Defining "emotional abuse" and "psychological abuse" is a task
made difficult by uncertainty as to whether or not such terms are
synonomous and/or interchangeable. There is an increasing tendency in
child protection literature to regard them as synonomous, or at least,
to make little distinction between them. The purpose of this paper is
to explore the origins of this tendency, and to provide an alternative
view, namely, that the terms are not synonomous, and there should be
different definitions for each. Existing commonly used definitions are
reviewed. The definitions that this paper provides stem from important
concepts in emotional and psychological development.