Representing an entirely new approach to domestic violence interventions, this book is based on data accumulated by the authors over the past 12 years from a series of qualitative studies, clinical practice with battered women and their batterers, and as champions of the cause of battered women. After 25 years, practitioners in the field are starting to question the original models of intervention. Both types of practitioners and settings for service are expanding rapidly. The approach advocated in this book is likely to become an important part of a new wave of alternatives available to practitioners in the coming years.

This accessible, practical volume describes and analyzes the experience of violence in dyadic life by focussing on couples who choose to remain together in spite of violence, while trying to make sense of a life in the shadow of pain, guilt, terror, and humiliation.