The problem of classifying the manifestations of psychological violence

The article develops a classification of manifestations of psychological violence. The study problematizes the current state of the classification of psychological violence, discusses the terminology and the attrib-utes of violent activity, suggests a model of the psychological violence process, considers empirical pre-requisites for the classification, and formulates the main «axes» describing various forms of psychologi-cal violence. Psychological violence is seen as a communicative process or activity in which the commu-nicator implements the following tasks in a variety of ways: a) delivery of a destructive message that vio-lates the psychological conditions for the realization of subjective functions; b) neutralization of «noises», i.e., increasing the receiver’s receptivity to these messages and to controlling other sources of infor-mation. Based on the theoretical analysis of the literature and on empirical material (description of specif-ic forms of psychological violence presented in 49 relevant publications), two main «axes» have been formed that describe the forms of psychological violence. One «axis» groups the forms of violence ac-cording to a specific method of delivering destructive content to the object of violence, the other one rep-resents the structural complexity of this form, its place in the structure of violent activity. The main re-sults are as follows: description of the variety of actions carried out by a subject of violence as a means of implementing communicative tasks; identification of deprivation as a type of psychological violence, along with its «direct» and «indirect» versions; conclusion about the minimal unit of analysis of violent activity as an action with a corresponding intention. These results can serve as a basis for developing a methodology for identification and assessment of the impact of psychological violence as well as can be used in research questionnaires.