6. What to do about psychological abuse

When a subject rightly arouses social alarm, it is not enough to acknowledge its existence and try to understand it. These are necessary moves, but practical ways forward that provide criteria for action must also be found. Otherwise, there is a risk that the alarm will not subside and that, in an emotional atmosphere of generalised anxiety, inadequate responses and false solutions will end up being produced.

What, then, is to be done about psychological abuse? First of all, a philosophical clarification. As we said at the beginning of this book, abuse is a human phenomenon: we are creatures who are primarily loving and secondarily abusive. Consequently, seeking to eradicate abuse makes little sense. As Eduardo Cárdenas (1999) says, what is achieved then is the opposite: exacerbating and stimulating it. This does not mean that abusers should not be controlled, but the objective of political, social and cultural action must be to encourage “good treatment”, that is to say, love.

6.1. How to limit psychological abuse: prevention

Preventing psychological abuse in a sensible way is the best investment that can be made in the field of mental health. And we insist on common sense because, of course, this does not include pursuing psychological abusers with the penal code, nor implanting chips in them that would be activated when they approach the abused person or… when the volume of their verbal expression rises (this last idea an absurdity that has not yet occurred to anyone, as far as we know, but touch wood).

Educating the population relationally is, on the other hand, a practicable and extremely useful measure which, unfortunately, is far from being implemented. On the contrary, one need only leaf through the health pages of El País to realise that, on a subject as important as mental health, the media, even when they are liberal and enlightened like the newspaper in question, systematically misinform and sow confusion. How many times has the discovery of the biological origin of schizophrenia, and even of the genetic roots of homosexuality, been announced? And yet stubborn reality insists on demonstrating, again and again, that the neurotransmitter of the moment ends up being discarded as the cause of the disorder in question, and that genes, 95% of which we share with the fruit fly, can only account for very important but elementary biological processes. Only, the journalist who rushed to relay the first piece of news shows no interest in reporting the second. Quite simply because the non-confirmation of a remote scientific hypothesis is of no interest to anyone.

Biology is, of course, fundamental to psychological activity. Without a brain, there are no mental processes; but if the central nervous system is the hardware of the psyche, relational activity is its software, which programmes it and gives it content. Love and abuse are fundamental elements of this programming.

Every time the importance of biological foundations in psychological development, normal or pathological, is emphasised, and the enormous scope of relational aspects is passed over in silence, misinformation is spread and, consequently, psychological abuse is encouraged by indirect means. And this is done systematically to the greater glory of the pharmaceutical industry, which is the one that does business with biology. Business so colossal (think of the phenomenon of Prozac consumption, a mere symbol of the fortunes being made with psychotropic drugs) that it requires a considerable advertising budget.

Informing people that the ways in which we treat our children, as well as the way we continue to relate to one another in adulthood, have a decisive bearing on our mental states is already, albeit in a very general way, a means of preventing psychological abuse. For if common sense and popular culture say that conflicts that are hard to resolve make us anxious, that loneliness and isolation depress us, that unfair treatment makes us aggressive and that confusion can go so far as to drive us mad, it is good that scientific discourse should confirm such obvious truths, instead of contradicting or obscuring them. Perhaps we will then think twice before triangulating our children in heart-rending conflicts of loyalty, abandoning them prematurely to their fate, treating them arbitrarily or disorienting them with contradictory messages.

This is why information must be brought as close as possible to the population, taking advantage of every forum within reach to debate the need to treat ourselves well and to treat children well, for the benefit of everyone’s mental health. Sensitive health authorities would know how to find the appropriate contexts, which should seek the participation of users by going beyond the classic advertising spots or billboards. Parents’ meetings in nurseries and schools could offer excellent opportunities to address, in a systematic and planned way, a wide range of subjects, and social and cultural centres should include these questions in their programmes. As for harassment at work, trade unions and professional associations should devote to it the attention it deserves, not only from the standpoint of claims and demands, but also by facilitating a preventive approach.

Certain specific subjects, such as divorce, require particular treatment because of their great scope. All the more so as certain highly influential ideologies sow confusion by delivering harangues on the indissolubility of the marriage bond. Few ideas about human relationships are as preposterous as that one, and the ideologies that use their influence to make divorce difficult, even if they then hypocritically sell the “annulment of marriage” at a good price, are accomplices to abuse.

When the couple ceases to constitute a space of love, forcing it to continue is the best way to guarantee that it will end up becoming a space of hatred and destructiveness. This is why the prevention of abuse involves arousing reasonable expectations in spouses: separated in the least traumatic way possible, it is possible to reorganise one’s emotional life successfully.

Separation and divorce are not a failure, but an increasingly well-trodden stage of the life cycle, and their beneficial influence is not confined to the spouses: it extends to the children. The fact that the latter, while they are small, do not want their parents to separate does not mean that separation is negative for them. It is one of those many irrational options by which children try to impose their will, requiring great serenity from adults to make them understand that not everything they desire is necessarily for the best. When the parental couple functions on hatred, showing itself incapable of resolving conflicts harmoniously, its civilised dissolution is a benefit for the mental health of the children, whatever their age. There is therefore no sense in parents waiting until the children have grown up to separate. By then, some ills may be harder to heal.

6.2. How to confront psychological abuse: crisis intervention and treatment

Once the existence of psychological abuse has been detected, the need arises to interrupt it, as well as to neutralise its immediate effects. We may call crisis intervention that which sets itself the main objective of interrupting the sequence of abuse, while treatment proper will aim to relieve and eliminate the suffering and symptoms generated in the course of the process. It is obvious that, in the majority of cases, these two interventions will have to be carried out in a unified or joint manner, since it is the symptoms and the suffering that put us on the track of the existence of a pattern of psychological abuse.

And here a recapitulation is called for, consistent with what has been set out in the preceding chapters, namely that, in many situations of psychological suffering, abuse is underlying, whether in the form of triangulation, deprivation or chaotisation, without it being necessary for all that to adopt an accusatory or strictly controlling approach. If, in physical abuse, control may be necessary when there is a serious and imminent risk to health, but, even in that case, this control must be exercised in the context of a therapeutic approach, the latter is even more indicated in psychological abuse, whose risks are always less immediate.

Control without therapy, which in physical abuse is doomed to failure, in psychological abuse quite simply makes no sense. Only a therapeutic approach makes it possible to achieve the stated objectives, that is to say, to interrupt the sequence of abuse and, simultaneously, to set a reparative process in motion. And, since we are talking about dysfunctional relational patterns that are triggered and develop mainly in the context of the family, it seems to be a matter of common sense that family therapy should be the most indicated option.

Family therapy is a form of psychotherapy which, as its name indicates, is practised by working with the family. It is also called systemic therapy because the theoretical model that inspires it is the systemic model, which takes its name from Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s general systems theory. Unlike individual psychotherapies, systemic family therapy does not focus primarily on people’s inner world, but on their relationships. It represents no ideological option in favour of the family in the abstract, but starts from the evidence that, even today, family relationships are the most important ones and those that have the greatest influence on the construction of the individual personality. This is why, when these relationships are inadequate or present negative aspects that make their members suffer, helping the family to change is a very useful practice. As family relationships change, people change, and the symptoms and psychological suffering disappear.