From mindjustice.org:

“Under the peculiar conditions of psychological torture, victims, isolated from others, form “emotional ties to their tormentors” that make them responsive to a perverse play in which they are both audience and actor, subject and object—in a script that often leaves them not just disoriented but emotionally and psychologically damaged, in some cases for the rest of their lives. “”(A Question of Torture, 10)

Comment:

Those who believe that only physical aggression is “real” violence; that only physical rape is “real” rape, that only physical property is “real” property, should look through the results of the greatest practical inquiry into the functioning of human beings under coercion – the US government’s research into mind-control – and reconsider.

In Language of Empire (Monthly Review Press, 2005), I devoted a chapter – Theater of Pain –  to this aspect of torture.