NCJ Number
108743
Journal
Journal of Family Violence Volume: 2 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1987) Pages: 335-349
Date Published
1987
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Kohlberg's theory of moral development is used to explain the change process of men who batter their wives and to provide a rationale for intervention.
Abstract
According to Kohlberg, moral development proceeds along six stages with differing orientations: obedience and punishment, naive egoism, 'good-boy', authority and social-order maintaining, contractual and legalistic, and conscience or principle orientation. These correspond to Piaget's three stages of egocentrism, other-orientation, and abstract reasoning. During treatment, the wife batterer is helped to move from denial and an egocentric mode of thinking to self-change and relationship-building as he seeks to gain approval from others and feel better about himself. In the final stage, personal transformation, the abusive male seeks to better himself through helping others and begins to adopt ethical principles with regard to human dignity and a just society. Differing interventions and modalities are appropriate to each stage: constraint, confrontation, behavior management, emotive development, and self-concept restructuring. 26 references and 2 tables.