You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
It is my honor to introduce this special volume on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Domestic Violence and Coercive Control. The study of domestic violence is an interdisciplinary field that is the focus of social scientists, public policy/public health experts, political and sociological academics, as well as basic developmental and neuroscience researchers (Buzawa, Buzawa, & Stark, 2017; Ritchie, 1996; Teicher & Samson, 2016; Tronick, 2020). Domestic violence laws and legal practice in family, criminal, and international courts is a specialty area of legal work (Fischel-Wolovick, 2018). In addition, the interpersonal pattern of power and control that we call domestic violence is a very frequent, often unrecognized, factor in clinical practice. It is a regular feature in the cases we see in our individual, child, adult, and family practice as well as in other modalities of treatment (Stark, 2007). Additionally, judicial requests for forensic mental health evaluation regarding the presence and impact of domestic violence in litigating families are amongst the most common assignments. Forensic clinicians are often called to craft quasi-legal solutions for these families. Despite their significant impact, forensic clinicians apply concepts and have informal training regarding these families that is, at times, highly divergent from what one learns in mainstream mental health education (Lieberman, Zeanah, & McIntosh, 2011). For many reasons, the field of domestic violence is often considered something of a “step-child” for many of these professional areas - belonging to all and none simultaneously.
It is my experience, after even decades working in the area, that mental health professionals often have an extremely superficial and outdated view of what comprises domestic violence. Domestic violence is NOT defined by the amount of overt violence that occurs in an intimate, usually family setting (Herman, 1992; Herzog & Schmahl, 2018; Walker, 1979). This assumption, that it