Patricia Evans

The Verbally Abusive Relationship, in 1992, named a pattern that had no accepted name: not violence, but the steady redefinition of somebody's reality through withholding, countering, trivialising and blame until they cannot say what is happening to them. It has stayed in print for thirty years and is the book advocates hand to people who cannot explain why they feel wrong. Evans worked as a consultant rather than as a clinician and built the categories from interviews with hundreds of women. Those categories are now standard vocabulary among people working in the field, which almost never happens to a trade paperback.