Domestic Violence and Psychology

Critical Perspectives on Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse

Paula Nicolson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780815385226
• eBook ISBN: 9781351202053
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Despite changes to laws and policies across most western democracies intended to combat violence to women, intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA) remains discouragingly commonplace.

Domestic Violence and Psychology: Critical Perspectives on Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse showcases women's harrowing stories of living with and leaving violent partners, offering a psychological perspective on domestic violence and developing a theoretical framework for examining the context, intentions and experiences in the lives of people who experience abuse and abuse themselves.

Nicolson provides an analysis of survivors' real-life stories, and thoughts about IPVA. The attitudes of the general public and health and social care professionals are also presented and discussed. The theoretical perspective employs three levels of evidence – the material (context), discursive (explanations) and intrapsychic (emotional). Domestic Violence and Psychology is divided into three parts accordingly, engaging qualitative data from interviews and quantitative data from surveys to illustrate these theoretical perspectives. Although many pro-feminist sociologists and activists firmly believe that any attempt to explain domestic violence potentially condones it, this book takes up the challenge to make a compelling case demonstrating how we need to widen understanding of the psychology of survivors and their intimate relationships if we are to defeat IPVA.

The new edition has been updated to include the latest developments in IPVA research and practice, and in particular examines the impact of a violent and abusive family life on all members, including children. This is essential reading for students, academics and professionals interested in domestic abuse, as well as professionals and practitioners, including psychologists, social workers, the police, prison officers, probation staff, policy makers, and charity workers.

Part 1

The context

1

What is intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA)?

Introduction

Thirty years ago ‘wife abuse’ didn’t exist; there were no ‘battered women’ or ‘abusive men’. Of course that doesn’t mean that men were not being violent toward women. Rather it means that the social problem … was not yet in the public consciousness.

Loseke, 2001: 107

When I was researching my family history for my recent book Genealogy, Psychology and Identity (Nicolson, 2016), I discovered that my paternal grandmother, Elizabeth, separated from her husband, Cuthbert Clark, before meeting my grandfather. No-one had ever told me about this and neither had I ever been aware of any family secrets. The young couple had only been married for a year. They had married when he was 22 and she 19. They were both theatre people. He was a composer of some note and she an actress and dancer, but the records show that she left him because of his cruelty and violence. As far as I know there were no consequences for Clark. He went on to marry later and have children. My grandmother met my grandfather and they were together until he died. She must have been an amazing woman to have left her abuser in the nineteenth century.

Histories of family life and gender–power relations have revealed that physical and mental cruelty to women and children were typically taken for granted as part of ‘normal’ family relations for centuries (Gordon, 1988). Domestic violence and abuse, now understood more broadly as intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA), generally takes place away from the public gaze, making it easy to ignore, diminish and/or deny (Zink et al., 2004; Heise, Pitanguy & Germain, 1994; Jecker, 1993; Berns, 2017). Therefore, even in sophisticated western democratic societies, recognition that violent behaviour in the private sphere ‘counts’ along with publicly committed violence and coercive control is a relatively new concept.

The latter part of the twentieth into the twenty-first century saw significant changes (McCauley et al., 1995; Gottman & Notarius, 2002) so that now, in law and in general, violence, abuse and cruelty, both in the home and towards an intimate partner in public, are without doubt as unacceptable as they are when similar acts occur to strangers in a public place (Pearshouse, 2008; Römkens, 2006). It is only during the past 25 to 30 years, though, that domestic violence and abuse have reached the top of the public criminal (Sacco, 2015), health (Breiding, 2015; Salmon, Baird & White, 2015), legal, social care (Rogers & Parkinson, 2018) and academic agendas, with research evidence now providing the core of practitioner training and guidelines for good practice (Sleath, Walker & Tramontano, 2017).

A burgeoning combination of campaigning (Robinson, 2017), advocacy (Teresi et al., 2016; Hague & Mullender, 2006) and research on domestic violence and abuse across the world (Bostock, Plumpton & Pratt, 2009; Walker, 2015) has been successful in placing concern over domestic abuse and violence high on the political and public agendas (Wuest & Merritt-Gray, 2001). This work has had a direct and irrevocable influence on clinical, health and social care practice (Berns, 2017; Crabtree-Nelson, Grossman & Lundy, 2016; Robinson, 2017), justice (Sullivan, Price, Bellucci & Hill, 2017), resource allocation and policy (Breckenridge & Mulroney, 2007). It has also made an impact on attitudes (Worden & Carlson, 2005; Gracia, 2014).

Thus, it may still be true to say that:

…advocates for battered women some thirty years ago took a strong and uncompromising stance that all violence against women is best dealt with as a crime, that it reflects the patriarchal nature of society, and that any attempt to examine couple dynamics in domestic violence adds to battered women’s victimisation. At the same time, some aspects of domestic violence were, of necessity, left out of the advocacy movement’s analysis. In order to advance an important social change agenda, advocates downplayed …the wish many victims have to stay with their abusive partners, albeit without continued violence.

Stith, Rosen and McCollum, 2003: 423

How does one manage the dilemma of being both pro-feminist advocating for women’s safety, and respecting the women who say they wish to remain with their partners and be supported to do so (Laidler & Mann, 2008)? Inevitably ideological disparities have emerged between some academics and women’s advocates (see, e.g., Kirkwood, 1993; Mullender & Morley, 2001; Loseke, Gelles & Cavanaugh, 2005; Hester, Jones, Williamson, Fahmy & Feder, 2017).

Questions about the nature and extent of women’s violence to men, violence within LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual and Queer) relationships, whether growing up with domestic violence influences adult behaviour of men and/or women, the impact of patriarchy and misogyny, and gender–power relations have not been resolved (Bowen, 2018; Badenes-Ribera, Bonilla-Campos, Frias-Navarro, Pons-Salvador & Monterde-i-Bort, 2016; Renzetti & Miley, 2014).

Navigating this intricate area, pitting psychology up against sociology, feminism against traditional psychology, qualitative versus quantitative research, in order to make a contribution to the security of women’s lives, continue to pose a major challenge.

In the following I examine some of the social, cultural and historical connections between all the key players as they impact upon naming, defining, identifying and understanding the scope and impact of what is most commonly referred to as domestic violence and/or domestic abuse and now IPVA. I then outline the possibilities provided by a material-discursive intrapsychic theoretical approach.

Describing IPVA

There has been an evolution in the way IPVA has been described and defined over the years. Wife battering (Appleton, 1980) progressed to be known domestic violence (Berrios & Grady, 1991), followed by the term domestic abuse in recognition that violence does not only take a physical form. Abuse provided the opportunity to include control, economic abuse, humiliation and isolation of the partner. Family violence (Knudsen, 2017) often used in the USA to include domestic abuse was identified as too broad to describe the abuse of an intimate partner. More recently, intimate partner violence became an even more wide-ranging term, followed now by IPVA as an even more inclusive term (Jewkes, 2002), bringing in the concept of coercive control (Hardesty et al., 2015; Bettinson & Bishop, 2015).

An updated (2018) British Home Office report¹ and guidance on domestic violence and abuse provides what it calls a new definition that is:

.. any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. The abuse can encompass, but is not limited to:

•psychological

•physical

•sexual

•financial

•emotional

Controlling behaviour

Controlling behaviour is a range of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour.

Coercive behaviour

Coercive behaviour is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim.

This is not a legal definition.

It still remains hard for victims/survivors to explain what it feels like to live with IPVA. Women’s experiences of life prior to an abusive relationship vary to such an extent that there is no global template or clearly defined line that is crossed for some of them between violence and non-violence (Ehrensaft, Knous-Westfall & Cohen, 2017). Expectations depend on early experiences of family life (Abramsky, Watts, García-Moreno, Devries, Kiss, Ellsberg, Jansen & Heise, 2011), as well as cultural context. Social norms vary between countries, communities and social groups (see Chapter 2) and sometimes even violence itself has different levels of meaning (McFarlane, Groff, O’Brien & Watson, 2006). Consequently, giving an experience meaning in any relationship requires pre-existing repertoires to enable individuals to name their experience. Linda Green (2010) talking about the experience of living with violent civil conflicts across the world makes the point:

How does one become socialised to terror? Does it imply conformity or acquiescence…? While it is true that with repetitiveness and familiarity people learn to accommodate themselves to terror and fear, low intensity panic remains in the shadow of waking consciousness. One cannot live in a constant state of alertness, and so the chaos one feels becomes diffused throughout the body.

Green, 2010: 186

This could equally be true of IPVA. This ‘socialization’ and ‘familiarity’ sometimes make it difficult for some women to see themselves as victim/survivors until sometime after it has happened and often they don’t recognize the full extent of the abuse until they are free from the perpetrator (Muehlenhard & Kimes, 1999). They may at the time experience the upsetting events simply as individual incidents which don’t necessarily paint the picture of themselves living in a violent relationship (Berns, 2017; Childress, 2018). It is possible to get used to someone’s bad and abusive behaviour so you see it as just ‘the way they are’. Connie² was typical in that:

… at the time I didn’t really know. I didn’t recognise it for what it was because I mean it was things like not speaking to you, like nudging you and bumping into you and at one point he pulled my hair and pushed me over, things like that. I just thought that was sort of like a bit over zealous but I didn’t really recognise it for the start off.

Most women, across many studies reported difficulty naming what was happening to them as abuse or domestic violence (Ferraro & Johnson, 1983; Hague & Mullender, 2005). As Lara reported:

In my case where there weren’t a lot, well it sounds a bit contradictory cause when I listen to what I am saying it sounds like there were a lot of physical abuse, but I didn’t think at the time there were a lot of physical abuse. And I didn’t sort of class myself as a person suffering domestic violence, just that I had got a really abusive husband, that’s all … Because most of his abuse were verbal … And I didn’t sort of when I first started going to the domestic violence project I used to feel a bit like sort of guilty, that I shouldn’t be there you know because I had not been getting beaten up every day I thought it didn’t count…when you leave you actually realise how bad things were.

In fact, Lara had been beaten up and thrown against a wall on the several occasions that her ex-husband had been out drinking. Somehow, though, it took a shift in her sense of herself to understand that she was experiencing IPVA. The psychological aspects of victimhood in this horrendous context make it hard for someone to be objective and reflect upon their own situation. The awareness that you are living with an abuser (rather than someone who behaves in certain ways) often creeps slowly into consciousness, by which time it is too late to simply leave. And then there is a sense of shame that this happened and possibly self-retribution for not having recognized IPVA.

Marilyn had had two abusive partners. Recognition of what was happening (particularly with the second man) left her with ‘Shame. I think that’s the big one’. But for her there was also the ‘wake-up call’ and then the:

Fear – the fact that if you do tell somebody then you have got to do something about it really. You’re … there’s no back up … you and your children living in the dark.

Marilyn’s previous experience of living with a violent man had made recognition that she was living with one once again even more frightening as she knew she had to name the experience but that would also compel her to act, particularly on behalf of her children. Then somehow she anticipated that flood gates would open and take away her control (see also Chapter 8).

Experiencing violence

Descriptions of incidents that women in the DASH study introduced into the interviews show the variety of abuse and violence that the men perpetrated and differences in how they dealt with it. Some women had always known their partners could act in violent ways, while others had never expected to witness or experience IPVA. Two women participants exemplify this.

Sandra, who was 22 when she was interviewed, described seeing her ex-partner of five years before they began living together ‘try and poke people’s eyes out and bite people’s noses off in fights’, so she was convinced his threats were authentic when:

… daily he used to tell me that if I leave him he knows where my nan lives, he’ll set their house on fire, he’ll kill my sister and he’ll cut my face wide open.

She did manage to leave him after he was imprisoned for assaulting someone else but was persuaded back to him after his release. Following their reconciliation, they went to another city to visit his mother but as they were driving back home (they were both drunk) he stopped the car and:

I was really drunk out of my head like concussed and he like pinned me down, do you know and ripped my tights and everything…. And I don’t know why I stayed with him after that because after he’d started, but didn’t do it properly, he started to have sex with me. I started crying and everything so he got off, so there’s me thinking ‘oh it’s right good that he stopped’… and there’s me thinking ‘he must care ’cos he stopped’. But after we got home he lost something in the flat and couldn’t find it so he started throwing the plates down stairs, at my head. You know the dinner plates and I was jumping like that and I was crying and he still had sex with me even though I didn’t want to and I was crying all the way through.

Sandra’s description and reflection on how she coped not only demonstrated violent and abusive behaviour on the part of her partner, but also hinted at how she was looking for some evidence, however small, that he cared for her. She initially thought he had stopped his sexual advance, which was the evidence she sought. But that he later continued to rape her while she cried and resisted remained crucial to her own narrative and possibly how she eventually identified his abuse and violence. Her story also brings to the fore the ‘relational’ side of IPVA, whereby the survivor had expectations of how she and her partner should live with each other (Allison, Bartholomew, Mayseless & Dutton, 2008).

Mary, a woman in her late 50s from a middle-class professional background, had a different, but equally harrowing, story to tell. Geoff, her husband of nearly 30 years by the time of the incident, frequently yelled and swore at her. On one occasion they were shopping and she dropped a bottle of wine as she was putting it in the supermarket trolley and it broke. ‘He just stood there and yelled “you silly fucking bitch”. You name it and it came out in this torrent.’ She was used to his abusive lang...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 The context
• Part 2 Discursive constructions of domestic abuse and violence
• Part 3 (Re)turning to intrapsychic psychology
• Notes
• References
• Index