especially when the woman killed the man when he
was asleep or was just starting his dangerously escalat-
ing abuse, the dynamics of domestic violence and psy-
chological theories, such as learned helplessness and
BWS, were introduced into court testimony.Psychological Theories About
Domestic Violence and
Battered Women
DDyynnaammiiccss ooff DDoommeessttiicc VViioolleennccee
In the past 30 years, the assessment of behavior that
is or is not considered to be domestic violence has been
a major challenge for advocates and professionals. This
difficulty may in large part be due to battered women
having to maintain secrecy in order to protect them-
selves from their abuser, which leads them to minimize
or cover up their pain, both emotional and physical.
However, as the women began to receive legal protec-
tion and services, they have been able to describe the
dynamics that occur in their homes, and as batterers
began to talk in the offender-specific intervention pro-
grams into which they were sent by the courts, they
confirmed much of the women’s descriptions. Lenore
Walker first found that battering did not occur all the
time in homes where domestic violence existed but that
it was not random either. Rather, the women described
a cycle of violence that followed a courtship period that
was mostly made up of loving behavior.
This cycle included three phases: (1) the tension-
building period, (2) the acute battering incident, and
(3) a period of loving contrition or absence of battering.
Each time a new battering event occurred, the memory
of fragments of the previous battering incidents added
heightened fear, which guided the woman’s response,
usually to try to calm down the batterer and prevent fur-
ther escalation of the violence. However, at times, when
the woman saw signs that the batterer’s violence was
escalating no matter what she did, she engaged in
actions to protect herself. Occasionally, this resulted in
her intentionally or unintentionally killing the abuser.LLeeaarrnneedd HHeellpplleessssnneessss
When evaluating battered women who killed their
abusers, it became necessary to understand why a
woman would use a gun or a knife against a man who
was sleeping or at the beginning of a violent event.
Why wouldn’t she simply leave? The answer to this
question is most important, both for specific cases andgenerally. The theory of learned helplessness helps
explain how someone can learn to believe that her
actions will not have a predictable effect and, therefore,
that leaving will not stop the violence toward her.
Research shows that many women are seriously injured
or killed at the point of separation. The batterer who
tells his partner that he will follow and harm her wher-
ever she goes and who uses his power and control to
enforce isolation, intrusiveness, and overpossessiveness
reinforces her belief in his omnipotence. When batter-
ing continues unabated and the batterer suffers no con-
sequences for his actions, he confirms her belief in his
dominance over her. The loss of contingency between
the victim’s behavior and the battering leads to learned
helplessness.
Battered women who experience learned helpless-
ness experience the loss of their belief that they can
escape to protect themselves. This learned helplessness
is sometimes misunderstood as actual helplessness or
the actual inability to escape the battering. The theory
of learned helplessness, together with the cycle theory
of violence and the BWS, has helped juries understand
why women do not simply walk out of their homes and
leave the batterer. In some of the legal opinions, the
BWS is actually described as including the dynamics of
abuse together with learned helplessness rather than
the collection of psychological signs and symptoms
that typically make up a syndrome according to the Diag-
nostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders(fourth
edition, text revision; DSM-IV-TR; American Psycho-
logical Association, 2000). However, this is part of the
tension between the advocates who wish to eliminate
any discussion of mental disorders as part of BWS and
psychologists who understand that exposure to repeated
trauma may well cause emotional difficulties, including
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), of which BWS is
considered a subcategory.TTrraauummaa TThheeoorryy aanndd
BBaatttteerreedd WWoommaann SSyynnddrroommee
The complexity of symptomatology and the clini-
cal presentation of battered women has made it chal-
lenging for both legal and clinical disciplines. Over
the years, these complexities have been widely stud-
ied, and a trend across cultures has been identified in
the way women experience various forms of violence
against them, including sexual assault and rape,
domestic violence and sexual exploitation, and harass-
ment. These abuses are perceived by most women
as traumatic events, and therefore, a combination ofBattered Woman Syndrome——— 41B-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:41 PM Page 41