Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair

by Sarah Schulman

In some places, there is an ideology that undue control of others is inherent to the recovery of an abused person. Because the child’s real needs were violated and disregarded, adulthood can produce an inability to tolerate difference, or confusion between vulnerability and danger. Inadequacy, failure, or even discreet incidents in which the partner does not repress all signs of difference can be experienced by an unprocessed hurt person as threat or Abuse.