ABSTRACT
D Child Abuse in Family Context The use of coercive strategies such as rewards, and their impact on abuse survivors, highlights the relational/interpersonal components of the abuse experience overtly described in the second portion [(b)] of Finkelhor's (1990) fourth point. The trauma/PTSD model continues to be the one most closely associated with conceptualizing child abuse. The literature on child abuse and its long-term effects, therefore, is strongly dominated, both explicitly and implicitly, by this formulation. Nonetheless, a comparatively small but growing body of clinicaL theoreticaL and empirical literature is progressively articulating an alternate framework for understanding abuse and its effects. This vision has taken on a variety of forms. However, those authors sharing this general perspective emphasize the interpersonal and social features and atmosphere surrounding the abuse experience, rather than directing their attention mainly to the specifics of the discrete abuse event.
