elieve that full memory of these events will reveal their "true" guilt.
As individuals do begin to review and deal with past abuse," Gil reports that they undergo intense feelings of anger toward their parents, an upwelling of much of the fear they felt as children but suppressed, and intense shame over accepting them-selves as abused children. However, in time, these feelings are replaced with relief in that they are now freed of the energy drain devoted to suppressing their thoughts and feelings regarding the abuse.
While authors such as Gil have examined the psychological/ behavioral ramifications of abuse, other researchers have
explored for the determinants of abuse. For example, Schlesinger and Revitch (1983) have presented an extensive discussion of the origins of sexual abuse in children and a comprehensive review of the literature on the origins of physical abuse has been provided by Gelfand, Jenson and Drew (1982).
Regarding the origins of physical abuse, Gelfand and associates (1982) have noted that there are several sets of factors responsible for childhood abuse. In this regard, one set of factors is parental characteristics. First, abusive parents tend to believe strongly in physical punishment as a means of disciplining children. Second, parents are more likely to be abusers if they were themselves abused as children. Perhaps the most important of parent characteristics associated with abuse is the fact that the majority of abusive parents have extremely un-realistic expectations and notions of how to manage children. In this regard, they tend to believe that children are always quiet and well behaved, or always loving and to feel that the best method of getting children to behave this way is through attack and assault. They tend to interpret children's failure to behave in accord with these unrealistic expectations as a form of
personal attack against themselves and their parental authority.