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Overview: The “Wife-Beater’s Wife” Reconsidered

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The Gender Gap in Psychotherapy

Abstract

Wife-beating, although not a new phenomenon, has been largely ignored by mental health professionals. Until recently the literature and research on family violence were limited to child abuse and murder, since these categories alone were generally accepted as serious problems deserving of public attention and intervention. Although extensive research and service efforts have focused on family dynamics that foster child abuse and alcoholism, there has been inadequate recognition of the aggression that is often directed toward the wives and mothers in such families. This “selective inattention” has been noted by most contemporary researchers and writers1–3 and was documented by O’Brien’s finding4 that the index of the Journal of Marriage and the Family from its inception in 1939 through 1969 contained no references to “violence.”

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Authors
  1. Elaine Hilberman
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Harvard Medical School and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, 02115, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Patricia Perri Rieker Ph.D.

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, 27514, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

    Elaine (Hilberman) Carmen M.D.

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© 1980 American Psychiatric Association

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Hilberman, E. (1980). Overview: The “Wife-Beater’s Wife” Reconsidered. In: Rieker, P.P., Carmen, E. (eds) The Gender Gap in Psychotherapy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-4754-5_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-4754-5_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4684-4756-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4684-4754-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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