Why Childhood Abuse Victims Hate and Are Hated

Donald W. Winnicott, the famous paediatrician turned psychoanalyst, suggested that abused and traumatized children dare not hope for love. To protect themselves against disappointment, they hate others ostentatiously and desire to be hated in return. It is their way of testing the waters: can these people or institutions hate the child without resorting to maltreatment and rejection? Epictetus: Men are disturbed not by events, but by the views which they take of them. Albert Ellis, founder of REBT, precursors to CBT: experience causes no specific emotional reaction, the individual’s belief system produces the reaction. Harry Stack Sullivan: people are products of their environment. Boris Cyrulnik: trauma consists of the injury and the representation of the injury. Adult interpretations of events are the most damaging post-traumatic experience for children. Labels can be more damaging and damning than the experience. Dorothy Rowe: when we are wrong, we self-blame and feel gui