Excellent book on emotional abuse

[ah]

Called Stalking the soul (translated from French, written in the 90's I think?) by Marie-France Hirigoyen.

It's not a new book but fascinating and unlike others I've read.
The writer describes this type of abuse when it happens in the family between partners / by parents toward their children, at work, everywhere. She calls emotional abusers "perverse" which I think may be the most accurate description I've come across.
She says a lot that really struck a cord and made a lot of sense to me. Very interesting book.

[Blueberry]

Thanks for the recommendation and it's good to see you back here, ah. 

[Hope67]

Hi Ah,
Thanks for this recommendation, I've just looked at the book online and I've ordered it - I think it looks really good, and appreciate your recommendation.
to you. 
Hope 

[ah]

P.S the book is very psychodynamic, leaning heavily on Freud's legacy. So it has a explanations about the abusers' psychology and why they ended up abusive. It was written by a psychoanalyst, I guess that's her language.
She sees emotional abusers as hurting, so they abuse to relieve their own pain, but I don't know if that's true. The sadists I know abuse because they enjoy it. It doesn't relieve their pain, it just brings them pleasure.
Maybe.

Now that I think of it, here's another excellent book (I think...) on emotional abuse, written a generation ago as well. By an American therapist this time. But he takes the opposite viewpoint on the psychology of abusers.

In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People
by George K. Simon Ph.D.

He says:

What our intuition tells us a manipulator is really like challenges everything we've been taught to believe about human nature. We've been inundated with a psychology that has us viewing people with problems, at least to some degree, as afraid, insecure or "hung-up."

And:

Unfortunately, mental health professionals and lay persons alike often fail to recognize the aggressive agendas and actions of others for what they really are. This is largely because we've been pre-programmed to believe that people only exhibit problem behaviors when they're "troubled" inside or anxious about something. We've also been taught that people aggress only when they're attacked in some way. So, even when our gut tells us that somebody is attacking attacking us and for no good reason, or merely trying to overpower us, we don't readily accept the notions. We usually start to wonder what's bothering the person so badly "underneath it all" that's making them act in such a disturbing way. We may even wonder what we may have said or done that "threatened" them. We may try to analyze the situation to death instead of simply responding to the attack. We almost never think that the person is simply fighting to get something they want, to have their way with us, or gain the upper hand. And, when we view them as primarily hurting in some way, we strive to understand as opposed to taking care of ourselves.

... Not only do we often have trouble recognizing the ways people aggress, but we also have difficulty discerning the distinctly aggressive character of some personalities. The legacy of Sigmund Freud's work has a lot to do with this. Freud's theories (and the theories of others who expanded on his work) heavily influenced the field of psychology and related social sciences for a long time. The basic tenets of these classical (psychodynamic) theories and their hallmark construct, neurosis, have become fairly well etched in the public consciousness, and many psychodynamic terms have intruded into common parlance. These theories also tend to view everyone, at least to some degree, as neurotic. Neurotic individuals are overly inhibited people who suffer unreasonable and excessive anxiety (i.e. non-specific fear), guilt, and shame when it comes to acting on their basic instincts or trying to gratify their basic wants and needs. The malignant impact of over-generalizing Freud's observations about a small group of overly inhibited individuals into a broad set of assumptions about the causes of psychological ill-health in everyone cannot be overstated.6 But these theories have so permeated our thinking about human nature, and especially our theories of personality, that when most of us try to analyze someone's character, we automatically start thinking in terms of what fears might be "hanging them up," what kinds of "defenses" they use and what kinds of psychologically "threatening" situations they may be trying to "avoid."

Might be very interesting to compare the two, if you've got spare time to read both 

Blueberry,
Thanks so much 
It's very hard for me but I'm trying. My default is to be silent but I'm trying... unrelated to books, sorry.