Considering it's a real life example, would be comparing spanking to torture (what), and thereby implying that spanking means you're evil...best to just not touch this one.
In the intro, we have:
This trope finds some justification in Real Life, where the cycle of "abusee turns abuser" is well known and documented. And that's ignoring how many an anti-hero becomes semi-evil after some sort of tragedy — emotional pain and trauma, if you will.
Contrary to popular belief, Real Life research has shown that abusees becoming abusers, "The Cycle of Abuse", is largely a myth. See the Real Life section of this trope for more information.
These can't both be true. Which is it?
Edited by Mikeavelli
I'm disputing the these two examples from Firefly, given that they're not really about torture making you evil, just psychologically unbalanced.
- While Mal isn't turned evil when he's tortured in War Stories, he does become extremely violent shortly after escaping. Given that he is attacking the guy who was torturing him, this seems pretty justified.
- It is implied in the R.Tam Sessions that this may have been part of the reason why River killed the "counselor" - what the Academy was doing to her drove her to violently retaliate against anyone she could lash out at.
Take them out. This trope is about torture making someone evil persistently after the fact, not torture making the tortured want to lash out against the torturer, which is a pretty reasonable response.
I think the quote means that people who are unhealthy in that they are psychologically self-tortured. This doesn't make it a bad quote for this page, but if it is read as "being tortured makes you evil" the statement lacks a sense of logical integrity imo.
I remember hearing about a study or studies that implied that parents who received corporal punishment as children are more likely to punish their own children similarly. Has anyone else heard of this one and if so know where it came from? And would it be relevant to this trope?
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