Forensic Psychology of Spousal Violence

Mauro Paulino

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780128035344
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Forensic Science
• Index: Law

Exploring the dynamics between victim and offender is paramount to answering important issues of character and vital for forensic research. This involves examining the role of the victim during and after victimization; this process is especially important for spousal violence because of the interactive process between the victim and the offender.
Forensic Psychology of Spousal Violence covers the phenomenon of spousal violence and its different forms, discussing the consequences of abuse, providing research tips to be used in the field, including relevant case studies and much more. The innovative approach of this text fills a void in the current understanding of spousal violence.

• Uses international statistics to present data of women battered and/or deceased to educate, change mindsets and practices and ultimately reduce the number of battered women and spousal homicides in the future
• Includes current case studies
• Includes best practices for spousal abuse investigations
• Portable for use in fieldwork

Chapter 1

The Phenomenon of Spousal Violence

Abstract

The first chapter is dedicated to the spousal violence phenomenon, starting with a historical summary about the evolution of marriage, which began as a social contract for patrimonial and generational matters. During the first phase of the construct of “marriage,” there were no concerns regarding emotions or a woman’s right to pleasure during intercourse. She was mostly seen as a mother (housewife) and not as a woman with needs, desires and will. The conceptual difficulties associated with the various existing terminologies in terms of violence in intimate relationships are addressed, which allows a better understanding of the spousal violence outline, which focuses on relationships where a matrimonial bond exists or has existed (eg, marriage or consensual union).

Keywords

Aggression; Domestic violence; Marriage; Sexual intercourse; Spousal violence; Violence; Violence against women

Historical Precedent: From the Marriage of Convenience to the Marriage of Love Materialized on Sexual Intercourse

In a topic where the union of two adults is used as a background, it is important that we reflect on love and marriage, even if we approach it in a synoptic form.

It is important to start by highlighting that marriage is constructed as a cultural product. It is an invention created at a certain moment in time (Aires, 2009a), which has been differently understood throughout the ages.

In 3000 BCE in Mesopotamia, marriage was arranged by the fathers of future spouses, and, in case the woman could not get pregnant, she could be expelled from society (Magalhães, 2010).

Marriage first appears as a solemn moment in Ancient Rome and Greece. The Romans also created the Marriage Law and instituted the practice of monogamy (Aires, 2009a).

Engels (2002) wrote that individual sexual love is not related to the creation of marriage. The genesis of marriage is marked by issues regarding the management of material goods, which is a very different notion than passion and love (Aires, 2009a).

In the Middle Ages, women did not have the right to choose their husband. The family’s attention was focused only on the task of choosing who would receive the dowry, as well as the sharing of seeds for agriculture, since some families had more seeds and of better quality than others (Aires, 2009a).

Throughout the Middle Ages, women did not have the status of being a “real person,” since they were seen as objects. Primarily, the father and the husband (after marriage) were their owners, claiming that women were physically and mentally weak. Consequently, these men could be violent toward their women, either by enslaving, selling or killing them after a case of adultery or infertility. In the aforementioned time period, men always had a woman that they fully controlled (Magalhães, 2010).

Engels (2002) states that marriages started as convenience marriages and not the result of individual sexual love. This means that the main issue resided on the male sovereignty of the family and on the procreation of descendants that could only be theirs, which carried the role of inheriting the family’s wealth. We can see the importance of the woman’s fidelity, resulting in the paternity of the descendants. In Pais’ (2010) understanding, the lack of love in marriage translates itself as some kind of freakish phenomenon.

Engels (2002, p. 90) hits a weak spot by stating that “it is quite frequently … [that] marriages of convenience … (become) the most crass prostitution—sometimes by the action of both partners, but more usually by the woman who is only distinguished from the usual courtesan for not renting her body as a piecework like a salaried worker but for selling it once and for all into slavery.”

The history of marriage is marked by the effort in saving family names and goods, stopping them from disappearing. This way, one of the reasons that marriage existed was the negotiation between families that would arrange their sons’ and daughters’ marriages at a young age. Everybody knew in advance whom they were going to marry, when the boy reached 10 and the girl 12 or 13 (Aires, 2009a).

The strong implementation of marriage was merely for economic reasons, since nobody would convey much importance to it.

Engels (2002) defends that complete liberty in marriage would only be possible when the suppression of capitalist production and its consequent property relations would have extinguished all economic factors that would strongly influence the choosing of the husband’s choices.

In the 12th century, courtier love is strongly present, that is, a love that is not dedicated to the partner but to adulterous relationships. Pais (2010) points out that marriage that distant from love created a double standard when talking about spousal fidelity, tolerating the man’s infidelity and forcing it on the woman. Today, spousal infidelity is taken by law as one of the foundations of divorce requests, where the offended requests the dissolution of the union, while the violator supports the inherent economic expenses.

Engels (2002) reflects that until the 19th century, it was not possible to talk about a family history, nor about individual sexual love before the Middle Ages.

The first reference in history to a marriage bound by love appears in the 19th century, with the marriage of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (Aires, 2009a). Costa (2003) states that at the beginning of the 20th century, the acceptable basis relative to choosing a partner for the rest of your life was loving attraction.

With more than 400,000 years of humanity’s history, only two or three hundred years ago did the emotional function of love assume an important role in marriage, with love being an integral part of a human being’s concerns. These outlines help to understand the difficulty of thinking about marriage bound to love, as well as the resistance to end a marriage where passion does not evolve into love. The former socioeconomic marriage forbade the cessation of the marriage through society’s control, particularly the extended family’s control (grandparents, parents, uncles), who were the main people interested in the already invested negotiations (Aires, 2009a).

The notion of inseparability in marriage is related to the control exercised by society as one of the results of the Spanish Inquisition, a repressive and dogmatic movement that emerged after the reform in the 15th century (Costa, 2003). Only at the end of the 20th century do we see the possibility of divorce without the stigma of something socially negative or pathological (Aires, 2009a), even though Engels (2002) stated decades ago that marriage without love is amoral. However, the current understanding of psychological science points to marriage as a space of personal achievement, “a space for psychological development and sharing …, in which, through an intimate and affective relationship, each human being develops into the most evolved state our society allows. It is not a place to suffer and destroy our close ones” (Aires, 2009a, p. 57).

Aires (2007) describes love as a basic need for humans, similar to breathing and eating, being the most important discovery someone can make during their life. Love is contemplated as a learning experience, like a construction that allows happiness and the feeling of accomplishment when achieved and not suffering, in other words, the opposite of spousal violence.

However, Western culture’s understanding of love is somewhat related to suffering. Pain is seen as proof of the intensity of a person’s loving feelings for someone else: a cultural production (eg, soap operas, poetry, music) that is surrounded by love passion or tragic love. In this perspective, a happy love will never become true as a reflection of human experience (Sánchez, 2008).

Aires (2007) states that love as an ingredient of marriage is the guarantee of mental health, with sex being the means of construction of the love bond between two loving adults. As we shall see, sex constitutes a target category of misrepresentations due to its primitive idea that the sexual act represents an obligation for women, being often overwhelmed by the aggressor. Hirigoyen (2006) states that in many cases of couples where spousal violence prevails, the sexual act often resembles a mutual masturbation without any affective exchange. Mintz (2004) underlines the role of sex as a promoter of the construction and reinforcement of bonds. Complementing the issue, Cassidy wrote in 2001 that the physical proximity and comfort ensured by sexual behaviors provide a basis for the development of emotional intimacy (Faria et al., 2009)

In 1997, Fuertes and López stated that the physical and emotional search for intimacy with the partner manifests in the capital form through a sexual context, with sexuality presenting itself as a way of expressing fondness and affection, and as an intimate communication with the partner (Faria et al., 2009). Sexuality represents one of the most universally gratifying experiences, being its motivational power comparable to the needs of survival and nourishment (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002).

According to Aires (2009a), married people present better physical and mental statistics. Marriage allows intimacy and sharing that is materialized through sex. It develops the human personality throughout the years that go beyond what is genetically programmed. However, this only occurs when you are truly happy in your marriage.

Samson (2010) defines that a sane, loving relationship is one that allows the development of the couple. He also adds that a stimulating loving relationship allows the couple to mature and develop themselves. The sexual contact will appear naturally when both partners show interest in the relationship. Sánchez (2008) contemplates in his article four parameters that allow us to define and differentiate the couple’s bond from other dyadic bonds (friends), namely daily life, shared life projects, sex, and monogamous tendencies (as a definer of a united loving object).

In short and to paraphrase Garrido (2002, p. 239), “love is incompatible with violence,” a love that is materialized through sex with a focus on building a marriage that promotes psychological growth, hopefully with no traces of a marriage by convenience, which was common in the past. However, according to the same author (Garrido, 2002), the core of this dissertation focuses on the matrimonial unions where love is absent and is marked by spousal violence, a definition that we shall discuss later.

Conceptional Difficulties

Similarly to what happens in other domains (eg, sexual abuse of children), the concept of spousal violence also goes through large difficulties in the unification of integrating criteria for a unique operational definition (Paulino, 2009). However, the big names of Russian psychology (Leontiev, 1978; Luria, 1976; Vygotsky, 2001) underlined the importance of communication as a mediator of thought. This means that it is important to take into account the words used to define a certain phenomenon to the extent that they will orient and guide our thoughts and, consequently, reach understanding regarding situations of spousal violence.

We are witnessing an indiscriminate use of concepts that are wrongly and frequently used as synonyms toward the phenomenon that it is trying to project through speech (eg, d...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Phenomenon of Spousal Violence
• Chapter 2. Statistical Data Regarding Spousal Violence
• Chapter 3. The Different Forms of Spousal Violence
• Chapter 4. The Consequences of Spousal Violence
• Chapter 5. Characterization of Spousal Violence Victims
• Chapter 6. Spousal Homicide
• Chapter 7. Explanatory Models of Spousal Violence
• Chapter 8. Considerations Regarding Spousal Violence Intervention
• Chapter 9. Tips on Investigating in the Domain on Domestic Violence
• Chapter 10. Reality
• Conclusion
• Afterword
• References
• Index