Abusive power and control

Abusive power and control (or controlling behaviour or coercive control) is the way that abusers gain and maintain power and control over a victim for an abusive purpose such as psychological, physical, sexual, or financial abuse. The abuse can be for various reasons such as personal gain, personal gratification, psychological projection, devaluation, acting out, envy or just for the sake of it as the abuser may simply enjoy exercising power and control.

Controlling abusers may use multiple tactics to exert power and control over their victims. The tactics themselves are psychologically and sometimes physically abusive. Control may be helped through economic abuse thus limiting the victim's actions as they may then lack the necessary resources to resist the abuse. The goal of the abuser is to control and intimidate the victim or to influence them to feel that they do not have an equal voice in the relationship.

Manipulators and abusers control their victims with a range of tactics, including positive reinforcement (such as praise, flattery, ingratiation, love bombing, smiling, gifts, attention), negative reinforcement, intermittent or partial reinforcement, psychological punishment (such as nagging, silent treatment, swearing, threats, intimidation, guilt trips, inattention) and traumatic tactics (such as verbal abuse or explosive anger).

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