Quand l’homme est battu par la femme : réflexions psychanalytiques sur l’inversion des pôles de violence de genre dans le couple

Abstract

ObjectiveIn this article, the authors explore the clinical issues of domestic violence from a particular viewpoint: when the man is beaten by the woman. MethodThey propose a psychoanalytical reflection on the reversal of the classic poles of domestic violence, crossing these perspectives with work on gender. Starting from the case of Sonia, a patient followed at her request in psychoanalytical therapy for 3 years, following violence (physical and psychological) repeatedly committed against her husband, the authors seek to capture the complexity of the ties with the Other, in the light of their repetition in the transfer. ResultsFrom the enigma that Sonia introjected in her psychotherapeutic relationship and from clinical impressions, the authors explore the purpose and the object of “perversion as the erotic form of the hatred” (Stoller, 1975), which they put in the perspective of the third topic according to Dejours (2001) and the compulsive intentions of the amential unconscious. DiscussionThe authors thus explore the idea that violence within a marital relationship could be related to gender violence, whose origin could be found in a primitive hatred of the object, where the subject refuses its difference. ConclusionThe acting out could appear then when the frustration in the relationship with the other recalls infantile trauma and the refusal of the difference from the object, sparking this primitive hatred.