THE PLAIN DEALER, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1974

When husbands take a beating, words inflict the wounds

By Robert Shields

The London Observer

LONDON

""

"No man, said Muhammad, "should beat his wife-even with a flower."

That some men do batter their wives arouses, rightly enough, revulsion and pity in the public mind. Sadistic behavior is not, however, solely a male prerogative..

Admittedly husband battering is not usually of the crude, grievous bodily harm variety-though I have come across a husband with a broken forearm which his wife had smashed with an ax. There are other, and much more common, kinds of wifely cruelty.

For example, Dr. T. was on a ward round when his "bleep" sounded. Going to the phone, he heard the agitated voice of his wife: "You left the electric saw out on the workbench, and Tom has cut his thumb off with it!"

He was in his car, still in his white coat, driving furiously through the traffic, before he realized that he hadn't asked his wife to which hospital his young son had been taken. There was nothing to do but race home-an hour's drive-to see if there was a note, or if a neighbor could help him.

Reaching home, he found the front door open and dashed in. His wife was sitting in an armchair reading a book. She didn't look up.

Ton

"Where is Tom?" he

gasped.

"At school, of course, Why?" She sounded surprised.

"You said he'd cut his thumb off!"

"Did I?" she said, calmly turning a page. "Well, he might have done; with you leaving your tools around like that."

This was no isolated incident in the lives of this couple, but just one in an endless series of destructive attacks on the husband.

For the most minor cause she would attack him physically, scratching his face or pulling out handfuls of hair. Several times he woke at night to find her standing over him with a knife in her hand.

In company, and in front of the children. she could be violently abusive or would ridicule him for his supposed sexual inadequacies. She occasionally wrote notes to his colleagues telling them he was impotent, which he was not, or that his medical qualifications were spurious.

Bizarre as this kind of behavior may seem in a professionally successful and well educated person, it is not untypical of women who exemplify the “angry woman syndrome”—a term coined by Dr. Nathan Rickles, a California psychiatrist.

These women, says Rickles, are often latently homosexual and harbor a deep envy and suspicion of men, which leads to victimization of their husbands.

The husband, however, is not always the only victim. The children may be brought in.

In order to punish her husband after a quarrel, Mrs. L. would sometimes go to a hotel for a day or two, taking her daughter with her.

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On one occasion she returned from just such an absence to find that her husband had-naturally enough-fed the family dog. She flew into a rage. "That's my dog," she yelled at him. "I've told you that I'm the only one allowed to feed him." She then grabbed their 3-yearold by the throat.

L

"Unless you get down on your knees and apologize, and swear you'll never feed the dog again, I'll choke her to death."

He did as he was told. Explaining his pathetic compliance, Mr. L. said, "She's so ruthless when she

is in a rage that there is no knowing what she will do. She is a dangerous woman."

This young wife actually drowned her daughter's kitten in front of her because she took too long eating her dinner.

And if she and her husband had a disagreement when the child was in bed, she would open the door and scream, "Daddy's killing me" till the child ran down in terror.

According to her psychiatrist, one lawyer's wife became an expert in subtle forms of psychological · warfare. She would, for instance, keep her husband awake all night when he had a crucial court case in the morning by thumping out of bed, slamming doors and flushing toilets.

Some of these wives seek allies outside the home. One

woman would occasionally tear her nighdress, then run dishevelled into the street and plead with passersby to help her "because my husband has gone mad and is trying to kill me.”

Another woman was frequently running to her doctor and her friends to show the scratches and bruises her husband had inflicted on her. To me she admitted that these minor injuries had been sustained only when her husband was

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trying to disengage himself from her violent attacks.

Usually, however, these couples will make strenuous efforts to present a facade of normality. Their friends do not suspect the degree of anger and misery that exists within the home, and it comes to light only when one or other seeks psychiatric help.

"HEY JUNIOR! ~ DADDY JUST BROKE

In my view, the majority of these women are not psychotic. Most are socially well adjusted. They are often successful in their careers and give the impression of being outwardly attractive personalities. They do not lose touch with reality and can shift in an instant from a state of apparently uncontrollable rage to smiling gentleness

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the moment the doorbell rings.

Why don't these hapless husbands simply pack their bags and go?

Some do, of course, thereby confirming their wives' live-long conviction that men are not to be trusted.

But most pathetically explain: "When there is an amnesty you couldn't find a nicer woman. Anyway, I love her... Besides, there are the children. I need them and they need me And if I left, would she turn on one of them?”

...

Or there is the husband who says, “She doesn't mean to be cruel. She is ill in some way. Perhaps I can help her... She is sorry

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afterwards and has promised never to do it again...

Actually she is not very sorry because she usually finds some way of blaming her cruel behavior on her husband.

"It's only because you paid so much attention to that woman at the party.. You make me feel unwanted...

Genuine repentance is rare, though minor regret may be expressed.

One psychiatrist reported on the case of an "angry woman," who, in the course of a row with her husband, picked up the phone, rang

her 80-year-old mother-inlaw and told her she had just stabbed her husband and he was bleeding to death in the garage.

She later "laughingly admitted" to her doctor that she had made up this story to punish her husband for not paying her enough attention.

A number of clinicans who have reported on cases of this kind state that the emotionally battering woman is usually one who has been severely deprived or rejected as a child and. at the unconscious level at least, lacks the ability to trust in the love of a man.

She tends to oscillate between the hope of being loved and the conviction that she is not. Believing she is unloved drives her into infantile rage which she may express directly or with the sophistication of adulthood, transmuted into cold and calculating sadistic acts.

Because her husband's affection is never felt to be enough to overcome her infantile fears of being essentially unlovable, he must be made to suffer. At the same time, though, she despises him for his weakness, his willingness to be trodden on and his patheti-

cally ingratiating manner.

For their part the husbands are usually "nice" men, using that word in the pejorative sense passive, conciliatory "Munich men" who want peace at any

price but never get it. Outside the home they are often highly successful and adequately assertive.

Their "niceness” in the home is a cover-up for fear. Continued on Page 9-E