has difficulty learning how to feel empathy for another person's pain. Patterson
( 1982) and his colleagues, Reid, Taplin, & Lorber ( 1981), studied the behavioral
interactions in the homes of children who were identified as aggressive boys.
Their family behaviors were coded and compared with those in homes where
boys were not reported as using aggressive behavior. The results were interest-
ing: Those in homes without aggressive boys exhibited many more positive than
negative behaviors toward each other.

The data divided the homes with aggressive boys into two groups. One group
centered on reported family violence, the other on relationships that were dys-
functional. As might be expected, those in the dysfunctional homes that pro-
duced an aggressive boy engaged in many more negative behaviors toward each
other. However, the group with the aggressive boys from homes with family
violence was most interesting. Here there were more negative than positive
interactions, but they occurred in a special pattern of chaining and fogging. That
is to say, one negative act quickly followed the last one, one after the other, so
that there was no time to make an effective response. This caused sufficient
cognitive confusion, further reducing the possibility of making an effective re-
sponse. And most importantly from a gender perspective, the negative behav-
ioral interactions were directed mostly from males to females. Patterson suggests
that coercive families train boys and men to use violence as a learned response
to obtain domination.

Research on men who batter women indicate that they learn to use verbal
intimidation and aggression punctuated by physical assaults in order to get
women to do what they want them to do ( O'Leary & Arias, 1988; Walker,
1984). Sexual abuse is also used to humiliate the woman and render her more
powerless to male demands ( Herman, 1992; Walker, 1979, 1989a, b & c). Men
who believe they are entitled to a woman's services usually seek to gain power
and control over the woman. Often these aggressive behaviors turn to violence
when she does not comply with what the man demands. Although there are
many different theoretical explanations for why men batter women, the most
parsimonious one is that "no one stops them." Those who work with men
ordered by the court into treatment say that men who abuse women (1) believe
they are not doing anything wrong; (2) if they understand that their behavior is
wrong, do not believe they will be caught; (3) if they get caught, believe they
will talk their way out of any trouble; (4) if they can't talk their way out com-
pletely, believe the consequences will be light. Most men who commit violence
who believe these points would be correct.

Feminist psychologists believe that violence in the home is the underbelly
of all violence in the streets and in society ( Pagelow, 1984; Walker, 1979).
Disconnected and alienated from their own families (Hansen & Harway,
1993), often victims of racial and class oppression with no belief in a future,
many males and some females learn to use violence as an attempt to survive
( Barnett & LaViolette, 1993). Kilpatrick ( 1990) found that the single most im-

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