Between the Professional

and the Private

Violence Against Women

Volume 15 Number 3
March 2009 362-384
2009 Sage Publications
10.1177/1077801208330436
http://vaw.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

The Meaning of Working With

Intimate Partner Violence in Social
Workers Private Lives
Hadass Goldblatt
Eli Buchbinder
Zvi Eisikovits
University of Haifa

Ilana Arizon-Mesinger
Yahel Children-Parents Treatment Center

This qualitative study examines the impact of working with intimate partner violence
on therapists marital relationships and gender identity. Data were collected by in-depth
semistructured interviews with 14 experienced women social workers working in
domestic violence treatment centers in Israel. Findings indicate that the boundaries
between workers private and professional lives are blurred and work experiences influence their intimate relationships and gender role identities, leading to overall questioning of their relationships. This newly rediscovered consciousness reshapes the meaning
of workers couple relationships. Such shift between private and professional should be
considered when training workers to intervene with intimate partner violence.
Keywords: domestic violence; phenomenology; social workers experience; work
spillover

raditionally, the helping professions are expected to create and maintain clearcut boundaries between professional and private domains. Professionals should
not let experiences from work infiltrate their private lives. This expectation is assumed
to protect the workers and their families as well as their clients. Nevertheless, there is
mounting evidence that the mutual influences are inevitable (e.g., Heller & Watson,
2005; Judge & Ilies, 2004), particularly for those who practice in sensitive domains,
which may lead to traumatic and posttraumatic reactions (e.g., Brown & OBrien,
1998; Figley, 1995; Iliffe & Steed, 2000; McCann & Pearlman, 1990; Wasco &
Campbell, 2002). Intimate partner violence is a case in point.
This study examines how women social workers experience the therapeutic
encounter with offenders and survivors of intimate partner violence and the ways in

362

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

Goldblatt et al. / Meaning of Working With Intimate Partner Violence 363

which such encounters have an impact on their private lives. Working with intimate
partner violence may evoke gender issues and threaten the core of the workers identity as a woman and wife. Workers may experience conflicts with their partners
around issues similar to those abused women experience with their spouses. Although
the difference lies in the solution to the conflict, workers in this area may sense a
greater threat to their private lives than they experience when working with other
trauma cases, with which they identify less. These influences act as a magnifying
glass, rendering the cases more dramatic, more visible, and thus easier to discern and
examine. Such examination enables reflections reaching far beyond the specific influences related to these encounters and may become catalysts for self-examination and
reflection in a broad range of personal life experiences. As such, the process is potentially important for understanding these workers inner world.
If we conceptualize intervention in general, and with intimate partner violence in
particular, as an ongoing negotiation of reality between the worker and the client,
shaped by personal, sociopolitical, and cultural contexts within which both sides live
and act (Gergen, 1994; Register, 1993; Wood & Roche, 2001), we can assume that
mutual influences are expected in creating the intersubjective nature of the therapeutic
encounter (Anderson & Goolishian, 1992). When gender roles and inequality or power
asymmetry are involved, as is the case with domestic abuse intervention (Avis, 1989;
Bograd, 1991; Goldner, 1988; Storm, 1991), the participants social and personal identities intertwine. This enhances the level of involvement and affects the attitudes of the
worker in both the personal and professional spheres (Avis, 1989; Johnson, Todd, &
Subramanian, 2005; McCallum, 1997; Prouty, Thomas, Johnson, & Long, 2001;
Register, 1993).
Recent attention has focused on the negative experiences that helping professionals
undergo as a result of working with family and intimate partner violence (Azar,
2000; Bell, 2003; Horwitz, 1998; Iliffe & Steed, 2000; Schauben & Frazier, 1995;
Way, Vandeusen, Martin, Applegate, & Jandle, 2004; Werk & Caplan, 1998). This is
expressed in secondary traumatization, vicarious trauma, countertransference, stress,
and burnout (e.g., Brown & OBrien, 1998; Campbell & Wasco, 2005; Cunningham,
1999; 2003; Dekel & Peled, 2000; Figley, 1995; Jenkins & Baird, 2002; McCann &
Pearlman, 1990; Neumann & Gamble, 1995; Trippany, White Kress, & Wilcoxon,
2004; Walker, 2004; Way et al., 2004). These effects are generalized to a variety of
therapists and health care professionals who deal with a range of trauma cases (e.g.,
Clark & Gioro, 1998; Collins & Long, 2003; Geller, Madsen, & Ohrenstein, 2004;
Sabin-Farrell & Turpin, 2003).
Some positive effects of working with trauma have been identified among therapists, such as developing a sense of competence with regard to coping, resolving own
personal traumas, drawing on early role models of coping (Bell, 2003; Linley, Joseph,
& Loumidisc, 2005), and grappling with existential questions leading to positive selftransformation (Benatar, 2004) or posttraumatic growth (Arnold, Calhoun, Tedeschi,
& Cann, 2005; Collins & Long, 2003; Sabin-Farrell & Turpin, 2003).

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

364 Violence Against Women

The changes occurring in professionals intimate lives, interpersonal expectations, and the influences on the structure of their identity have scarcely been
addressed. For example, few studies have addressed the relationship between intimate relationships and gender roles among social workers, in the context of their
encounter with abused women (Goldblatt & Buchbinder, 2003). One study examined
how exposure to violence, as well as undertaking an authoritarian role at work, has
an impact on police officers abusive behavior toward their intimate partners at home
(Johnson et al., 2005).
The encounter with abused women may trigger anger, criticism, and subsequent
judgmental statements on the workers side (e.g., Why doesnt she leave her abusive
partner?). It may also trigger concern for ones own and family members safety and
may bring ones own feelings of vulnerability and fear to the encounter (e.g., It could
happen to me, too; Iliffe & Steed, 2000). Similar gender, age, or intimate relationship
status may result in identification with the client (Horwitz, 1998; Register, 1993) and
anger toward the abuser. Partner violence may become a magnifying mirror of the
workers own daily family conflicts concerning intimacy, child-rearing practices, and
decision making (Goldblatt & Buchbinder, 2003). Encountering family violence may
also renew memories of exposure to violence in the workers family of origin (Benatar,
2000; Iliffe & Steed, 2000). Hence, workers intervening with perpetrators and/or victims of intimate partner violence need to be aware of their attitudes and emotions and
their source and of subsequent reactions they may experience during the process.
Intimate partner violence training programs for workers often encourage participants to reflect on their emotions and attitudes associated with their clients and intervention. However, they seldom directly address the influence of such work on their
personal lives or professional identity (Enns, Campbell, & Courtois, 1997; Hamberger
& Ambuel, 1997; Register, 1993) and even less frequently address the issue of boundary permeability between the professional and private spheres of workers lives, but
focus mostly on the improvement of services to clients (Campbell, Raja, & Grining,
1999; Enns et al., 1997; Hamberger & Ambuel, 1997).
Finally, the literature on workfamily relations indicates a wide range of empirically identified connections and spillovers between these life domains yet seldom
addresses the inner experiences arising from work influences on private lives (e.g.,
Edwards & Rothbard, 2000; Grzywacz, Almeida, & McDonald, 2002). Some studies
have examined the effect of spillover from family to work and work to family (i.e.,
mood and satisfaction), values (i.e., the importance attributed to work and family),
time allocation (e.g., Thompson & Bunderson, 2001), skills, role conflicts (i.e., being
both a parent and a manager of a large firm) (e.g., Perry-Jenkins, Repetti, & Crouter,
2000), and spillover of fatigue and the subsequent inability to fulfill family roles and
demands (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985). It is also established that positive or negative
moods at work affect positive or negative moods experienced at home (Edwards &
Rothbard, 2000; Heller & Watson, 2005; Judge & Ilies, 2004).

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

Goldblatt et al. / Meaning of Working With Intimate Partner Violence 365

Serious personal, societal, and work-related problems might occur when workers fail
to balance work and private life responsibilities effectively, such as working overtime to
meet the familys increasing financial needs, or work demands, such as increasing competitive pressure for productivity. These difficulties are manifested in various emotional
and behavioral consequences, such as increased stress levels and stress-related illness,
lower life satisfaction, and higher rates of family conflicts, violence, and divorce
(Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985; Hobson, Delunas, & Kesic, 2001). Although the spillover
literature addressed core issues such as workers role conflicts, moods, and quality of
life, it has referred to neither inner experiences nor interpersonal processes (i.e., impact
on gender identity issues) experienced by workers in sensitive areas, such as intimate
partner violence, from the subjective experience of the participants.
The present study examines the way in which Israeli women social workers who
work with intimate partner violence experience the influences of their work on their
private lives. As the title suggests, such exposure at work may catalyze selfexamination influenced by their work experience. The treatment of intimate partner
violence perpetrators and victims began in Israel around the 1970s, approximately
30 years ago, involving a variety of professionals and activists. Since the recognition
of intimate partner violence as a social problem, a complex treatment system has
evolved and is mainly staffed by social workers in a variety of public social services,
such as shelters for abused women, a shelter for abusive men, centers for treatment
and prevention of domestic violence, centers for treatment of sexual abuse survivors,
and telephone hotlines. As in other areas of social work, most of the workers are
women and thus might be more vulnerable to identification with female victims of
similar age or intimate relationship status (Horwitz, 1998; Register, 1993).
Although the literature review points to a wide range of professionals treating
different types of trauma, social workers have seldom been addressed as a unique
group who intervene with intimate partner violence and child and sexual abuse survivors (e.g., Bell, 2003; Campbell et al., 1999; Cunningham, 1999, 2003, 2004;
Goldblatt & Buchbinder, 2003).
Hence, this study attempts to shed light on the intersection between the private
and professional for a highly susceptible population of women social workers, who
are constantly exposed to difficult subject matter, not only through their clients but
also through their own reaction to these issues, which then have an impact on their
intimate lives.

Method
Participants
This study uses a phenomenological perspective. Such research is based on small
purposive samples based on a limited number of informants who are considered to be

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

366 Violence Against Women

information rich. In such studies, depth is traded for representativeness (Creswell,

1998; Patton, 1990). In the current study, 14 interviewees provided sufficiently rich
information, and theoretical saturation was achieved. This was apparent from additional interviews, which provided no new material and a recurrence of most themes.
The phenomenological perspective is particularly useful in studying sensitive topics (Boss, Dahl, & Kaplan, 1996; Rosenblatt & Fischer, 1993), and the encounter
between work and private life for social workers who work with intimate partner
violence undoubtedly may be classified as sensitive by the criteria of sensitivity and
degree of threat (Renzetti & Lee, 1993; Wasco & Campbell, 2002).
Criteria for inclusion in the sample were gender (female, because most workers in
this field are women), age, seniority at work with intimate partner violence (based on
the assumption that older and more experienced workers may cope differently than
younger and less experienced workers), and marital status (assuming that marital status
may shape workers perceptions of intimate relationships). The study participants were
14 female social workers who were working with intimate partner violence victims
and perpetrators in different social services throughout Israel (shelters for abused
women, centers for treatment and prevention of family violence, and telephone hotlines in various cities). Choosing participants from a variety of services enhanced
variability among the studys population (Adams & Schvaneveldt, 1985). Participants
age ranged from 29 to 52 years old. Twelve participants had been married for between
4 and 31 years, one female interviewee was separated from her husband, and one was
divorced. Clinical experience ranged from 5 to 23 years, and work experience with
intimate partner violence ranged from 2 to 14 years. Eleven participants had a masters
degree and three had a bachelors degree. The participants gave their informed consent
prior to the study and participated in the research voluntarily.

Procedure
Data collection. The interviewer was an experienced social worker with 11 years
of seniority in clinical work with children and families in distress. The participants
and the researcher had no former acquaintance. The researcher contacted the social
service managers to inform them of the research aims and rationale. After receiving
the managers approval, the researcher met with workers in each service, whose
characteristics met the purposive sample criteria. She introduced the study, asked for
their cooperation, and promised confidentiality. The workers who agreed to participate in the study were then asked to confirm their consent for tape recording the
interview. The time and place of the interview were also fixed.
First, the participants completed a demographic questionnaire and then underwent
an in-depth semistructured interview that was conducted in Hebrew and lasted
approximately 2 hours. The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed verbatim.
The interview questions were developed following open-ended pilot interviews
with five social workers who had worked with intimate partner violence perpetrators

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

Goldblatt et al. / Meaning of Working With Intimate Partner Violence 367

and survivors. The interviews yielded information about main themes of related
issues in these workers professional and personal life domains. An additional source
was information derived from the literature on intimate partner violence. The
researcher content analyzed the pilot interview data as well as analyzing main
themes that were derived from the literature. She conceptualized her findings into an
interview guide that included five conceptual themes: (a) perception of intimate
partner relationships, (b) violence in intimate relationships, (c) the workers views of
intervention into violence in intimate relationships, (d) the meaning of work in the
social workers life in general and in family life in particular, and (e) the relationship
between intervention with violence in intimate relationships and the social workers
spousal relationships. The participants were also asked whether they had ever experienced personal life events that resembled those of their clients.
The questions were formulated in a manner that allowed an in-depth exploration
of the participants experience regarding the five themes mentioned above. Based on
the phenomenological tradition, the interviewer encouraged participants to tell their
stories from a reflective position in their own words. This allowed them to construct
their narratives according to the temporal, relational, and spatial shifts and flow of
experiences while probing issues seen as essential for understanding the topic at
hand (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000).
Analysis. The phenomenological method presumes (Spinelli, 1989) that researchers subjective perspectives, their prior biases and prejudices, expectations, and
assumptions, unavoidably shape the findings (Boss et al., 1996; Denzin & Lincoln,
1994). Therefore, they need to be bracketed and suspended as much as possible
(Moustakas, 1994; Spinelli, 1989). The team was composed of persons who were
experienced in intimate partner violence, both clinically and in terms of research. Their
views were often discussed with other members of the research team, which enabled
them to set aside their personal values and subsequent biases. Consequently, the main
categories that emerged during the data analysis process were grounded in the data and
were expected to represent the participants experience rather than the categories
assumed a priori by the researchers. Adherence to this procedure enhanced the studys
credibility (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). In addition, we attempted to make clear distinctions between interpretations and descriptions in our data analysis, and, by so doing,
we were focused on the immediate impressions of the phenomena under investigation
(Spinelli, 1989). Our data were organized based on themes emerging from the narratives themselves, and we kept our interpretive notes separate from the descriptive narratives (Moustakas, 1994; Spinelli, 1989).
To increase intercoder reliability, thematic content analysis was performed separately by each coauthor. We performed separate cross-case analyses by detecting and
coding themes across cases. Subsequently, we examined comparatively our individual analyses, discussed differences, and sought agreement. The comparison covered both the content of the themes and the interpretation of their meaning. In cases

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

368 Violence Against Women

of disagreement regarding the interpretations of the themes, the few on which we

disagreed were excluded from the findings.

Ethical Considerations
The study was conducted according to the rules of the university ethics committee. All participants voluntarily agreed to participate in the study and signed
informed consent forms following a brief explanation of the general aims of the
research. The study findings report omitted the participants names.

Findings
Content analysis revealed two main themes: (a) between work and couplehood:
the blurring of boundaries as a source of reflection on intimate relationships and
(b) violence as a source of changing worldview. Our overall findings indicate that
work with intimately violent clients infringes the boundaries between private and
professional and provides a new and qualitatively different meaning to intimate
relationships in the family, particularly in relation to gender and power relations. The
result is the development of an ongoing conflictual ecology in the couples lives,
which is directed toward redefining gender relationships. Although in most cases,
such conflicts are seen by the interviewees as opportunities for development, in
some cases they became the catalyst for the dissolution of the relationship.

Between Work and Couplehood: The Blurring of

Boundaries as a Source of Reflection on Intimate Partnership
The interviewees described their work as an opportunity to reassess their intimate
relationships. By so doing, they bring the two domains closer and make them mutually permeable. The following quote is illustrative:
You are counseling and helping and find yourself asking many questions about your
own couplehood, womanhood, and how it relates to you. What does it all mean to you?
To what extent is violence present in your own life? You might even be battered, . . . if
you had financial problems or other limitations, for instance. . . . I suddenly realized
that this is relevant to me, even similar to my situation. (Interviewee 16)

While working with clients, questions originally directed to them are redirected
toward the self, and the answers that were previously taken for granted are increasingly questioned. Thus, the certainty of ones own normative dyadic space is scrutinized and doubts are raised regarding the intimate relationship. As conflict and
violence are increasingly brought home and incorporated into private life, they are

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

Goldblatt et al. / Meaning of Working With Intimate Partner Violence 369

no longer strange and unknown as previously but become familiar and relevant. As
such, they become a threat to the workers intimate relationship as well as a measure
against which she reexamines its components. Violence becomes a metaphor encapsulating all past and future relationships that includes power, inequality, crisis, or
conflict and becomes a significant component of the workers micro cosmos, her
interpersonal and social world. This is reflected in the following quote:
Couple life is always under scrutiny as a result of the encounter with the battered
women. What is similar and what is different about their situation and mine? All this
greatly reflects the decisions and choices I make and the way I locate myself vis--vis
men. How do I claim the right to speak, to change or decide? Theres a lot of mirroring
here, but for myself, a person with strong opinions and a stable and strong couplehood,
work appears at times like a kind of legend, from very far away. . . . I can come home
and tell my husband about a man who limits the number of pieces of toilet paper his
wife uses. . . . We can have a whole discussion about it as if it comes from another
world. It is alien to my own couplehood, too far from my experience. My husband does
not measure how much toilet paper I use. But on the other hand, it is relevant in terms
of dictums, orders. He uses other kinds of directives. I cant verbalize it yet . . . I am
still trying to formulate it. How much respect, or lack of it, is present in our relationship, and what do we argue about? What will keep us together and what might cause
us to separate? . . . I am lucky that I have a stable, long-lasting partnership based on
closeness and friendship. So we have a common launching ground, strong enough to
withstand all these storms. (Interviewee 7)

This quote illustrates that working with violence in intimate relationships becomes a
mirror that, by constantly reflecting these relationships various nuances, poses a challenge to the workers couplehood and forces them to reexamine much of what was
taken for granted between them and their partner. The more secure the worker feels of
her autonomy regarding separation within the couplehood, the more she allows work
to penetrate the boundaries of her private life and is willing to reexamine it (e.g., I am
lucky that I have a stable, long-lasting partnership. . . .). On the other hand, such
ongoing reexamination is not risk free. The various issues brought home from work
tend to sharpen and dramatize the otherwise trivial everyday struggles facing couples
in their lives. Stories from work are integrated into the workers private lives and their
intimate dyadic experience. This is illustrated in the following quote:
For every oppressed woman that comes into your room, you take a look at yourself and
assess your own position on the continuum of oppression. How different are you from
her? Your mother certainly did not go through this. How successful are you in your life?
Every question and every decision is examined in light of the extent to which you
safeguard your own rights, you defend your own status. . . . You just see woman after
woman, who tells you her story, and this encourages you to check where you really
stand, and your family priorities. Where does this leave me? It intensifies the constant
power struggles at home. (Interviewee 1)

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

370 Violence Against Women

Workers perceive battered women as being denied their freedom along with additional basic human rights. They view encounters with them as opportunities for selfreflection and examination of gender roles as women, in relation to couplehood, and
of intergenerational transmission of intimate relationships and how these are carried
out in their own experience. The intensity of involvement with issues that seem
highly relevant for the workers often blurs the boundaries between themselves and
clients to a point where the focus of the narrative shifts, and this inevitably raises the
question of who is at the center of the discussion, the client or the worker.
This permeability of boundaries often leads to a continuous preoccupation with
and examination of the workers intimate relationships as a whole and calls the continuation of the relationship into question. One worker described this as follows:
The workplace isnt a hospital. In a hospital, everyone is sick, but there is a feeling here,
in this place of work, that everyones couplehood is sick [she stresses the word]. . . .
Maybe this is what leads to tensions and struggles in our intimate relationships. Because
here you learn that its something you have to fight for. . . . You need to prove to yourself that youll never get into that kind of relationship, that it can never happen to you,
but in some twisted circumstance, it could happen to you. (Interviewee 2)

The quote reflects the workers experience of both confusion and danger concerning
the possibility of being personally affected. On one hand, the interviewee denies the
similarity to a hospital, and on the other hand she draws parallels with illness and
medical settings. The confusion in the text reflects helplessness and the inability to
delineate clear boundaries between herself and the client. She clearly reiterates the
totality of the situation as an illness, an external factor that attacks and becomes part
of you against your will. This worker feels that her entire couplehood is threatened.
Her working environment is contagious and she feels the threat of infection at all
times, so she is on constant alert. The danger is a permanent feature of her working
life. The sense of security in the couplehood also becomes problematic.
The experience of victimhood and the need to defend the self from its effects
further weaken the distinction between private and professional life. The following
quote from a social workers narrative relates to this:
On Sundays, when I return from the mens group (which I facilitate), he knows that
theres no point in talking to me. . . . It brings out all my aggression. I am hard and
emotionally charged, and theres no way I can let him touch me. I desperately need
air. . . . Look, I tell him about what went on, but I really need my space, both physically and emotionally. . . . I tell him things, but cant convey the intensity of what
happened in words. Words just demolish the experience. (Interviewee 7)

This worker returns home after a traumatic session with batterers and brings its
effects with her. She feels infected by aggression and estranged from her quiet and
peaceful home territory. There is discontinuity between her working life and private

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

Goldblatt et al. / Meaning of Working With Intimate Partner Violence 371

life, and she therefore feels estranged from her partner. Intimacy is impossible and
any physical contact is framed as unbearable in light of her involvement with physically violent clients and her feelings of estrangement on her home territory. Her
distress is expressed through her need for space and air, which conveys the threat as
the sense of suffocation. The worker goes on to present her inability to verbalize and
therefore share the experience. This state of affairs leaves her alone with the trauma
and her normative attempts to share her pain remain in the realm of ritual.
Some workers deny the relationship between work and private life, but such attitudes seldom withstand deeper examination of the subtext. For example,
I have never allowed my exposure at work to affect my private life. I have always made
sure this doesnt happen, sort of closing a door, or pulling down a screen, something
artificial which I place between myself and work. I know that my personality is different. I would never let such things to happen to me. I would get up and leave. I can see
today that I do argue with my partner and there are things on which I never compromise. No couplehood is perfect and no home is without its frictions. But I can still see
that if I dont compromise on essential principles. . . . For the first few months I
worked here, I used to dream about things at work, as if they had come from another
planet . . . but I would quickly pull down the screen and tell myself that, This has
nothing to do with me; I dont let these things touch me. These things dont always hit
you in the face. Sometimes you can never know, but it has never got in the way, and I
never use this stuff in my own couplehood. (Interviewee 15)

On the overt level, this interviewee makes a conscious effort to document that her
private and working life are completely separate. Nevertheless, an in-depth examination of her statements concerning her private life indicates that although her personal
and working lives are presented in sharp contrast to each other, they are also highly
intertwined. Each serves as the context for understanding the other, and they therefore merge and become figure and ground to each other. Her constant search for the
differences points to a high level of uncertainty concerning their existence.
Preoccupation with stressing the differences to such an extent may suggest that the
informant has difficulty making the distinction and is anxious to prove it exists. An
artificial effort to stress the distinction by the use of screens and doors reiterates
the sense that it exists in the realm of wishful thinking. The most threatening theme
within the effort to achieve differentiation was related to the resemblance between
the worker interviewed and the battered women who are her clients. The descriptions
of prevalent imperfections in couplehood (no couplehood is perfect) appears to
attempt to reframe the workers conflicts with her intimate partner as normal and
stress the distinction between normal and abnormal conflicts and, therefore, between
herself and her clients. The entire narrative is structured by a double message: on one
hand, the need to make a clear distinction between work and private life on the prescriptive level and, on the other hand, the constant fear that if the distinction should
become blurred her private life will be severely threatened.

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

372 Violence Against Women

Violence as Source of Emerging Worldview

Intervention with clients who experienced intimate violence was seen by many
interviewees as a source of personal development arising from the opportunity to
clarify their own gender identity and its expression in intimate relationships. Two
distinctive groups of workers were identified based on the ways they relate to gender
identity: One group came to terms and compromised with the power differential
arising from gender differences and searched for ways to cope with it from a conciliatory position. The change they experienced was based on mere awareness and
the ability to talk about it from a position of strength. The second group was larger
and comprised workers who decided to fight for their newly discovered gender rights
and who were willing to enter conflictual situations to actualize these. This group
moved toward a more conflictual intimate relationship.
A worker from the compromising group stated,
My work in this area provided me with many things that I hadnt experienced previously. Our family is quite reserved. We seldom express feelings; even when my husband and I are alone, we never get very romantic. Everything is guarded, reserved, done
with respect, less emotional, we dont scream and we dont melt with passion. Thats
the way it used to be and I think I was the first to change. When I changed, my couple
life and parenting changed. Listen, I dont mean to say that I express feelings impulsively. But I know it is possible. I envy people who can speak or cry impulsively. . . .
Its as if Ive collected a sea of battered wives tears in my imagination, which has
melted my reserve, control, and denial. My defense mechanisms are actually very
strong, but I am real soft on the inside. I know myself and I guess I built up many
defenses to survive in this world. But this job broke them all down. It allowed me to
compromise and accept myself as a woman. I think I am more of a woman today than
I once was. I am more daring and let myself say that absolute equality is impossible;
we cant have absolute equality. (Interviewee 6)

The interviewee in this quote reported a sense of renewal, discovery, and innovation
arising from her experience with battered women. The change she reported as a
consequence was primarily internal and personal but led to a softened family ecology. Once she discovered her own emotional capabilities through the suffering
(tears) of battered women, she was more emotionally open and willing to part
from her restraint, to move from a power ridden to a more emotional, softened, and
more secure position. Once she is emotionally recharged, she feels secure and looks
at her gender relationships from a less conflictual perspective. Her freedom comes
from the ability to balance power and emotions and create her own modus vivendi
in gender relationships.
The second group of workers who decided to fight for their newly discovered
gender rights is illustrated in the following quotes:

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

Goldblatt et al. / Meaning of Working With Intimate Partner Violence 373

Since I have been working in this domain, everything has become a matter of principle.
My husband is constantly defending his position, so that he doesnt get run over and
squashed. As a result, home has become a battlefield. It was a real war zone up to a couple
of months ago, and then we decided to disengage. For a couple of months, we were wary
of each other, but today we are moving toward a balance. But we were fighting over nothing . . . over everything and over nothing. My husband sometimes says, Tell me, cant
you be submissive, for once in your life? For once in your life tell me yes? I think this
creates problems, since it reflects the problems of society. Why should I be submissive for
once in my life? The mere thought of it is ridiculous. . . . In this line of work, the need
to be autonomous is strengthened. Not to depend on anyone, so that if he disappears I
wont collapse. The sense of always being on your toes, always being on the alert, never
counting on anyone and never to let your guard down is really strong. (Interviewee 1)
If I try to look for ideal couplehood at work in the shelter [for abused women] or at
home with my husband or anywhere, I discover that there is no such thing as ideal. We
are constantly trying to identify . . . there you go again, something should happen.
Something big needs to happen for the world to change and for these power relationships to die out. I sometimes feel the need to be part of a revolution, of something huge
that can be seen, heard, and expressed in everything. I feel as though Im constantly
holding a magnifying glass. It is so exhausting. . . . It penetrates your home; it is my
main preoccupation and has taken over my agenda, my entire feminist worldview, and
my overall perspective. . . . These are things which are constantly present at home, in
my nuclear family, with my partner, in the way I educate my child. These things are
part of my life. (Interviewee 5)

Common to these quotes is the sense of bringing interpersonal conflicts to the societal level. They are presented as part of a macro-political struggle within which the
family is a capsule where gender conflicts and power struggles are played out. Because
most conflicts are politicized and depersonalized, the boundaries between work and
family become permeable, and work situations serve as warning signs for what can
happen in ones own family. It further appears that workers use the family as a locus
for experimenting with newly acquired concepts and worldviews. However, there is an
underlying subtext of anxiety and a fear of total collapse. The first interviewee talks
about being on guard to save herself and her family from such collapse and subsequent
breakdown of the family unit. The other narrative brings the conflict to the societal
level where her family is not within range. Once the conflicts tend to get out of control
and threaten the existence of the family, workers develop various strategies to control
it. In the above quotes, they range from disengagement and reflection, which by default
helps with cooling the mark out, or distancing the effect from the workers private
life, to utopization, or bringing the conflict to dimensions for which the family is
irrelevant and can therefore be excluded. Paradoxically, both interviewees express a
sense of attrition. Although they invest much energy in verbalizing and working
through social conflicts, it seems to exhaust them, and they search for ways to
contain both the conflict and the threat associated with struggles arising from it.

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

374 Violence Against Women

The sense of threat to the family unit that is inherent in working with battered
women is expressed in the following narrative:
Our work and personal lives are inseparable. I look around me in staff meetings and
realize that I am the only person there who is still married. It didnt used to be like that.
Over the years, the number of married women among us decreased constantly. I am
always joking that Id better get out quick before it gets to me too [she laughs]. The fact
that everyone here eventually gets divorced because of what the work does to us is
becoming the subject of black humor. It scares me a lot to think that I might be divorced
in a couple of years. You cant tell for sure if it is because of the work, but it is work
related. (Interviewee 12)

This quote is part of a longer narrative that described how most of the interviewees
colleagues went through a process of strengthening their gender identity and their
consciousness of inequality to a point at which their marriages became impossible.
The interviewee lives under constant threat that she may go in the same direction.
On one hand, she expresses the wish to perpetuate her couplehood, and on the other,
she has an awareness that her work may ruin it. Overall, the fear of losing couplehood is a recurring theme among married women who work in the field of intimate
violence. This conflict between the need for security and the predictability inherent
in couplehood often contradicts the need for freedom that could be achieved by
breaking away. This is illustrated in the following quote:
This work place is threatening. . . . I am always afraid. It is something I never had
before, the fear that everything is going to fall apart. Fear that our relationships will fall
apart. I am even frightened to talk about it. I couldnt talk about it before. But it comes
up here. The staff here is special. At my previous places of work, we would go out with
our partners and it was nice. Here, when we meet in the evenings, its just the girls, and
there is a love between us which appeals to our inner desires to be unattached . . . these
gender issues come up. They keep coming up, as we keep talking about gender because
of the violence and it triggers in me this yearning for freedom which never existed
before. (Interviewee 3)

This interviewee brings up the importance of her newly discovered reference group
in considering new options of freedom. The group is not only a sounding board on
which these issues can be aired but also a space in which her yearning for freedom
can be expressed and is reinforced. The group and such topics are all the result of
working with intimate violence.
The following quote describes the interviewees private rebellion against stereotypical gender roles:
This happened because I wanted to check things out from a feminist perspective: A
greater sense of anger as a woman, more awareness of these kinds of issues, more of an
attempt to check out expectations of women. Most of the time, I make the food and my

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

Goldblatt et al. / Meaning of Working With Intimate Partner Violence 375

husband comes home later. Suddenly I found myself not preparing food. I just didnt feel
like it. My husband didnt mind. Even if he gets home tired, he can still make his own
food. I was really checking things out with myself. (Interviewee 10)

Although previous narratives exemplified how intervening with intimate violence

evokes awareness of feminist gender identity, the above passage illustrates how such
work leads the workers to experiment with feminist theory in action. Acting along
these lines is inherently conflictual. Such experimentation is associated with trying out
acts of personal revolt against traditional gender roles (in the present case, cooking)
and experimenting with boundaries. The primary target of such experimentation is the
worker herself. Although feminist approaches subsume conflict, this did not occur, as
she neither negotiated with her husband nor needed to do so, as he was willing to go
along with the experiment and had no preset expectations, therefore adjusting to the
newly created situation without any demands. The only conflictual situation remaining
was that of the worker with herself. It reflects an inner interaction arising from her
working context and has little to do with her intimate relationship. She viewed her
experimentation as an attempt to try out her freedom but found that it was accompanied by much insecurity. Both the need to experiment with freedom and the insecurity
resulting from such experimentation arose from her encounter with battered women.
It appears that the boundaries between work and private life among the workers
interviewed become increasingly permeable. This creates a sense of confusion and
existential chaos and a series of partially solved dilemmas. The workers deal with
this in several ways. Some turn to therapy and frame their problems as psychological
and in need of treatment. This group emphasized positive change as an outcome of
professional intervention. Others grow into an ambivalent situation that encapsulates
an increased awareness of the emerging crisis in their intimate relationships under
the influence of work, associated with both a positive attempt to actively seek solutions to the crisis through therapy and the possibility of breaking up as a realistic
option. Finally, some handle the change in their perception of gender relations by
separating from or divorcing their partners and therefore accelerate the process of
redesigning their intimate relationships.
The therapy-oriented group is exemplified by the following narrative:
We went to therapy for a while. I also went alone. After a while, he joined for part of
the process. He came partly because I was already going. I was the one who brought
the need to change something and he felt more comfortable that the change was coming
from me, but he understood that if he wants to stay with me, he needs to join me in
therapy. I took more of a responsibility for the change, partly because I saw at work
that there is always one party who has more interest in inducing change in the relationship. Why should he want to change anything? He was happy with the status quo. He
came with me to the sessions, because he didnt want to lose the couplehood, and
finally understood that he also needs to change. (Interviewee 8)

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

376 Violence Against Women

The woman in this narrative presents herself and her intimate relationship as in crisis. Initially, she feels that her consciousness created a gap in her intimate relationship. Her work and the understanding gained from it served as both a catalyst and an
avenue for understanding the value of change. Once she turns to therapy to handle
the crisis, she rightfully takes the credit for initiating and leading the process with a
male partner who follows in her footsteps and comes to realize the price he needs to
pay to safeguard their joint life. The secondary gain perceived by the interviewee
from this process is the change in the former power structure that balanced her position in relation to her partner and thus contributes to preserving the couple intact.
The second perspective related to ambivalence is exemplified by the following quote:
Recently, the crisis came to a head. We had to check out the whole thing. I sensed that
we shouldnt succumb to the crisis. We had to find out what was going on. I kept asking
questions about everything I felt and thought about the crisis. . . . What belongs to me?
What belongs to him? What are the implications? I think it is also related to what goes
on at work. Something was bound to be awakened. . . . I think it was clear to me from
the beginning that there will be implications, that life wont be the same and I was scared
of it. . . . I am always the one asking the questions, the dissatisfied one, the one in
doubt; he, on the other hand, creates an atmosphere of togetherness. He wants to make
sure we dont break up. I dont perceive divorce as a danger. It comes up as an option.
Now it is not an option. Were now in a period of hope. . . . When the divorce was an
option, Id made up my mind to go to therapy to surface all the questions. He also started
treatment. He started some kind of process. . . . He said, You are a wonderful woman
and I think I am a wonderful person. How come its not working? As if something has
gotten messed up. . . . There is an understanding between us that we need to do something to avoid that. It is also related to work because divorce is talked about a lot. It is
not seen as something bad. It is something we know is an option. As someone working
with violence, I see it as something less horrible. (Interviewee 10)

The ambivalence in this quote is obvious: Working with intimate partner violence
becomes a pair of eyeglasses through which the partners revisit their interpersonal
world. What they see will never be the same. The work-related crisis is both unique
and acute and leaves no place for running away from basic questions related to the
relationship. Because the woman is the one who works with intimate violence, she is
the initiator of the questions but not of the solutions. All options including divorce
become feasible against the backdrop of what women know from working with their
clients. This brings the relationship to a turning point and transforms it from a nonreflective to a reflective one. Once the process of reflection and the subsequent options
open up, everything is possible. The certainty of a continuous relationship is lost and
substituted with a continuous examination and reexamination that can lead to the alternative options of staying together or parting.

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

Goldblatt et al. / Meaning of Working With Intimate Partner Violence 377

Discussion
The meaning of mutual reality of intimate relationships is co-constituted through
partners constant negotiation toward mutual understanding and agreement on meaningful themes that compose the essence of their couplehood (Berger & Kellner, 1975;
Denzin, 1984; Gergen, 1994). The encounter with families who live with violence and
the subsequent insights gained in the areas of couple relationships and gender roles
may challenge the taken-for-granted reality of the workers couplehood (Mclain &
Weigert, 1979) as known to them. The reflective and often critical stance infused in the
relationship and the reexamination of the partners attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in
light of such a stance might be interpreted as an attack on the norms, trust, and predictability of their togetherness (Denzin, 1984). The couples sense of intimacy and privacy is under siege and is often substituted by emotional alienation that increases over
time with further exposure outside the family to violence and its implications.
Treating trauma victims in general and abused women in particular is one of the most
difficult and demanding therapeutic intervention domains because of the workers ongoing exposure to difficult life situations and their consequences (e.g., Cunningham, 2003;
Linley et al., 2005; Sabin-Farrell & Turpin, 2003). The workers feel committed to helping the victims at risk to defend themselves. At the same time, the spillover of such
experiences in the workers private lives forces them to defend their own private and
psychological space. Such a double emotional burden is hard to bear, and despair, helplessness, powerlessness, anger, and guilt become permanent fixtures of workers everyday life (Cunningham, 2003; Dutton, 1992; Iliffe & Steed, 2000).
In addition, because work with abused women draws its principles from feminist
approaches, the therapeutic space becomes conflictual and focused on constant
examination of perceptions, attitudes, power differentials, and social relationships.
Although this is done in the therapeutic context with battered women, its effects on
the workers self-examination of their private context are far reaching.
Hence, intervention with abused women validates one of the basic feminist
assumptions about women treating women: This is an encounter between women
who have a common denominator as women, who share the same societal and cultural context in relation to gender and power (Wood & Roche, 2001). Frequently, the
workers expectations from their clients and themselves intertwine.
Such spillover from work to private life (Heller & Watson, 2005; Iliffe & Steed,
2000; Strawderman, Rosen, & Coleman, 1997) may induce restlessness and insecurity
in the workers intimate relationships by reiterating the gap between what they prescribe for their clients and the way they live themselves. The effects of such spillover
are both personal and social. On the personal level, they examine their values and
attitudes regarding issues such as personal identity, femininity, power, and violence. At
the same time, they continuously examine the proximity of the abused womens experiences to their own world (Goldblatt & Buchbinder, 2003; Register, 1993; Strawderman
et al., 1997).

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

378 Violence Against Women

Given the compelling nature of such intense existential issues, the workers need to
confront and cope with the interface between the professional and personal domains.
A case in point is the need to address their personal and professional attitudes concerning gender relationships. The workers who are women themselves experience dissonance between their personal perceptions, values, and behaviors and the perceptions,
values, and behaviors they hold as professionals. While working with battered women,
they tend to implement their feminist attitudes and invest much energy in encouraging
women to leave behind their victimized status and actualize their right to live a violence-free life. However, such work is paralleled by an ongoing self-assessment toward
answering questions regarding their own choices concerning intimate partner relationships and their own freedom of choice, overall goal attainment, and partnership style.
By so doing, the workers introduce new social and emotional themes to their couple
reality, thus reshaping and reconstructing their couple relationships.
During treatment, the workers are expected to contain emotions such as their clients helplessness, anger, and anxiety. They aim to help the abused women transcend
such emotions and acknowledge their strengths, hopes, and competence for change
(Iliffe & Steed, 2000; Strawderman et al., 1997). These messages are echoed in the
workers relationships and become a background against which the workers emotions
toward their intimate partners are examined. Once the workers identify and acknowledge the discrepancy between the personal, social, and professional self, they set out
to create change in their own lives. The change process is gradual and emerged in this
study as being composed of a series of discernible phases. At first, the workers experience an increased awareness of family relations. They place themselves in an evaluative and reflective position concerning their own lives, in light of the lessons learned
from intervention with survivors of intimate partner violence. Subsequently, or perhaps
concomitantly, they experience a combination of threat to their couplehood and family,
anger toward their spouse, and helplessness in the face of possible change. In the next
stage, such negative emotions meet with changing gender attitudes and decreased
tolerance toward any perceived inequality and injustice. The transfer of these genderrelated insights into the private sphere further acerbates the inner and interpersonal
conflict in workers lives. Thus, exposure to intimate violence transcends the professional domain and becomes a lens through which the workers reflect on their intimate
relationships, their family, and life in general.
At this stage, the workers are at an existential crossroads, which exceeds by far
the issue of violence or gender relations and deals with broader issues such as freedom and individuation, choice, attempts to renegotiate and redefine their own and
their partners gender identity, power distribution, and emotional relationships in
couplehood. If this examination yields positive results, the workers experience more
confidence in themselves and their intimate relationships. Their trust in their partners
is enhanced and so is the collaboration between them. The couplehood is preserved
and the protected space of intimate life is regained, but with more resilience to external threat. Conflictual issues, either interpersonal or social, are examined with an

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

Goldblatt et al. / Meaning of Working With Intimate Partner Violence 379

increased degree of authenticity. If the reflective process does not lead to viable solutions, the relationship may embark on an escalatory trajectory, and the we-ness
(Mclain & Weigert, 1979) of the couple is in jeopardy. Whatever the chosen path, the
strain arising from the expectations of change in the relationship in light of what was
experienced in therapy and the perceived dangers that such change may entail to the
couplehood remain an ongoing motif in these womens lives.
Perhaps this threat of uprootedness (Marris, 1974) leads to the finding that workers feel the need to stress the difference between their intimate partners and the
partners of the women they were treating. It appears that initially the workers were
placing abuse encountered in the foreground and allowing it to enter their personal
space. However, perhaps because of the threat of violence and the subsequent anxiety created by it or because of the need to delineate for themselves some personal
space that is free of it, they seem to develop strategies for moving abuse into the
background and their violence-free intimate lives to the foreground. This enabled
them to be more amenable to promote change in their intimate relationships. It is
noteworthy in this context that many of the interviewees reported seeking therapy at
this time and even encouraged their partners to join this process.
However, the workers are not alone in the process described above. Their intimate
partners are active participants in the process of renegotiating their joint reality.
Based on what the workers expressed in their narratives, the men may react to their
female partners changing attitudes and behaviors in a variety of ways. They may
join their partners, negotiate the process of change, and thus co-construct a new
mutually agreed reality. In case of disagreement regarding the transformation in the
couple relationship, the men might resent the renegotiation, escalate the conflict, and
initiate disengagement and divorce.
The findings show that abused women who make changes in the context of desperate and hopeless situations also serve as a motivation for the workers to reflect on
their personal intimate situation as necessitating change and believing that it can be
done. As Kobasa, Maddi, and Kahan (1982) claimed, commitment to a goal enables
transformation of frustrating experiences into challenging ones, thus coping more
efficiently with stress-inducing events and people.

Implications for Professional Training

The foregoing research documented how clients and workers cocreate reality in
their encounters (Anderson, 1997; Gergen, 1994; Hoyt & Berg, 2000), a fact often
assumed but seldom demonstrated by using an insiders view. It also showed the
impact of such joint construction on the workers lives. We believe that it became
clear that the constant shift between working with intimate partner violence and the
personal existential world of the worker is inevitable. Such shift induces internal
conflicts that have an impact both on the professional and on the personal-intimate

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

380 Violence Against Women

lives of the workers but also have the potential to reshape and enhance the meaning
of couples relationships, thus improving their quality of life.
It appears that the rhetoric of separating professional from private is not a realistic principle, and the co-construction of reality should underlie both anticipatory and
on-the-job socialization of workers in general and workers with difficult and emotionally demanding clients and situations in particular. This entails providing the
workers with a set of reflective and analytic skills, which may enable them to understand and act on their experience with their clients rather than invest futile efforts to
divorce themselves from them.
Several important issues emerging from this study have significant implications
for training workers in the field of intimate partner violence.
1. Training should emphasize preparation for the emotional burdens arising from this
kind of work and the potential for such burdens to penetrate the private lives of the
workers, changing them in several core personal and interpersonal respects.
2. The workers should learn to use the new lens acquired in this kind of work constructively to empower them rather than take an escalatory trajectory in their interpersonal relationships. Skills to deal with such escalation need to be taught rather
than circumvented.
3. Workers should be taught to deal with the development of a self-reflective attitude
toward themselves and their intimate relationships, including the potential critical
examination of their interpersonal status quo.
4. Workers need to learn more about gender relations and gender inequality and constructive ways to overcome this. In this context, they need to learn about womens
culture, womens ways of knowing and feeling, and their unique needs and their
actualization.
5. It is necessary to acquire the ability to move working experiences from the figure
to the ground, not denying their influence but not letting them overcome their personal lives either. Such figureground interplay is helpful in controlling the extent
of penetration of work in private lives.
6. Finally, it is essential to focus both pre-employment socialization and on-the-job
socialization on broader existential issues such as individuation, freedom, choice,
identity, and culture, which are often neglected at the expense of acquisition of
technical skills considered to be a sign of professionalism.

References
Adams, G. R., & Schvaneveldt, J. D. (1985). Understanding research methods. New York: Longman.
Anderson, H. (1997). Conversations, language and possibilities: A postmodern approach to therapy. New
York: Basic.
Anderson, H., & Goolishian, H. (1992). The client is the expert: A not knowing approach to therapy. In
S. McNamee & K. Gergen (Eds.), Therapy as social construction (pp. 25-39). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Arnold, D., Calhoun, L., Tedeschi, R., & Cann, A. (2005). Vicarious posttraumatic growth in psychotherapists. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 45, 239-263.

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

Goldblatt et al. / Meaning of Working With Intimate Partner Violence 381

Avis, J. M. (1989). Integrating gender into the family therapy curriculum. Journal of Feminist Family
Therapy, 1(2), 3-26.
Azar, S. T. (2000). Preventing burnout in professionals and paraprofessionals who work with child abuse
and neglect cases: A cognitive behavioral approach to supervision. Journal of Clinical Psychology,
56, 643-663.
Bell, H. (2003). Strengths and secondary trauma in family violence work. Social Work, 48, 513-522.
Benatar, M. (2000). A qualitative study of the effect of a history of childhood sexual abuse on therapists
who treat survivors of sexual abuse. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 1(3), 9-28.
Benatar, M. (2004). Purification and the self-system of the therapist. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation,
5(4), 1-15.
Berger, P., & Kellner, H. (1975). Marriage and the construction of reality. In D. Brisset & C. Edgley
(Eds.), Life as theater (pp. 219-233). Chicago: Aldine.
Bograd, M. (1991). Female therapist/male client: Considerations about belief systems. In M. Bograd
(Ed.), Feminist approaches for men in family therapy (pp. 123-151). New York: Harrington.
Boss, P., Dahl, C., & Kaplan, L. (1996). The use of phenomenology for family therapy research. In D. H.
Sprenkle & S. M. Moon (Eds.), Research methods in family therapy (pp. 83-105). New York:
Guilford.
Brown, C., & OBrien, K. (1998). Understanding stress and burnout in shelter workers. Professional
Psychology: Research and Practice, 29, 383-385.
Campbell, R., Raja, S., & Grining, P. L. (1999). Training mental health professionals on violence against
women. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 14, 1003-1013.
Campbell, R., & Wasco, S. M. (2005). Understanding rape and sexual assault: 20 years of progress and
future directions. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 20, 127-131.
Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative
research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Clark, M. L., & Gioro, S. (1998). Nurses, indirect trauma, and prevention. Journal of Nursing Scholarship,
30(1), 85-87.
Collins, S., & Long, A. (2003). Working with the psychological effects of trauma: Consequences for
mental health-care workersA literature review. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing,
10, 417-424.
Creswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Cunningham, M. (1999). The impact of sexual abuse treatment on the social work clinician. Child and
Adolescent Social Work Journal, 16, 277-290.
Cunningham, M. (2003). Impact of trauma work on social work clinicians: Empirical findings. Social
Work, 48, 451-459.
Cunningham, M. (2004). Teaching social workers about trauma: Reducing the risks of vicarious traumatization in the classroom. Journal of Social Work Education, 40, 305-317.
Dekel, R., & Peled, E. (2000). Staff burnout in Israeli battered womens shelters. Journal of Social Service
Research, 26, 65-76.
Denzin, N. K. (1984). Toward a phenomenology of intimate partner violence. American Journal of
Sociology, 90, 483-513.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Introduction: Entering the field of qualitative research. In N. K.
Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 1-17). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Dutton, M. A. (1992). Empowering and healing the battered woman. New York: Springer.
Edwards, N. P., & Rothbard, N. P. (2000). Mechanisms linking work and family: Clarifying the relationship between work and family constructs. Academy of Management Review, 25, 178-199.
Enns, C. Z., Campbell, J., & Courtois, C. A. (1997). Recommendations for working with intimate partner
violence survivors, with special attention to memory issues and posttraumatic processes. Psychotherapy,
34, 459-477.

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

382 Violence Against Women

Figley, C. R. (Ed.). (1995). Compassion fatigue. New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Geller, J. A., Madsen, L. H., & Ohrenstein, L. (2004). Secondary trauma: A team approach. Clinical
Social Work Journal, 32, 415-430.
Gergen, K. L. (1994). Realities and relationships: Sounding in social construction. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Goldblatt, H., & Buchbinder, E. (2003). Challenging gender roles: The impact on female social work
students of working with abused women. Journal of Social Work Education, 39, 255-275.
Goldner, V. (1988). Generation and gender: Normative and covert hierarchies. Family Process, 27,
17-32.
Greenhaus, J. H., & Beutell, N. J. (1985). Sources of conflict between work and family roles. Academy
of Management Review, 10, 76-88.
Grzywacz, J. G., Almeida, D. M., & McDonald, D. A. (2002). Work-family spillover and daily reports of
work and family stress in the adult labor force. Family Relations, 51, 28-36.
Hamberger, L. K., & Ambuel, B. (1997). Training psychology students and professionals to recognize and
intervene into partner violence: Borrowing a page from medicine. Psychotherapy, 34, 385-375.
Heller, D., & Watson, D. (2005). The dynamic spillover of satisfaction between work and marriage: The
role of time and mood. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 1273-1279.
Hobson, C. J., Delunas, L., & Kesic, D. (2001). Compelling evidence of the need for corporate work/life
balance initiatives: Results from a national survey of stressful life-events. Journal of Employment
Counseling, 38, 38-44.
Horwitz, M. (1998). Social worker trauma: Building resilience in child protective social workers. Smith
College Studies in Social Work, 68, 363-377.
Hoyt, M. F., & Berg, I. K. (2000). Solution-focused couple therapy: Helping clients construct self-fulfilling
realities. In M. F. Hoyt (Ed.), Some stories are better than others (pp. 143-166). Philadelphia:
Brunner/Mazel.
Iliffe, G., & Steed, L. (2000). Exploring the counselors experience of working with perpetrators and
survivors of intimate partner violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 15, 393-412.
Jenkins, S. R., & Baird, S. (2002). Secondary traumatic stress and vicarious trauma: A validational study.
Journal of Traumatic Stress, 15, 423-432.
Johnson, L. B., Todd, M., & Subramanian, G. (2005). Violence in police families: Work-family spillover.
Journal of Family Violence, 20, 3-12.
Judge, T., & Ilies, R. (2004). Affect and job satisfaction: A study of their relationship at work and at home.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 661-673.
Kobasa, S. C., Maddi, S. R., & Kahn, S. (1982). Hardiness and health: A prospective study. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 42(1), 168-177.
Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Linley, P. A., Joseph, S., & Loumidisc, K. (2005). Trauma work, sense of coherence, and positive and
negative changes in therapists. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 7, 185-188.
Marris, P. (1974). Loss and change. London: Routledge Kegan Paul.
McCallum, S. (1997). Women as co-facilitators of groups for male sex offenders. Social Work with
Groups, 20, 17-30.
McCann, I. L., & Pearlman, L. A. (1990). Psychological trauma and the adult survivor: Theory, therapy
and transformation. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
Mclain, R., & Weigert, A. (1979). Toward a phenomenological sociology of the family: A programmatic
essay. In W. R. Burr, R. Hill, I. F. Nye, & I. L. Reiss (Eds.), Contemporary theories about the family
(Vol. 2, pp. 160-205). New York: Free Press.
Moustakas, C. E. (1994). Phenomenological research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Neumann, D. A., & Gamble, S. J. (1995). Issues in the professional development of psychotherapists:
Countertransference and vicarious traumatization in the new trauma therapist. Psychotherapy, 32,
341-347.

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

Goldblatt et al. / Meaning of Working With Intimate Partner Violence 383

Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Perry-Jenkins, M., Repetti, R. L., & Crouter, A. C. (2000). Work and family in the 1990s. Journal of
Marriage and Family, 62, 981-998.
Prouty, A. M., Thomas, V., Johnson, S., & Long, J. K. (2001). Methods of feminist family therapy supervision. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 27, 85-97.
Register, E. (1993). Feminism and recovering from battering: Working with the individual woman. In
M. Hansen & M. Harway (Eds.), Battering and family therapy: A feminist perspective (pp. 93-104).
Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Renzetti, C. M., & Lee, R. M. (1993). The problems of researching sensitive topics: An overview and
introduction. In C. M. Renzetti & R. M. Lee (Eds.), Researching sensitive topics (pp. 3-13). Newbury
Park, CA: Sage.
Rosenblatt, P. C., & Fischer, L. R. (1993). Qualitative family research. In P. G. Boss, W. J. Doherty,
R. LaRossa, W. R. Schumm, & S. K. Steinmetz (Eds.), Sourcebook of family theories and methods:
A contextual approach (pp. 167-177). New York: Plenum.
Sabin-Farrell, R., & Turpin, G. (2003). Vicarious traumatization: Implications for the mental health of
health workers. Clinical Psychology Review, 23, 449-480.
Schauben, L. J., & Frazier, P. A. (1995). Vicarious trauma: The effects on female counselors of working
with sexual violence survivors. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 19, 49-64.
Spinelli, E. (1989). The interpreted world. London: Sage.
Storm, C. L. (1991). Placing gender in the heart of MFT masters programs: Teaching a gender sensitive
systemic view. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 17, 45-52.
Strawderman, E., Rosen, K., & Coleman, J. (1997). Therapist heal thyself: Countertransference and the
treatment of a battered woman. Journal of Family Psychotherapy, 8, 35-50.
Thompson, J. A., & Bunderson, J. S. (2001). Work-nonwork conflict and the phenomenology of time:
Beyond the balance metaphor. Work and Occupations, 28, 17-39.
Trippany, R. L., White Kress, V. E., & Wilcoxon, S. A. (2004). Preventing vicarious trauma: What counselors should know when working with trauma survivors. Journal of Counseling and Development,
82, 31-37.
Walker, M. (2004). Supervising practitioners working with survivors of childhood abuse:
Countertransference, secondary traumatization, and terror. Psychodynamic Practice, 10, 173-193.
Wasco, S. M., & Campbell, R. (2002). Emotional reaction of rape victim advocates: A multiple case study
of anger and fear. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 26, 120-131.
Way, I., Vandeusen, K. M., Martin, G., Applegate, B., & Jandle, D. (2004). Vicarious trauma: A comparison of clinicians who treat survivors of sexual abuse and sexual offenders. Journal of Interpersonal
Violence, 19, 49-71.
Werk, A., & Caplan, T. (1998). Non-violent group supervision within a violence clinic context. Clinical
Supervisor, 17, 101-111.
Wood, G. G., & Roche, S. E. (2001). Situations and representations: Feminist practice with survivors of
male violence. Families in Society, 82, 583-590.

Hadass Goldblatt, PhD, is a lecturer in the Department of Nursing, Faculty of Social Welfare & Health
Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel. Her recent writings have dealt with the experience of professionals
intervening with domestic violence and trauma issues, adolescents exposure to interparental violence, and
spousal violence. Formerly, she was the head of the Unit for Research, Intervention, and Prevention of
Domestic Violence, Haifa, Israel. She is a qualified family therapist and an experienced supervisor in social
work.
Eli Buchbinder, PhD, is a social worker and a senior lecturer at the School of Social Work, University
of Haifa, Israel. He specializes in qualitative research on intimate partner violence. He has published
numerous journal articles in this field. He is the coauthor (with Zvi Eisikovits) of Locked in a Violent

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015

384 Violence Against Women

Embrace: Understanding and Intervening in Domestic Violence (2000). Formerly, he has worked in different
social work institutions, including a public welfare agency, a childrens residential care facility, a family
therapy facility, and a domestic intervention unit, and has served as a mental health officer in the army.
Zvi Eisikovits, PhD, is professor of social work and director, Center for the Study of Society, University
of Haifa, Israel. His recent work includes numerous articles in the field of intimate partner violence on
topics such as escalation, children of battered women, and the impact of working with intimate violence
on professionals and a book (with Eli Buchbinder), Locked in a Violent Embrace: Understanding and
Intervening in Domestic Violence (2000), on the phenomenology of intimate partner violence. He specializes in using qualitative methodology to create grounded theory in the field of intimate partner violence.
Ilana Arizon-Mesinger, MA, is a social worker, a qualified supervisor in social work, and a group
therapist. She is the head of Yahel Children-Parents Treatment Center, Tirat-Hacarmel Municipality, TiratHacarmel, Israel, and also has a private practice.

Downloaded from vaw.sagepub.com at UNIV FEDERAL DO CEARA on April 27, 2015