Abused Wives

By

William D. Dannenmaier

During the years that I was employed: as a teacher, psychologist and researcher as well as for some time following retirement, I donated time, as a volunteer, to varied agencies. Sometimes this was on an ad hoc basis, as was the semester I spent an hour each morning in a class for mentally retarded children or the semester I worked as an aide, one hour a day, in a class for the emotionally disturbed. There was one stretch of six years when it was a minimum of a half day a week in a mental health clinic working, as a psychologist, with court referrals and persons recently discharged from mental hospitals. This was followed by half days for five years donated to social work agencies.

I didn’t do this out of any great charitable feeling, it was entirely in self interest. I taught psychological testing and mental health and had become convinced from reading professional journals and text books that professors lost track of reality after a while. I didn’t want that to happen to me, so I tried to keep in touch with the people I was telling others how to test and counsel. I also learned a lot.

One thing I discovered was the wisdom of Dr. Sullivan, a respected expert on schizophrenia in the 1950s and 60s. He argued that each of these most difficult and disoriented of people have a rational to their behavior. To be successful, a psychologist or psychiatrist must first understand their client’s reasoning. Then, by entering his or her system of logic, he can help them. I found this to be true of all people with whom I worked. To be successful, I had to understand their thinking.

A second learning was that sometimes society views the wrong aspect of a problem. This was the case with my child abusing wives. A volunteer task with one agency included doing group counseling with about twenty women who had been convicted of abusing their children. For some weeks, perhaps months, it was the type of group session one sees in movies: we were getting to know one another and talking about children. Nothing much was happening. Then, one week, a break-through occurred.

A member came in with a black eye. In answer to my query, she said her husband had hit her. Another member of the group, a woman who would have made a good offensive tackle on a professional football team spoke up. “No one would do that to me! You should walk out.” The others murmured their agreement.

That was the last thing I wanted, a woman with three children walking out, with children, on a moment’s notice. “Wait a second,” I said, “if you walk out, where will you eat tonight? Where will you sleep?”

The conversation stopped and the woman thought for a minute, “I have a friend down in Florida.” (This was in Tennessee.)

“Do you know the address?”

“No.”

“The city?”

“No.”

“Before you leave, you had better have a place to go.” Then, curious, I went to the group as a whole and asked each one if she had ever been abused by her husband. Except for my tackle, every woman said, “Yes.” My women were not only convicted child abusers, they were battered wives also.

I thought that over for a minute and then said, “I don’t blame your husbands. You are probably lousy wives.”

That got their attention, so I want on.

“I don’t know anyone, doing any job, who does their best year after year when they believe that it is the only thing they can do, they have no choice. Do you? It’s like being in prison.”

They all agreed. They were not as good as they could be as homemakers: mothers or wives. So then came my next questions, “If you had to leave, where would you go and where would you stay?” Not one had an answer.

From that point, the next steps were to identify what each would like to do if she had to work and how she could go about it. I’ve forgotten most of those answers, but one wanted to know how to apply for a job at a factory. Three wanted to be nurses’ aides. We went into a vocational counseling mode, helping each to get started on what they wanted to do.

The meeting before the night that the three who wanted to be nurses’ aides were to begin class, I suggested that they prepare a special meal and dessert, something the husband was particularly fond of, for him to serve when they left. The goal was to make it a special night for the husbands and children as well as for the wife. (A campus feminist criticized me for this, saying the wife shouldn’t have to. Possibly not, but I wanted the husband as well as the wife looking forward to those nights.)

Of interest, surprising to me and to the women, was the response of the husbands as the wives began to prepare themselves to enter the world of work if necessary. Every woman reported her husband was delighted and supportive. After the fact, it made sense. Not only were the women frustrated by being tied to one single job, the men were frustrated also. As the only “bread earner” in the family, they were in a similar trap to their wives.

The week my nurses’ aides graduated, I went to the director of the agency and said some of the women were ready to move on. They no longer needed their group therapy.

“We can’t have that,” she replied, “our funding depends on how many we have.”

The director wanted them to stay sick! The vocational rehabilitation agencies are the only state or federal agencies that receive state funds for those they cure! I learned more than I wanted. That was the week I quit volunteering at that state welfare agency.

Incidentally, during the more than a year I worked with these women on helping them to be able to stand on their own feet, there was not a single incident of “child abuse” or “wife abuse.” We had been looking at the wrong problem.