|
|
All forms of abuse - overt and covert - are about maintaining control. Aggression and its transformations are primitive and immature reactions to a perceived sense of helplessness, threat and loss of control. Abuse - violent and non-violent - seeks to re-assert one's identity, re-establish predictability, and master the environment - human and physical.
Covert abuse - as distinct from the overt variety - is stealthy and surreptitious. It is hard to discern and requires long-term observations in carefully controlled circumstances (such as a therapeutic session). It comprises a few "techniques" and creates an ambience of intimidation, uncertainty, and perplexity.
There are many types of abuse: physical (battering and assault), emotional (mental or psychological), verbal, sexual (molestation, incest, rape), financial (usually involves identity theft and fraud), and legal (leveraging law enforcement agencies, the courts, and lawyers to harass or intimidate).
|
|
The abuser collects information - mostly of intimate nature - in order to coerce, manipulate, charm, extort or convert his victim "to the cause".
|
|
The abuser recruits third parties - friends, colleagues, mates, family members, the authorities, institutions, neighbours, the media, teachers - to cajole, coerce, threaten, stalk, offer, retreat, tempt, convince, harass, communicate with, and otherwise manipulate his target.
Sometimes the abuser engineers situations in which his victim suffers abuse, harassment, embarrassment, and humiliation and is subjected to social sanctions (condemnation, or even physical punishment). Thus, society itself, or a social group, become the instruments of the abuser.
|
|
The fostering, propagation and enhancement of an atmosphere of fear, intimidation, instability, unpredictability and irritation (also known as "gaslighting"). By creating an abusive ambience, the abuser avoids explicit acts of abuse - but maintains manipulative control. Ambient abuse is characterized by an irksome feeling, a disagreeable foreboding, or premonition.
In the long term, such an environment erodes the victim's sense of self-worth, self-esteem, and self-confidence. The victims becomes paranoid or schizoid and thus is subjected to even more to criticism and judgment by other family members, friends, colleagues and society. The roles are thus reversed: the victim is widely considered mentally deranged and the abuser - the suffering party.
|
|
Reacting disproportionately - for instance, with violence or rage - to the slightest slight, whether real or imaginary. Such exaggerated reactions are perceived by the abuser to be punishments meted out by him for "offences" committed against him. Thus, the abuser may throw a temper tantrum over any disagreement, or criticism, no matter how gently expressed. By constantly changing the rules of the game and by applying unusually harsh and arbitrary penalties, the abuser keeps the victims in the dark and creates in them neediness and dependence on himself - the exclusive source of "justice" and judgment of right and wrong.
|
|
The abuser engineers impossible, dangerous, unpredictable, unprecedented, or highly specific situations in which he is needed, depended on, or - rightly or wrongly - considered the only source of authority, knowledge, skills, connections, or useful traits. Thus, the abuser generates his own indispensability.
|
|
Abusers often lack empathy. They dehumanize and objectify people (treat them like objects, extensions, or instruments). Physical, psychological, verbal and sexual abuse are all forms of dehumanization and objectification.
|
|
Unpredictably, capriciousness, inconsistency and irrationality are instruments of abuse. Family members thus become dependent upon the abuser's whims, outbursts, or mood. By destabilizing its life, the abuser becomes the only stable element in the family unit.
|
|