Psychology of Abuse

By Juan Moisés De La Serna

In this eBook, we will approach one of the most important themes of our time, abuse, both physical and psychological, from a new perspective.

This eBook will help us know a reality that is scarcely talked about beyond the circles of health and safety specialists, and that is extended all through life.

Abuse in all its forms will affect every individual in different ways, despite the efforts made by some authorities to stop social inequalities, such as gender violence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Dec 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781547529964

Book preview

Psychology of abuse

By

Dr. Juan Moisés de la Serna

PREFACE

In this eBook, we will approach one of the most important themes of our time, abuse, both physical and psychological, from a new perspective.

This eBook will help us know a reality that is scarcely talked about beyond the circles of health and safety specialists, and that is extended all through life.

Abuse in all its forms will affect every individual in different ways, despite the efforts made by some authorities to stop social inequalities, such as gender violence.

INDEX

Dedicated to my parents

Acknowldgments

I take this opportunity to thank beforehand all the people who collaborated with their contributions in the realization of this text, especially the Instituto Nacional de Estadística de España; Dr. Virginia Mora, an expert in Violence and Trauma; Dr. María Manrique de Lara Ochoa, Job, Personal and Educational Coach; and Dr. Pedro José Horcajo Gil, master in General Sanitary Psychology (doctoring in Forensics Psychology: the effectiveness of a program to treat men convicted for abusing their wives).

Chapter 1. Defining Abuse

Abuse is a situation in which anyone can find themselves in at any given time, whether at home, at work or simply while walking down the street.

When abuse is received within the family, it is usually called domestic violence or intrafamilial. One of the issues regarding domestic violence is that it is scarcely reported, due to the emotional proximity between aggressor and victim.

With regards to domestic violence, the aggressor is any one person who exercises physical or psychological violence against any other member of the household (descendants, ascendants, spouses, brothers, etc.), not considering, in this category, gender violence, which is defined by that which is exercised by a man against a woman with whom he shares or has shared emotional bonds.

If we focus on the results offered by Google, the tendencies to search domestic violence, in all its different meanings around the world, from 2004 to 2017, we can attest that the first country most worried about is Angola, followed by Uganda and Puerto Rico; the USA occupies the sixteenth position, and Spain occupies the fifty second position, out of the seventy-one countries that compose Google’s results, where the last position is occupied by Italy.

This does not reflect the number of cases of this type of violence in those countries, only the number of times this term was searched, that is to say, there may be a country with few occurrences of domestic violence, but in which the people are highly sensitive to it, so that there are many searches on Google about it.

Or, on contrary, a population where domestic violence is institutionalized and there is, on the other hand, a small consciousness about this issue, and almost no searches are produced about it.

It is worth it to note that among the twenty first positions of countries who search search for this term, fourteen are from the American Continent.

Equally important to note that, in a global scale, there has been a drop in the use of this term within the years; 2017 had 50% less searches than the ones made in 2004.

If you make a cumulative analysis regarding the seasonal tendency for this search on Google, you can observe how in February, March, September and October more searches related to domestic violence are made; while in July, August, December and January you have fewer searches about it.

The data about domestic violence that are provided by the INE (initials in Spanish for the National Statistics Institute) from Spain, about Domestic Violence and Gender Violence since 2011 to 2015 (the last report was published in June, 2016) show a gradual drop of such cases, from 7.744 in 2011 to 7.229 in 2015.

In women, the drop that most stands out is in the age range of 70 to 74 years-old, where it goes from 193 cases in 2013 to 87 in 2015; contrariwise, the most highlighted increase happens in women under 18, where it goes