Couples Therapy for Domestic Violence: Finding Safe Solutions

Couples Therapy for Domestic Violence: Finding Safe Solutions. Sandra M. Stith, Eric McCollum, and Karen H. Rosen. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2011, 204 pp., $60.05 (hardcover).

There is by now general agreement that limiting intimate partner violence (IPV) treatment to same-sex psychoeducational groups for perpetrators and victims services for the partner results in very modest treatment success (e.g., Babcock, Canady, Graham, & Schart, 2007). The assumptions underlying the prevailing treatment model-that IPV is unilaterally perpetrated by perpetrators (mostly or exclusively male) on hapless victims (usually female)-have been challenged by a wealth of research indicating IPV is as often as not a dyadic problem involving mutual abuse (Bartholomew & Cobb, 2011; Dutton & Nicholls, 2005). The logical alternative to same-gender groups is couples therapy. Same-gender groups cannot as effectively address abuse dynamics and can promote negative male bonding leading to misuse of material learned in the program; whereas well-designed studies using comparison groups have found couples therapy at least as safe and effective as same-gender groups (see Hamel, 2007).

The few published books on the topic of conducting couples counseling for IPV have been few and far between. The manuals by Neidig and Friedman (1984) and Geffner and Mantooth (2000) take a psychoeducational approach; and both Potter- Efron (2005) and Hamel (2005, 2007, 2008) have expanded the scope of treatment by considering interventions involving the entire family. But the new work by Sandra Stith, Eric McCollum, and Karen H. Rosen, even if limited to the relationship dyad, provides the richest, most detailed guidelines yet for working within this particular modality in all of it phases.

In the initial chapters, the authors begin by giving a clear rationale for their approach. Over many years of conducting traditional marriage therapy, they discovered that many couples who sought counseling for general marriage problems were, upon closer examination, experiencing various degrees of IPV. This discovery, together with the limitations of traditional treatment mentioned earlier, and a convincing body of emerging research evidence finding high rates of bidirectional relationship violence and identifying marital discord as "the most accurate predictor of physical aggression against a partner" (p. 17) led the authors to initiate a comprehensive research-based therapy for abusive couples. Their book is the culmination of a 15-year effort, during which...