Intimate violence : attacks upon psychic interiority /

A society terrified of youth violence requires effective guidelines for treating batterers. Traditionally, a therapist sympathizes with abused victims and blames the batterer for dominating, overpowering, and controlling others. This approach contradicts the fact that most batterers suffered early abuse and ignores therapists' revulsion at and fear of the batterer's rage. Treatment of batterers' early trauma is notably absent from previous studies, e.g., Domestic Violence in the Lives of Children, ed. by Sandra Graham-Berman and Jeffrey Edleson (CH, Dec'01), and Violence against Children in the Family and Community, ed. by Penelope Trickett and Cynthia Schellenbach (CH, Dec'98). Scalia (a practicing psychotherapist) transforms the reader's understanding of psychic origins of battering and enlists compassion for the batterer's early trauma. Noting that the psychic origins emerge from a rupture in narcissistic equilibrium, affect regulation, experience of self, and identification, the author argues that when situations re-evoke these early traumas, violence erupts to contain a fear of annihilation and falling apart. Furthermore, society, law, and therapists' persecution of the batterer increases resistance to therapy. In a scholarly discussion of powerful clinical cases in psychoanalysis, Scalia examines the need to establish an empathic alliance with the patient. Useful to upper-division undergraduates through faculty, professionals, and general readers. S. M. Valente University of Southern California