Group psychological abuse refers to groups where methods of psychological abuse are frequently or systematically used on their members. Such abuse would be practices that treat the members as objects one is free to manipulate instead of respecting their autonomy, human rights, identity and dignity. In a group can also play mind games with another person that can make the victim seem like they are accepted but in actuality they are backstabbing the person when his/her back is turned. When the victim requests assistance from the abusing group it is not given.
Psychological abuse refers to practices that, simply stated, treat a person as an object to be manipulated and used, rather than as a subject whose mind, autonomy, identity, and dignity are to be honored.
Some scholars in the wake of Robert Jay Lifton or Margaret Singer have associated group psychological abuse with brainwashing or mind control and with cults. The concepts to have similarities and overlap in some places, but they are not identical.
William V. Chambers, Ph.D. received the John G. Clark Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Cultic Studies from the American Family Foundation, for his work with Michael Langone, Ph.D. in developing the Group Psychological Abuse Scale.
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