INTIMATE ABUSIVENESS

The practice of psychology includes treatment groups for perpetrators of wife assault, treatment for victims, and policy work on court-treatment models. Existing theories of wife assault perpetration (psychiatric, sociological, sociobiological, and social learning) fail in a variety of ways to explain the empirical data generated by research in the last 2 decades. A new theory is proposed to account for individual differences in the tendency to be assaultive in intimate relationships. The focus of this theory is on men whose abuse is specific to intimate relationships and is manifested through cyclical mood swings. For these men, abusiveness is triggered by their internal mood states rather than by external events. Several studies are cited indicating that intimate attachment generates rage in wife assaulters. The origins of this attachment rage are traced to early development. This template generates a complex of perceptions (attributions and projections) and behaviors (abusiveness) specific to intimate relationships. A personality profile of intimately abusive males has been strongly related to intimate partners' reports of psychological abusiveness. In several samples of males, including physically assaultive males, nonviolent controls, clinical outpatients, college students, and gay males.