Cyclical Wife Abuse

Although women do abuse men, by far the greatest proportion of abusive incidents are committed by males. Thus, what is often discussed as "spouse abuse," is actually wife assault. According to Straus and Gelles (1990), at least 1.8 million women are battered by their husbands every year in the United States.

Regarding wife assault, Campbell and Lancaster (1994) refer to it as one of America's major community health problems; this because of its greater prevalence than other forms of domestic or partner violence, its greater potential for homicide, its effects on children in the household, and its long-term emotional and physical consequences. In other words, understanding wife assault is imperative.

The purpose of the review of literature presented here is to bring some understanding to the process of wife assault by examining whether cyclical wife assault is associated with abusers' personality; specifically, the review examines Donald Dutton's (1995a, 1995b) theory that cyclical wife abusers suffer from Borderline Personality Organization (BPO). To provide context, the review begins with a description of historical or early models of wife assault, emphasizing their problematic nature in terms of providing a complete picture of wife assault.

The historical overview is then followed by an explication of: (1) the work of Lenore Walker (1979) regarding the cyclical nature of wife assault and (2) the work of John Gunderson (1984) regarding the stages associ

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ogy. Findings indicated that the abusers were significantly more likely than controls to evidence signs of BPO. However, there was some correlation between abusiveness and other measures. As Dutton (1994a) put it: Results of this study indicate that a profile of a psychologically abusive man can be composed from self-report scores on measures of borderline personality organization, MCMI-II measures of general psychopathology, and anger. (p. 187). In another study, Dutton (1994b) examined for behavioral and affective correlates of borderline personality organization in a sample of wife assaulters. Sixty court-referred and 60 self-referred subjects (age 1765 years) were assessed on the Self-Report Instrument for Borderline Personality Organization. The top and bottom quartile groups were compared on differential patterns of emotional expression, violence, presence of current trauma symptoms, and substance abuse. Results showed that the BPO scale correlated significantly with anger, jealousy, experienced trauma symptoms, and frequency of use of both verbal and physical aggression. High BPO subjects were more angered and assaultive in response to intimacy issues. In other words, borderline personality organization appear

Category: Psychology - C