Mental health articles

Dynamics of families with intrafamilial abuse One final method of understanding intrafamilial abuse is to compare dynamics of families in which incest occurs to dynamics in other types of families. Various studies have now compared families with nuclear abuse to those with other intrafamilial abuse (Alexander & Lupfer, 1987; Ray, Jackson, & Townsley, 1991), or have compared families with intrafamilial abuse to families without intrafamilial abuse (Alexander & Lupfer, 1987; Harter, Alexander, & Neimeyer, 1988; Jackson, Calhoun, Amick, Maddever, & Habif, 1990; Madonna et al., 1991; Ray et al., 1991). Most of these studies are retrospective. One study compared families with nuclear abuse (most often the father) to families of abuse by an extended family member and to families without abuse (Alexander & Lupfer, 1987). In this study, families with nuclear abuse had more traditional relationships between husband and wife, parent and child, and male and female than victims abused by an extended family member. On the other hand, scores for cohesiveness and adaptability in all families with intrafamilial abuse were similar, but differed significantly from those families who had no victims of sexual abuse. The authors concluded that characteristics described by Herman (198 1) regarding traditional family values were also found to a lesser degree in families with non-nuclear intrafamilial abuse. A second group of studies compared families with intrafamilial abuse to families with no abuse. As compared to families with no abuse, families with any type of intrafamilial abuse were less cohesive (Alexander & Lupfer, 1987; Harter et al., 1988; Jackson et al., 1990) and less adaptable (Alexander & Lupfer, 1987). These families were also more controlling (Jackson et al., 1990) and traditional, and fathers were more powerful (Maddock et al., 1991). Individual members had less autonomy (Madonna et al., 1991), were less able to support autonomy or intimacy of family members (Madonna et al., 1991), and were more socially isolated (Harter et al., 1988). Further, they exhibited less empathy and trust, their range of feelings was more constricted and masked (Carson, Gertz, Donaldson, & Wonderlich, 1990; Madonna et al., 1991), and family members often had distorted and incongruous beliefs about themselves and the family (Madonna et al., 1991). Finally, families with intrafamilial abuse also have a higher number of psychosocial stressors than families without victims of sexual abuse (Levitt, Owen, & Truchsess, 1991). This review suggests that families in which intrafamilial abuse occurs have many of the same characteristics of those families in which father-daughter incest occurs, including more stressors, more powerful fathers, greater traditionality, and greater dysfunction. Another study compared dynamics in families with intrafamilial abuse to families of victims of extrafamilial abuse as well as to families with no abuse victims (Ray et al., 1991). The general hypothesis of this study was that dynamics found in families in which incest occurred would be found to a lesser extent in families with extrafamilial abuse, an hypothesis that was partially supported. Indeed, characteristics found in both intrafamilial and extrafamilial abuse included a lack of involvement of family members with each other, especially as this involvement related to closeness, emotional support, and activities that would promote a child’s development. Compared to families with no abused members, those with abused members were less cohesive, less likely to encourage independence, and less organized around responsibilities, activities, and rules. In general, families of intrafamilial abuse had the greatest pathology, families with extrafamilial abuse had less pathology, and families with no abuse victims had the least. A final study compared families with nuclear family abuse to those with extended family abuse, extrafamilial abuse, and families with no abuse victims (Alexander & Lupfer, 1987). In this study, the same progression was found, with scores typically stepping down from nuclear family abuse, whose scores indicated the most pathology, to extended family abuse, to extrafamilial abuse, and finally to no abuse. The largest difference was most often between nuclear family incest and extended family incest. The exception is that cohesion scores in all families with abuse victims were somewhat uniform but were significantly higher, indicating more pathology, than those for families with no abuse victims. In summary, it appears that many of the dynamics found in father-daughter incest and other intrafamilial abuse are also exhibited in families with extrafamilial abuse. The differences appear to be in the level of intensity of these dynamics.

Tags: abuse