Re-Thinking the Cycle of Violence
Linda Coates, Ph.D.
Allan Wade, Ph.D.
Centre for Response-Based Practice
Duncan B.C. Canada
In Dignity: Addressing Violence aand Injustice
through Response-Based Practice
Yellowknife
Feb 18-20, 2014
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
1
Response Based Practice:
Accurate and Complete Descriptions (Minimum)
 Social Context
 Accurate language
 Actions of Perpetrator
 Responses of Victim
 Social Responses to Victim and Perpetrator
 Victim and Perpetrator Responses to Social Responses
Description 1:
One night Sue and Tom argued on the walk home from
the pub. Tom complained Sue was cold and not
interested in sex. Tom stopped to urinate in the
bushes. Tom asked Sue to stop and wait. By the time
Tom caught up to Sue, they were at the house. Tom
tried to get into the bedroom. Tom pushed the door
open and forced his way in. Sue told Tom to get out.
Tom pushed Sue hard against the wall, called her a
nasty name, and punched the wall near her face. Tom
grabbed Sue, punched her in the ribs, and left the
bedroom. Tom left the house.
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
3
Description 2:
One night Sue and Tom argued on the walk home from the pub.
Sue complained Tom was crude to her drank too much. Tom
complained that Sue was cold and not interested in sex. Tom
stopped to urinate in the bushes. Sue kept walking. Tom asked Sue
to stop and wait. Sue refused to wait and kept walking. By the time
Tom caught up to Sue, they were at the house. Sue went straight
into the bedroom and closed the door, without saying a word. Tom
tried to get into the bedroom. Sue told Tom to leave her alone.
Tom pushed the door open and forced his way in. Sue told Tom to
get out. Tom pushed Sue hard against the wall, called her a nasty
name, and punched the wall near her face. Sue ducked underneath
his arm and ran for the phone in the living room. Tom grabbed Sue,
punched her in the ribs, and left the bedroom. Sue rolled onto her
side, gasping for breath. Tom left the house. Sue found the phone
and called her best friend, who lived two blocks away.
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
4
Emotional Hydraulics
Rage and intimate abusiveness are closely tied to issues in early development,
and seeing this connection can. . . . enable us to chart cyclical buildups of
internal tension as a key element in intimate abusiveness. Such cyclical tension
is, I believe, a personality consequence of a disrupted attachment process, a
pathway linking early problems with adult pathology. From John Bowlby’s
descriptions of insecurely attached infants “arching away angrily while seeking
proximity” to the ambivalence of the abusive adult, a lifelong thread appears in
the psychological profiles of abusive men. This thread includes ambivalence
toward the partner, dysphoria produced by intimacy, and a tendency to blame
the partner for the dysphoria. The latter process spirals upward on selfamplifying ruminations that produce unbearable tension states that culminate in
violence. (Dutton, 1998, p.vii)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
5
Family Violence Project literature states:
The partners' characteristics hold them together. . . . As abused
partners adapt and become more compliant . . . the partners'
characteristics make them increasingly dependent on one another.
After prolonged abuse [they] develop complementary
characteristics: aggressive/passive, demanding/compliant;
blaming/accepting guilt.
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
6
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
7
The “Cycle Theory of Violence” is
a social response to victims and
perpetrators of violence.
It is now called “the cycle of
violence”, leaving out the word
theory, as though it is a fact.
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
8
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
9
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
10
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
11
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
12
Language: Metaphor and Image
Explosion, Honeymoon, Tension Building
Cycle: Natural rhythms, hormones, sex/orgasm
Unchanging, immutable, inevitable, right, good
The cycle becomes the perpetrator
The focus becomes the victim
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
13
Concealing Victim Resistance
Generally, she realizes that his battering behaviour is out
of control and that he will not respond to reason. In
most instances, she does not resist; she tries to remain
calm and wait out the storm. This feeling is usually
accompanied by a firm belief that if she tries to do
anything to resist, her attacker will only become more
violent. (Walker, 1979, p. 62)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
14
During the first stage . . . the woman tries
to calm the abuser and often changes her
lifestyle to avoid angering the man.
(Ciraco, 2001, p. 172)
The victim senses the aggressor becoming
edgy and more prone to react negatively
to any trivial frustration. Many victims
learn to anticipate violent outbursts and
try to avoid it by becoming nurturing,
compliant or by staying out of the way.
(RCMP)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
15
During the first stage . . . the batterer engages in minor verbal
abuse. . . . The woman tries to calm the abuser and often
changes her lifestyle to avoid angering the man. This usually
sets a precedent of submissiveness by the woman building the
gateway to future abuse. The second stage consists of an
“uncontrollable discharge of tensions that have been built up
during phase one”. . . . During the third stage, the abuser acts
remorseful and apologetic, usually promising to change. As a
result, many women grant abusers multiple opportunities to
repent and thereby fall into a cycle of abuse.
Ciraco, 2001
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
16
Mutualizing: Victim as Accomplice
She lets the batterer know that she accepts his
abusiveness as legitimately directed toward her. It is
not that she believes she should be abused; rather, she
believes that what she does will prevent his anger from
escalating. If she does her job well, then the incident
will be over; if he explodes, then she assumes the guilt.
In essence, she has become his accomplice by accepting
some of the responsibility for his abusive behaviour. (p.
56)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
17
Her reward for accepting abusive violence is a
period of calm and kindness. (p. 67)
If she has been through several cycles already, the
knowledge that she has traded her physical and
psychological safety for this temporary dream
state adds to her self-hatred and embarrassment .
. . She is selling herself for brief periods of phasethree behaviour. She becomes an accomplice to
her own battering. (p. 69)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
18
Blames and Pathologizes
This usually sets a precedent of submissiveness by
the woman building the gateway to further abuse.
(Ciraco, 2001, p. 172)
During the third stage, the abuser acts remorseful
and apologetic, usually promising to change. As a
result, many women grant abusers multiple
opportunities to repent and thereby fall into a cycle
of abuse". (Ciraco, 2001, p. 172)
The batterer, spurred on by her apparent passive
acceptance of his abusive behaviour, does not try to
control himself. (Walker, 1979, p. 57)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
19
Learned Helplessness:
Repeated batterings, like electrical shocks,
diminish the woman's motivation to respond.
She becomes passive. (p. 49)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
20
Learned Helplessness
“This concept [of learned helplessness] is important for
understanding why battered women do not attempt to free
themselves from a battering relationship. Once the women
are operating from a belief of helplessness, the perception
becomes reality and they become passive, submissive,
'helpless'. They allow things that appear to them to be out of
their control to actually get out of their control. (p. 47)”
“Their behaviour was determined by their negative cognitive
set, or their perceptions of what they could or could not do,
not by what actually existed. The battered women's
behaviour seems similar to Seligman's dogs, rats, and people.
(48)”
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
21
Conceals Violence
The batterer fully accepts the fact that his rage is out of control, as
does the battered woman. (Walker, p. 60)
The second stage consists of an ‘uncontrollable discharge of
tensions that have been built up during stage one’. (Ciraco, 2001,
p. 172)
The aggressor appears to lose control physically and/or
emotionally. Many aggressors report they do not start out
wanting to hurt the victim, but want only to teach the victim a
lesson. (RCMP)
The violence has an element of overkill to it, and the man cannot
stop even if the woman is severely injured. (Walker, p. 62)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
22
Mutualizing:
The couple who live in such a violent relationship become a
symbiotic pair – each so dependent on the other that when one
attempts to leave, both lives become drastically affected. (p. 68)
When the loving-kindness is most intense . . . this symbiotic
bonding really takes hold. (p. 68)
As abused partners adapt and become more compliant . . . the
partners' characteristics make them increasingly dependent on
one another” .
Both the batterer and the battered woman fear they cannot
survive alone, and so continue to maintain a bizarre symbiotic
relationship from which they cannot extricate themselves (p. 43)
The worse their relationship gets, the more they are cut off from
23
others, and the more they are dependent on each other.
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
Perpetrator Responsibility
The batterer ends up not understanding what
happened. His rage is so great that it blinds his
control over his behaviour. He starts out
wanting to teach the woman a lesson, not
intending to inflict any particular injury on her,
and stops when he feels she has learned her
lesson. (p. 60)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
24
Mitigating Perpetrator Responsibility
Tensions that have been built up erupt
The incident is usually 'triggered' by an external event or
internal state…
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
25
For Don, control meant turning Martha into a puppet, stifling
her independence, taking away any life she may have had apart
from him. He was tortured by the fear that she would abandon
him, and no matter how hard he tried to squelch that fear by
asserting control, the fear never left him. This helps explain
why Don was battering Martha practically every other day
rather than episodically. He felt constantly vulnerable to losing
her, and he released the demons of his vulnerability through
violence.
Jacobson & Gottman, 1998, p. 75
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
26
Perpetrator Responsibility
The aggressor appears genuinely sorry for what has
happened. Their worst fear is that the partner will leave
them as a result of what has happened and they try to
make up for their behaviour. (RCMP)
He confesses when caught in the act and then cries for
forgiveness. The batterer truly believes he will never again
hurt the woman he loves; he believes he can control
himself from now on. (p. 65)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
27
Police manual:
“It is difficult to obtain a complete picture of family violence
because it often remains hidden. A woman who is being abused
may endure the abuse for a long time before seeking support,
while some victims never tell anyone about the abuse. Victims
may be reluctant or unable to talk about their situation or to report
the abuse for many different reasons. They may:
• Fear that the abuser will retaliate against them or their loved
ones
• Fear being stigmatized by others
• Be economically dependent on the abusive partner
• Live in an isolated area
• Be socially isolated from others
• Feel ashamed or powerless and lack access to information,
resources and support.”
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
28
Police manual:
“While often frustrating for professionals, the
ambivalence, denial, and helplessness that often
characterize abuse victims may be learned messages that
have allowed the victim to survive the abuse. Victims of
domestic violence may not behave like victims of other
violent crimes. While some victims want prosecution to
the fullest extent of the law, many do not.
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
29
Beverly Engel
The emotionally abused woman is a particular type of
woman, a woman who has established a pattern of
continually being emotionally abused by those she is
involved with, whether it be her lover or husband, her boss,
her friends, her parents, her children, or her siblings. No
matter how successful, how intelligent or how attractive she
is, she still feels "less than" other people. Despite perhaps
having taken assertion-training classes, she still feels afraid
to stand up for herself in her relationships and is still
victimized by her low self-esteem, her fear of authority
figures, or her need to be taken care of by others. She was
emotionally abused as a child, but she may or may not
recognize how extensively this kind of childhood continues
to affect her life. (Engel, 1990, p. 7)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
30
Beverly Engel
The JEW is a particular type of woman, a woman who
has established a pattern of continually being emotionally
abused by those she is involved with, whether it be her
lover or husband, her boss, her friends, her parents, her
children, or her siblings. No matter how successful, how
intelligent or how attractive she is, she still feels "less
than" other people. Despite perhaps having taken
assertion-training classes, she still feels afraid to stand up
for herself in her relationships and is still victimized by
her low self-esteem, her fear of authority figures, or her
need to be taken care of by others. She was emotionally
abused as a child, but she may or may not recognize how
extensively this kind of childhood continues to affect her
Coates
2014 Centre for
RBP
life.& Wade,
(Engel,
1990,
p. 7)
31
Four Operations of Language
Conceals Violence
Blames
Victim
Obscures
Responsibility
Conceals Responses
and Resistance
Centre for RBP
32
Transformation of Unilateral
Action into Mutual Cycle
Unilateral Violence
Mutual Cycle
 Deliberate Action
 Effected, Automatic Behaviour
 Resistance
 Passivity
 Unilateral Action
 Mutual Action
 Abuse and Violence
 Psychological traits
 Action in social and material
 Individual without social
context
 Male perpetrator and female
victim (of his violent actions)
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
context
 Female perpetrator and male
victim (of her psychology)
33
Four Operations of Response Based Language
Exposes Violence
Align with
Victim
Clarify
Responsibility
Honour Responses
and Resistance
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
34
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
35
Thank You!
Coates & Wade, 2014 Centre for RBP
36