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"Refusing responsibility for marital failure is often the cause of setting abuse in motion. An individual with idealistic ideas about marriage carries on an apparently normal relationship with his partner until the day he has to choose between this relationship and a new one. Abuse will grow in proportion to yesterday's idealism. It is impossible to entirely accept responsibility for a failure of this kind. The partner is held responsible when love is withdrawn because she has committed an unnamed fault. The denial of love is acted upon although often verbally denied.
"Recognizing this manipulative behavior leaves the victim in a state of terrible anxiety she cannot get rid of alone. At this stage, victims experience shame as well as anger: shame at not being loved, shame at having accepted humiliation, and shame at what they have submitted to and undergone.
"In some cases, it is a question not of becoming abusive, but of manifesting a previously hidden emotionally abusive nature. This overt hate, now revealed, resembles a persecution complex. Role reversal takes place: the aggressor becomes the victimized one, although the real victim still feels the guilt. To make the situation credible, the other must be forced to behave unacceptably so that she can then be invalidated."Stalking the Soul:
Emotional Abuse and the Erosion of Identity
pages 21-22
"The only protective mechanism for child victims of emotional abuse is to cut themselves off from the situation; subsequently, their identity erodes, the deep core of their soul dies. Everything left over from childhood is perpetually reenacted as an adult.
"Even if all abused children don't become abusive parents, a destructive cycle has been created. Each one of us can act out our inner violence on someone else. Alice Miller shows us how over time, children or victims of control forget the violence they suffered -- the will to know must be erased -- but the syndrome either reoccurs in them or is taken out on others."
Stalking the Soul:
Emotional Abuse and the Erosion of Identity
page 48
"While some employers treat their personnel like children, others treat them like things -- to be used at will....[W]here creativity is involved, the attack on the person is even more direct: any initiative or innovation on their part is destroyed. Employers try to prevent the departure of useful or indispensable employees; they mustn't be allowed to think the situation through or feel capable of working somewhere else. They must be led to believe they're only worth their present job. If they resist, they're isolated. They are denied any kind of contact: eye contact, greeting in the hall, or a deaf ear turned to their suggestions. Hurtful and unkind remarks come next, and if these prove insufficient, emotional violence appears.
"Outright hostility later replaces latent ill-will or malevolence if the victim reacts and tries to rebel. This is the phase of emotional abuse that has been called 'psychoterror.' At this stage, any means or methods will be used, sometimes including physical violence, to destroy the designated victim. This can lead to psychical annihilation or suicide. The attacker has now lost sight of any potential benefits to the company and focuses only on his victim's downfall."Stalking the Soul:
Emotional Abuse and the Erosion of Identity
pages 74-75
[from the hardbound edition]
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