What causes a man to batter his wife whom he supposedly loves? A father who rejected and shamed him, a mother who was inconsistent in her care of him and violence in his family are the childhood roots of battering. Then as an adult when he is afraid his wife will leave him, the batterer lashes out in rage.

These are the conclusions of Donald Dutton, a psychologist in Vancouver, B.C., who has been studying and treating male batterers for the past twenty years. In his latest book, The Batter: A Psychological Profile , Dr. Dutton argues that the most important factor in the history of a batterer was that his father was rejecting and physically and emotionally abusive. As a result, the boy who becomes a batterer grew up with low self-esteem and a weak sense of his masculinity and lovability.

The mother of a batterer, Dutton found, was inconsistent in her parenting in that she was both loving and rejecting with her son. She was often so distressed by her husband's abuse of her that she couldn't be fully available to her son. He then developed a realistic belief that he could not rely upon a woman to meet his emotional needs. Add the violence the boy saw his father inflict on his mother and he also learned by example that the way to deal with women when angry was to become abusive.

Dutton sees the batterer as both a victim and an offender. He makes it quite clear, however, that the fact the batterer was once a victim does not excuse his abusive behavior. To change his behavior permanently, the batterer must take full responsibility for it no matter what happened to him in childhood or what his wife does to anger him.

Dutton found that battering follows a cycle first outlined by Lenore Walker in 1979 in her pioneering book, The Battered Woman. In the first stage, tension builds up in the batterer. Like many men, he is unable to focus on himself and his emotions to determine what is going on with him, so he blames his wife for his discomfort.

The second stage occurs when the batterer erupts in violence against his wife. The most dangerous times for her are when she threatens or prepares to leave him or when she becomes pregnant. Sadly, although he would never admit this, the batterer is so insecure he can see his own baby as a threat to his relationship with his wife.

All humans have a strong need to attach to others and any threat to attachment results in anger. In the batterer, the anger becomes extreme, however. The goal of his violence is to keep his wife from leaving him but ironically it may only serve to drive her away.

The third stage is the honeymoon stage when the batterer is genuinely sorry for his behavior and promises to never let it happen again. He showers his wife with love, which is what we all want, but this only keeps her trapped in an abusive relationship if only for a little while longer.

A horrifying fact that Dutton found in his research is that once the battering begins, the woman can do nothing to stop it. Only he can. Many women attempt desperately to placate their husbands to avoid the abuse but some may even provoke his anger just to get it over with. They know it is coming and are powerless to prevent it.

Some batterers cannot be successfully treated in therapy but many can.

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