Domestic Violence Dynamics: A Therapist’s Perspective. Mark F. Graham, Ed.D. LPC, LMFT.
Let’s begin with an episode:
A husband and wife are separated because of potential
violence and hateful feelings. Daughter,
who is with Mom and Brother, calls Dad, who is in an apartment, and tells him
that Brother has left a tool out in the yard.
Dad rages and, against Mom’s advice, charges over to the house and, in
his own words [later] “acts like an idiot” – in other words, he rages out of
control and terrifies the whole family.
Later, in therapy, Husband complains accusingly: “She’s keeping the kids from me. She won’t let my daughter call me anytime she
wants to.” His overall attitude in this
communication is: “You see what a bitch she is?
You see what I have to put up with?
You see why I am justified in my anger?”
It is very difficult to get him to see that his wife’s
reluctance to let their daughter call him is a direct result of his major
mishandling of the information that the daughter shared with him on the
previous occasion. He does not see his
wife’s fear – he sees only maliciousness on her part. [“She’s keeping the kids from me.”] She is simply acting in response to his
out-of-control behavior. He chalks it up
to another one of her many irrational and unfair or punitive actions against
him; feeding future episodes of rage.
There is a particularly powerful tendency for the abuser to
see himself as a victim. There is
frequently [maybe always] a deep and profound hurt that is usually denied and
avoided, but opens and pours forth especially after abusive episodes in the
“makeup” phase. The spouse feels a need
to nurture when the abuser is in this phase, and there are usually good
feelings for both of them at this time.
There is a sense of hope for the victim since the abuser seems [and
indeed may be] truly remorseful. These
feelings rarely lead to genuine growth or behavior change, however. They are feelings of contrition, but they do
not necessarily lead to repentance [behavior change]. Getting out of this cycle requires relatively
long-term therapy work, moving toward the deep and consistent acceptance of
responsibility, and an even deeper healing of the root of the hurt that is
feeding the bitterness, transference and projection – [the blindness to self
and blame of the victim.]
Another characteristic of the abusive personality is an
unwillingness to accept boundaries set by the spouse. Any “no” on her part – any refusal to go
along with the way he sees things about virtually anything – is a threat to his
security that derives from his ability to have complete access to her
will. There may be a connection between
this security-need and the deep hurt that comes up in him when she is out of
his control. There also are manipulative
aspects of this hurt, since she tends to move back toward him when he is
feeling it – and that is precisely what he desperately needs. If he can control with his anger, he avoids
the profoundly toxic feelings of fear and hurt.
But there is more to this rage than protection from
hurt. It has a vengeful, punitive
quality. One suspects that he is
punishing her for his past hurts. He
feels like a victim [and maybe in his family of origin, he has been
victimized] and is transferring these dynamics into his marriage. He may be punishing her for the sins of his
parents. This is “transference.”
His victim-mindedness is deeply rooted and tenacious. He rather adamantly refuses to see himself as
a perpetrator, and he tends to dismiss the best-rendered confrontations to that
end. A possibility is, as already
implied, that he has been victimized
[abused] in his family of origin.
One pattern is an abusive father and an over-protective “bleeding heart’
mother who feels that her son is a victim, and who, unwittingly inculcates that
perception of him into him. He
introjects {a psychological term describing our tendency to take into ourselves
personality traits or perceptions of others] an abusive father image, and from
his mother he introjects a self-perception of victim. He lives out both of these roles in his
marriage.
There is a seething hatred [frequently murderous] that is
alternately denied and sorrowfully confessed.
But, as already stated, these confessions don’t seem to lead to behavior
changes. There is a tremendous spiritual
battle here, between taking responsibility, on the one hand, or reverting back
to blaming her and justifying the hatred, on the other.
Anyone who listens to the abuser may indeed feel that he has
been abused and misunderstood, and he may be a master at evoking sympathy and
justification for offenses, which he almost always minimizes. He deeply needs to see her as evil,
cunning, manipulative and controlling.
And he can go for hours with stories that validate this perception; even
to the point that she begins to believe them herself. If she tries to correct him on any point – to
demonstrate that her motives were not “evil” [as he contends] – he will likely accuse her of “lying’ or
twisting the truth or minimizing. I have
seen one man threaten to walk out of the counseling session because his wife
was trying to simply clarify one of his accusations. This type of powerful reaction to even the
slightest disagreements with his way of seeing things tends to shut her
down. She suppresses her perception of
the truth to avoid conflict, which enables him to carry forth his distorted
perceptions of her unencumbered by her corrective input. Her failure to disagree with him is then
frequently understood by him to mean that she agrees with his very distorted
and negative perceptions of her. Many of
these dynamics, as this one, result in a self-generating downward spiral for
the couple – one that is extremely difficult to reverse. The core or center of the pathology is in the
abuser – a truth that is sensed by almost everyone except him, his immediate
family, and his misogynist [woman-hating] friends; all of whom have a tendency
to retard the needed therapy by enabling his distorted view. This makes healing very difficult since she
is frequently the only one who seeks help outside the system. Even if she gets out of the marriage, he
still has access to the children, and will frequently continue to abuse through
them and through the legal system, which is rightly compelled to honor his
fatherhood.
The legal system walks a very thin line here between
protecting the children and honoring the family – specifically the father’s
rights to the children. I have
all-to-often seen these fathers using their children as pawns in a very
sinister game of capturing the “queen” – to punish her. The legal system bears a major responsibility
to educate itself in the dark and murky dynamics of misogyny and abuse and
control; because it takes a certain exposure of time and depth to see what is
really happening. I had the very
unfortunate experience of walking one abused client through the court system,
only to witness the extremely disappointing outcome of a judge who basically
said: “You two stop this nonsense and get along for the children’s sake.” The judge’s perception was that the woman was
taking advantage of her pro bono legal services [she could not afford legal
services since she was paying him child support while also bearing most of the
expenses of parenting that he was relegating to her.] She was fulfilling all her court-mandated
responsibilities while he was sliding by on most of his – totally overlooked by
the judge. Everyone who was associated
with this case – many of whom had walked through the ordeal with the victim for
two years – was sickened and disappointed by the shallow and ineffective
response of the court. And I am sure
this is not an isolated case.
What is needed is court-mandated exposure of the entire
family to one therapist [trained or experienced in the area of domestic
violence] over a long enough period of time for the true dynamics to
emerge. This therapist would have access
to the children, husband and wife – though not at the same time. Care would be taken to provide safety for the
children to express themselves honestly – some abusers have been known to
threaten or punish children for revealing damaging information. The judge would lean heavily on the
therapist’s information. In fairness to
the judge, he does not have the time or venue [other than the therapist] to
gain this information.
Recent laws requiring anger-management for every D.V. 911
call are a great breakthrough. Most
abusers will never submit themselves to the scrutiny of therapy unless required
to. Even then there are a certain
percentage who will not reform, and they must eventually be sent to jail. But to pull the woman out of the relationship
only saves her and her children [a very important accomplishment]; not the next
woman that the abuser hooks up with. The
core of the problem is to either reform or jail the abuser. Otherwise he starts the cycle over again with
the next victim. Probating perpetrators
into therapy is a great light in this darkness.
But we must continue to work to make the system work well. The therapy must be long enough and deep
enough to be effective. It must create
“second-order” growth – not just superficial and temporary compliance until the
pressure is off. There must be on-going
accountability and on-going contact with the spouse to insure against
relapse. Both partners need therapy, but
not conjointly. The therapy is
different for the victim and perpetrator – and it is not marital therapy.
For him it focuses on issues of responsibility, denial,
self-control, self-awareness, ability to be introspective, acknowledging and
expressing feelings appropriately, discernment of love vs. need/control/desire,
healing of inner family of origin wounds.
This is most effectively done in group therapy characterized by
compassionate confrontation.
For her it involves
boundary-setting, rebuilding of self-esteem, responsibility-training [i.e.,
what she is and is not responsible for], security and safety, vocational
training [toward independence], help with her children and community support.
For the children this therapy involves clarifying their
distorted views of marriage, manhood and womanhood. For boys – teaching them to respect their
mothers and women in general. For girls
– teaching them to be re-sensitized to disrespect and abuse so that they can
recognize and disallow it in future relations.
There are many gaps in our ministry to the people caught up
in this destructive and pathological system.
Children are coming out of these systems with gaping wounds in their
souls, and with distorted ideas of family roles. It will be very difficult for them to
overcome and become good citizens and happy people. We have important work to do.
Domestic violence / Gender hatred
Men who hate women hate them for the same reason that Cain
hated [and killed] Abel: because Abel’s
righteousness exceeded his own [1 Jn 3:12].
On a deep level, men sense that woman is a nobler, more evolved
creature. She is human, and not without
faults of course; but think of all the evil done in the world by men vs. that
done by women. And much of the evil done
by women is in response to or in alliance with a man. Her desire to be loved by a man makes her
vulnerable to his spiritual immaturity; perhaps the primary “weakness” referred
to in 1Pet. 3:7, which man is admonished to protect her from by “honoring” her.
To the degree of man’s immaturity, he hates woman’s excessive beauty and
goodness, and tries to make her believe that she is an inferior creature;
exaggerates her faults and blames her for his own. At the root of this hatred is a sense of
inferiority, envy, and insecurity [because he does not want to lose her—a
phenomenon that profoundly confuses her: “Why does he want me if he hates me so
much?”]. If and when a man matures, he
begins to see the magnificent gift of womanhood; how God has created her
uniquely [even with her faults] to help him become what he was created to
become—more responsible, compassionate, wise and good. He is able to learn much from her about
himself, and about the softer, nurturing aspects of love, and to appreciate the
wonderful gifts of femininity. He is able
to grow in humility because of his faults that inevitably are exposed in the
intimacy of his life with her. His love
for her sets her free to become more of what God created her to become; and
though the man may never surpass her in spiritual maturity [ability to love
unselfishly, practice non-competitive kindness and compassion from the
unspotlighted sidelines] because of her maturity and the efforts she sees man
making, she overlooks his faults—she extends grace to him, and is even able to
[miracle of miracles] love him. Without
realizing or making anything of it, she becomes a manifestation of God’s love
to him—one that he can only realize as and to the degree that he allows the
Holy Spirit to transform and mature him.
