According to Tomlinson-Keasey (1985), child abuse is of such proportions that each day in this country, abusive parents are responsible for the deaths of two children. In addition, about 500,000 children are beaten, burned, thrown and generally battered without losing their lives; and these figures represent a low estimate because: (1) they do not include emotional and verbal abuse; and (2) not all cases of physical abuse are re-ported. Moreover, this estimate does not include cases of sexual abuse which Adams and Tucker (1982) estimate occurs to thousands more children.
Over the last two decades there has been extensive research aimed at determining the psychological and behavioral con-sequences that result from individuals being abused as children. The purpose of this paper is to review a sampling of this re-search and so arrive at a clinical profile of adults who have been abused as children.
Studies of Adults Abused as Children
Eliana Gil (1983) has noted that examination of clients presenting themselves for psychotherapy evidences certain be-havioral patterns, which are reliably associated with their being abused as children. In general, these patterns include: (1) difficulties finding and maintaining employment; (2) alcohol problems; (3) problems related to marriage to an abusive spouse; (4) depression; and (5) a general and pervasive feeling of "wandering" through life without goals or direction.
In almost every case of people with psychological and be-havioral problems stemming from childhood abuse, Gil (1983) has noted that clients tend to rationalize and minimize their parents abusive behavior utilizing selective memory in which the most negative situations are only partially recalled. She attributes this process of selective memory to the fact that many victims of child abuse secretly feel guilty and responsible for what happened to them. Therefore, they fear being able to remember events because they b...