Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, Vol. 1, No.

1, 1999

Male Perpetrators of Violence Against Women:

An Attachment Theory Perspective
Peter Fonagy1,2

This paper proposes an attachment theory formulation of violent acts

perpetrated by men against women, usually in the context of sexual
relationships. It is proposed that relationship violence may be seen as an
exaggerated response of a disorganized attachment system. It is related to a
disorganized attachment pattern in infancy coupled with a history of abuse
and an absent male parental figure. The author proposes a theory based on
a psychoanalytic understanding of the development of the self, and highlights
similarities between the clinical presentation of male perpetrators and those
with borderline personality disorder.
KEY WORDS: domestic violence; aggression; attachment; disorganized attachment.

INTRODUCTION

Taking an historical perspective, violence against women is hardly a

problem (Gordon, 1989). As long as society generally has construed women
as property and explicitly promoted the social domination and privileges
of men, family violence (bar its most extreme forms) has been condoned
and legitimized. Yet relationships between intimate adult partners in which
women are victims and husbands or boyfriends are perpetrators are now
known to have devastating and long-term physical as well as psychological
consequences, not only on the women involved but also on child witnesses
(Osofsky, 1997). A study conducted in 1991 in a Boston City hospital found
1University College London, Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis, The Anna Freud
Centre; Director of Research, The Menninger Child and Family Center and Clinical Protocols
and Outcomes Center.
2Correspondence should be directed to Peter Fonagy, Sub-Department of Clinical Health
Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom;
e-mail: p.fonagy@ucl.ac.uk.

1521-1401/99/0100-0007$16.00/0 C 1999 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

8 Fonagy

that 10% of the children who used outpatient psychiatric services had wit-
nessed a knifing or a shooting by the age of 6 years, and the majority of
these incidents occurred in the home (Taylor, Zuckerman, Harik, & Groves,
1994).
How social changes finally led to the criminalization of domestic vio-
lence (Pleck, 1987) is beyond the scope of this contribution. My aim here
is to provide a model for understanding why, notwithstanding the late twen-
tieth century changes in gender roles, abuse or assault by men of a wife
or sexual partner remains relatively commonplace. I will restrict myself here
to trying to understand the behavior of the men involved. About 12% of
men have a lifetime incidence of serious violent acts toward women—acts
such as punching, kicking, beating with a physical object, and rape; two-
thirds of these individuals regularly repeat such assaults (Straus, 1979). The
gravity of these offenses is indicated by their duration as well as their se-
verity. In her seminal study of 120 battered women, Walker (1979) reported
the typical duration of battering to be between 2 and 24 hours.
There are two categories of violent acts against women (Meloy, 1992).
By far the most common are the Type I, impulsive attacks carried out as
a consequence of minimal provocation but in a state characterized by the
perpetrator as uncontrollable and overwhelming rage. A number of large-
scale clinical surveys have identified a group of angry, jealous, depressed
men frequently violent with their partner (Dutton, 1995a; Saunders, 1992).
By contrast, there are premeditated attacks of "predatory" violence against
women, Type II violence, where the perpetrator carefully plans the attack,
attachment to the victim is based in fantasy, and pleas for temporarily di-
minished responsibility lack plausibility. I believe that both forms of vio-
lence are linked to attachment relationships, actual or imagined, but
require somewhat different accounts. Here we shall focus on the first type
and do little more than acknowledge that the second form also richly de-
serves study.
There are several competing accounts of Type I male violence against
women. An influential one is rooted in the tacit approval that society gives
to abusive males. I quote: "Men who assault their wives are actually living
up to cultural prescriptions that are cherished in Western society—aggres-
siveness, male dominance, and female subordination—and they are using
physical force as a means to enforce that dominance" (Dobash & Dobash,
1979, p. 89). Domination of women is to some degree a cultural prescrip-
tion and violence can serve as a desperate means to that end. However,
this does not make a psychological account superfluous or exonerative, as
some feminist writers imply (Goldner, Penn, Sheinberg, & Walker, 1990).
There are also a number of observations that are inconsistent with a purely
sociological feminist account (Dutton, 1995b). For example, why are abuse
Male Perpetrators of Violence Against Women 9

rates lower in more patriarchal cultures (Sorenson & Telles, 1991)? Why
is there no simple relationship between the actual power a man has in a
particular relationship and wife assault (Yllo & Straus, 1990)? Why are
abuse rates relatively high in both male and female gay couples (Lie, Schilit,
Bush, Montague, & Reyes, 1993)? Although I believe sociological factors
to be at the root of the problem, such an enterprise is emphatically not
exonerative—rather understanding is the preferred path to early prevention.
A psychological account is required to address such issues.
Social learning theory accounts maintain that violence against women
is a learned response to stress—supported by the immediate rewards (feel-
ings of agency and control, the cathartic expression of anger, or the ending
of an argument)—that violence may bring (Dutton, 1995a). Modeling on
parental behavior may also be relevant (Bandura, 1986). Interparental vio-
lence certainly relates to male assaultiveness. In a 1-year prospective study,
men who had been exposed to interparental physical assaults were 3 1/2
times more likely to hit their own wives (35% vs. 10%) (Straus, Gelles, &
Steinmetz, 1980). It would be unwise, however, to accept a simple modeling
account of this specific association. Observing fathers hitting mothers in-
creases the likelihood of physical aggression on the part of wives as well
as husbands, and parents of both genders toward their children (Kalmuss,
1984). Observing interparental aggression appears to prime all individuals
to acts of violence. Further, interparental violence is not a complete expla-
nation because many men who commit this type of act have no histories
of witnessing violence between their parents (Walker, 1979).

ATTACHMENT THEORY

Our starting point here is the epidemiological observation that the vast
majority of Type I violence, where the perpetrator is male and the victim
female, involves intimate or attachment relationships (Dutton, 1995a). This
most robust and reliable of observations, in a field otherwise littered with
inadequately documented accounts, suggests that attachment theory may
be helpful in constructing an explanation.
Attachment theory is the black sheep of the psychoanalytic family
(Fonagy, in press). John Bowlby's early writings (Bowlby, 1960) were the
subject of severe criticisms from Anna Freud, Rene Spitz, and Max Schur
as well as others who considered it mechanistic, nondynamic, and based
on thorough misunderstandings of psychoanalytic theory (Freud, 1960;
Schur, 1960; Spitz, 1960). Opposition to his views provided one small area
of common ground for the followers of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein
10 Fonagy

(Grosskruth, 1986), and for decades Bowlby was a relatively isolated figure
in psychoanalysis.
Attachment theory is, however, experiencing something of a psycho-
analytic renaissance (e.g., Lichtenberg, 1995). This is perhaps due to the
increasing ecumenicalism of psychoanalysis and the general acceptance of
an object relations perspective in the basic psychoanalytic model. According
to attachment theory, the primary function of early object relationships is
to provide the infant with a sense of security in environments that induce
fear (Bowlby, 1973). Bowlby assumed that on the basis of the interactions
between the infant and a caregiver, self-other representations develop (he
termed these internal working models) that reflect the child's cumulative
experience of sensitivity on the part of that caregiver. This aspect of in-
fant-caregiver relationships is present in most psychoanalytic formulations
and clearly overlaps with some current uses of Bion's containment concept
(Bion, 1962), Winnicott's holding environment (Winnicott, 1965), Kohut's
self-objects (Kohut, 1971), and Sandler's concept of safety (Sandier, 1960).
The child's confidence in the caregiver's capacity to appreciate his distress
and to act on this understanding is reflected in the security of the bond
between infant and mother (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978).
Mary Ainsworth observed that insensitively parented 1-year-olds tended
either to avoid the caregiver after a brief period of separation ("anxious-
avoidant") or refuse to be comforted by her on her return ("anxious-resis-
tant"). By contrast, sensitively parented children sought comfort from the
caregiver following brief separation. These patterns are reliable across situ-
ations. Secure attachment predicts the healthy development of the child in
terms of educational success, peer relationships, self-esteem, and identity
formation. Bowlby (1973) assumed that the attachment system remains a
central organizer of interpersonal behavior throughout the life span. Some
infants, who may show any of these three patterns, also show signs of dis-
organization. On reunion with the caregiver they freeze, collapse, bang their
heads, slap the caregiver, hide, or try to escape. These behaviors suggest
deep dysfunction in the attachment system.
Bowlby (1969) claimed that the developmental task of the child is to
establish a relationship with the caregiver that, through proximity, ensures
protection. The parent's caregiving system provides this proximity and con-
tact to ensure protection and, ultimately, survival. Threat activates the at-
tachment system that, in turn, triggers the caregiving system of the adult.
But what of an abusive relationship? Maltreatment (a threat) causes an
overactivation of the attachment system, often paradoxically in relation to
the abuser who is at once the source of threat and the hope for its con-
tainment (Rajecki, Lamb, & Obmascher, 1978). This, in a nutshell, is at
the heart of disorganized attachment.
Male Perpetrators of Violence Against Women 11

Research using Mary Main's Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) may

have also contributed to the increasing acceptance of attachment theory
ideas. The AAI represents an attempt to assess current mental repre-
sentations by adults of their childhood attachment experiences (Main,
Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). Several studies, including one by our team in
London, have demonstrated that in as many as 80% of cases, infant at-
tachment classification can be predicted on the basis of adult attachment
classification made before the birth of the child (Fonagy, Steele, & Steele
1991b; Steele, Steele, & Fonagy, 1996). Parents with an insecure (incoher-
ent) view of their childhood attachment experiences are highly likely to
build an anxious attachment relationship with their infants (van IJzendoorn,
1995).
A number of writers working in the context of attachment theory have
proposed that hurting one's partner could be the exaggeration or perversion
of attachment behavior (Dutton, 1995b; Dutton, Saunders, Starzomski, &
Bartholomew, 1994; Mayseless, 1991; West & George, in press). Broadly
speaking, the intensity and force of such abuse could be seen as reactions
to attachment insecurity. They parallel behavioral patterns in highly inse-
curely attached infants and children. Let us explore this suggestion further.

RELATIONSHIP VIOLENCE AS EXAGGERATED RESPONSE OF

ATTACHMENT SYSTEM

Bowlby (1973) recognized that anger is the natural response of the

child when the expectation of safety, close to the attachment figure, is jeop-
ardized. In normal development, it has a signaling function of strengthening
the relationship between child and caregiver. By the second year, and per-
haps even earlier, anger also serves to maintain the integrity of the self-
representation. Threats to the toddler's capacity for self-determination
normally lead to ferocious tantrums. Tantrums tend to subside with the
emergence of a stable self-organization. The angry outburst of the toddler
is not mainly a call for protection, it is also a self-protective response to
insensitivity on the part of the caregiver, felt at the moment to have un-
dermined the child's nascent self-image (Fonagy, Moran, & Target, 1993).
Normally this reaction provokes the immediate intensification of care-taking
responses with a greater chance that the child's intentionality is recognized.
Toddler temper tantrums are common only in the attachment context.
The normal anger response, however, turns to aggression when insen-
sitivity is pervasive. The defensive shield of anger is called for so frequently
that the oppositional response becomes integrated with the child's self-
structure. Self-assertion immediately yields aggression. Although anger has
12 Fonagy

an important function within the attachment relationship, aggression is

clearly dysfunctional because it threatens to break apart the attachment
bond. In Bowlby's formulation, aggression—or rather dysfunctional anger-
lies at the root of anxious attachment.
Anxious attachment may thus be linked to violence but cannot provide
sufficient explanation. Why? First, anxious attachment is far too common:
In working class samples the majority of children are anxiously attached
(Broussard, 1995), and most do not become violent. Second, anxious at-
tachment is a relatively stable interpersonal strategy characterized in adult-
hood by the dismissing of relationships as unimportant (this tends to be
the pattern of the avoidant individual), or as a preoccupation, admittedly
sometimes quite angry, with past attachment relationships (the adult out-
come of an anxious resistant attachment pattern) (Main, Kaplan, & Cas-
sidy, 1985). Neither of these strategies resembles the uncontrolled behavior
of violent males. Third, clinical evidence suggests that, far from dismissing
the importance of relationships, such men sometimes go to extreme lengths
to retain their dysfunctional relationships with their victims following vio-
lent episodes, expressing contrition, despair, and a commitment to change
(Walker, 1979). Finally, but perhaps most important, aggression should not
be confused with violence. Whether we conceive of aggression as inherent
to human nature, or as a response to frustration, it is far too pervasive to
be a sufficient cause of a physical attack on the body of another human
being, which thankfully is less common. We would argue that violence in-
volves an additional crucial component that predisposes such individuals
to act on bodies rather than on minds. It is the inadequacy of their capacity
to think about aggression in relation to attachment that pushes them into
violent acts in intimate relationships.

ATTACHMENT AND THE CAPACITY TO REPRESENT MENTAL

STATES

At the heart of the attachment theory account of violence, is the

caregiver's persistent failure to recognize the child's subjective state in in-
fancy. We have argued that without an intrinsic capacity for experiencing
oneself as driven by wishes and desires, constrained by beliefs and expec-
tations, the child depends on the attachment figure to discover his or her
own subjectivity (Fonagy & Target, 1995; Fonagy & Target, 1997). In my
experience, few children wake up one morning and say "Hey! I think there-
fore I am." The child "finds himself" in the caregiver's mind as an inten-
tional being motivated by mental states, beliefs, and desires. This
representation is internalized as the core of the psychological self. Thus,
Male Perpetrators of Violence Against Women 13

the realization of subjectivity might be more accurately stated: "My

caregiver thinks of me as thinking, therefore I exist as a thinker."
There is some evidence consistent with this model: We have shown
that the caregiver's capacity to reflect on mental states in describing their
own childhood predicts the child's security of attachment (Fonagy, Steele,
Moran, Steele, & Higgitt, 1991a). If the caregiver sees her or his own past
in mental state terms—what mother and father thought and how they re-
sponded psychologically—they were two to three times more likely to have
secure attachment to their children. The quality of early attachment is also
a relatively good predictor of the child's capacity to learn that other peo-
ple's behavior is best understood in terms of mental states—the so-called
"theory of mind" (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). Children securely attached
in infancy are more likely than their insecurely attached counterparts, at
age 5 years, to pass cognitive tests of understanding affective states in oth-
ers (Fonagy, 1997; Fonagy, Redfern, & Charman, 1997a). The child's un-
derstanding of minds critically depends on a developmental opportunity to
find himself or herself represented in the caregiver's mind as a mentalizing
individual. The parents' mentalizing capacity is also a good predictor. Thus,
a theory of mind is, first of all, a theory of self. Mentalization, the capacity
to understand and interpret human behavior in terms of the putative men-
tal states underpinning it, arises through the experience of having been so
understood in the context of an attachment relationship. This, in my view,
is a critical aspect of the transgenerational transmission of abuse.

THE ROLE OF ABUSE IN THE HISTORY OF VIOLENT MALES

We have already touched on the common observation that violent men

often have a history of abuse in childhood (Kalmuss, 1984; Revitch &
Schlesinger, 1981; van der Kolk & Fisler, 1994). In a prison-based study,
we have systematically examined narratives of attachment histories of vio-
lent men (Levinson & Fonagy, 1998). Attachment interview narratives of
violent males were characterized by a predominantly dismissing pattern,
overtly denigrating or disavowing attachment relationships, and a high
prevalence of early, unremitting trauma. Unlike the results in a personality
disordered comparison group, unresolved trauma, as defined in the Adult
Attachment Interview coding system, was not common in this group. Cog-
nitive irregularities when trauma is discussed indicate unresolved trauma
in the AAI. For example, slips of the tongue, confusions of past and pre-
sent, prolonged pauses, or unexpected intrusions of the trauma into other
contexts. This was not present in the violent men's narratives. By far the
most marked feature of these interviews was the refusal of almost all the
14 Fonagy

violent offenders in the sample to either spontaneously, or in response to

interrogation, comment on mental states in the context of attachment re-
lationships—either their own or those of their caregivers.
For example, one man, in prison for (among other things) grievous
bodily harm against his girlfriend, described in disturbing detail how his
alcoholic father regularly, on returning home, emptied his bladder on him
and his younger sister. When asked, as part of the interview protocol, "Why
do you think your parents behaved as they did?" he responded: "You tell
me. You are the f'ing psychologist." Throughout the rest of his interview,
he mentioned mental states but a handful of times, and on each of these
occasions it was in the context of what warders, fellow prisoners, or the
police felt or thought. When discussing his wife, his lover, his children, or
his parents, he addressed their social and economic circumstances, their
physical environment, their personality, their psychopathology, and most
commonly their observed behavior. "My wife, she does OK. She is on child
support." "My father was right off his rocker. He'd belt us one, no trouble."
He was remarkably insensitive about his wife: " She likes a bit of the rough
stuff, y'know." The same man was, however, clearly sensitive to the warder's
mental states: "They ain't bad the screws in this nick. They take a shine
to you so long as you know what they are after. They ain't saying—but
you'll know."
We suggest that violent acts against women are often committed by
men with inadequate mentalizing capacities. We assume that they are fre-
quently victims of childhood abuse who cope by refusing to conceive of
their attachment figure's thoughts and thus avoid having to think about
their attachment figure's wish to harm them. The lack of safety of their
environment repeatedly triggers their attachment system, but the behavior
of their caregiver destroys a mentalizing intentional stance. How could 5-
or 6-year-old children begin to start thinking about the mental states that
might have caused a parent, who claims to care, to regularly humiliate and
degrade them? Under the pressure of the combined need to seek comfort,
yet at the same time to escape, children's minds compromise, accepting
physical comfort yet creating mental distance. Unfortunately, in so doing,
they are forced to continue to disrupt the capacity to represent mental states
in themselves and in others in the context of attachment relationships. They
continue to operate on inaccurate or schematic impressions of thoughts
and feelings that handicap them enormously when confronted with intimate
relationships.
There are two propositions here: first, that individuals who experience
childhood trauma are likely to defensively inhibit their capacity to mentalize
and second, that some characteristics of violent males may be linked to
Male Perpetrators of Violence Against Women 15

the developmental pathology associated with this inhibition. I will address

each one in depth.

THE IMPACT OF MALTREATMENT ON MENTALIZING

Accumulating evidence suggests that maltreatment impairs the child's

reflective capacities and sense of self. Schneider-Rosen and Cicchetti (1984,
1991) noted that abused toddlers showed less positive affect on recognizing
themselves in the mirror than did controls. Beeghly and Cicchetti (1994)
showed that these toddlers had a specific deficit in use of internal state
words and that such language tended to be context-bound. Our Menninger
study of maltreated 5- to-8-year-olds found specific deficits in tasks requir-
ing mentalization, particularly among those referred for sexual or physical
and sexual abuse. They could not solve puzzles requiring them to conceive
of one person's false beliefs concerning a second person's false beliefs.
These results suggest that maltreatment may cause children to withdraw
from the mental world. Their attachment behaviors, their proximity seeking,
is disorganized because they desperately seek physical closeness while trying
to create mental distance.
Why should this happen? First, recognition of the mental state of the
other can be dangerous to the developing self because the child who rec-
ognizes the hatred implied by the parent's abuse is forced to see himself
or herself as unlovable. Second, intentional states may be denied or dis-
torted. Abusive parents commonly claim beliefs or feelings at odds with
their behavior. The child cannot test or modify his or her own repre-
sentations, which become rigid or inappropriate and may be abandoned.
Third, the public world, where reflective function is common, may give rise
to alternative models of experiencing the self that are rigidly kept separate
from the attachment context. Finally, the dysfunction may occur, not be-
cause of the maltreatment, but of the family atmosphere that surrounds it.
Authoritarian parenting, commonly associated with maltreatment, is also
known to retard the development of mentalization (Astington, 1996). These
youngsters and their mothers find it difficult to take a playful stance (Ales-
sandri, 1992), so the social scaffolding for the development of mentalization
may be absent in such families.
If lack of consideration for the child's intentionality is pervasive, con-
sequences may occur not just at the functional but also at the neurode-
velopmental level. The work of Bruce Perry (1997) suggested that
Romanian orphans, institutionalized shortly after birth and suffering severe
neglect and maltreatment during most of the first year of their lives, show
significant loss of cortical function in the orbital frontal areas. These areas
16 Fonagy

have been independently shown to be involved with inferring mental states

(Frith, 1996). At 4 years, those who had been adopted before 4 months
showed far less frequent disorganized attachment than those adopted later
(Fisher, Ames, Chisholm, & Savoie, 1997). It has been independently dem-
onstrated that insecure, particularly disorganized, attachment is associated
with a far slower return to baseline of separation-induced cortisol elevation
(Spangler & Grossman, 1993). Chronic exposure to raised levels of cortisol
associated with chronically insensitive caregiving may bring about neurode-
velopmental anomalies that result in a mentalizing deficit. I believe that
male violence often has neurobiological underpinnings.

MALE VIOLENCE AND DEFICIT IN MENTALIZING

So—to the second proposition—are some characteristics of violent

males to be explained by a deficit of mentalization? This assumption is
overly simplistic. There are variations across situations or types of relation-
ships. Even incarcerated men may, as I have said, be aware of the mental
states of prison officers.
Following the principles of Kurt Fischer's "dynamic skills theory" of
development (Fischer, Kenny, & Pipp, 1990), we may assume that mal-
treatment is associated with a "fractionation" or splitting of mentalization
across tasks and domains. Just as the understanding of conservation of liq-
uid does not generalize to conservation of area, reflective capacity in one
domain of interpersonal interaction may not generalize to others. In violent
men, the normal coordination of previously separate skills has not come
about, fractionation has seemed adaptive to the individual and has contin-
ued to dominate over integration.
Certain types of violence are undoubtedly associated with a moral dis-
engagement consequent on a more or less total failure of mentalization.
There are at least four reasons why this is likely to be the case (Fonagy,
Target, Steele, & Steele, 1997b; Fonagy et al., 1997c): (1) Individuals with-
out a well-established sense of their own identity may more readily feel
that they are not responsible for their actions because they genuinely lack
a sense of agency; (2) mentalizing capacity is anticipating the psychological
consequences of others; (3) a limited capacity to mentalize could cause the
person to treat others like physical objects; and (4) limitations on mental-
izing are likely to cause a certain fluidity within the mental representational
system that can lead to liberal rationalizations. Certain violent men show
a remarkable, self-serving capacity to reinterpret unacceptable conduct as
acceptable.
Male Perpetrators of Violence Against Women 17

Underlying these ideas is the pivotal notion that violent men extend
their natural aggression into violence through a defensively generated defi-
cit in sociocognitive functioning. There is good evidence that individuals
with antisocial personality disorder fail to respond with a sense of shock
to photographic images of human suffering (Blair, 1995), and Type II vio-
lence probably does involve some kind of pervasive dysfunction of what
James Blair has called the "violence-inhibiting mechanism." By contrast, I
believe thatTypeI violence, while entailing some of the same mechanisms,
actually involves, as one of its essential components, an acute but grossly
constricted sensitivity to the mental state of the victim. Let me explain what
I mean.

DISORGANIZATION OF ATTACHMENT IN INFANCY AND THE

VULNERABILITY TO LATER TRAUMA THAT THIS ENGENDERS

Why should emotionally charged interactions trigger a regression to

nonmentalistic thinking? Schuengel (1997) has recently provided evidence
for Main and Hesse's (1990) hypothesis that caregivers of infants whose
attachment is disorganized, frequently respond to the infant's distress cues
by frightening, frightened, or dissociated behavior. The infant's emotional
expression triggers dissociation, a temporary failure on the part of the care-
taker to perceive the child as an intentional person. The child comes to
experience his or her own arousal as a danger signal for abandonment. It
should not surprise us then that fear of abandonment in such children can
become a trigger for nonmentalizing functioning; it brings forth an image
of the parent who withdraws from the child's attachment cues in a state
of anxiety or rage, to which the child reacts with a complementary disso-
ciative response.
Thus far, we have skirted around the central implication of this model.
I have explained that internalization of the caregiver's image of the child
as an intentional being is central in self-organization. If this image is ac-
curate, the child's self-representation will map on to what could be called
a "constitutional self" (the child's experience of an actual state of being,
the self as it is). When the child feels anxious, the caregiver's contingent
reflection of this anxiety will be internalized and eventually serve as a sym-
bol for the internal state (Gergely & Watson, 1996). The representation
will be true to the child's primary experience. Disorganized attachment pre-
cludes the development of such an organic self-image. Internal experience
is not met by external understanding; it remains unlabeled and confusing,
and the uncontained affect generates further dysregulation.
18 Fonagy

There is overwhelming pressure on the child to develop a repre-

sentation for internal states. Winnicott (1967) warned us that failing to find
his or her current state mirrored, the child is likely to internalize the
mother's own state as part of his or her self-structure. The child incorpo-
rates into his or her nascent self-structure a representation of the other
(Fonagy & Target, 1995). When confronted with a frightened or frightening
caregiver, the infant takes in as part of himself or herself the mother's
feeling of rage, hatred, or fear, and her image of the child as frightening
or unmanageable. This painful image must then be externalized for the
child to achieve a bearable and coherent self-representation. The disorgan-
ized attachment behavior of the infant, and its sequelae—bossy and con-
trolling interactions with the parent—permit the externalization of parts of
the self and limit further intrusion into the self-representation. The disso-
ciated core of the self is an absence, rather than genuine psychic content.
It reflects a breach in the boundaries of the self, creating an openness to
colonization by the mental states of attachment figures. Disastrously, in the
case of some children maltreated later in development, this will not be a
neutral other but rather a torturing one. Once internalized and lodged
within the self-representation, this "alien" representation will have to be
expelled not only because it does not match the constitutional self, but also
because it is persecutory. The consequences for interpersonal relationships
can be disastrous.
This constellation, we believe, is the root of disorganized attachment.
Why do we think so? (1) The disorganized behavior of the infant is re-
placed, during the first 5 years of life, by brittle behavioral strategies of
controlling the parent, through either aggression or age-inappropriate
caregiving behavior (Cassidy & Marvin, 1992; Main & Cassidy, 1988). (2)
The parents experience the child as taking control and themselves as in-
creasingly immobilized, and failing to provide caregiving (George & Solo-
mon, 1996; Solomon & George, 1996). (3) The mothers of disorganized
children describe these children as replicas of themselves, and experience
themselves as merging with the child. We assume that these experiences
are explained by the children externalizing aspects of their self-repre-
sentation that relate, not to the mother's representation of the child, but
the representation of the mother, now within the child's self. (4) Precocious
caregiving behavior (West & George, in press) is also consistent with the
idea that the representation of the mother is internalized into the self. (5)
Most follow-up studies also show an association between disorganized at-
tachment and deviant levels of aggressive behavior (Lyons-Ruth, 1996).
The externalization of the image of the mother from within the self-
representation makes this representation more coherent. Such externaliza-
tion can work only if the mother is controlled sufficiently for the alien
Male Perpetrators of Violence Against Women 19

self-representation to be experienced as external. This strategy may be re-

inforced, in childhood, insofar as offensive or threatening behavior often
compels the adult to resume a position of authority and thus reactivate the
parent's own caregiving system that the parent had temporarily abandoned
(West & George, in press).
The mechanism described here is an example of the psychoanalytic
notion of projective identification (Klein, 1946) or, more specifically, what
Elizabeth Spillius (1994) has termed "evocatory projective identification."
The disorganized pattern of attachment is rooted in a disorganized self.
The individual, when alone, feels unsafe because of a torturing repre-
sentation from which he or she cannot escape because it is experienced
from within the self. Unless the relationship permits externalization, the
individual feels at risk of disappearance, psychological merging, and losing
all coherence and relationship boundaries.
In adulthood, disorganized self-representation still manifests as an
overwhelming need to control the other. Violent men have to establish a
relationship in which their partner acts as a vehicle for intolerable self
states. They manipulate the relationship to engender the self-image in the
other that they feel desperate to disown. They resort to violence at times
when the independent mental existence of the other threatens this process
of externalization. At these times, dramatic action is taken because of a
terror that the coherence of the self will be destroyed by the return of
what has been externalized.
The act of violence then performs a dual function: to recreate and
reexperience the alien self within the other and to destroy it in the uncon-
scious hope that it will be gone forever. Perceiving the terror in the eyes
of their victim, they are reassured. Their subsequent pleas for forgiveness
are genuine, because of their overriding need for a relationship where this
externalization is possible. Let me conclude by considering in some detail
the clinical presentation of men involved in partner abuse in terms of the
theoretical framework proposed. This is based both on published clinical
descriptions and our own interviews with men imprisoned because of their
violence.

THE CLINICAL PRESENTATION OF MEN WHO ARE VIOLENT

TOWARD WOMEN

There is evidence that such men find it intolerable to be alone: They

report feeling vulnerable and abandoned (Dutton, in press). A man, un-
usually in prison for raping his wife, described how his relationship with
her disintegrated after he lost his job so she had to take part-time employ-
20 Fonagy

ment and he was forced to spend his days alone in the house. He com-
plained of "having too much time to think," but his account made it clear
that while he had been employed, he was able to think of his wife as fearful
and totally dependent on him. Being at home, unemployed and confronted
with evidence of her competence, he began to see her as successful and
quite socially skilled. He described these ideas emotionally, as making him
feel totally "gutted" (empty). He had no one available to be the vehicle
for the frightened, dependent part of himself.
A second key feature of partner violence is escalating tension and an-
gry outbursts on the part of the man, normally accompanied by recognition
of wrong doing but also of being out of control (Walker, 1979). The im-
pulsivity is, in our view, linked to their inability to coherently represent
their emotional states. Fearing abandonment, they quickly resort to pre-
mentalistic physical action-centered strategies. They lose the capacity to in-
fluence their partner through changing their state of mind. A kind of
mentalistic learned helplessness sets in. It is most readily triggered by the
threatened loss of the vehicle for their self-representation. A younger man
described to us how mild irritation could become uncontrollable rage.
While he stayed out late drinking most evenings, his partner was required
to return within seconds of the times they had agreed. Her lateness, what-
ever the cause, would lead to rapidly mounting anger, which he recognized
to be unreasonable but was unable to contain. His phrase for describing
the process was telling: "It was like holding onto hot metal, I just had to
let go, I had to let her have it." The result may not be physical violence.
It may be words that might sound like attempts at changing the other's
intentions but are in fact intimidation and coercion. The aim is physical
control and possession of the woman's body, her physical being. The op-
pressive jealousy of these men is not an expression of love or desire, but
a crude manipulation to keep the partner captive and available to regulate
self-states.
Why is the outburst of violence normally preceded by this intensifica-
tion of abandonment anxiety, manifesting as controlling behavior? In our
experience, these periods are generally marked by the woman's increased
autonomy. Often she is lulled into a false sense of security by her partner's
contrition following the most recent violent encounter. She may be puzzled
by her partner's excessive jealousy because, if anything, she feels more com-
mitted to him. What she fails to realize is that her relative sense of being
at ease is an intolerable threat to her partner because of his need to ex-
ternalize an alien part of the self-representation.
What complicates matters in this phase is that the man appears to
regress to a mode of thinking where only one version of reality is possible.
The mere possibility of a false belief is denied (Fonagy & Target, 1996).
Male Perpetrators of Violence Against Women 21

He loses his ability to "play with reality" and any attempt by the victim to
present an alternative version of events is perceived as a provocative ges-
ture or an attempt to drive him crazy. The insane possessiveness is aggra-
vated by this singularity and rigidity of perspective. This primitive
experience of psychic reality, which equates internal with external, signals
his mounting anxiety associated with mental separation. She is no longer
what he needs her to be. Delusional ideas that the partner had changed
in character or appearance were frequently reported. To become "his" once
more, she has to be forced into the role of the terrified infant and accept
the unbearable image of the petrifying or petrified mother. Or as one of
our subjects put it: "She has to be taught a lesson."
The trigger for the violent attack is often incidental, but, almost in-
evitably, it is a further indicator of the woman's psychological separateness.
Examples may be a new hairstyle, a passing remark that expresses concern
about someone other than the perpetrator. The trigger is insignificant. It
is inevitable that anything the woman does might remind the man that she
is a person in her own right (as indeed she has always been and will always
be). If she stays silent, or if she answers back, both can remind the batterer
of her intentionality.
What ensues is a frenzied and often prolonged sadistic act where she
is made to suffer. Such men do not lack empathy altogether. In fact they
can be strikingly sensitive. It is essential that the man see the woman's
reaction—and within that something that he would otherwise experience
as part of himself. The crucial aim is that it should be out there rather
than in him. And therefore, the woman's struggle, pleading, and suffering
are vital features of his experience.
Reports of these attacks tend to support such a formulation. For ex-
ample, the man's rage is rarely "blind;" he remembers well how the woman
reacted, and reports adjusting his actions to elicit what he needs ("I wanted
to hear her scream, so I hit her harder"). There are subtle and specific
links between the emotional states the man reports prior to the act of vio-
lence and the emotions he attributes to his victim during his attack. For
example, a man who had been increasingly troubled by flashbacks to child-
hood trauma beat his wife wondering what kind of memories she would
have of the experience. During the attack there tends to be a merger of
subjectivities and the men perceive in the woman's mind the feelings they
try to shed, which tends to trigger an intensification of the attack. For ex-
ample, the man we first described reported feeling mocked by his partner
and he raped her principally to "take the smirk off her face."
It is hard to feel empathy for such actions. Yet, in a sense, it is only
at these moments that such individuals feel coherent and real. There is
undoubtedly an aspect of these tirades that at least superficially appears
22 Fonagy

cathartic given the build-up of tension during the preceding period. Yet
drive discharge seems to be an incidental part of the process. Men do not
report pleasure associated with these episodes—rather a restoration of an
inner gestalt, a release of tension, the creation of an inner peace, an odd
kind of tranquillity. I have often been puzzled by such accounts of violence
where my perhaps understandable expectation was that turmoil and conflict
would ensue, but descriptions were more consistent with the reinstatement
of homeostasis, even if the context is chaos, like being in the eye of a hur-
ricane. The calm reflects the successful destruction of the woman's psychic
independence. She is once again the mere vehicle of her partner's patho-
logical projective processes.
Inevitably, a dramatic and rapid shift may be observed in the relation-
ship. In this capacity, the woman once again becomes uniquely important
to his psychological well-being. The move from violence to contrition may
at first seem puzzling. We know that the remorse is anything but genuine.
Yet the need for the woman, which is expressed in obsequious self-abasing
gestures, is genuine enough. Paradoxically, the man's reaction frequently
triggers the woman's caretaking attachment system, as she senses his genu-
ine need. The tragedy is that the man's need is not for his partner as a
real person, and the more she is reassured by his apparent remorse and
protestations of commitment, the more she relaxes and permits her indi-
viduality to emerge, the closer she brings the next episode of terrible vio-
lence.
There is a further important aspect of the clinical picture that our
approach helps to explain. One might search for hostility toward women
born out of maternal rejection in the history of violent men. However, avail-
able evidence, both empirical and clinical, points to rejection by the father
as a predictor of anger, domination, and emotional and physical abuse in
the intimate relationship (Dutton, 1995a). We suggest that the father's hos-
tility plays an important role.
We suggest that a father has the potential to introduce the viewpoint
of the third into a disorganized infant-caregiver relationship. The father's
absence and negativity cannot, in our view, cause male violence without
the early attachment antecedents we have described, but his behavior may
be a necessary contributing factor.
Beyond rejection, paternal behavior has been reported to have been
characterized by various forms of shaming, insults, and random punishment.
When a child's mentalizing capacity is already vulnerable as a consequence
of disorganized attachment and the associated disorganized self-structure,
the child is unlikely to be able to withstand the paternal humiliation. Fright-
ened and frightening caregiving in infancy creates a gap, an open window,
within the self-structure that may then be filled by the father's hostility
Male Perpetrators of Violence Against Women 23

toward the child. That hostility, mindless and terrifying, is now also expe-
rienced as within the self. It is hard for most of us to appreciate the des-
peration that such a predicament engenders.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a noticeable overlap between the formulation offered for men

who are violent with women and one we have suggested could account for
borderline personality organization (Fonagy, 1991). Is this because we tend
to identify similar patterns whatever group of patients we study? Or are
there genuine similarities between the two groups? I hope I am not being
totally self-serving in opting for the latter alternative. In fact, the link be-
tween borderline phenomena and violence against women has been made
by others (Dutton, 1995a, b), and there is a logic to this. The combination
of troubled early attachment and maltreatment culminating in profound
personality pathology follows different developmental paths in men and
women (Fonagy & Target, 1995). Women with this kind of background
often attempt suicide and deliberately harm themselves, having projected
alien parts of the self into their own bodies. They develop disorganized
violent relationships with their physical selves comparable to those of men
with their sexual partner—hoping to destroy the "alien" self within. They
rapidly acquire a borderline diagnosis. The social structure within which
we live appears to lead men with similar problems down quite a different
path. They become the abusers rather than the abused, tormenting others
apparently without corresponding self-torment.
I believe both groups to be victims of a social structure that does not
support families and the parenting function sufficiently to enable us to give
adequate care to our young, that provides few alternative structures within
which children could come to arrive at self-recognition through social in-
terchange with a benevolent and dependable caretaker—a social structure
that most cruelly places supreme emphasis on individuation, individuality,
and the achievement of selfhood, the most vulnerable aspect of the indi-
vidual with disorganized attachment. I believe that disorganized attach-
ments and associated complications in self-organization can occur, at least
in part, because society has relinquished its caretaking function, demolished
its institutions for supporting emotional development, and shifted its pri-
orities from the mental and emotional to the material. In the increasing
violence around us, we may be seeing the casualties of this cavalier ap-
proach. The problem of male sexual violence cannot be adequately ad-
dressed without genuine commitment of our resources to prevention, to
fully supporting parents and young children, and radically revising social
24 Fonagy

priorities in the direction of a relationship-and-emotional-development-fo-

cused approach to education and socialization.

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