Lenore Walker The Battered Woman

As an attempt to answer the afore-mentioned question and expand the understanding of violence, Lenore Walker published her work The Battered Woman in 1979. On the belief that her findings could answer the question, Walker introduced BWS as a set of psychological characteristics common to battered women, including low self-esteem, feelings of guilt and traditional views about marriage and gender. Through her work, she countered the idea of ‘female masochism’ stating that people often label battered women as masochistic for not leaving the relationship without considering the woman’s inability to help herself. She defined a ‘battered woman’ as:
“......a woman who is repeatedly subjected to any forceful physical or psychological behaviour by
Walker attributed a battered woman’s behaviour to the theory of ‘learned helplessness’ and the ‘cycle theory of violence’. The concept of ‘learned helplessness’ was originally studied by Dr. Martin Seligman as a characteristic in dogs. While conducting the study, Seligman had placed dogs in cages and administered electrical shocks on them each time they made an attempt to escape. From this experiment, he inferred that these dogs swiftly learned that the only way to resist the shocks was to remain in the cages and in due course of time, they discontinued their attempts to escape. Thus, Seligman concluded that the dogs developed learned helplessness to “trade the unpredictability of escape for the more predictable coping strategies.” Later on, this same theory was applied by many specialists in the cases of women who are in battering relationship. The theory suggests that the women’s experiences of their attempts to control the violence would over time produce learned helplessness and depression as the repeated battering, like the electrical shocks, diminish the woman’s motivation to respond. Thus the woman remains all submissive and passive and never attempts to flee from the battering relationship which eventually leads her to accept battering as a way of
In the very beginning, there is a ‘tension building phase’ when there is a gradual intensification of tension which is manifested by obnoxious behaviour on the part of the batterer and which sometimes escalates to minor acts of physical abuse. In order to avoid such situations in future, the woman attempts to pacify her husband by doing what she thinks might please him. However such attempts eventually fail and this invariably gives way to the ‘acute battering phase’. In fear of pain and injury, which she will have to endure during this phase, she often expedites the inevitable explosion, forcing it to occur in conditions so as to minimize the impending harm. The explosion itself is constituted by physical and verbal aggression which leaves the woman injured and shaken. The final phase being the ‘loving contrition phase’ phase’ is characterized by extremely loving and contrite behaviour on the part of the batterer where he portrays compassion and repentance, often promising a better future without brutality. The woman believes her husband and, early in the relationship at least, derives a ray of hope from this behaviour. This phase provides optimistic reinforcement for the woman to stay in the relationship, even if the phase comes to be characterized simply by an absence of anxiety or violent behaviour. Thus the latter phase acts to keep the woman in the relationship believing that the nightmare is over when in