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Researchers say they can also distinguish two types among the men most likely to kill their wives: the "loose cannon" with impulse-control problems, and those who are calculated and focused, whose heart rate drops even as they prepare to do violence to their partners. The latter group may be the more dangerous. Says Neil Jacobson, a psychology professor at the University of Washington: "Our research shows that those men who calm down physiologically when they start arguing with their wives are the most aggressive during arguments."
There may be other psycho-physiological links to violence. It is known, for instance, that alcohol and drug abuse often go hand in hand with spousal abuse. So does mental illness. A 1988 study by Maiuro of Seattle's domestic- violence program documented some level of depression in two-thirds of the men who manifested violent and aggressive behavior. Maiuro is pioneering work with Paxil, an antidepressant that, like Prozac, regulates the brain chemical serotonin. He reports that "it appears to be having some benefits" on his subjects.
Most studies, however, deal not with battering as an aftereffect of biology but of violence as learned behavior. Fully 80% of the male participants in a Minneapolis, Minnesota, violence-control program grew up in homes where they saw or were victims of physical, sexual or other abuse. Women who have witnessed abuse in their childhood homes are also at greater risk of reliving such dramas later in their lives, unless counseling is sought to break the generational cycle. "As a child, if you learn that violence is how you get what you want, you get a dysfunctional view of relationships," says Barbara Schroeder, a domestic-violence counselor in Oak Park, Illinois. "You come to see violence as an O.K. part of a loving relationship."
The cruelest paradox is that when a woman is murdered by a loved one, people are far more inclined to ask, "Why didn't she leave?" than "Why did he do that?" The question of leaving not only reflects an ingrained societal assumption that women bear primary responsibility for halting abuse in a relationship; it also suggests that a battered woman has the power to douse a raging man's anger -- and to do it at a moment when her own strength is at an ebb. "It's quite common with women who have been abused that they don't hold themselves in high esteem," says Dr. Allwyn Levine, a Ridgewood, New Jersey, forensic psychiatrist who evaluates abusers for the court system. "Most of these women really feel they deserve it." Furthermore, says Susan Forward, the psychoanalyst who counseled Nicole Simpson on two occasions, "too many therapists will say, 'How did it feel when he was hitting you?' instead of addressing the issue of getting the woman away from the abuser."
Most tragically, a woman may have a self-image that does not allow her to see herself -- or those nearby to see her -- as a victim. Speaking of her sister Nicole Simpson, Denise Brown told the New York Times last week, "She was not a battered woman. My definition of a battered woman is somebody who gets beat up all the time. I don't want people to think it was like that. I know Nicole. She was a very strong-willed person."