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Introduction

Introduction The following essay will concentrate on "patriarchal-terrorism" (Gilchrist et al. 2004) meaning the non-sexual violence of men against their female intimate partners. This kind of aggression was given many names since its "social construction" in the 1970ies (Mehrotra 1999), such as wife-battering, partner or spouse-abuse, family or intimate violence (Straus, 1978, Gondolf, 1988, Gilchrist et al. 2004). Nevertheless, the still most common term "Domestic Violence" (Stanko, 2001, 2004, Hague et al. 2003, Shipway 2004) is used in the following when selected theories of violence in general and Domestic Violence (DV) in particular are presented before a taxonomy of offender-types is introduced and critically evaluated with regard to an appropriate intervention. Both the extent of Domestic Violence and the risk of serious injuries are high in the UK (Stanko, 2001, Walby & Allen, 2004). One in four women reported physical assault by a current or former partner in their life (Mirrlees-Black, 1999). Nearly, a sixth of all violent crime is domestic (Dodd et al. 2004). In 2001, 2 women were killed every week by their husbands (Stanko, 2001). Around 12, 9 million incidents of Domestic Violence against women occurred in 2003/4 (Walby & Allen. 2004). As violence-related terms are highly controversial (Berkowitz, 1993), they must be clarified. According to Blackburn (1993: 210), "Violence denotes the forceful infliction of physical injury," but is only partly committed by aggression which shall be defined as the intentional infliction of harm towards an unwilling object (Geen, 2001, Berkowitz, 1993). Aggression can be divided - although mixed motivations may occur (Anderson & Bushman, 2002) - into instrumental and proactive on the one hand and affective or "hostile" and reactive on the other (Berkowitz 1993, Archer & Browne, 1989, Crick & Dodge, 1996). The latter may correlate with anger (Geen, 2001) being viewed by Novaco (1978) as an affective stress reaction to provocations. This reaction is composed by a combination of arousal and cognitive labelling as anger. Recently, the "traditional" assumption that anger causes aggression (Anderson & Bushmann 2002) ...read more.

Middle

Controversially, the Antisocial, Narcissistic and Low-Pathology clusters evidence similar characteristics on a general antisocial line (Holtzworth-Munroe et al. 2000). Conclusive Evaluation and suggestions for intervention The presented typologies are only restrictedly comparable as study-methods, i.e. sample size, classification-systems and the existence of comparison groups, differ. As an example, Gilchrist's et al. (2003) study only referred to DV-offenders on probation. A control group was missing. Furthermore, the MCMI-III is insufficient to diagnose personality disorders exactly as its personality descriptions are rather dimensional than categorical (Sonkin & Liebert, 2002). To identify Borderline and Psychopathic offenders, the additional use of the Oldham-inventory (Oldham et al. 1985) and the PCL-R (Hare, 1991) is proposed. Besides, Psychopathy has to be separated from APD (Shipley & Arigo 2001), especially with regard to intervention (Hare, 1998, 2000). Besides, analysing DV-offenders' disposition of violence, one should keep in mind that an aggressive disposition facilitates aggression, but is neither necessary nor sufficient to commit a violent act (Blackburn, 1998). The actual situational context - determined by proximal contributions and pre-existing attributions - must be taken into consideration. Hence, instrumental and hostile violence can occur despite or because of dispositions. To summarise, the following triable offender-taxonomy, integrating a so far lacking attachment on theories, is proposed: First, the family only offender does not tend toward general violent traits. Instead, according to the principles of cognitive neoassociation (Berkowitz, 1993), he seeks a convenient target after specific situations of frustration such as in the work-place. More situational than dispositional variables dominate his aggression which is facilitated by the rational-choice-approach of the source exchange theory (Gelles & Cornell, 1990). The relatively low risk inhibiting domestic violence compared to external, inter-male aggression is supported by sociocultural patriarchal attitudes towards women viewed as a scapegoat (Dobash & Dobash 1992). Aggression is committed mostly affectively, but also instrumentally in cases where the women try to escape the traditional scheme so that the male retains a moderate degree of self-esteem. ...read more.

Conclusion

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