EFFECTS OF EMOTIONAL ABUSE IN FAMILY AND WORK ENVIRONMENTS Awareness for Emotional Abuse

This study investigates links between emotional abuse and emotional awareness. Predictions included a positive correlation between emotional abuse and alexithymia, and that few individuals reporting emotional abuse would self-label as having been abused. Eighty participants completed anonymous, self-report surveys with symptom and trauma inventories. Participants were asked if they were physically, sexually, or emotionally abused (using the word “abused”); these questions preceded symptom and maltreatment measures. Emotional abuse Rachel E. Goldsmith, PhD, recently graduated from the University of Oregon Psychology Department. She has co-authored papers on topics that include trauma awareness, cultural aspects of trauma, and trauma and fiction. She has worked as a therapist in university and community agencies, and has been an instructor for the Psychology of Trauma undergraduate course at the University of Oregon. Jennifer J. Freyd, PhD, is Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon. Freyd is the author of Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse (Harvard, 1996) and the co-editor of Trauma & Cognitive Science (Haworth, 2001). She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Address correspondence to: Jennifer J. Freyd, Department of Psychology, 1227 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1227 (E-mail: rgoldsmi@darkwing. uoregon.edu). Submitted for publication on 8/29/03; revised 4/26/04; revised 8/11/04; accepted