Psychological violence

Coercive control describes a systematic set of violent acts that aim to subordinate and control another person. Coercive control refers to a pattern of behaviours an individual uses to establish dominance and control over another person in an intimate or familial relationship.

It involves tactics aimed at manipulating, dominating, and instilling fear in the victim, ultimately undermining their autonomy and freedom. Coercive control often includes a range of abusive behaviours, such as emotional manipulation, isolation from friends and family, financial control, surveillance, intimidation, threats, and physical or sexual violence.

The abuser employs these tactics systematically over time, gradually eroding the victim's sense of self-worth, independence, and personal agency. This form of control is not limited to isolated incidents but operates as a sustained and pervasive pattern of abuse. It aims to dominate every aspect of the victim's life, using fear, intimidation, and psychological manipulation to maintain power and control.

Coercive control is recognised as a serious form of domestic abuse and a criminal offence in many jurisdictions. It is important to raise awareness about coercive control, as it can have severe and long-lasting effects on the well-being and safety of the victim.

Combating coercive control and psychological violence against women in the EU Member States

Psychological manipulation, i.e. gaslighting, involves the abuser employing various strategies to distort the victim's perception of events, their memories, and their sense of self. Gaslighter aims to cause the victim to doubt themselves, their experiences and their observations. These acts may be claims that something has not happened, the other person is imagining things, exaggerating, delusional, or does not remember what happened.

Gaslighting is done through persistent denial, contradiction, lies, and manipulation of information. The gaslighter aims to gain power and control over the victim by making them question their own judgment, intuition, and sanity.

The term originated from a play and subsequent movie called "Gas Light," where a husband tries to convince his wife that she is going insane by manipulating her environment.

Gaslighting can profoundly impact the victim's mental and emotional well-being. It can lead to self-doubt, confusion, anxiety, depression, and a loss of self-esteem. Recognising gaslighting behaviours is essential for individuals to protect themselves from manipulative and abusive relationships.

Ill-treatment means undesirable behaviour which causes suffering to the other person. It can be intentional, unintended, nonrecurring, continuous physical or psychological violence.

Neglect is a form of violence where the perpetrator, usually a caregiver or a guardian, disregards or leaves the physical or emotional needs of the other person, for example, a child, untreated.

This means violence against children, which is a crime in Germany. It is physical and/or mental violence that a parent, another adult, or potentially a sibling is using towards a child to cause physical, psychological or emotional hurt or pain for the child to punish them or regulate or control their behaviour.

Even though the parents’ aim might be to “raise” and teach their children with violent discipline, it does not help to grow a conscience but a fear of punishments. Children might learn how to avoid certain behaviours, not because they would understand why it is forbidden but because they don’t want to get hurt.

Physical punishments will not encourage children, and they can cause serious and long-lasting damage to their core self, identity, and dignity and hence cause even more difficulties in their adulthood.

It is called silent treatment when a person intentionally stops communicating verbally and nonverbally to another person. If it happens often or takes long, it is a form of mental or emotional violence.

The silent treatment is sometimes used to get the other person to defer or punish them by withholding any form of attention or endearment, a basic human need. It is a very hurtful and efficient manipulation tactic because brain studies have found that ostracism like this causes actual pain.

Nearly 1 in 2 women researched across the EU have experienced mental abuse in their lifetime. In the US, 66% of domestic violence victims stated that their abusers harassed them at work through phone calls and emails.

So, while mental violence is such a subtle form of domestic violence, the statistics of multiple negative impacts suggest the need for serious intervention and prevention activities from the actors in the public sector. In addition, the HR, healthcare and other organisations of private employers may have an interest in interventions to avoid the cycle of violence.

While awareness creation and support building are still taking small steps, many positive developments exist in multiple areas within the EU.

Employers play a key role in breaking the taboo around domestic violence — Guest blog by DV survivor Kati

The German Criminal Code does not define psychological violence as a separate criminal offence. However, acts that are classified as psychological violence can, under certain circumstances, constitute other criminal offences such as coercion (Section 240 StGB), threats (Section 241 StGB) or insults (Section 185 StGB). Psychological violence is also closely related to the hallmarks of stalking. However, psychological violence is rarely punished because the difficulty is in identifying it and proving the consequences to be caused by psychological violence.

In the case of mental violence, great efforts are needed so that first, the victim recognizes the violence, the professional recognizes it, and in order to find effective ways to guide the victim and the perpetrator to help prevent future violent events and to get appropriate help to survive.

By getting help from a doctor and/or therapist at an early stage and openly talking about experiences and their effects, proving the cause-and-effect relationship of psychological violence can be helped.

To make it easier to recognise mental violence and act on it, our certified therapists have explained the essentials in a concise and easy-to-understand way in the Mental violence & gaslighting checklist to support both the experiencers and perpetrators as well as the front-line professionals.

If you feel that you are abused, your feeling is the reason to talk to somebody or seek more information. It's never easy to get started, but when done and proceeded with the guidance of professionals, the unwanted impact of mental violence can be prevented.