Listening to Battered Women: A Survivor-Centered Approach to Advocacy, Mental Health, and Justice (Psychology of Women)

194 Pages·2007·8.97 MB·English

Listening to
Psychology of Women
B O O K S E R I E S
Bringing Cultural Diversity to Feminist Psychology: Theory, Research, and
Practice
Hope Landrine, Editor
The New Civil War: The Psychology, Culture, and Politics of Abortion
Linda J. Beckman and S. Marie Harvey, Editors
Shaping the Future of Feminist Psychology: Education, Research,
and Practice
Judith Worell and Norine G. Johnson, Editors
Sexuality, Society, and Feminism
Cheryl Brown Travis and Jacquelyn W. White, Editors
Practicing Feminist Ethics in Psychology
Mary M. Brabeck, Editor
Relationships Among Asian American Women
Jean Lau Chin, Editor
Feminist Family Therapy: Empowerment in Social Context
Louise B. Silverstein and Thelma Jean Goodrich, Editors
Featuring Females: Feminist Analyses of Media
Ellen Cole and Jessica Henderson Daniel, Editors
Psychology and Economic Injustice: Personal, Professional, and Political
Intersections
Bernice Lott and Heather E. Bullock
Listening to Battered Women: A Survivor-Centered Approach to Advocacy,
Mental Health, and Justice
Lisa A. Goodman and Deborah Epstein
Listening to
A Survivor-Centered Approach to Advocacy,
Mental Health, and Justice
LISA A. GOODMAN AND DEBORAH EPSTEIN
Foreword by Judith L Herman
American Psychological Association
Washington, DC
Copyright © 2008 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved. Except
as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication
may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, including, but not
limited to, the process of scanning and digitization, or stored in a database or retrieval
system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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To our families, Bill, Caleb, Gabriel, and Susannah (Lisa's)
and Michael, Adam, and Rachel (Deborah's), with all our love.
Contents
Series Foreword ix
Foreword xi
Preface xv
Introduction 1
1 The Need for Continued Reform: The Broad Scope
and Dep Impact of Intimate Partner Violence 7
2 The Advocacy Response 29
3 The Mental Health System Response 49
4 The Justice System Response 71
5 A Critical Analysis of System Responses: The Importance
of Voice, Community, and Economic Empowerment 89
6 Recommendations for Future Reform 111
References 137
Author Index 165
Subject Index 173
About the Authors 183
vn
Series Foreword
ontemporary society is marked by a great number of critical chal-
Clenges: The number of children and families living in poverty is ris-
ing. High school dropouts from our nation's schools are increasing, and
high-stakes testing is changing the way our students are being educated.
We are living with the effects of welfare reform and need to look critically
at how these reforms have affected children, youth, and families. Head
Start programs, long celebrated for being scientifically based educational
interventions, are at risk for losing funding.
Since September 11, 2001, we have lived with new restrictions on our
freedoms, new costs for wars launched in the Middle East, and constant
fear. How is this new anxiety affecting women who have long been the
transmitters of culture and community? Mental health problems in this
age of anxiety are enormous even as managed care and federal policies
reduce support for mental health services. How can prevention programs
be developed in an age of drastic budget cuts and removal of basic social
and health services? New neurological research and the genome project
are revealing individual differences that require careful thought regarding
the implications for education, socialization, and remediation. While our
country is becoming more diverse, tolerance and celebration of diversity
are decreasing and reproductive choices are becoming more restricted.
How are individual rights preserved while we balance human rights and
the welfare of others?
SERIES FOREWORD
Feminist psychologists have claimed they have a moral imperative to
improve society. This book and others to follow in the Society for the Psy-
chology of Women Series (Division 35) of the American Psychological
Association draw on the expertise of psychologists who have been work-
ing on social issues using the lens of feminist consciousness. Forthcoming
books in the series will present invited monographs that address critical
issues facing our society. These volumes will be based on current scholar-
ship but will be written in a way that is accessible to laypersons who are
not knowledgeable in a given field. Longer than a journal article but
shorter than a full text, these invited monographs in the series will not just
tell the readers what we know on a topic, but also what we as a society (as
professionals, parents, researchers, policymakers, and citizens) need to do
regarding the issue.
Mary M. Brabeck, PhD
Book Series Editor
Steinhardt School, New York University
Foreword
Judith L. Herman
ome time ago, I attended the 25th anniversary celebration for a local
Sbattered women's shelter. Several of the founders were there to be hon-
ored. These were grassroots activists who, back in the 1970s, had opened
their homes to shelter women in crisis. Through informal neighborhood
networks they had put out the word that their doors would be open when
a porch light was on. Eventually this pioneering group succeeded in rais-
ing the money for a building to be used as a safe house and organizing
volunteers to serve as the shelter staff. The shelter had grown and devel-
oped many innovative services. Over time the founding group had been
replaced by a more professional staff. Most recently, the shelter had hired
a director whose background was in the corporate world as a professional
fundraiser. The new staff members brought a wealth of knowledge and
skill in their areas of expertise, but they came from a very different class
background from that of the founders, and they lacked the founders' inti-
mate knowledge of the community. The 25th anniversary celebration paid
tribute to the founders with nostalgia for an era that had passed.
Since its origins more than 30 years ago, the battered women's move-
ment has been remarkably successful. Paradoxically, this means that it has
lost some of the qualities of a social change movement. Services for bat-
tered women have become institutionalized. This book attempts to com-
Judith L. Herman is training director for the Victims of Violence Program in the Department of Psychiatry
of the Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and clinical professor of psychiatry at Har-
vard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.