Intimate Partner Violence between Power and Love: Reconciling Feminist and Attachment-Based Perspectives

Abstract

Intimate Partner Violence is a serious social problem which for decades has been at the center of a scientific and ideological debate between two opposing conceptual frameworks: the feminist perspective and a series of so-called genderneutral perspectives, among which the most influential is the one based on the application of attachment theory to violent romantic relationships. From a feminist perspective, violence in couple relationships is essentially a matter of gender and power. Conversely, according to the attachment-based perspective, IPV is a gender-neutral phenomenon which derives from dysfunctional ways of seeking the satisfaction of affective needs within intimate relationships. The objective of the present contribution is twofold: to highlight how each of the two perspectives mentioned above is incomplete and complementary to the other, and to suggest how the construction of a broader and more complex conceptual framework for the understanding of IPV, cannot ignore the integration of power dynamics and love/affective dynamics that characterize couple relationships.