Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

by Lundy Bancroft

Couples therapy is designed to tackle issues ...

you can’t accomplish any of these goals in the context of abuse.

You can’t take the leaps of vulnerability involved in working through early emotional injuries while you are feeling emotionally unsafe—because you are emotionally unsafe.

if you succeed in achieving greater intimacy with your abusive partner, you will soon get hurt even worse than before because greater closeness means greater vulnerability for you.

Couples counseling sends both the abuser and the abused woman...

The abuser learns that his partner is “pushing his buttons” and “touching him off” and that she needs to adjust her behav...

This is precisely what he has been claim...

Change in abusers comes only from the reverse process, from completely stepping out of the notion that his partner plays an...

An abuser also has to stop focusing on his feelings and his partner’s behavior, and look instead at h...

Abuse is not caused by bad relationship dynamics.

And even if it worked, even if you could stop his abusiveness by catering to his every whim, is that a healthy way to live?

If you have issues you would like to work on with a couples counselor, wait until your partner has been completely abuse-free for two years.

Couples counseling can end up being a big setback for the abused woman.

The therapist thereby inadvertently echoes the abuser’s attitude, and the woman is forced to deal with yet another context in which she has to defend herself, which is the last thing she needs.

an abuser can retaliate for a woman’s frank statements during couples sessions.

Increasingly, therapists across the United States and Canada are refusing to engage in couples or family sessions with an abuser, which is the responsible course of action.

THE ABUSIVE MAN IN INDIVIDUAL THERAPY

The more psychotherapy a client of mine has participated in, the more impossible I usually f...

The highly “therapized” abuser tends to be slick, condescendin...

He expects to be rewarded for his emotional openness, handled gingerly because of his “vulnerability,” colluded with in skirting the damage he has done, and congratulated for his insight.

I have yet to meet an abuser who has made any meaningful and lasting changes in his behavior toward female partners through therapy, regardless of how much “insight”—most of it false—that he may have gained.

The fact is that if an abuser finds a particularly skilled therapist and if the therapy is especially successful, when he is finished he will be a happy, well-adjusted abuser—good news for him, perhaps, but not such good news for his partner.

Psychotherapy can be very valuable for the issues it is devised to address, but partner abuse is not one of them; an abusive man needs to be i...

THE ABUSER ...

Consequences, the first item on the list, are manifested primarily through the abuser’s experience of losing his relationship (at least temporarily if not permanently),

The abuser program has responsibility for items two and three, providing the abusive man with education about abuse and confronting him with his attitudes and excuses.

high-quality abuser program is entirely different from therapy.

Therapy focuses on the man’s feelings and gives him empathy and support, no matter how unreasonable the attitudes that are giving rise to those feelings. An abuser program, on the other hand, focuses on his thinking. The feelings that the abuser program...

Therapy involves few rules, or none, governing what the man is allowed to do during the period he is in therapy. The abuser program requires the man to refrain from all physical violence and threats and to work seriously on reducing his verbal aggression and...

abusive man’s therapist usually will not speak to the abused woman, whereas the counselor of a high-quali...

Therapy typically will not address any of the central causes of abusiveness, including entitlement, coercive control, disrespect, superiority, selfishness, or victim blaming. An abuser program is expected to cover all ...

An abuser program is expected to provide the man with education about abuse, to counsel him on how to apply those concepts to his own life, and to confront his abusive attitudes and excuses...

At the same time, an abuser program possesses no more magi...

The man who makes major life changes as a result of attending an abuser program is the one who chooses to work the program, not the one who sits back and waits for the program to ...

The successful client neither fights his counselors every step of the way, telling them what ignorant idiots they are, nor kisses up to them unctuously while claiming th...

Rather, he comes weekly with a seriousness of purpose, practices what he is told, and tries to face ...

regret to say that a majority of abusers choose no...

It isn’t that they can’t change (any abuser who doesn’t have a major mental illness can change) but that ...

They run a sort of cost-benefit analysis in their heads and decide that the rewards of remaining in control of th...

They decide that to consider seriously the perspective their counselors are presenting to them is just too uncomfortable and difficult and offends their arrogant sense of certainty about everything—at least, about everything having t...

Later in this chapter I offer some suggestions on how you can increase the likelihood that your partner will be among those who do overcome their abusiveness. Bear in mind, though, that the ultimate choice is his; the saying “You can lead a horse to ...

HOW DO I KNOW IF HIS ABUSER PROGRAM I...

In a responsible program the abused woman is considered the primary client.

Those in charge of an abuser program should do the following:

Contact you quickly after your partner enters the program. In this call, they should ask you to give a history of his abusive behavior and of any substance abuse, and tell you where to go for abused women’s services.

Warn you that only a minority of abusers make lasting changes and that a few actually get worse from part...

Tell you the rules he has to follow to be ...

Describe to you the topics that will be covered in his group meetings and give you as much detail about ...

Devote most sessions at the program to discussing the core attitudinal and behavioral issues of abuse (as covered in Chapter 3).

Furthermore, you should be given a copy of any written reports generated by the program about the abuser,