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Craig Norberg, a founder of the men's self-help group RAVEN (Rape and Violence End Now) in St. Louis, says the typical spouse beater is unable to cope with the traditional notion of masculinity. "Not maleness, but the traditional male role, which requires men to be stoic. It requires men to not need intimacy, to be in control, to be the 'big wheel,' and when there is a problem to 'give 'em hell.' The difficulty is that nine out of ten men fail at that list, at least in their own judgment."
Indeed, the batterer is often afflicted with mind-bending insecurity. The man's wife, says Psychologist Walker, is "the emotional glue that holds him together." As a consequence, he is desperately afraid of losing her. "All the time I knew she was going to leave me," says William, the Atlanta birthday-party batterer. "She liked to play the song Slip Away, and I knew she was going to do it." Explains Dick Bathrick, a clinical psychologist who with a colleague runs the only program for wife abusers in Georgia: "The husband is trying to make her be closer to him by controlling her physically—and he doesn't realize that he's driving her away."
The last time William saw his wife he beat her until he tired. "When it was over," he says, "I picked her up off the floor and kissed her and told her I was sorry. I wanted to feel the pain that she felt. So I kissed her. Her nose was running and she was crying, and I loved her very much."
Such displays of tenderness are not unusual. "He may send her roses if she has left," says Michigan Psychologist Serum, "but it's not out of love. It's out of a desire to regain control." Indeed, batterers can be very calculating, both in how they deal with their wives and with the authorities once they are caught. They are frequently charming to a fault. Says Therapist Jeffrey Perez, who runs a program for batterers in New Orleans: "These guys are real slick and real glib. They can play therapy off against the court system and not have to be responsible."
The first self-help group for abusive men was formed in Boston in 1977. There are now about 50. Very few men go to such centers on their own. Either their partner has left or is threatening to, or they are attending under court order. By and large, they do not believe they have done anything wrong, sometimes insisting that they are not batterers at all. Those who own up to being violent frequently believe their wives are at fault. Nick, 33, an unemployed New Yorker who chose a six-week counseling program over 90 days in jail, is franker than most. "Most of the time I thought I was right. It [the violence] was called for." If they stay in a treatment program, and very few do without a court order, some men reach a kind of self-awareness that results in a more pacific nature. In a spouse-abuse workshop in Rockland County, N.Y., a man named George, 50, reported at the end of six weeks, "If a husband takes control of himself, a wife cannot make him hit her." As awareness goes, this particular insight might make Freud gape, but George's wife Susan reports no violence for the past 18 months.