Donald G. Dutton

Apart from a few yet highly established and influential women's organisations, ideologically rooted within 1970s radical feminism and relying only on shelter studies to peddle their point (despite such studies having been exposed, time and again, for their obvious flaws in the scientific literature), you'll be hard pressed to find any expert on domestic violence believing that it's a 'gendered crime', which can explained away with caricatural (and unhelpful, useless) explanation such as show more 'it's the patriarchy, stupid!'.

Donald G. Dutton, who teaches in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, and who has written extensively on the topic, offers here a brilliant survey of the literature at hand. First published in 2006, it ranges from psychology, psychiatry, sociology, neuropsychology, criminology, and various other fields, to nail a point which should be common sense yet has become nothing but: domestic violence is not motivated by patriarchal values; it's not the product of the patriarchy (he, in fact questions whether we even live in a patriarchy at all!); and it certainly is not a gendered crime, women being as abusive as men are when in intimate relationships. It goes beyond that, though.

Focusing both on what constitutes a cycle of violence in such relationships, and, the reasons that can make an abuser an abuser, he not only debunks the gender feminist paradigm (according to which such domestic violence can only be rooted in women being economically and politically disempowered in society a large, and so also disempowered at home, hence why they can only be victims and never perpetrators themselves...) but, demonstrates how such paradigm has been useless ands counterproductive by being adopted to try and tackle the issues.

From policing to interventions, of course, anyone with an hint of critical thinking can acknowledge that the system is completely broken! Why so, though? Look no further: the paradigm shaping it (the patriarchal model) is nothing but false.

I highly recommend this read. It's dispassionate, clear, comprehensive, detailed, accessible, and, again, relying on many studies and researches from multiple disciplines, which have been piling up for the past few decades yet keep being completely ignored by policy makers, bamboozled by ideologically motivated lobbies holding a firm grip on the debate (let alone popular 'understanding' of such a complex issue!). The tragedy indeed is that we, a a society, carry on to listen to gender interested lobbies instead of the experts. And so it is, then, that the system will carry on being broken, men will carry on being abused, abused women will carry on remaining unsafe at the hands of men whose issues are not scientifically but ideologically addressed, women not fitting the gender narrative will carry on being completely let down (including abusers themselves, in need of help instead of infantilising deresponsibilisation in the name of a politico-social narrative) and, above all, children trapped in such abusive environments will carry on to suffer... with all the consequences for the next generations. Do yourself a favour: read the science. show less

This book demonstrates that intimate partner abuse by men is more than just a learned pattern of behavior--it is the outgrowth of a particular personality configuration. Findings from the author's research with over 400 batterers are integrated with the literature on object relations, attachment, and psychological trauma to trace the development of the abusive personality from early childhood to adulthood. The volume concludes with a discussion of clinical outcomes and a detailed, practical show more overview of a 16-week group treatment program. For the paperback edition, the treatment chapter has been revised and expanded to reflect the ongoing development of the author's clinical approach. Included are new guidelines for working with borderline personality disorder and attachment disorders in the context of batterer groups. show less

Dutton is widely regarded as one of the leading researchers and authors on domestic violence. This is fairly heavy reading, but for me, keys in with Bill Eddy's work on High Conflict People.