THE ABUSIVE PERSONALITY The Abusive Personality Violence and Control in Intimate Relationships S E C O N D E D I T I O N DONALD G. DUTTON THE GUILFORD PRESS New York London ©2007 The Guilford Press A Division of Guilford Publications,Inc. 72 Spring Street,New York,NY 10012 www.guilford.com All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced,translated,stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical, photocopying,microfilming,recording,or otherwise,without written permission from the Publisher. Printed in the United States of America This book is printed on acid-free paper. Last digit is print number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dutton,Donald G.,1943- The abusive personality :violence and control in intimate relationships / by Donald G.Dutton.—2nd ed. p.;cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-10:1-59385-371-8 (hardcover) ISBN-13:978-1-59385-371-6 1. Abusive men—Psychology. 2. Object relations (Psychoanalysis). 3. Attachment behavior. 4. Intimacy (Psychology). I. Title. [DNLM: 1. Personality Disorders. 2. Spouse Abuse. 3. Interpersonal Relations. 4. Men—psychology.WM 190 D981a 2007] RC569.5.F3D87 2007 616.85′82—dc22 2006016741 About the Author Donald G. Dutton, PhD,is Professor of Psychology at the Uni- versity of British Columbia.In 1979,he cofounded the Assaultive Hus- bands Project,a court-mandated treatment program for men convicted of spousal assault. Dr. Dutton has published over 100 papers and four books,including Domestic Assault of Women (1995,University of British Columbia Press);The Batterer:A Psychological Profile (1995,Basic Books), which has been translated into French, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, and Polish; and Rethinking Domestic Violence (2006, University of British Columbia Press).He has frequently served as an expert witness in civil trials involving intimate abuse and in criminal trials involving family violence. v Preface D uring the last 25 years there have been remarkable advances in our understanding of the psychology of intimate rage, violence, and abusiveness.These advances have come from a variety of sources:devel- opmental psychopathology,which charts the many microfailures in the attachment process;neurobiopsychology,which investigates the forma- tion through mother–infant interaction of brain structures that regulate emotion; and the study of personality disorders, which assesses long- term alterations in thinking,feeling,and acting that are atypical within one’s culture. Rage and intimate abusiveness are closely tied to issues in early development.In attachment theory rage is the initial reaction to attach- ment disruption—the sustained absence of the source of security. Understanding this connection can move our comprehension beyond the “stimulus–response”models of social learning theory and enable us tochartcyclicalbuildupsofinternaltensionasakeyelementinintimate abusiveness.Suchcyclicaltensionis,Ibelieve,apersonalityconsequence of a disrupted attachment process,one pathway linking early problems with adult pathology. From John Bowlby’s descriptions of insecurely attached infants “arching away angrily while seeking proximity”to the ambivalence of the abusive adult, a lifelong thread appears in the psy- chological profiles of abusive men and women. This thread includes ambivalence toward the partner,dysphoria produced by intimacy,and a vi Preface vii tendency to blame the partner for the dysphoria.The latter process spi- ralsupwardinself-amplifyingruminationsthatproduceunbearableten- sionstatesthatculminateinviolence.Thesetensionstatesdrivethought processes into obsessional “feedback loops” and generate self-fulfilling prophecies when negative actions follow negative anticipations. One of the goals of this book is to make explicit these pathways from early development to adult abusiveness.In so doing,I review for the professional reader both the theory and research data pointing to these pathways. I include attachment theory, neural development, and object relations since each has important points to make,and we are not yet at a point where we can exclude any on the basis of available data. One of the surprising outcomes in the new research on neural develop- ment is that it supports the theories on early infant cognition put for- ward by object relations theory. The research component of this book links the psychological pro- files of abusive men with their partners’ reports of the form and fre- quencyoftheabusiveness.Thentheconnectionsofthoseprofilestothe men’s recollection of early treatment are empirically established.A triad of early abuse,being shamed by a parent,and being insecurely attached through unpredictable parental emotional availability formed the basis of the adult abusive personality in the sample we studied.These three components produce an emergent dysphoria, blamed on the partner, and a tendency to ruminate, culminating in explosive abuse. The re- search described links the childhood experiences to their adult sequelae. Research techniques of this sort have limitations, which I describe in the text.They do represent,however,a critical first step toward under- standing the development of intimate abusiveness from a lifespan per- spective.Furthermore,theyarecurrentlybeingvalidatedbylongitudinal studies on children, adolescents, and young adults. These longitudinal studies expand and reaffirm the original research in a number of ways: They are prospective and do not rely on the retrospective reports of our sample; they examine subjects for lengthy developmental periods; and they apply to both men and women,finding more similarities than dis- similarities in the development of the abusive personality.The empirical foundation for “abusogenesis”(the development of long-standing traits of abuse) is now far advanced. I have also included a treatment chapter that derives from the empirical studies on the psychological infrastructure of abuse. If we know its underpinnings and focus treatment on them,then we can alter the support structure that perpetuates abusiveness. Conversely, treat- ments that do not address this psychological infrastructure are doomed viii Preface to fail in the long run.They will simply have treated the symptoms,and theproblemwillrecur.Psychotherapeuticgroupinterventiondoesfairly well in treating abusiveness, although certain personality constellations need more attention, and techniques borrowed from therapies specifi- callydevelopedtotreatpersonalitydisorder,trauma,andattachmentdis- orders can be amalgamated into abuse treatment. I thank Seymour Weingarten, Editor-in-Chief at The Guilford Press,for his encouragement in developing this book.I also thank the many people who have provided support,critical advice,and inspiration for the ideas developed here:Kim Bartholomew,Daniel Sonkin,Terrie Moffitt, Miriam Ehrensaft, Murray Straus, Allan Schore, David Celani, Dante Cicchetti,Drew Westen,John Bowlby,and John Archer. Contents CHAPTER1. Introduction 1 CHAPTER2. Early Explanations 20 CHAPTER3. Learning of Abusiveness 45 CHAPTER4. The Psychology of the Cycle of Violence 74 CHAPTER5. The Structure of the Abusive Personality: 93 The Data CHAPTER6. The Primitive Origins of Rage 123 CHAPTER7. An Anger Born of Fear: Attachment Rage 147 CHAPTER8. The Sociopsychoneurobiology of Attachment 178 CHAPTER9. The Early Antecedents Studies 190 CHAPTER10. Longitudinal Development 211 and Female Abusive Personalities CHAPTER11. The Treatment of Assaultiveness 221 Index 250 ix