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Abstract
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Identifying markers of psychobiological predisposition to violence opens the door to prevention and intervention in the field of male violence against women. Currently, we have no effective drugs to treat abusers of women, but the development of psychotherapeutic intervention programmes and neuropsychological rehabilitation mark a promising path.
The figures of women murdered by their partners are startling (World Health Organization, 2011), so gender violence has become an issue of public health relevance. Much of current research in this field has focused on the study of the consequences of violence on the health of the victims. However, which kind of men are punished because of domestic violence against women, the factors that enable those violent acts or the psychotherapeutic and neuropsychological interventions that allow for an effective treatment towards reintegration have not received the same attention.
The profile of offenders is well described by social and personality psychology. Some features such as high emotional dependency and low self-esteem and social assertiveness have been pointed out. In addition, they often present hostile cognitive schemas such as degrading and sexist attitudes toward women, together with inadequate feelings toward themselves and their partners, resulting in pathological jealousy. This leads to an inability to resolve conflicts through mature mechanisms like negotiation or empathetic cooperation, thus triggering violence (Farrell, 2011). Psychobiological research of abusers is almost nonexistent, greatly hindering the formulation of initial hypotheses. The study of these variables will optimise and improve the limited effectiveness of current therapies (Echeburúa-Odriozola et al., 2010).
But not all offenders are alike in personality, cognitive schemas, psychosocial and cultural variables and, by extension, in biological characteristics that predispose them to violence. In this sense, they have been classified into two categories according to their sympathetic reactivity (the nerves that prepare us for action) to stress or psychophysiological predisposition to cope with it. Type I individuals act with premeditation and tend to show a low arousal or behavioural reaction to alerts or attention to the appearance of a stimulus to cope with stress, and tend to show more proactive violence. On the other hand, type II (the object of our investigation) react with violence impulsively and are more physiologically activated before the stressor or any stimulus that produces an imbalance in the body appears (Gottman et al., 1995)....
Language: en |