[Alt text: Is He Doing It On Purpose?
When a client of mine tells me that he became abusive because he lost control of himself, I ask him why he didnāt do something even worse. For example, I might say, āYou called her a fucking whore, you grabbed the phone out of her hand and whipped it across the room, and then you gave her a shove and she fell down. There she was at your feet, where it would have been easy to kick her in the head. Now, you have just finished telling me that you were ātotally out of controlā at that time, but you didnāt kick her. What stopped you?ā And the client can always give me a reason. Here are some common explanations:
āI wouldnāt want to cause her a serious injury.ā
āI realized one of the children was watching.ā
āI was afraid someone would call the police.ā
āI could kill her if I did that.ā
āThe fight was getting loud, and I was afraid neighbors would hear.ā
And the most frequent response of all:
āJesus, I wouldnāt do that. I would never do something like that to her.ā
The response that I almost never heardāI remember hearing it twice in fifteen yearsāwas: āI donāt know.ā
These ready answers strip the cover off of my clientsā loss-of-control excuse. While a man is on an abusive rampage, verbally or physically, his mind maintains awareness of a number of questions: āAm I doing something that other people could find out about, so it could make me look bad? Am I doing anything that could get me in legal trouble? Could I get hurt myself? Am I doing anything that I myself consider too cruel, gross, or violent?ā
A critical insight seeped into me from working with my first few dozen clients: An abuser almost never does anything that he himself considers morally unacceptable. He may hide what he does because he thinks other people would disagree with it, but he feels justified inside. I canāt remember a client ever having said to me: āThereās no way I can defend what I did. It was just totally wrong.ā He invariably has a reason that he considers good enough. In short, an abuserās core problem is that he has a distorted sense of right and wrong. /End alt text]
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