NCJ Number
154507
Journal
Counseling Psychologist Volume: 22 Issue: 4 Dated: (October 1994) Pages: 539-582
Date Published
1994
Length
44 pages
Annotation
This article reviews the clinical, theoretical, and empirical literature on wife abuse and wife abusers in order to provide answers to why men abuse their wives and what can be done to stop them.
Abstract
The author discusses relevant historical and contextual information, presents an overview of domestic violence, and describes the evolution and current status of public and professional awareness and response. The review includes research studies and discursive papers that view wife abusers from sociopolitical and psychological perspectives. The author proposes an integrated model for understanding etiological, dynamic, and intervention issues and concludes with a discussion of clinical and research implications and recommendations. She indicates that the clinician who provides treatment services to wife abusers walks a thin line between therapeutic advocacy of the client and responsible accountability to the victim. Therapeutic issues of confidentiality and privilege are both complex and controversial. Based on the perspective of the ecological theory of male violence toward female intimates, the author suggests that researchers need to document the extent and correlation of selected variables within each layer of influence. In addition to batterer-versus-nonbatterer comparisons, researchers need to contrast intrapsychic, interpersonal, and sociocultural data within the population of batterers. 184 references, 1 table, and 3 figures