Portrait of an Abuser

What like of person would physically and emotionally abuse his wife? Researchers are still searching for answers, but studies have pointed out the following characteristics:

• Abusers have a need to control the environment around them, especially the people who are closest to them. Beating up their wives periodically is one way to ensure compliance.
• Men who have been brought up in a violent home are most likely to abuse their female partners. Other risk factors are unemployment, less education, and drug and alcohol use. One should not forget, however, that many well-educated professional men doctors, lawyers, business executives also beat their partners.
• Many abusers are dependent on their wives and jealous of them. Fearing abandonment, they minimize the attacks and blame the victim for any violence inflicted on her.

Unfortunately, abusive men often resist treatment. Court-ordered batterers’ education and treatment groups have had reasonable success. A few men do come to such groups voluntarily. Conventional models of couples or family therapy are absolutely contraindicated where one member of the couple is committing criminal assaults on the other. Most important, men must be confronted with the results of their battery and learn that if they don’t change their behavior, they will go to jail.