Battered Wives

¹ The Maudsley Hospital, Denmark Hill, London, SE5 8AZ

A battered wife is a woman who has suffered serious or repeated physical injury from the man with whom she lives. The intensity and extensity of the battering can be graded.

The incidence is not yet known, but there are indications that it is large.

Battered wives, or at least many varieties of them, make use of help when it is available.

The condition is not a clinical entity but rather one possible resultant of a variety of social, psychological and psychiatric factors. It is best regarded as a failure in adaptation rather than as a disease entity, or as a failure to acquire adequate social learning (no lessons, wrong lessons, incapacity to learn, lessons destroyed). The problem has close resemblances to other social deviance with which it often co-exists.

Classification of this diverse condition is essential, and most of the classifications of deviant behaviour and criminality can be applied.

Among the wide variety of arbitary types of wife battering which are described in psychiatric practice, and apart from the probably major cultural type, are the immature personalities (which may have a good prognosis); the other personality disorders, notably the dependent and aggressive types; the jealousy reactions, ranging from intolerance of competition to delusional jealousy (which are so dangerous as to demand separation of the spouses); the addictions, which probably more often co-exist with battering rather than cause it, but sometimes offer a convenient focus for treatment; practically all the psychiatric illnesses, though none is essential. The frequently observed return of a battering couple to one another suggests sado-masochism, but this is probably less common than is supposed—other conditions simulate it, especially dependency, fear of loneliness, and not knowing that there is any better form of relationship. The hardship scale developed by Dr. Griffith Edwards and his team provides a useful approach to this field, which may have advantages over the more limited concept of battering.

Especially in psychiatric practice (which no doubt concentrates the pathological varieties of the condition) it is common to find battering families rather than a battering father—the father may assult the children as well, and may receive a great deal of aggression himself; the battered mother is quite likely to be a battering mother.

Studies of small samples of child-battering fathers suggest that at least one quarter of them also batter their wives.

Battering of wives certainly leads on in some cases to killing the wife.

Police protection, like all other demonstrations of power, is most effective in contemplation. It is unreasonable to expect police to protect the wife from a psychiatrically ill husband, or from one in an advanced state of passion, in a domestic situation, and in fact they cannot.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. L. EDLESON The Overlap Between Child Maltreatment and Woman Battering Violence Against Women, February 1, 1999; 5(2): 134 - 154. [Abstract] [PDF]

				J. L. EDLESON Responsible Mothers and Invisible Men: Child Protection in the Case of Adult Domestic Violence J Interpers Violence, April 1, 1998; 13(2): 294 - 298. [Abstract]

				P. S. Brandon Violence in the Family Perspectives in Public Health, October 1, 1977; 97(5): 201 - 205.

				J.J. Gayford Battered Wives: (a) Research On Battered Wives Perspectives in Public Health, December 1, 1975; 95(6): 288 - 289.

				A. R. Dewsbury Battered Wives: (b) Family Violence Seen in General Practice Perspectives in Public Health, December 1, 1975; 95(6): 290 - 294.