Abuse manipulates and twists a child’s natural sense of trust and love. Her innocent feelings are belittled or mocked, and she learns to ignore her feelings. She can’t afford to feel the full range of feelings in her body while she’s being abused—pain, outrage, hate, vengeance, confusion, arousal. So she short-circuits them and goes numb. For many children, any expression of feelings, even a single tear, is cause for more severe abuse. Again, the only recourse is to shut down. Feelings go underground.

— Laura Davis

Abuse may consist of physical maltreatment or language that is belittling, discriminatory...

— Asa Don Brown

Abuse really is its own alphabet. Those who have not gone through it cannot understand it fully. The echos of violence hang in subconscious long after the threat is gone.

— Michelle Franklin

[Abusers] blame the world - circumstances, other people - for their defeats, misfortune, misconduct, and failures. The abuser firmly believes that his life is swayed by currents and persons over which he has no influence whatsoever (he has an external locus of control). But there are even subtler variants of this psychological defense mechanism. Not infrequently an abuser will say: "I made a mistake because I am stupid", implying that his deficiencies and inadequacy are things he cannot help having and cannot change. This is also an apoplastic defense because it abrogates responsibility. Many abusers exclaim: "I misbehaved because I completely lost my temper." On the surface, this appears to be an autoplastic defense with the abuser assuming responsibility for his misconduct. But it could be interpreted as an apoplastic defense, depending on whether the abuser believes that he can control his temper.

— Sam Vaknin

Abuse the innocent and create a monster.

— Jaime Tenorio Valenzuela

ABUSIVE MEN COME in every personality type, arise from good childhoods and bad ones, are macho men or gentle, “liberated” men. No psychological test can distinguish an abusive man from a respectful one. Abusiveness is not a product of a man’s emotional injuries or of deficits in his skills. In reality, abuse springs from a man’s early cultural training, his key male role models, and his peer influences. In other words, abuse is a problem of values, not of psychology. When someone challenges an abuser’s attitudes and beliefs, he tends to reveal the contemptuous and insulting personality that normally stays hidden, reserved for private attacks on his partner. An abuser tries to keep everybody—his partner, his therapist, his friends and relatives—focused on how he feels, so that they won’t focus on how he thinks, perhaps because on some level he is aware that if you grasp the true nature of his problem, you will begin to escape his domination.

— Lundy Bancroft

Accepting necessary conflicts for the sake of improving the lives of children is the only fundamental moral crusade that matters.

— Stefan Molyneux

A change in those moments, some switch turned off forever, the end of trust or safety or love, and how do we ever find the switch again?

— David Vann

A child's attachment process begins within the first year of life...

— Asa Don Brown

A child's temperament appears to play another significant role in the child's own perceptions and worldview.

— Asa Don Brown