Coercive Control has seemingly reached epidemic proportions worldwide. The insidious nature of this pattern of abuse will have made it difficult for us to every truly know the extent and scope of those affected, but suffice it to say, it is likely to be much more than any country's domestic abuse organizations are likely to imagine.
Unlike situational violence, Coercive Control is a multi-phased, sequenced pattern of abuse that relies heavily on tactics of psychological abuse, intertwined with financial, sexual, reproductive, medical, child and post-separation abuse tactics to exert power-over and control-of one's selected target. While rages, threats of violence and physical abuse tactics are also employed, an abuser is likely to carefully calibrate his abuse tactics to obscure the fact that one is, in fact, under assault. The insidious nature of this type of abuse is one reason why many victims are likely to remain in the dyad longer than they might if it were more overt abuse. Another reason is that victims are likely to become entrapped in their own lives as the abuser will exploit personal and structural vulnerabilities, making leaving extremely difficult.
(Please note, I am loathe to refer to this as a relationship, for in my opinion, it is nothing but an assault that began with a kiss and will have ended in disaster. To call coercive control, relational abuse or intimate partner violence is to imagine that rape is about making love.)
Dr. Emma Katz' provides one of the more robust conceptual frameworks of coercive control, as compared to Evan Stark's model presented in his then groundbreaking book, Coercive Control: How men entrap women in their personal lives (2007). Dr. Katz builds upon Stark's efforts and quite accurately describes the more subtle, psychologically corrosive elements of the tactics of abuse than previously captured in other descriptions.
Of special importance is the attention paid in the research itself in which Dr. Katz reports on her qualitative interviewing of 15 mothers and 15 children. Her work examines both the damage done to mothers and children and the affective bond between them due to the nature of the abuse. She also provides robust description of the ways in which mothers and children adapt, cope and survive years of pain and suffering due to the controlling abuser in their lives. The findings of her work underscore the idea that coercive control is not just spousal or partner abuse but also child abuse. Children are abused both in experiencing a mother being abused and in being abused directly as well.
As a psychotherapist who works with individuals and family systems impacted by this type of abuse, her work has been an invaluable aid in more deeply understanding the insidious nature of coercive control. In my opinion, it should be required reading for mental health and academic professionals for whom reporting of child abuse is mandated. Every family court judge and lawyer should read this book as well. This book is not necessarily the starting point for domestic abuse survivors themselves, as it is dense and lengthy, at least not in their first months of recovery. Those readers may find Dr. Lisa Aronson Fontes book, Invisible Chains, a useful point of departure in understanding what they endured.
As someone who has also begun researching Coercive Control himself, an under-discussed element of coercive control that is paid scant attention in Dr. Katz' conceptual framework is the role of trauma bonding induced by what some might call "love-bombing" and what this author thinks of as the weaponization of sex and romance. It is in the earliest whirlwind of romance that the invisible chains of coercive control are first forged and as a sequential building block, sets the stage for additional tactics of abuse that will ensue, such as isolation, induced emotional dependency, etc.
Dr. Katz, while a young academic has embarked upon a stellar career, making a robust contribution to the research of coercive control in the lives of children and mothers. She is associated with additional research efforts through the SHERA Family Research Group based in the United Kingdom with global research efforts under way. She is an exciting academic whose career you should follow.
The book, as you might gather, is one that I highly recommend.
No comments:
Post a Comment