An object-relations approach to the phenomenon and treatment of battered women

Recently, a great deal of attention has been devoted to the issue of women who are battered by their mates (Martin, 1976; Roy, 1977a). Such women exhibit some contradictory and seemingly strange behavior, such as saying they love their husbands and ignoring or rationalizing away the times their husbands beat them. They stay with the battering husbands for years, often taking repeated and severe beatings. These battered women, who sometimes come from homes where they either were beaten or saw their mothers being beaten, may also use violence on their own children (Gelles, 1974). How may these apparently disparate feelings and behaviors of battered women be reconciled within the framework of contemporary psychoanaytic theory and practice?