A Domestic Violence Typology

The theory and research related to the psychology of domestic violence has progressed through dramatic changes over the last 30 to 40 years, culminating in recent significant shifts in the paradigms used to understand families struggling with this problem. To understand these developments, it is instructive to briefly review the relevant history in this area of inquiry. Then we will look at some recently proposed changes to how families struggling with domestic violence problems can be described and understood.

History

Most of our common law in the United States can be traced back to the nation's dominant British roots. Early British Common Law held that women were inferior to men and had no legal existence apart from their husbands. In accordance with British tradition, it was a man's legal right to strike his wife. Even early British rape laws reflected the concept of women as property and held that a rape victim's husband, not the victim herself, should be paid restitution for damage to the woman.

In the late 1800s, the first wave of domestic violence reform emerged in the United States and gradually spread, albeit slowly, across the land. Domestic violence received renewed and intensified attention in the 1960s and 1970s, when the women's movement and the idea of feminism began to flourish. The first shelter for battered women ' Haven House, in Pasadena, CA ' was created in 1964. The 1974 release of Erin Pizzey's book entitled “Scream Quietly or the Neighbors Will Hear” substantially increased momentum for the battered women's movement and, by 1986, over 700 shelters had been established in the United States.

The 1980s saw the emergence of the idea that victims of domestic violence could suffer something called “battered women's syndrome.” Proponents of this theory proposed a set of psychological sequelae in victims, and the syndrome was often used by defense attorneys in their attempts to defend women who had killed their abusive husbands.

In 1993, Pence and Paymar introduced the “power and control wheel” to describe the various dimensions of family domestic violence. Pence, E. and Paymar, M. (1993), Education Groups for Men Who Batter: The Duluth Model. New York: Springer. Also in the 1990s, the “Violence Against Women Act,” introduced by then-Sen. Joe Biden, was passed, providing the 50 states with funds for the prevention of domestic violence.

Despite a long history of inattention to the plight of victimized women, and despite the reality that domestic violence continues to be a psychologically toxic part of family experience for too many American households, cultural values have now shifted substantially: Domestic violence is now considered by most to be immoral, illegal and profoundly traumatic for children.

Early Theories

For over 30 years, the “power and control” model for understanding domestic violence became the main lens through which domestic violence families were viewed. This model emphasized the likelihood that if domestic violence occurs once, it will most likely occur repeatedly and will escalate in intensity. The domestic violence described in the power and control model usually involves patterns of intimidation, coercion, threats and pathological control. It offered millions of women long-overdue validation, a way to understand what they had experienced, and a foundation for protecting themselves and their children.

During the 1990s and 2000s, however, research progressed beyond this earlier, more simplistic paradigm for understanding family violence. The earlier model had significant value because it offered a way for the field to organize its interventions, and helped to articulate the reasons why any domestic violence needed to be taken very seriously. However, during the 1990s and 2000s, there has been a gradual progression in our knowledge toward more comprehensive models of the various ways in which domestic violence manifests itself. While some advocates argue that the notion of different domestic violence “types” is both factually inaccurate and dangerous for victims, the weight of empirical evidence now argues strongly for the notion that a “one-size-fits-all” approach to diagnosing and intervening with domestic violence is out of sync with the day-to-day reality of families in which violence has occurred.

The Wingspread Conference (2007)

In 2007, two quite different, yet highly respected organizations ' the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) and the Family Violence Department of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (FVD-NCJFCJ) ' brought together a think tank of internationally respected researchers and advocates regarding domestic violence. Their goal was to try to find common ground for an understanding of this difficult topic.

While family courts were viewed as having begun to recognize that parenting decisions should be made differently in domestic violence cases than in non-violent families, there was also a consensus that, once the label of “domestic violence” attached, important differences among violent families were often ignored. In the July 2008 issue of Family Court Review, Professors Joan Kelly and Michael Johnson summarized the substantial body of empirical research demonstrating that intimate partner violence should no longer be viewed as a unitary, single-type phenomenon. They convincingly argued that, based on accumulated data, domestic violence families can be differentiated with respect to context, consequences, and partner dynamics, and that four patterns of domestic violence more accurately capture the complex nature of the problem than the single-type model. Kelly and Johnson's model, a model that emerged from Wingspread, is summarized below.

Coercive Controlling Violence (CCV)

This subtype represents the classic “batterer,” and is sometimes referred to as “intimate terrorism.” The power-and-control wheel fits this subtype by articulating the dynamics of intimidation, control, fear inducement, threats, the assertion of male privilege, the use of economic abuse, etc. While not necessarily associated with high levels of violence ' because of the effectiveness of the psychological tactics on their own ' this is the most common type of domestic violence encountered in shelters, police departments, hospitals, and courts. These families evidence the highest risk for injury, at times severe, to the victims. Eighty-seven percent to 97% of CCV is male-perpetrated, and this type is most associated with lethal outcomes. The defining characteristic of this subtype is the pathological level of control and intimidation present in the spousal relationship.

Violent Resistance (VR)

It is not uncommon in some families for women to respond to coercive control and violence with violence of their own. Mildred Daley Pagelow, Ph.D., reports that 71% of victims in shelters had responded to violence with violence. Pagelow, 1981, Woman-battering: Victims and Their Experiences. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Much violent resistance meets the common-sense definition of self-defense, is often automatic and short lived, and the resistor often discovers it does not work and increases her vulnerability. When violent resistance manifests in a woman killing her violent partner, she is most likely to have experienced severe, frequent and dangerous attacks. The media-generated image of a woman who carefully plans to murder her husband is largely inaccurate, as a rule, with most incidents occurring in the heat of the moment.

Situational Couple Violence (SCV)

This is the most common type of domestic violence, occurring far more frequently than the coercive type. It is distinctively different from coercive controlling violence because there is an absence of dysfunctional power and control dynamics; on average, the violence is less severe (but can occasionally be quite severe); and fear of the partner is not a central issue, or a particular characteristic, of these individuals. One or both of the partners usually has a poor ability to manage conflicts or angry impulses. Males in this group are not particularly misogynistic in attitude. Men and women appear to engage in situational couple violence at roughly the same rates, with women in the teen and young adult age-bracket tending to have higher rates than men. Roughly 50% of marriages
evidence this type of lower level violence.

Separation Instigated Violence (SIV)

This type involves violence prompted most often in the early stages of separation, where there is no prior history of violence in the relationship or outside of it. It tends to occur at roughly the same rate in both men and women, and the partner being left is most often the perpetrator. SIV is usually limited to one to two episodes early in the separation process, and court intervention usually stops the violence. Among high-conflict custody litigants, 21% report SIV as having occurred.

Practical Implications

The recognition by prominent researchers and advocates of the appropriateness of differentiating domestic violence families into different “types” represents a significant paradigm shift for the field. The research in this area suggests the following tentative improvements to how domestic violence cases could be assessed and dealt with:

• If any violence is reported in a family, it is critically important to evaluate whether there is a history of coercive control, given that these tend to be the families in which the most dangerous outcomes occur. Careful family assessment, preferably using validated domestic violence instruments, holds the most hope for effective child protection and victim advocacy;
• If faced with coercive controlling offenders, consideration should be given to the idea that this is the most appropriate group for the question, “Should these children have unsupervised contact with this violent parent?”;
• The field can now begin to research whether different forms of treatment fit each of these various manifestations of domestic violence; and
• Child custody assessments should carefully explore domestic violence possibilities and do a subtype analysis.

Pence, E. and Paymar, M. (1993). Education Groups for Men Who Batter: The Duluth Model. New York: Springer.

Jeffrey P. Wittmann, Ph.D., a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors, is a licensed psychologist and trial consultant at the Center for Forensic Psychology in Albany. He conducts peer work-product reviews and is the author of Custody Chaos, Personal Peace (Penguin, 2001). He can be reached a [email protected].

The theory and research related to the psychology of domestic violence has progressed through dramatic changes over the last 30 to 40 years, culminating in recent significant shifts in the paradigms used to understand families struggling with this problem. To understand these developments, it is instructive to briefly review the relevant history in this area of inquiry. Then we will look at some recently proposed changes to how families struggling with domestic violence problems can be described and understood.

History

Most of our common law in the United States can be traced back to the nation's dominant British roots. Early British Common Law held that women were inferior to men and had no legal existence apart from their husbands. In accordance with British tradition, it was a man's legal right to strike his wife. Even early British rape laws reflected the concept of women as property and held that a rape victim's husband, not the victim herself, should be paid restitution for damage to the woman.

In the late 1800s, the first wave of domestic violence reform emerged in the United States and gradually spread, albeit slowly, across the land. Domestic violence received renewed and intensified attention in the 1960s and 1970s, when the women's movement and the idea of feminism began to flourish. The first shelter for battered women ' Haven House, in Pasadena, CA ' was created in 1964. The 1974 release of Erin Pizzey's book entitled “Scream Quietly or the Neighbors Will Hear” substantially increased momentum for the battered women's movement and, by 1986, over 700 shelters had been established in the United States.

The 1980s saw the emergence of the idea that victims of domestic violence could suffer something called “battered women's syndrome.” Proponents of this theory proposed a set of psychological sequelae in victims, and the syndrome was often used by defense attorneys in their attempts to defend women who had killed their abusive husbands.

In 1993, Pence and Paymar introduced the “power and control wheel” to describe the various dimensions of family domestic violence. Pence, E. and Paymar, M. (1993), Education Groups for Men Who Batter: The Duluth Model. New York: Springer. Also in the 1990s, the “Violence Against Women Act,” introduced by then-Sen. Joe Biden, was passed, providing the 50 states with funds for the prevention of domestic violence.

Despite a long history of inattention to the plight of victimized women, and despite the reality that domestic violence continues to be a psychologically toxic part of family experience for too many American households, cultural values have now shifted substantially: Domestic violence is now considered by most to be immoral, illegal and profoundly traumatic for children.

Early Theories

For over 30 years, the “power and control” model for understanding domestic violence became the main lens through which domestic violence families were viewed. This model emphasized the likelihood that if domestic violence occurs once, it will most likely occur repeatedly and will escalate in intensity. The domestic violence described in the power and control model usually involves patterns of intimidation, coercion, threats and pathological control. It offered millions of women long-overdue validation, a way to understand what they had experienced, and a foundation for protecting themselves and their children.

During the 1990s and 2000s, however, research progressed beyond this earlier, more simplistic paradigm for understanding family violence. The earlier model had significant value because it offered a way for the field to organize its interventions, and helped to articulate the reasons why any domestic violence needed to be taken very seriously. However, during the 1990s and 2000s, there has been a gradual progression in our knowledge toward more comprehensive models of the various ways in which domestic violence manifests itself. While some advocates argue that the notion of different domestic violence “types” is both factually inaccurate and dangerous for victims, the weight of empirical evidence now argues strongly for the notion that a “one-size-fits-all” approach to diagnosing and intervening with domestic violence is out of sync with the day-to-day reality of families in which violence has occurred.

The Wingspread Conference (2007)

In 2007, two quite different, yet highly respected organizations ' the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC) and the Family Violence Department of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (FVD-NCJFCJ) ' brought together a think tank of internationally respected researchers and advocates regarding domestic violence. Their goal was to try to find common ground for an understanding of this difficult topic.

While family courts were viewed as having begun to recognize that parenting decisions should be made differently in domestic violence cases than in non-violent families, there was also a consensus that, once the label of “domestic violence” attached, important differences among violent families were often ignored. In the July 2008 issue of Family Court Review, Professors Joan Kelly and Michael Johnson summarized the substantial body of empirical research demonstrating that intimate partner violence should no longer be viewed as a unitary, single-type phenomenon. They convincingly argued that, based on accumulated data, domestic violence families can be differentiated with respect to context, consequences, and partner dynamics, and that four patterns of domestic violence more accurately capture the complex nature of the problem than the single-type model. Kelly and Johnson's model, a model that emerged from Wingspread, is summarized below.

Coercive Controlling Violence (CCV)

This subtype represents the classic “batterer,” and is sometimes referred to as “intimate terrorism.” The power-and-control wheel fits this subtype by articulating the dynamics of intimidation, control, fear inducement, threats, the assertion of male privilege, the use of economic abuse, etc. While not necessarily associated with high levels of violence ' because of the effectiveness of the psychological tactics on their own ' this is the most common type of domestic violence encountered in shelters, police departments, hospitals, and courts. These families evidence the highest risk for injury, at times severe, to the victims. Eighty-seven percent to 97% of CCV is male-perpetrated, and this type is most associated with lethal outcomes. The defining characteristic of this subtype is the pathological level of control and intimidation present in the spousal relationship.

Violent Resistance (VR)

It is not uncommon in some families for women to respond to coercive control and violence with violence of their own. Mildred Daley Pagelow, Ph.D., reports that 71% of victims in shelters had responded to violence with violence. Pagelow, 1981, Woman-battering: Victims and Their Experiences. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Much violent resistance meets the common-sense definition of self-defense, is often automatic and short lived, and the resistor often discovers it does not work and increases her vulnerability. When violent resistance manifests in a woman killing her violent partner, she is most likely to have experienced severe, frequent and dangerous attacks. The media-generated image of a woman who carefully plans to murder her husband is largely inaccurate, as a rule, with most incidents occurring in the heat of the moment.

Situational Couple Violence (SCV)

This is the most common type of domestic violence, occurring far more frequently than the coercive type. It is distinctively different from coercive controlling violence because there is an absence of dysfunctional power and control dynamics; on average, the violence is less severe (but can occasionally be quite severe); and fear of the partner is not a central issue, or a particular characteristic, of these individuals. One or both of the partners usually has a poor ability to manage conflicts or angry impulses. Males in this group are not particularly misogynistic in attitude. Men and women appear to engage in situational couple violence at roughly the same rates, with women in the teen and young adult age-bracket tending to have higher rates than men. Roughly 50% of marriages
evidence this type of lower level violence.

Separation Instigated Violence (SIV)

This type involves violence prompted most often in the early stages of separation, where there is no prior history of violence in the relationship or outside of it. It tends to occur at roughly the same rate in both men and women, and the partner being left is most often the perpetrator. SIV is usually limited to one to two episodes early in the separation process, and court intervention usually stops the violence. Among high-conflict custody litigants, 21% report SIV as having occurred.

Practical Implications

The recognition by prominent researchers and advocates of the appropriateness of differentiating domestic violence families into different “types” represents a significant paradigm shift for the field. The research in this area suggests the following tentative improvements to how domestic violence cases could be assessed and dealt with:

• If any violence is reported in a family, it is critically important to evaluate whether there is a history of coercive control, given that these tend to be the families in which the most dangerous outcomes occur. Careful family assessment, preferably using validated domestic violence instruments, holds the most hope for effective child protection and victim advocacy;
• If faced with coercive controlling offenders, consideration should be given to the idea that this is the most appropriate group for the question, “Should these children have unsupervised contact with this violent parent?”;
• The field can now begin to research whether different forms of treatment fit each of these various manifestations of domestic violence; and
• Child custody assessments should carefully explore domestic violence possibilities and do a subtype analysis.

Pence, E. and Paymar, M. (1993). Education Groups for Men Who Batter: The Duluth Model. New York: Springer.

Jeffrey P. Wittmann, Ph.D., a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors, is a licensed psychologist and trial consultant at the Center for Forensic Psychology in Albany. He conducts peer work-product reviews and is the author of Custody Chaos, Personal Peace (Penguin, 2001). He can be reached a [email protected].