I'd tried to explain this in different ways, like getting married - but this was much later and actually the consequence of his escalating verbal abuse - I wanted to get out as soon as possible.

I was no longer useful as a pawn. He'd definitely won, so he didn't need the pawn any more.

That didn't stop him from telling people everywhere how concerned he was about me, having lost my mother and all. It didn't stop him from making heart-rending statements like "I am now both a mother and a father to her" (he was neither). It didn't stop him from still presenting a sentimental, doting, loving facade to the world.

But he stopped presenting it to me.