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The tragedy of the battered woman has not only emerged from the shadows, it is a front-page issue receiving enormous public attention as well as considerable professional interest. Celani brings a psychoanalytic perspective to this problem in an effort to counterbalance the prevailing sociological, political, and behaviorist discourse with one based primarily on the work of W. R. D. Fairbairn. This book might be considered a companion volume to another recent work by Celani (1993), in which he explicates the psychopathology and treatment of the borderline from the vantage point of Fairbairn's theories.
The focal point is Fairbairn's object relations theory, which Celani feels is convincingly superior to Freud's instinct theory. The importance of Fairbairn's work notwithstanding, Celani does Freud an injustice in dismissively oversimplifying his views. Even if one takes away the instinct theory from Freud's vast output, what remains not only serves as the foundation of psychoanalysis but also contains ideas that foreshadow much of contemporary psychoanalysis. Celani seems quite willing to throw out the baby with the bath water. He takes as a starting point Fairbairn's observation that neglected or abused children cling to their rejecting parents even when offered a more favorable and supportive living situation. He sees this as the key issue in the return of the battered woman to her abuser. The battering scenario occurs when two people “with preexisting personality disorders come together and try to reexperience their unmet childhood needs in relationship with each other” (p. 150). The male abuser differs from his spouse only in his assumption of an independent façade. Celani regards the abusing male as fitting the diagnostic category of narcissistic personality, and the abused spouse as borderline. Each is extremely dependent on the other.