Keywords:: overview of children's psychological abuse
1 definition
Childhood abuse mainly includes physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse and neglect. For a long time, children's psychological abuse is a concept without a unified definition. In the 1960s, westerners began to study children's psychological abuse. For more than 50 years, countless scholars have defined children's psychological abuse. After comparison and summary, the author believes that these concepts can be roughly summarized into the following three categories:
1. 1 Judging from the injuries suffered by children,
This concept emphasizes the consequences, that is, the adverse effects on children after abuse, which mainly include the development of children's social ability, childhood self-development, emotional development and potential spiritual and creative development. For example, D.Iwaniec believes that psychological abuse is a persistent and repeated inappropriate behavior against children, which damages their potential mental and ability development, such as seriously damaging children's self-esteem, reducing their sense of accomplishment and belonging, and hindering the development of mental health. K.O'H agan also believes that psychological abuse refers to persistent and inappropriate behaviors that damage or potentially reduce children's mental potential or ability (including intelligence, memory, cognition, understanding, attention, language and moral development). According to C. Kavanagh, only when psychological injury leads to obvious symptoms, such as sudden change of social psychological state or depression, can it be called abuse.
1.2 Judging from the behavior of parents or caregivers,
This concept emphasizes the behavior of parents or caregivers, which is usually persistent, repetitive and inappropriate and will do great harm to children. For example, D.Glaser thinks that parents abuse their children at a certain time or use certain behaviors, or continuous inappropriate care is also typical psychological abuse. Including five categories: lack of emotion, irresponsibility and neglect; Negative attribution, blaming the responsibility on children; Inappropriate development expectations are inconsistent with children's communicative behavior; Refusing to recognize children's personality; Refuse to improve children's social adaptability. Apsac (American Professional Society for Child Abuse) believes that psychological abuse refers to the repeated behavior of caregivers. These behaviors convey negative information to children, that is, they are worthless, have many shortcomings, unlovable, dangerous, redundant, useless or only useful when meeting the needs of others. And summed up six forms of psychological abuse: verbal and nonverbal hostility, spitting, rejection and belittling; Threatening children or putting children and their relatives at risk; Exploitation/corruption, that is, conniving children to develop bad behavior; Reject emotional response, ignore children's communication needs, can't express positive emotions to children, and don't put emotions into their interaction with children; Isolate and prevent children from communicating with peers or other adults; Neglecting children's psychological, physiological and medical needs can not meet their basic rights of medical care and education.
1.3 from the perspective of adult behavior and its consequences for children,
Predecessors have summarized the definitions of psychological abuse by different scholars from different angles, but some scholars have combined these two aspects to define it. For example, Garbarino, Guttmann and Seeley believe that psychological abuse is the behavior that adults destroy the consistency between childhood self and the development of their social ability, including five behaviors: rejection, isolation, intimidation, neglect and corrosion (leading to bad behavior and deviant behavior).
To sum up, the definitions of psychological abuse are different and not uniform, but in my opinion, we should comprehensively consider several aspects and give a more comprehensive and accurate definition of psychological abuse from a broader perspective. Therefore, psychological abuse should refer to the persistent, repetitive and inappropriate behavior of parents or adult caregivers who are closely related to children and have responsibilities and obligations to children, intentionally or unintentionally, leading to children's social ability and development. These behaviors include rejection, isolation, intimidation, neglect, verbal hostility, inconsistent behavior and so on.
2 historical development and research status
/kloc-at the end of 0/9, sigmund freud, the founder of psychoanalysis (1856- 1939) first raised the issue of sexual abuse in childhood. During years of clinical treatment, Freud found that many of his patients suffered sexual harassment and injuries from adults in their childhood. Freud believed that childhood experiences played an important role in the formation of mental disorders, so he advocated psychoanalysis to trace the repressed childhood sexual abuse experiences of patients. Since then, some studies have begun to pay attention to child sexual abuse. Until 1962, Kempe Henry and Dr. Brandt F. Steele first discussed the problem of child abuse in American medical journals, put forward the term "abused child syndrome", and published the classic book "abused child syndrome". As a general term for sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse and neglect of children, the problem of child abuse is increasingly recognized by western scholars. 1974, the us congress passed the child abuse prevention and treatment act (CAPTA), which stipulated the minimum definition standards of child abuse and neglect in each state (the specific definition is left to each state). Its content is: Child abuse and neglect refers to any act or omission of parents or caregivers that causes serious physical or mental injury, sexual abuse, exploitation, neglect or abuse to children, among which the word "mental injury" of children appeared for the first time. However, since then, children's physical abuse and sexual abuse are still concerned by many researchers and child protection agencies, while psychological abuse is rarely mentioned. It was not until 1980s that the problem of psychological abuse of children was gradually concerned by western scholars and began to be put forward in a separate form. 1998, M.R.Brassard pointed out that psychological abuse is the core problem of child abuse and neglect, which constitutes the basic component of child abuse and neglect, and is more destructive, and it is easy for children to have abnormal psycho-pathological characteristics and various mental diseases. At this point, children's psychological abuse officially entered the historical stage of academic research.
The research history of psychological abuse of children in China is not long. The earlier research on children's psychological abuse began at the end of last century, but it has only been more than ten years. Among them, Yang (1999) focused on the psychological abuse caused by kindergarten teachers intentionally or unintentionally. Since then, domestic scholars have studied psychological abuse in education and teaching one after another, but only a few, and the content only involves the psychological abuse of teachers to students, all of which are reviews, and there is no empirical research. Ni (2003), a scholar in China People's Liberation Army 145 Hospital, published two reviews on children's psychological abuse and neglect, which really opened the prelude to the research on children's psychological abuse in China.