Les violences dans le couple au risque d’en mourir : paroles de femmes

Abstract

ObjectivesDespite the several devices to protect women victims of domestic violence, the recurrence of violence from one generation to the following one, and the enigmatic noticing that some women maintain the link with their violent partners led us to study the psychic factors and dynamics at work in their relationship. Materials and methodologyClinical research was conducted with 26 women victims of domestic violence. The women interviewed had all been separated from their partners for some months. Most of them were fragile both from the point of view of their social integration and of their mental state. We were able to request interviews with them through the associations that support them, and we guaranteed them their anonymity. We conducted an analysis of the content and of the form of their answers to identify unconscious issues at work in their conjugal and family history. ResultsWe can find in the history of these women an active process in the transgenerational transmission of violence: if the individual and family history includes the internalization of cultural elements of gender identities and relationships between genders and generations, continued violence and recurrence of violence would have to be understood as an attempt to stage again and/or to elaborate childhood experiences. ConclusionsThe study highlights the need to think the treatment of domestic violence through two main methods of remediation: at the societal level through education in gender equality, and at the individual level, through a psychotherapeutic support for women, including in their link with their children, that would allow them to solve their childhood history; the impulsive force of which can defy death.