Psychological maltreatment: the difficulty of objectifying the phenomenon

The violence involved in the phenomenon of psychological abuse mobilizes us deeply and we cannot help but identify with the victim, awakening our tendency to protect and/or “save”. It is very important to review these emotional reactions of the professional that can condition both the assessment and the intervention.

Concept and characteristics

According to the regulations recognized in the field of child protection, psychological abuse is understood as “that chronic situation in which the adults responsible for the child, through actions or deprivations, provoke negative feelings towards the child’s self-esteem and limit the child’s initiatives”.
From this definition we can extract three important characteristics that must be fulfilled in psychological maltreatment:

1. It is a chronic situation, therefore, this element will help us to differentiate when it is a dysfunction in the relationship or a pathological relationship but not psychological abuse.
2. Negative feelings towards self-esteem are provoked.
3. Initiatives are limited, one of the basic elements for the development of the personality is to be able to stimulate the desire to grow, to live and creativity. When development and autonomy are hindered, very serious consequences are produced, affecting the feeling of self-esteem.

Forms of psychological abuse

In Parental Alienation Syndrome, the 3 conditions mentioned above may be present: it may be a chronic situation, self-esteem is affected (the Alienating parent threatens abandonment and loss of esteem towards the child) and initiatives are limited, if we do not lose sight of the need and/or desire to relate to the other parent (the child develops a tendency to feel his or her relationship with the other parent as harmful and dangerous). For this reason we can be sure that this represents true psychological abuse.

Many other definitions of psychological abuse differentiate between an active and a passive form, with the understanding that abuse can occur either by action or omission. In the passive form there is a lack of an affective context, there is no stimulation or affection and the relationship that offers it is predominantly cold. Often this form of psychological abuse is conceptualized as emotional neglect.

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Behind the active forms of mistreatment, the most evident actions and signs, typical of moments of parental lack of control where physical mistreatment is the external mark, it is necessary to bear in mind the psychological mistreatment that also tends to occur. The different forms of violent and humiliating punishments of the repressive education of the black pedagogy have been a form of expression of these psychic mistreatments that still today are women in some cases.

As clear signs of identification of psychological mistreatment are considered:
– rejecting, despising, humiliating, insulting, ridiculing, manipulating and terrorizing.
– manipulating and terrorizing: manipulation refers to influencing or inducing a child to behave with a malicious purpose. A serious level of manipulation can become terrorizing, i.e. using fear as a means of control, threatening the child with extreme or diffuse but sinister punishment.
– oppressing-pressing: it has to do with demanding results or actions from the child, either beyond his possibilities, or in an excessive and unnecessary way, and implies an action of domination over him.
– corrupt: facilitating and reinforcing deviant or antisocial behavior patterns, especially in the areas of aggressiveness, sexuality and drugs.
– ignore: refers to the unavailability of the parents and the lack of communication and interaction of the parents with the child.
– isolating: depriving the child of opportunities to establish social relationships by prohibiting or punishing the child from participating in leisure activities and interacting with others.

Therefore, psychological abuse in childhood is not only that caused by a terrible and evil character who wants to subjugate the child by explicitly and manifestly enjoying his power over him. We can also discover psychological mistreatment in the humiliations and rejection received by the character of Cinderella and the Ugly Duckling or in the abandonment of Tom Thumb.