Dr Donald Dutton book "Rethinking Domestic Violence" Donald G. Dutton (2006)
http://www.ubcpress.ca or order directly from Whitton@ubcpress.ca
A summary of the book details: "Violence between intimate partners is commonly viewed through the lens of gender politics. In "Rethinking Domestic Violence", Donald G. Dutton argues for a new examination of the topic – one more open to collaborative views and interdisciplinary insights. Challenging and insightful, this book is a must for anyone researching the nature of violence".
"Rethinking Domestic Violence" reviews all research on causes, incidence and policy toward domestic violence called intimate partner violence (IPV). It concludes PIV causation is best explained by personality disorder and that gender analysis is not supported by the data. It shows how the male perpetrator-female victim stereotype is not typical. Similarly, it reviews evidence for both mandatory arrest and no drop prosecution and finds that both have failed. It recommends a more flexible professional approach that blends, criminal justice, community psychology and community mental health approaches.
Don Dutton received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Toronto in 1970. In 1974, while on faculty at the University of British Columbia, he began to investigate the criminal justice response to wife assault, preparing a government report that outlined the need for a more aggressive response, and subsequently training police in "domestic disturbance" intervention techniques. >From 1979 to 1995, he served as a therapist in the Assaultive Husbands Project, a court mandated treatment program for men convicted of wife assault. In the course of providing therapy for these men, he drew on his background in both social and clinical psychology to develop a psychological model for intimate abusiveness. He has published over one hundred papers and books, including the Domestic Assault of Women, The Batterer and The Abusive Personality. : A Psychological Profile.
See more on Don Dutton at his website: http://www.drdondutton.com/
"Dutton has served as an expert witness in criminal trials involving family violence, including his work for the prosecution in the O.J. Simpson trial. He is currently Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia".
"Rethinking Domestic Violence" is the third in a series of books by Donald Dutton critically reviewing research in the area of intimate partner violence (IPV). The research crosses disciplinary lines, including social and clinical psychology, sociology, psychiatry, affective neuropsychology, criminology, and criminal justice research. Since the area of IPV is so heavily politicized, Dutton tries to steer through conflicting claims by assessing the best research methodology. As a result, he comes to some very new conclusions.
These conclusions include the finding that IPV is better predicted by psychological rather than social-structural factors, particularly in cultures where there is relative gender equality. Dutton argues that personality disorders in either gender account for better data on IPV. His findings also contradict earlier views among researchers and policy, makers that IPV is essentially perpetrated by males in all societies. Numerous studies are reviewed in arriving at these conclusions, many of which employ new and superior methodologies than were available previously.
Also See Murray Straus' latest paper :
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID41E2.pdf
Abstract
The study investigated the widely held belief that violence against partners in marital, cohabiting, and dating relationships is almost entirely perpetrated by men, and that when women assault their partners, it has a different etiology than assaults by men. The empirical data on these issues were provided by 13,601 university students who participated in the International Dating Violence Study in 32 nations.
The results in the first part of this paper show that almost a third of the female as well as male students physically assaulted a dating partner in the 12 month study period, and that the most frequent pattern was mutuality in violence, i.e. both were violent, followed by "female-only" violence. Violence by only the male partner was the least frequent pattern according to both male and female participants.
The second part of the paper focuses on whether there is gender symmetry in a crucial aspect of the etiology of partner violence -- dominance by one partner, The results show that dominance by either the male or the female partner is associated with an increased probability of violence.
These results, in combination with results from many other studies, call into question the assumption that partner violence is primarily a male crime and that, when women are violent, it is self-defense. Because these assumption are crucial elements in almost all partner violence prevention and treatment programs, a fundamental revision is needed to bring these programs into alignment with the empirical data. Prevention and treatment of partner violence could become more effective if the programs recognize that most partner violence is mutual and act on the high rate of perpetration by women and the similar etiology of partner violence by men and women.