Editorial note: This article uses the terms “torture,” “torment,” and “psychological pressure” analytically, not as a final legal finding. It does not claim that any named person has committed torture in the legal sense. It examines a broader public-interest question: how procedures, pressure, repeated demands, public shaming, data access, institutional persistence, and unresolved official emotion can become psychologically destructive when used against a person over time.

Emotionalized power and procedural torment: what psychological pressure gives to people who use it

Responsibility is necessary. A society without responsibility quickly sinks into moral swamp. If a person creates debt, harms creditors, hides assets, misleads institutions, violates reporting duties, or breaks legal obligations, the state must be able to respond. Courts, tax authorities, insolvency bodies and regulators exist for a reason.

But responsibility has another side. The state must also be responsible. Officials must also be responsible. Procedures must also be responsible. Public power must be purposeful, proportionate, explainable and limited.

When the state uses proceedings, queries, liability decisions, bankruptcy procedures, public money, letters, deadlines, official accusations, public reputational pressure and institutional persistence against a person, this is not only a legal process. It is also a psychological event.

It affects the person’s nervous system, health, family life, identity, work ability, future planning, trust in society and relationship with the state.

That is why long-running state pressure deserves analysis not only legally, but psychologically. The deepest question is not only whether a specific proceeding is technically lawful. The deeper question is:

At what point does responsibility become torment?

And even more uncomfortably:

What does such torment give to the person or institution using it?

Procedure does not act only on paper

Bureaucracy often sees the citizen as a file. A file has dates, letters, decisions, deadlines, registry entries, replies, complaints, claims and references to legal provisions. A file does not sleep badly. A file does not wake up at night. A file does not have children. A file does not sit at dinner while mentally preparing for the next official letter.

A person does.

When a person’s life is tied for months or years to procedures, this does not remain neutral background noise. It becomes a chronic psychological load. Every letter may feel like a threat. Every official notification may raise the pulse. Every new demand may activate the same internal question: how long will this continue?

If the procedure is clear, proportionate and purposeful, the person can at least understand the conflict. He may disagree, but he knows what the fight is about.

When procedures repeat, overlap, stretch, expand, or appear hopeless, the psychological effect changes. The person no longer feels that he is dealing with one concrete legal problem. He feels that he is fighting a system.

Fighting one problem is hard.

Fighting a system is existentially exhausting.

A single problem has shape. A system can feel like fog with hands coming out of it.

The shift from accountability to torment

Accountability has a legitimate goal. It asks: what happened, who is responsible, what harm occurred, what remedy is lawful, what public interest is protected, and what outcome is proportionate?

Torment has a different structure. It may still use legal language, but psychologically it begins to ask different questions:

How long can pressure be maintained?

How much uncertainty can the person tolerate?

How much public humiliation can he absorb?

How many letters, deadlines, procedures, accusations or inquiries can be placed into his life?

How far can he be pushed before he reacts badly?

And once he reacts badly, can that reaction be used as proof that the pressure was justified?

This is one of the most dangerous dynamics in public power. A system may pressure a person until he becomes more reactive, more aggressive, more desperate or less diplomatic. Then the system points to his reaction and says: look, he is the problem.

Objectively, that is a serious ethical problem. If pressure helps produce the behavior later used to justify more pressure, the process becomes self-validating.

The citizen is no longer merely being held accountable. He is being shaped into evidence against himself.

Emotionalized power: when official emotion enters procedure

Public officials are human. They can feel fear, anger, disgust, humiliation, resentment, moral outrage, contempt or personal injury. If a citizen insults them, attacks them publicly, accuses them, investigates them, mocks them, or challenges their authority, emotional reactions are understandable.

But a rule-of-law state exists precisely because public power must not be governed by emotion.

The official may feel anger. The procedure must not become angry.

The official may feel fear. The procedure must not become fearful.

The official may feel humiliated. The procedure must not become revenge.

The official may dislike the citizen. The procedure must remain neutral.

The danger begins when emotion finds a legal costume. The official does not say, “I want to hurt him.” The official says, “We are using all legal options.” The official does not say, “He made me feel powerless.” The official says, “Public interest requires further action.” The official does not say, “I want him to learn a lesson.” The official says, “He must understand responsibility.”

This is how emotionalized power works. The emotion is not admitted. It is translated into procedure.

That translation is psychologically dangerous because it gives subjective emotion an objective-looking form. The letter has a legal reference. The decision has a file number. The request has a deadline. The demand looks administrative. But the internal motor may be personal irritation, fear or resentment.

When that happens, law can become a weapon while still looking like law.

What torment gives to the person using it

To analyze procedural torment objectively, one must ask what it gives to the person or institution using it. People rarely continue pressure that gives them nothing psychologically. Even when they believe they are acting for justice, there may be hidden rewards.

The first reward is control.

If a citizen has made an official feel attacked, embarrassed or powerless, procedure restores asymmetry. The citizen may write, complain, accuse, publish or insult. But the official or institution controls deadlines, formats, access, decisions, procedural tempo and official language. This restores the feeling: I am still the one with power.

The second reward is moral superiority.

By framing the citizen as irresponsible, dangerous, dishonest, aggressive or problematic, the person using pressure can feel morally elevated. The conflict is no longer between two imperfect human beings. It becomes a struggle between order and disorder, responsibility and irresponsibility, civilization and chaos.

That moral framing is intoxicating. It allows harshness to feel clean.

The third reward is emotional discharge without confession.

An official cannot openly express personal revenge. But every additional demand, delay, refusal, file expansion, formal correction or public statement may carry a small hidden discharge of anger. The person can feel: I am not being emotional; I am enforcing rules.

The fourth reward is self-protection.

If a citizen is asking uncomfortable questions about the official or the institution, attacking the citizen’s credibility may reduce the pressure on the institution. The question is no longer “what did the institution do?” It becomes “who is this problematic person asking the question?”

The fifth reward is group bonding.

Institutions bond around shared threat. A difficult citizen can become a symbolic enemy who helps the group feel united. Officials may not consciously conspire. But they may begin to share a defensive emotional frame: this person is attacking us, this person is dangerous, this person must be contained.

The sixth reward is sadistic satisfaction, in the broad psychological sense.

This does not always mean crude enjoyment of pain. More often it means a subtle satisfaction in seeing the other person lose certainty, time, energy, reputation or composure. The pressured person becomes smaller, more reactive, more dependent on institutional responses. For someone who felt attacked, that shrinking of the other may feel like justice.

That is why procedural torment can be so morally dangerous: it allows the person using power to feel righteous while receiving psychological rewards from another person’s suffering.

What may cause it

Procedural torment can arise from several psychological causes. Not all require conscious malice.

One cause is narcissistic injury. When a person in authority is publicly criticized, mocked or investigated, he or she may experience the criticism not as part of public accountability but as a personal humiliation. The official role becomes fused with the ego. An attack on the office feels like an attack on the self.

Another cause is fear. If the citizen is intense, unpredictable, angry or publicly aggressive, the official may begin to experience him as a threat. Fear can justify increasingly harsh measures. The official may believe that pressure is defensive, not punitive.

A third cause is resentment toward active people. Bureaucratic personalities may sometimes resent highly agentic, entrepreneurial, risk-taking or confrontational individuals. The active person moves, creates, breaks, challenges, fights and refuses passivity. To a passive control-oriented personality, that energy may feel morally offensive. The desire to “put him in his place” can then disguise itself as order.

A fourth cause is institutional self-protection. When a citizen’s claims threaten the reputation of an agency, the agency may instinctively protect itself. This does not require a conspiracy. It can happen through small defensive acts: technical replies, delayed clarity, refusal to personalize responsibility, emphasis on the citizen’s past faults, and selective framing of the facts.

A fifth cause is moral absolutism without self-reflection. The official sees the citizen as a wrongdoer and therefore stops asking whether the state’s own conduct is proportionate. Once the citizen is classified as “bad,” almost any pressure begins to feel justified.

A sixth cause is the absence of feedback. Citizens often have fewer tools than institutions. If an official overreaches, the consequences may be slow, diffuse or nonexistent. Without real accountability, emotionalized use of procedure becomes easier.

A seventh cause is bureaucratic dissociation. The official sees only the file, not the life behind the file. The human effects — insomnia, fear, family tension, health decline, reputational collapse — are treated as outside the procedure. This allows the procedure to continue without moral interruption.

Why active people are especially vulnerable to this dynamic

Active people often suffer more intensely under procedural pressure because their identity is built around agency. They experience themselves as causes, not objects. They want to build, move, solve, fight, argue, create, risk and correct reality.

When such a person is trapped in a procedure that moves slowly, answers technically, expands unpredictably or refuses plain clarity, the psychological frustration becomes enormous.

The active person does not merely feel punished. He feels ontologically inverted. He is used to acting on the world. Now the world acts on him through letters, deadlines, decisions and institutional silence.

This can create escalating behavior. The more passive and opaque the system becomes, the harder the active person pushes. The harder he pushes, the more the system frames him as aggressive. The more aggressive he appears, the more the system justifies continued pressure.

This is how an active citizen can be converted into a procedural enemy.

The system may then claim that it is responding to his aggression, while ignoring how its own opacity, delay and pressure helped produce that aggression.

Health consequences: chronic stress is not abstract

Long-term conflict with state power can produce chronic stress. Chronic stress means that the body does not fully exit readiness mode. The nervous system keeps waiting for danger.

Sleep may worsen. Blood pressure may rise. Irritability may increase. Concentration may decline. The person may become defensive, suspicious, impatient, obsessive or emotionally reactive. None of this necessarily means the person is weak. It means the human organism is not designed for endless procedural war.

The most tragic aspect is that stress reactions can later be used against the person. If he becomes angry, he is called aggressive. If he becomes suspicious, he is called paranoid. If he writes too much, he is called obsessive. If he investigates officials, he is called hostile. If he defends himself intensely, he is called unstable.

But a fair analysis must ask: how much of this reaction was produced by the pressure?

A rule-of-law state should not create a condition in which a person becomes a worse version of himself and then use that deterioration as justification for further pressure.

Family consequences: torment does not stay in the office

Procedure does not remain inside the administrative file. It comes home.

If a father, mother, son, spouse or sibling is constantly in conflict with the state, the family feels it. Children feel the mood. Partners feel the tension. Parents feel the fear. The home atmosphere changes.

A person under chronic official pressure may be physically present but psychologically still inside the proceeding. He reads documents. He prepares replies. He anticipates the next move. He checks email. He rehearses arguments. He loses emotional availability.

This is why proportionality is not only a legal principle. It is a family-protection principle.

The existence of a family does not exempt anyone from responsibility. But it does require the state to ask whether continued pressure is necessary, effective and proportionate. If a proceeding produces little public benefit but damages family stability, the state is no longer making a merely administrative choice. It is making a moral choice.

Reputational consequences: public conflict as a second punishment

Public reputation can become a second punishment. A person may still be legally contesting matters, but socially he is already marked as a problem.

Once the public picture becomes “debtor,” “business-ban person,” “dangerous complainer,” “aggressive litigant,” or “problematic citizen,” the person is fighting not only a file. He is fighting an identity imposed on him.

This can affect banking, business partners, platforms, future opportunities, family reputation, children, and the person’s own belief that rebuilding is possible.

For active people, this is especially destructive. Their identity is often connected to action, competence and creation. If the state helps turn them publicly into a toxic figure, their future agency is damaged.

Therefore the state must be careful. It must not create reputational destruction unless the facts and public interest clearly justify it. Procedure should not become social execution by paperwork.

The bureaucratic pleasure of watching the file grow

There is a darkly comic image at the center of procedural torment: the file grows while the person shrinks.

The file receives new letters.

The file receives replies.

The file receives deadlines.

The file receives decisions.

The file becomes thicker, more impressive, more official.

The person becomes tired.

The file does not have blood pressure.

The file does not have children.

The file does not wake up at night.

The file does not wonder whether life can ever restart.

If a state begins to love the file more than the human being, the procedure becomes morally dangerous.

A rule-of-law state should not exist to feed files. It should exist to achieve justice.

Objective balance: responsibility yes, torment no

The objective position is not that every difficult citizen is innocent. It is not that every entrepreneur is a hero. It is not that every public official is cruel. It is not that every proceeding is torment.

Responsibility is necessary.

But responsibility must have form, limit and purpose.

If the person owes money, the claim must be lawful.

If assets were hidden, evidence must support that conclusion.

If public money is used, the public purpose must be clear.

If the state continues a proceeding, the expected result must be explainable.

If data is accessed, the legal basis must be clear.

If reputational damage is created, the public interest must justify it.

If pressure affects family and health, the state must be able to explain why that pressure is unavoidable.

Without such explanation, the process may still look legal on paper, but psychologically it begins to resemble punishment by exhaustion.

Final assessment: the state must know how to win without destroying

The deeper issue is not whether a state can win a proceeding. Of course it can. The state has resources, authority, databases, official language, lawyers, time and institutional continuity.

The deeper issue is whether the state can win without destroying the person unnecessarily.

A serious rule-of-law state does not need to break a person to prove a point.

It does not need to convert emotion into procedure.

It does not need to use public money to continue symbolic punishment.

It does not need to let a file eat a life.

It does not need to make an uncomfortable citizen into an enemy of the state.

It can hold people responsible while still remaining calm, proportionate, human and accountable.

That is the difference between justice and torment.

Justice solves a problem.

Torment feeds on a person.

And when public power begins to feed on the person it is supposed to process fairly, the problem is no longer only legal.

It is psychological.

It is moral.

And it is a public-interest issue of the highest order.