Verbal abuse: the underrated psychological violence

When I noticed that verbal abuse is being used in discussions, comments and in daily life I thought it was only in specific places till I talked virtually to a French man who told me that it is also happening in France, and, in English we have numerous examples at social networks, comments on blogs, chat rooms, in short, whenever people are communicating.



Verbal abuse in public can be witnessed by everybody and the abuser may have some people to defend them.



Domestic verbal abuse is different: many times the person who is abused has to deal with it in silence.

I found this article by Pielmorena at Allvoices that approach the topic:





"Verbal abuse, often utter to humiliate, defame and demoralize other. It’s a hostile language that can hurt one ear. It is also known as “reviling’. The abuser may intentionally or unintentionally express an abusive behavior in form of battering someone involving the use of profanity, without physical strain like blows, strikes or punches.



This deliberately throwing of harsh words sometimes it’s undeniably out of provocation rooted from a bad flow of communication, such as fight or argument, or unhealthy debate, whilst the abuser may forcibly or willingly utter to cause harm or to simply defend oneself like a counterattack nor reciprocation. Whilst most of the verbal abuser express hurting offensive words merely out of habit to cause pain in order to trigger the target’s emotion. Through assassination they can get the attention and the participation they need from their target.



Outburst, rages, foul words, swearing, malicious statements, insult, verbal assaults, nasty comments, name-calling are some forms of verbally abusive act that may ressolve to attack, harrass and harm someone particularly inflicting pychological violence.

These types of abuse is free from evidence for it leaves no visible scar, welt, wound or bruise. Most of the time the victim suffer in silence and isolation. Tending to become outbalanced, confused and stress. The victim noticebly has low self-esteem and afraid to open up or express oneself. They became aloof and undergone depression in the long run.



Apparently large percentage of these cases happen privately. And everybody can be a miserable victim and everyone without excuse can play as a perpetrator. Unfortunately there are no corresponding law in U.S. that responsible into this momentarily. But there are numerous groups established to give support and helping hand to aid the victim of verbal abuse.



Think first before you open your big mouth. Be sensible and considerate to the feelings of others. Handle words with care. Avoid regretting for something that you wish you didn’t said for words once said you cannot take it back it is irreversible. it’s like a gunshot once fire, it can get straight to the target and it can kill. If you got nothing good to say. Better not say anything. Just keep your mouth shut."

Octavio Paz on turning others into Nobody

I ask permission to Octavio Paz to use this excerpt in a different context. In his book "The Labyrinth of Solitude" Paz is talking about Mexico.

When I first read this excerpt it made me realize of some relations I had in my life and it was a revelation for me. It helped me understand serious issues about me.

I hope that it produces the same effect for those who are turned into Nobody and feel they belong nowhere.

As a human rights advocate Octavio Paz would be happy.








"We dissimulate in order to deceive ourselves, and turn transparent and phantasmal. But that is not the end of it: we also pretend that our fellow-man does not exist. This is not to say that we deliberately ignore or discount him. Our dissimulation here is a great deal more radical: we change him from somebody into nobody, into nothingness. And this nothingness takes on its own individuality, with a recognizable face and figure, and suddenly becomes Nobody.



Don No One, who is Nobody's Spanish father, is able, well fed, well respected; he has a bank account, and speaks in a loud, self-assured voice. Don No One fills the world with his empty, garrulous presence. He is everywhere, and has friends everywhere. He is a banker, an ambassador, a businessman. He can be seen in all the salons, and is honored in Jamaica and Stockholm and London. He either holds office or wields influence and his manner of not-being is aggressive and conceited. On the other hand, Nobody is quiet, timid, and resigned. He is also intelligent and sensitive. He always smiles. He always waits. When he wants to say something, he meets a wall of silence; when he greets someone, he meets a cold shoulder; when he pleads or weeps or cries out, his gestures and cries are lost in the emptiness created by Don No One's interminable chatter.

Nobody is afraid not to exist: he vacillates, attempting now and then to become Somebody. Finally, in the midst of his useless gestures, he disappears into the limbo from which he emerged.



It would be a mistake to believe that others prevent him from existing. They simply dissimulate his existence and behave as if he did not exist. They nullify him, cancel him out, turn him to nothingness. It is futile for Nobody to talk, to publish books, to paint pictures, to stand on his head. Nobody is the blankness in our looks, the pauses in our conversations, the reserve in our silences. He is the name we always and inevitably forget, the eternal absentee, the guest we never invite, the emptiness we can never fill. He is an omission, and yet he is forever present. He is our secret, our crime, and our remorse. Thus the person who creates Nobody, by denying Somebody's existence, is also changed into Nobody. And if we are all Nobody, then none of us exists." (emphasis added)

I hope that if you read it and can relate you realize that you were turned into nobody, or nothingness, only in the eyes of others but you are one and they cannot take that from you: you are their secret, their crime and remorse.

You are their agonizing conscience without which they cannot exist.

Live!

R. D. Laing On DSM-3: the project of homogenization of experience

This is a three minutes video and it's worthy every second because it talks about our normal experiences of life being considered as mental disorders. There are two parts and the second is about the psychophobia. At the beginning he tells a very funny story about a psychologist that asks it... watch the video.

 I just did transcript these excerpts:



"One characteristic of our culture I think it is a, what I call "psychophobia". Psycophobic... we are frightened of their own minds, of our own psyches.




There is no other book going arond that is more explicit about it than the DSM-3 "Diagnostic Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association 3rd edition which calls itself as a compendium of criteria for mental disorder.



Any unsual perception experience is a criteria for mental disorder... any unusual perception...



I feel the presence of a dead person who is not there. You're allowed to do that for three weeks after your mother dies. After that it is a criteria for mental disorder.



what seems to be a massive project of 
homogenizing experience. We are all experiences at the same time



nobody will gonna be allowed to experience diferently, diferent from any one else. It's not allowed to see the sky as grey if other people see as blue.  ...

Blue, grey, white? There is only one answer.

Image: roujo at Flickr

R.D. Laing a Homage2: Tranquilizers as chemical straight jackets

Ohio State University Conference in 1984 about George Orwells Book 1984

R. D. Laing spoke here. Filmed and produced by moi.

R. D. Laing: a Homage

"There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain."



"We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing."



"We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love."



"Whether life is worth living depends on whether there is love in life."

R. D. Laing





R.D. Laing was born in 1927 in Glasgow, Scotland. At university he become fascinated with hypnosis. In the Btitish Army, as a psychiatrist and Lieutenant, he began to have severe doubts about psychiatry as it was then being practised and the relationship between psychiatrist and patient. These doubts led to the publication of "The divided self". Other books include "The self and others", "The politics of experience" and "The painted bird".




Image: "Knots", by Claire Edwards based on the play by Laing of same name.

"I can remember seeing a play by RD Laing called knots. It was hilarious."

Claire Edwards.

Kitty in panic

Extreme reaction caused by stress, a dysfunctional family, bad mood,...?

(Funny but this is how I behave sometimes.)

"Only one click away is too far" or "shortest way between two points equals pleasure"

The catchy phrase "only one click away" might not facilitate things as well as the scientific truth that "the shortest way between two points is a straight line" might not help when we are planning our routes.

It came to my mind because all my documents are in a file and I just have to open the window where it is and click at the file to get my pictures, texts and everything.

I didn't do it yet and I don't feel like doing.

One of the reasons is that this road looks so long! Please don't laugh at me because I'm sure you gave up doing a search because you didn't want to open another window to your favorite search engineer... because it was too far.

I believe that we have a kind of distance measurement, a kind of space relation when we are using computers but I still don't know how to express it or if it's only me who feels it

- any input would be highly appreciated.

What I know is that when I'm planning my routes, walking since I don't drive, to go somewhere the shortest distance is only important when I'm in a hurry.

Other factors are more important to consider such as a nice and not crowded street, a place I like that is on the way, nice people I might know and many others that gives me pleasure.

There is a street I don't like to cross next to my house and I discovered that it is because three of the buildings are huge and as I walk I feel it will take years to reach the end. I'm sure if there were regular buildings and commerce I would not avoid this street.

Doe it make any sense to you?

Ok, I will open the file, tomorrow, or, on Monday.

Balloons and the mind of the beholder

Balloons at the sky is an image that is known all over the world as a celebration of a happy occasion and at the moment someone looks at the sky and find them out it will be a brief moment of joy.

In June, 18 2010 balloons released into the sky by a kindergarten sparked a security alert when the country's military mistook the formation for parachuting North Koreans.

The left picture by Photolibrary was published at The Telegraph telling the story. (read it here)

Sometimes we mistake some images, for the good or for the evil, according to our mood and thoughts. I hope today you see a lot of good images. What a better day for balloons than Sundays?

Image of the devil on the hair of the Queen: Pareidolia

Last month I published about pareidolia, when an illusory image is perceived, and the example was the Canadian dollar bill that was taken out of the market because people saw the devil at the Queen's hair.
This picture shows in red what is seen.

Pareidolia took Queen's Elizabeth Dollar Canadian bill out of the market

I love Nicholas's Intelliblog and whenever I visit it I learn or I'm touched by something. Today it was the concept pareidolia that I knew by experience but didn't know it had a name:

Pareidolia is a peculiarity of our brain wiring whereby it attempts to look for the familiar in the unfamiliar. The burnt toast really doesn’t look like President Obama, we know that. Our brains tell us that it’s an impossibility, however, this doesn’t stop us from seeing something resembling human features in the configuration of light and dark areas of toasted bread.

Likewise, listening the constant drone of rushing water while in the shower can give rise to an experience of an auditory pareidolia (or to be more precise, a paracusis). We may think we hear the phone ringing or snatches of conversation. The white noise of the falling water stimulates the brain to manufacture all sorts of auditory misperceptions.
Scientist Carl Sagan proposed that pareidolia confers on humans an evolutionary advantage, especially where visual stimuli are concerned. He proposed that the human brain has evolved so that it is “hard-wired” to recognise the human face and easily distinguish a myriad variations of the basic features. This allows fast discrimination of friend from foe, but will also allow us to create order out of a chaotic pattern of light and shade, manufacturing a resemblance to a face of patterns on inanimate objects. Pareidolia is perhaps the most innocent form of this tendency of humans to create order out of chaos. (emphasis mine)

How many times I experienced pareidolia! Watching at the clouds and seeing animals appearing and disappearing, faces in stains or at the morning toast.

I really like the idea that it is "an innocent form this tendency of humans to create order out of chaos".

The Queen's Elizabeth portrait appeared on a Canadian dollar bill in 1954 and so many people saw the devil on the Queen's hair (highlighted area) that the bill went out of circulation. The drawing was done from a photography and of course there was no devil.