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A letter to the editor in response to the first installment of this series suggested a shift in focus from the psychology of the victim to that of the abuser, and that it "hold abusers accountable for their own behavior."
In calling attention to the potential "victim-blaming" language in Part One, the point was well made. However, literally focusing on the psychology of the abusers, as it turns out, is easier said than done. This is because it is usually the victim, not the abuser, who seeks help; as a result, psychologists still don't know much about abusers.
The problem is that, as part and parcel of being abusive, abusers tend not to be willing to hold themselves responsible for their own behavior. "Every now and then, I get someone in therapy whose wife has insisted that they get help with their abuse problem. They usually leave after a few sessions," says Dr. Louise Miglionico, a Burlington psychologist, "and I have never had someone call me and say, 'I'm beating my wife or my partner, can you please help me stop?'"
As for court-mandated counseling programs, they tend to be short in duration, poorly supervised, and ultimately unsuccessful; about 85 percent of batterers who go through such counseling eventually return to their abusive ways.
This dearth of meaningful contact with abusers has left therapists and criminologists unable to do much but speculate about what makes abusers do what they do.
There are many theories that attempt to explain what makes people commit violence within their intimate relationships, but none of these theories have yet provided a satisfactory explanation.
In its early exploration of the nature of aggression, the neurological theory claimed that abusers suffer from a brain disorder and have a neurological disposition towards violence. But it did not explain why abusers often target only their intimate partners and only under certain conditions, or how they conceal their violent natures from the general public.
The sociological feminist theory blames reliance on violence as a control mechanism in our patriarchal families and society. This is a tempting theory, since the majority of abusers are men beating women, and since society has been slow to react to domestic violence. But it fails to explain why most men, in spite of these influences in society, don't beat their wives. It also cannot account for domestic violence within same-sex relationships.
Social learning theorists posit that abusers are abusive because they were abused or witnessed violence during their childhood. This is also a tempting theory, since most abusers do have a childhood history involving abuse. However, one study of the public at large estimates that only 40 percent of those abused as children go on to become abusive themselves, making childhood abuse an indirect cause at best.
One recent theory proposed by Donald G. Dutton in The Abusive Personality is that there is an abusive personality type closely related to what psychologists call "borderline personality disorder." Dutton groups abusers into three categories: overcontrolled, generally violent (psychopathic), and borderline/cyclical.
Psychopathic batterers usually display "a lack of capacity to empathize; a tendency to use violence for control and instrumental gain; and frequently, a history of antisocial actions and crime." In fact, their use of violence is so instrumental in nature that their heart rates actually decline during heated arguments.
Overcontrolled abusers "deny their rage while experiencing chronic frustration and resentment," and actually try to avoid conflict. They are passive, dependent, often passive-aggressive, and rather infrequent abusers; they are a risk for spousal homicide.
But it is the third category, cyclical, that most abusers seem to fall into. Most former victims describe their abusers as having a "Jekyll and Hyde" personality that goes through regular cycles and that is generally concealed from everyone except their intimate partners. That description is inconsistent with what is known about both psychopaths and overcontrolled individuals. Cyclical batterers, by contrast, "have abuse that is frequent, predatory, and confined to their intimate relationship. They appear 'normal' - even likeable - in other relationships. They are hard to detect, and they are dangerous." This category is the focus of Dutton's work.
Dutton, who has worked with a large number of assaultive men, believes that "borderline personality organization" is the one designation in the DSM-IV that most accurately describes the personality of the cyclical batterer. Individuals with BPO suffer from regular states of anger, anxiety, or euphoria, mood shifts that cannot be attributed to external factors; wavering energy levels and irregular sleep cycles; recurring self-destructive thoughts and a tendency to redeem moody behavior through self-derogation; a preoccupation with securing affection; fear of abandonment, isolation, and loss; and a tendency to feel conflicting emotions toward others, most notably love, rage, and guilt. Says Dutton, "If you change criterion 3 to read, 'redeems moody behavior through derogation of a significant other,' you would have a description of wife assaulters."
Indeed, it is the habit of "victim-blaming" that is perhaps the hallmark of cyclical abusers. Unlike psychopathic abusers, cyclical abusers do actually have some feelings of guilt. Since these "pangs of conscience" are painful, abusers find any of a number of ways of reconstructing what they have done and deflecting responsibility onto the victim. Abusers tell themselves and their victims things like "there's something about you that just brings this out in me" or "I wouldn't be such a bitch if you just lost some weight."
Cyclical batterers and people with BPO share a tendency to go through cycles; in fact, several years ago, BPO was referred to as "cyclical personality."
For cyclical batterers, there are three main stages. In the "tension-building" first stage, the abuser is often moody, nitpicky, or verbally abusive. Next comes the battering stage, in which unexpressed irritability explodes into an abusive outburst. The battering is followed immediately by the "contrition stage," in which the abuser begs forgiveness, promises to go to AA or be sober, gives gifts, wants to make love, and declares undying love and devotion. Once the victim returns, the cycle begins again.
Another common trait to both BPO individuals and batterers is separation anxiety. People with BPO suffer from intense separation anxiety, "dreading potential loss while chronically anticipating it, 'seeing it happening, when in fact it is not.'" Most wife-beaters Dutton has worked with respond most emotionally to hypothetical scenarios in which they perceive abandonment, as when a wife announces to her husband that she wants to visit a nearby town for a long weekend with female friends. The batterers, according to Dutton, "perceived the man [in this scenario] as being humiliated by the wife's demands," while healthy men "hardly even saw them as demands."
Finally, both BPO sufferers and abusers have difficulty maintaining strong, clear self-images and often depend upon relationships to define themselves. As a result, they place unrealistically high demands upon both their relationships and their partners; when their demands are not met, they can react as if their very lives are threatened.
Dutton believes that the roots of abusers' problems lie in very early childhood. He speculates that most batterers were not only abused, but grew up in atmospheres where their very souls and identities were threatened. In his discussion of object relations theory, which focuses on an infant's early maternal attachment, Dutton turns to the work of Dr. David Celani, a published scholar and psychologist practicing in Winooski. Celani devoted much of his The Illusion of Love to the topic of domestic abusers. Dutton's discussion of an identity-threatening environment is also similar to that described in Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Children of Narcissists and Their Struggle for Self.
All of these books indicate that a person raised in a household where narcissistic family members suppressed her sense of self, and where she was exposed to abuse that could later serve as a model for her own behavior, would have all the elements of an abusive personality type. Furthermore, many people with this abusive personality type may not yet realize that they have potential for violence, especially if they have not yet been in a long-term relationship.
Up to this point, society has done little to help abusers; most domestic violence programs focus solely upon protecting and supporting the victims.
However, the Internet does boast at least one Web site worth mentioning: Blain Nelson's Abuse Pages, at www.blainn.cc/abuse. This site provides a list of questions to help readers determine whether their own behavior is abusive. It also offers Abuser Recovery Information, which includes details about several newsgroups and mailing lists abusers can join in order to converse with other "recovering abusers."
But in the absence of extensive community resources, dealing with the problem means facing some unpleasant realities.
Abusers must realize that, value judgements and explanations aside, hitting a partner, harassing him, and destroying his property are crimes, crimes for which one can actually go to prison if and when a victim chooses to press charges.
Further, if the victim has already left the relationship over the abuse, the abuser must realize that any contact with her will tend to slow her recovery process - even if that contact is just a phone call or a letter to apologize.
What can be done for abusers, and whether they can ever be cured, depends largely on their willingness and ability to look at themselves, a common goal for all people in therapy, but one which is particularly difficult for those with abusive personalities.
This concludes OITM's series on same-sex domestic violence.
