Rethinking How We Understand Emotional Abuse

More than fifteen years ago, I began trying to understand Emotional Abuse.

That work eventually became my first book.

But the questions did not end when the book was published.

Over the years, I continued to follow developments in Emotional Abuse and Emotional Elder Abuse. As new research and knowledge became available, I eventually returned to my original work with a question:

What would still hold up today?

I did not return to the original work simply to update it.

I wanted to examine it.

Some of my earlier observations remained remarkably relevant. Others could now be understood more clearly. Some required refinement, and some explanations needed to change.

As I worked through the material, it became increasingly clear that this would not be a revised edition of my first book.

It had become a different book.

Behind Closed Doors is the result.

One of the most important changes is deceptively simple.

When we suspect abuse, the question that naturally comes to mind is:

Who is the abuser?

But that question may already contain a conclusion.

There is another question that logically comes first:

What is happening?

Beginning there changes the process.

Instead of deciding what happened and then looking for evidence to support that explanation, we can reconstruct events, distinguish what is known from what is assumed, examine conflicting information, and allow the evidence to lead.

The book examines questions such as:

How do we recognize a pattern without assuming one?
What happens when different people tell different versions of the same events?
How do we distinguish observation from interpretation?
What can changes over time tell us?
How do we keep the person at the centre of the situation from disappearing behind everyone else’s explanations?

And perhaps most importantly:

How do we know what we think we know?

Not every troubling situation can be understood immediately.

Information may be incomplete.

Accounts may conflict.

Important events may have happened behind closed doors.

Being unable to reach an immediate conclusion does not mean that nothing is wrong.

It means that the evidence does not yet allow us to say exactly what is happening.

“I don’t know yet” can be the beginning of better investigation—not the end of it.

Behind Closed Doors is not about providing a formula for identifying an abuser.

It is about learning how to examine a difficult situation before deciding what it means.

It asks us to slow down, separate evidence from assumption, pay attention to change and pattern, and remain willing to revise our understanding when new information emerges.

Because sometimes the question that changes everything is the one we should have asked first:

What is happening?

Behind Closed Doors
A forthcoming book by Gunta Krumins