anently, by mental and psychological abuse. This is actually violence of a more disgusting kind. (Recommended reading: "Stalking the Soul" by psychiatrist Marie-France Hirigoyen. (excellent). Situational violence, fuelled by alcohol, is also appalling, but the dynamics are very different. There is physical abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse. The list is long. Most abusers abuse surreptitiously. They are "stealth abusers". You have to actually live with one in order to witness the abuse. There are three important categories of abuse: Overt Abuse The open and explicit abuse of another person. Threatening, coercing, beating, lying, berating, demeaning, chastising, insulting, humiliating, exploiting, ignoring ("silent treatment"), devaluing, unceremoniously discarding, verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse are all forms of overt abuse. Covert or Controlling Abuse Abuse is almost entirely about control. It is often a primitive and immature reaction to life circumstances in which the abuser (usually in his childhood) was rendered helpless. It is about re-exerting one's identity, re-establishing predictability, mastering the environment – human and physical. To the abuser, nothing exists outside himself. Meaningful others are extensions, internal, assimilated, objects – not external ones. Thus, losing control over a significant other – is equivalent to losing control of a limb, or of one's brain. It is terrifying. Independent or disobedient people evoke in the abuser the realization that something is wrong with his worldview, that he is not the centre of the world or its cause and that he cannot control .......""""|
|Anonymous Posted: 08/07/2005 15:20|
|Patricia - from a non-psychologists abuse, viewing it from a differnet angle, there are 3 types of abuse. Physcial - beating, punching, kicking etc. Verbal - which can be emotional or mental. And sexual - which is both physical and for the most part also mental|
|Blath Posted: 10/11/2005 13:45|
|I agree with both Patricia and Anonymous who posted after her. Not all abusers beat, punch or kick, and often insidious abuse is worse than physical abuse. I have first hand experience of a Covert Controlling Abuser - arguably the most self-centred man on the planet who is hell bent on destroying his children as he has already destroyed his wife, all for the sake of controlling them. I chose to remain single and childless because of the way I was treated as a child (and well into adulthood, including right now). Abusers don't change, the system in Ireland is too underfunded to make significant change so those who are abused, if they can, must learn to deal with such abuse and with God's help escape from it.|
|Anonymous Posted: 10/05/2006 13:55|
|It's not just the fear of the police not believing or taking action. It's the fear of family and friends not believing you, or bizzarely, the fear that if you expose the abuser for what he is, he will suffer repercussions in his life. I was abused for almost two years by a highly respected, award winning journalist and I still haven't really told people the full extent of the things he did, even though it was a long time ago, and I am now extremely happily married to a fantastic man. I don't know what I was thinking at the time, but it felt more important to protect his reputation as a so called decent middle class intellectual than stand up and say 'look what he did to me'. I'm not going to do anything about it now, but I sometimes feel like I want to report him to somebody as I colluded in him getting away with it. He really messed my life up for the time we were together and for a good while afterwards.|
|Nick Posted: 27/07/2006 14:52|
|Am looking for advice for a friend who is the the middle of suffering controlling abuse from her ex-husband to the extend that her friends and family fear for her safety. She needs advice on how to handle this. She is going through legal / police channels at the moment but could do with advice on understanding his psycholocial make-up. They have children so she has to be able to deal