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So my therpist said the UN defintion is more for international, terrorism etc. I dont know, dont know much about how it came to be and dont care to research it.
But when you google "torture" and not "define torture" as I first did, it gives a very good defintion:
tor·ture
ˈtôrCHər/ noun
1.
the action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something, or for the pleasure of the person inflicting the pain.
synonyms: infliction of pain, Link Removed, ill-treatment, Link Removed,Link Removed; Link Removed
"acts of torture"
verb
1.
inflict severe pain on.
"most of the victims had been brutally tortured"
synonyms: inflict pain on, Link Removed, Link Removed,Link Removed, Link Removed, Link Removed
"they have tortured suspects in order to extract confessions"
a·buse verb
əˈbyo͞oz/
1.
use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse.
"the judge abused his power by imposing the fines"
synonyms: Link Removed, Link Removed, Link Removed;More
2.
treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.
"riders who abuse their horses should be prosecuted"
synonyms: Link Removed, Link Removed, Link Removed, treat badly; More
noun
əˈbyo͞os/
1.
the improper use of something.
"alcohol abuse"
synonyms: Link Removed, misapplication,misemployment; More
2.
cruel and violent treatment of a person or animal.
"a black eye and other signs of physical abuse"
synonyms: Link Removed, Link Removed, ill-treatment; More
So my therpist said the UN defintion is more for international, terrorism etc. I dont know, dont know much about how it came to be and dont care to research it.
Well - your therapist is probably working his own angle on how to keep you from minimizing your own abuse. But the definition flat-out matters, because there are people who are held, in international arenas, by terrorists or terror organizations, and tortured. That's 100% pure, grade-A, by the book torture. Sometimes they develop PTSD. Some of them are on this site.
Everything else is, I think, as @scout86 said it best:
I'm thinking that all torture is abuse, but not all abuse is torture, correct? And, maybe, when most of us hear the word "torture" we kind of go to "worst things imaginable"? So we tend to think that "torture" HAS to be worse than "abuse". But what if that's not what makes the line between the two? What if it's not severity, or damage inflicted, but just the nature of the abuse?
If we could understand 'torture' as an actual term of art (legal term, which is is) and not something open to interpretation - frankly, it would just be more accurate.
Which in turn, would be more respectful, in my book.
All torture is abuse. Not all abuse is torture.
Not all acts that imitate our assumption of what torture is (chains, hoods, pain, whatever) are actually acts of torture.
When Christopher Hitchins (author) asked to be water boarded so he could understand the experience of it, and did so under the training guidelines that the US military uses - was he being tortured? No. He experienced a technique that is used to torture. (google it, if you want to see it)
Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is what it is, all on its own.
Ritual Sexual Abuse is different - and also, is what it is.
Domestic Violence.
Rape
Kidnapping
Incest
Abuse, psychological
Abuse, physical
Abuse, sexual
Torture
...and every other horrific word you can think of. Each describes it's own act. Parasuicide is not suicide. A panic attack is not 'nerves'. Mental Illness is not cancer. Apologies for what probably reads like a big old semantics rant - but no-one benefits from having the wrong understanding of their own trauma experience. And no-one benefits from having their trauma experience undermined with appropriated language.
And, as Scout also said (my bolding added for emphasis)
I can understand the usefulness of definitions of terms, but also the idea that something might come off as "not bad enough" and that might be "invalidating". Except that that form of invalidation exists in your own head, really. And, maybe, someone who feels invalidated to be told that they were "just" abused, not tortured, needs to examine their own struggles with validation.
My personal learning, over the course of this thread, is pointing me to see that what is likeliest - for my own experience - is that my kidnapper was interested in how torture works, on some level, and was experimenting with it (on me).
I know I was in the republic of basement long enough to forget that there was an alternative. I know I believed there was no rule of law or even, no actual boundary line between keeping me alive or letting me be dead. I know he experimented with how long I could be kept without air, how long I'd remain unconscious. I don't think he knew if he was going to kill me or let me live - I could be wrong about that. But really, I think he didn't care, after awhile.
Does that mean I was tortured? It straddles the definition, and I'd ultimately leave it at - no, not precisely tortured, but the intent and scenario were reminiscent of a torture situation.
Always, with the caveat: these are my thoughts, and if they ring bells for others, awesome. If not, that's cool too.
But the definition flat-out matters, because there are people who are held, in international arenas, by terrorists or terror organizations, and tortured. That's 100% pure, grade-A, by the book torture. Sometimes they develop PTSD. Some of them are on this site.
Oh, I wasnt minimizing, or at least I wasnt trying to. Im not educated on it so I didnt want to add anything to it as it would likely be wrong. And he probably was saying it to not allow me to minimize what happened.
To me, its a tough rope to straddle. Some werent tortured, were abused but describe it as torture. Some were tortured by legal definition but mininmize to abuse or less.
I think what I was, and sort of still am, struggling with is the idea that one must be physically held against your will to he tortured and if not then one is a willing participant and thats not the case. And I think I came up with that in my own brain. But one can be conditioned and threatened, or held by a threat that one has been conditioned to believe and still tortured.
So the definion I got when googling "torture" instead of "define torture" was a bit more indepth and, to me, decribes it better...to me anyway.
I am certain the words torture and torturous are not interchangeable.
My childhood and later in life, torturous. Certainly. Undeniably.
But was the methodology of torture present?
Grooming is not torture.
Brainwashing and eradication, yes torturous, and intrinsic to torture..but not torture.
The intention of torture is of wholly dominating/mastering another using fear and suffering to control and subjugate. (Not textbook, simply my perspective)
I am no professional, nor am I well versed in this matter..but I feel the difference is clear and not at all subjective.
Torture requires repetition of particulars, which are innumerable in their nature but singular in their purpose; to destroy hope.
Torture requires a measure of time. It could be hours that are measured in breathes or years measured by blows.
I believe torture always carries malignant intent in all its representations. It's always and only about the destruction of another. It is about pathological intentions in action against hope and against life.
intensity + intent + duration = torture.
you can be abused without the abuser being aware of their harmful behaviors. you cannot be tortured in the same way.
Intensity. Intent.
I think Joeylittle touched on what I struggle with most when in this discussion of torture (versus abuse). I think maybe this discussion is so alarming because, I guess we have to acknowledge that there are objective criteria and there is an objective spectrum of suffering. (Is there, though?) Some of my abusers wanted to torture me. Is that the same thing. I don't know.
They engineered situations that mimicked what we typically define torture as. One of them went far enough to try something he saw on TV, and I only discovered several years later that he could have killed me because he had no idea what he was doing. (He had me flat on my back.) He got off on it. He could only get off on it when. You know. It felt official to me. They had the rooms and the tools and the power. They trained me to endure so that they could use me for. Making money and being good at it. And it worked because I wanted to be, really good and I wanted to make sure, I was good. Brainwashing. Conditioning. I would never have went against them. So is that? You know.
And if it isn't then what does that even mean. What is even the point defining anything other than interrogation as torture? I think either it's a form of intense, prolonged, malicious abuse or it's not. It's interrogative, intended for a specific purpose (to gather information or punish) in a specific circumstance by a specific person. So it just depends how you want to define that and I think anyone who has been through an interrogation by an official in a political situation would of course want to separate that from ordinary occurrences of abuse (even intense, prolonged, sadistic occurrences).
Intending domination of another can also be said of pretty much anyone in serial killer territory.
Are all of them torturers? No.
It can be stated motivation of completely average abuser pricks, whose abuse destroys their victim's life.
Are all of them torturers? Again, no.
Basically I wouldn't lump something so complex as a motivation of a perp (for one act, in one moment, let alone many, or a prolonged period of time, or multiple crimes - nothing unusual) in with anything else as a single defining characteristic of what an act is. It doesn't work. It doesn't work even academically. It goes against what decades of work in multiple criminal justice fields established as basic knowledge, experience based, as well.
I'm not even sure that the motivation of the perp matters.
Lot of people commit torture while they are "only doing their jobs". Do some of them get off on it? Maybe? Probably? But it doesn't really matter if they ENJOY water boarding you or not, it's still torture. (Granted that certain folk in our government have thought that it's not. Just picked that as an example. There are plenty of examples.)
Abuse can be a very offhanded thing. To me, there is no end game except to get a said result from the victim (even if that means picking up socks). Sadists rarely just abuse. They have an endgame. It feeds their soul to crush others and to watch those others be crushed. Sadists torture. Because they need to. And they like it. A lot.
Sadists rarely just abuse. They have an endgame. It feeds their soul to crush others and to watch those others be crushed. Sadists torture. Because they need to. And they like it. A lot.
That I agree with. Though I also agree that its our perception that they are enjoying it but how can they not be while smiling, laughing, and sexually arroused and the more pain you are in the more they smile, laugh, and become sexually arroused?
I think the motivation of a perp is probably the single-most defining characteristic. Intention matters. Just because someone is only doing their job--that is an intention, right there.
The problem is when you start defining what intention specifically denotes torture vs. abuse. I think I rail a little at must be perpetrated from someone in an official capacity, because there are a lot of situations that I would categorize as torture that lack that element. Or, perhaps, that diverge from that element. A government official, a military official, an authority official. When you're a kid, what's official mean?
And that's why I think you either have to accept that torture is defined as a form of intense abuse, or torture is defined as who is doing the torturing and why.
This implies that torture is worse than abuse, which is the whole problem in the first place - torture isn't worse than abuse. No such thing as Just Abuse. I think as long as people generally think abuse is mild and torture is severe, they will continue to conflate the terms. (Not meaning to attack you, @shimmerz - you've just given a good example of it, is all)
Sadists are sadistic. Torturers torture. I do not think they are automatically the same, or interchangeable.
