The Abuse of Men: Trauma Begets Trauma (Paperback)

~ Barbara Jo Brothers (Author) "EDITOR'S NOTE. The following lectures were part of Virginian Satir's month long training seminar in Crested Butte, Colorado, Process Community I, August 1981 and Process..." (more)
Key Phrases: dual trauma couples, traumatized couples, dissociative attachment, New York, The Haworth Press, Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

When men are abused, everybody suffers.

This courageous book exposes a dark secret: Men are often victims of abuse. Although a great deal of attention has recently been paid to the victimization of women, the role of men as victims--not just perpetrators--has been neglected. The Abuse of Men reveals the impact of physical, sexual, and emotional trauma on the lives and relationships of men.

This groundbreaking book shows how the negative effects of both basic training and combat may also cause lasting damage to men's self-esteem, ability to trust, personal boundaries, and ability to form healthy relationships. The Abuse of Men explores the prevalence of other kinds of violence and abuse toward men and boys, from child-battering to spousal abuse. It also discusses how the culture of violence and societal expectations of boys and men can help drive victims of abuse toward continuing the cycle of violence.

The Abuse of Men discusses the sources of trauma, including:

• the quality and quantity of domestic violence committed by women against men
• the role of abusive fathers in raising sons who become abusers
• vicarious traumatization from living with partners whose uncontrolled PTSD makes them dangerously abusive
• hazing, military training, and other socially sanctioned male-on-male violence
• trauma contagion and transactional victimizing

The Abuse of Men also offers specific suggestions for therapists working with abused men and their partners, including an innovative step-by-step program for treating couples who have both been traumatized. By understanding how men and boys become victims and respond to trauma, you can help heal their pain and teach them to build positive, loving relationships.

Product Details

• Paperback: 134 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (July 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789013797
• ISBN-13: 978-0789013798
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,988,227 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The worst book ever written about gender issues, September 19, 2002

By	"arclaw" (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I feel called upon to warn everyone I can possibly reach in the strongest possible terms against squandering their time or money on the worst book I have ever read, let alone actually reviewed, in the entire field of gender equity and men's rights.

Strong words? Maybe but I feel they are fully justified by the facts. First of all, it is galling in the extreme to find a book of such low quality bearing a highly misleading title implying that it will usefully analyze the disgracefully neglected issue of men as abuse victims and even suggesting that it may expand upon Philip Cook's seminal 1997 masterpiece "Abused Men: The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence." Instead, discounting references, Brothers offers fewer than a hundred smallishly-sized, large-type pages of text, six articles in total, only ONE (by Tonia L. Nicholls and Donald G. Dutton) concentrating on the effects of abuse on its male victims.

What can the other five articles possibly address, you may wonder. The first piece is a bizarre, disjointed transcript of seminar leader Virginia Satir's speech to a live audience. Ostensibly addressing "models of perceiving the world" and "relationship as hierarchy," the piece sheds no light on any issue of any relevance to the book's ostensible topic.

Immediately following this most curious opening piece is an analysis by Audrey Diane Bloom and Randall Lyle of the "vicarious trauma" which may afflict male partners of female sexual-abuse survivors. Their article never manages to engage its topic effectively.

It gets worse. Aphrodite Matsakis manages to write an article entitled "The Impact of the Abuse of Males on Intimate Relationships" while demonstrating her evidently perfect ignorance of the fact that domestic violence does at times occur to adult male victims. As examples of male abuse she discusses only abuse IN CHILDHOOD or abuse in military and paramilitary experiences. This despite the fact that the immediately succeeding article alludes to men as victims of violence! Matsakis' standard feminist analysis reveals no attempt at any fresh insight, as she recycles tired lines about how violent men are beating the woman in themselves.

The article by Nicholls and Dutton does centrally address female abuse of male intimates. Since this article does at least discuss the book's ostensible subject, and is competently if not impressively documented and executed, it qualifies as book's only article even marginally qualified for publication under this title.

While Nicholls and Dutton are the only ones to cite the work of Cook, not to mention Straus and Gelles, they cannot even manage to get Cook's title correct! In fact, even to my casual perusal, an inordinate number of other typos crop up throughout the book in citation dates and article titles.

Norman Shub follows with a stunningly self-indulgent tale from his own childhood of his troubles with his parents. The piece leads nowhere. I can imagine the writing of it may have been extremely therapeutic for Shub, but with all due respect, he ought to have sought publication of it in a vastly different forum and editor Brothers should have realized its inappropriateness. Erwin Randolph Parson concludes the book with its longest article (comprising well over one-third of the text), addressing "intertraumatic dissociative attachment" and the treatment of trauma in couples. Parson provides a tiresomely detailed case history of one couple with which he worked. Years previously, the WIFE was raped and the husband suffered a work accident that disabled him. It is hard to see what this article is doing in this book. What abuse did occur again struck the female. Couldn't Brothers have tracked down some articles better fitting the book's title?

How did such a travesty come to see the light of day, at the same time that gifted, insightful authors such as Jack Kammer cannot find a publisher? One can only surmise that a highly regrettable confluence of incompetence, ignorance, and inertia joined together to allow this disgraceful volume to see the light of day. We may be reminded not to judge a book by its title and to resist the temptation to purchase a work which sounds compelling from its title but for which we have no recommendation.