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This Special Issue on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is relevant not only for psychodynamically oriented clinicians but also for all psychotherapists and physicians. It is sobering and perhaps startling that an extremely high percentage of women have been exposed to severe IPV at some point in their lives. In this issue Graham-Bermann and Miller note that as many as 24% of women have been in romantic relationships in which they have been choked, beaten, or burned by a male partner. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, IPV made up 20% of nonfatal violent crimes experienced by women in 2001 but only 3% of nonfatal violent crimes experienced by men (Rennison, 2003). In 2002, of women killed with a firearm, two-thirds were killed by intimate partners (Violence Policy Center, 2004). When women report sexual violence the perpetrator is commonly an intimate partner. For example, a three-year longitudinal study of a national probability sample of 4008 adult women found that 13% of adult women had been victims of completed rape during their lives. Of these, 9% of victims were raped by husbands or ex-husbands and 10% by boyfriends or ex-boyfriends (Kilpatrick, Resnick, Saunders, & Best, 1998).
Although the perpetrators of IPV can be of either sex they are usually men and all articles in this issue discuss male to female violence. The emphasis in these articles is on the traumatic effects of IPV on women, the transmission of trauma intergenerationally, assessment, and intervention. An additional dimension to consider in thinking about IPV concerns the behavior of men.
It is no surprise that IPV is perpetrated much more commonly by men since violent behavior itself is far more common among males. This is true in all societies and has been true throughout recorded history. In fact since records have been kept there has never been any group in which violence has been reported to have been perpetrated more frequently by girls or women than boys or men (Moyer, 1974). Male ag