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intelligent or unintelligent, but if the person choosing has not been
manipulated or coerced, then he or she is demonstrating autonomy. Our
culture, which exalts the individual above the collective, has a decided
preference for autonomy over obedience or dependency. Although civil order
obviously requires a minimum level of conformity to authority, western
culture has clearly been moving in the direction of greater autonomy and civil
rights for the individual. Respect pays due consideration to autonomy by
requiring that influencers step back and allow individuals to choose according
to their best judgment about what is true and good.
Identity. The statement that the unexamined life is not worth living need
not necessarily be interpreted as the call of the “contemplative wilderness.”
It can be interpreted as an affirmation of psychological identity: people have
the capacity and need to look at and define themselves, however crudely.
Having a name signifies having an identity. But obviously an identity involves
much much more than a name. It involves a sense of individuality, of
belonging to a wider community and culture, and of internal integration.
Multiple personalities are not considered a boon (i.e., five personalities are
not thought to be better than one). They are considered pathological because
internal integration is deemed a good. Similarly, despite our culture‟s
preference for individuality, individuality is not to be carried to such an
extreme that the individual ceases to belong anywhere.
Respect pays due consideration to a person‟s identity. Respecting identity
means treating people as unique beings (rather than forcing them into
predetermined molds), not tampering with their social support systems, and
not interfering with their sense of psychological integration, of wholeness. A
person‟s identity ought not to be treated like a house that can be torn down
and rebuilt. The hypothetical identity that might be, however luminous,
ought always defer to the identity that is, however deficient. This does not
mean that people should not change. It simply means that they should be
respected as they are and that change should be organic, not speciously
“transformational.”
Dignity. Part of the reason that people change, but change reluctantly, is
their need to feel worthwhile, in the eyes of others as well as themselves.
They change to become better than they are (according to their view of the
good), but they change reluctantly in order to defend the worth of the
imperfect self that is. I prefer the term “dignity” to “self-esteem” as the
former more clearly reflects a social dimension than the latter --
psychopaths can have high self-esteem but little dignity.
Respect gives due consideration to a person‟s dignity, a sensitivity to his or
her feelings. We tolerate one another‟s illusions about ourselves because we
all recognize how important feeling worthwhile is. That is why one of the
cruelest actions is to strip persons of their dignity.
Psychological Abuse
Respecting individuals means honoring mind, autonomy, identity, and dignity. Psychological
abuse, respect‟s opposite, results when one person (or a group of persons) influences
another (or others) so as to:
1. control information in order to manipulate thinking and judgment,
2. manipulate or coerce choice
3. fragment or alter personal identity to serve the influencer‟s interests

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2, 1992, Page 47
4. systematically or intentionally undermine the influencee‟s feelings of worth
In psychological abuse, other people are not respected. They are treated as objects to be
manipulated for the benefit of another. Respecting psychologically abused people obliges
one to intervene in some way otherwise one implicitly condones the abuse. However,
deciding what intervention is appropriate in a particular case can be very difficult. It may
depend upon factors such as the closeness of one‟s relationship with the abused person, the
probability of success of a given intervention, the availability of help, the degree of abuse,
one‟s personal skills and resources, and the psychological makeup of the abused person.
Sometimes the realistic ethical course may be to support certain social changes that would
make abuse less likely, for example, educational programs on child abuse.
Also complicating the decision to intervene is the tendency to impute unconscious
motivations or character deficiencies to abused persons. Such imputations can be self-
serving in that they provide observers with a rationalization for not acting on behalf of
others. Students of psychological abuse, however, recognize that, although personal
vulnerabilities play a role in the process, the primary cause of the painful effects is the
unethical manipulations of the victimizer(s). Victimizers abuse victims. However much
victims‟ vulnerabilities may contribute to the process, victimizers must not be excused.
What they do --regardless of its effectiveness or the proclaimed nobility of its goals --is
ethically indefensible. When this is recognized, an ethical obligation to combat psychological
abuse automatically arises. This obligation may, depending upon the observer‟s
circumstances, manifest anywhere along a continuum from “moral support” to full-time
dedication to countering one or more types of psychological abuse.
Treatment Implications
This view of psychological abuse has important implications for treatment. Because the
process of abuse is done to victims, however much their vulnerabilities may single them out
as especially at risk, victims must come to understand the psychological techniques that
enabled the victimizer(s) to abuse the victims‟ mind, autonomy, identity, and dignity. In
addition to protecting victims against future manipulations, such an understanding also
enables victims to demystify victimizers and knock them off the phony thrones from which
they played God. Leveling the playing field, so to speak, enhances victims‟ capacity to
restore their dignity.
Victims also need to realize that what was done to them was wrong. The ethical dimension
of psychological abuse must be placed in bold relief and its victims must be allowed --
encouraged even --to express appropriate moral outrage. The outrage will not magically
eliminate the abuse and its effects. Nor will it necessarily bring the victimizer to justice. But
it will enable victims to assert their inherent worth and their sense of right and wrong by
condemning the evil done to them. Moral outrage fortifies good against formidable evil.
Even implicitly denying victims‟ need to express moral outrage shifts blame from victimizers
to victims. Perhaps that is why so many victims are disturbed by “detached” therapists, or
“objective” scientific researchers. They interpret the detachment or “objectivity” as implicit
blaming of themselves.
Using words such as “good” and “evil” may seem medieval to some. I believe, however, that
the banishment of such terms and concepts from psychological language diminishes the
mental health profession‟s effectiveness. The wife abuser does not merely have “different
values” from the abused wife. The husband is morally culpable and the abused and mentally
confused wife needs at some point to express moral outrage in order to reawaken her sense
of right and wrong. This does not mean that respect should not or cannot be shown toward
the victimizer. Moral condemnation is not incompatible with respect, because respect is not
synonymous with approval. Indeed, as the abused wife reawakens her ethical sense through
moral outrage, the abusing husband can reawaken his ethical sense through sincere