title: Sheltered women's perceptions of their abusive marital relationship: Conflictual themes of dominance and submissiveness.
abstract: The Core Conflictual Relationship Themes (CCRT) approach was applied in order to examine the conflictual nature of sheltered women's perceptions of their marital relationship following domestic violence in Israel. Thirty-six sheltered women and 89 community-based women were compared. The CCRT method was useful in revealing that battered women, when thinking retrospectively about their relationships with their abusive partners, are concerned with conflictual themes of dominance and submissiveness. The sheltered women reported a desire to be more dominant and less submissive in their relationships with their abusive spouse, despite being less dominant than they wished in practice. These findings help clarify the emotional conflicts that battered women may be dealing with after leaving an abusive relationship and imply that interventions should promote their empowerment.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Ariel University , Ariel , Israel.
authors.forename: Eliane
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sommerfeld
authors.affiliation: b Department of Criminology , Ariel University , Ariel , Israel.
authors.forename: Mally
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shechory Bitton
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D018585:Battered Women / Q000523:psychology*; D017579:Domestic Violence / Q000523:psychology; D004291:Dominance-Subordination; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D008393:Marriage; D008875:Middle Aged; D009042:Motivation; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010465:Perception; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013179:Spouse Abuse / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires