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A précis of Cloé Madanes’ inteventions to prevent marital violence.

Cloé Madanes terms her work a “therapy of social action” (Madanes,

1995).The ideological components that make up this approach include an
interactional or systemic viewpoint, a belief in the importance of protecting human
rights, the use of directives, the necessity of using the family as a self help group
and the belief that the quickest way to change a person is to change the context
of the person. These principles are manifest in her approach to therapy. They
inform the 12 step intervention she has devised to prevent domestic violence
described below.

Madanes 12 steps:
Prior to beginning treatment, the therapist makes a risk assessment of the
situation and the violence. This includes any history of violence in each spouse’s
family, an exploration of what abuse has already occurred and an assessment for
risk to the children. At the first session, or before, the therapist will request the
phone numbers of mother, father, other relatives and possibly other important
“elders” in the family such as clergy, for both spouses. If the therapist assess that
there may be a risk of future violence, the following steps are taken:

1. Separation:

The therapist will intervene immediately to separate the husband and wife before
waiting for a court order or the police. If the violence is in the past and has not
been reported, the police may not become involved until a future act of violence
occurs. The therapist’s goal is to prevent this. She will tell the couple that they
must agree to a temporary, immediate, separation.

2. Family of origin

The therapist will then connect husband and wife to their family of origin,
explaining that they must re-establish a connection with them. If that is not
possible, some other parental figure, church, or community members will be
enlisted. The abuser’s positive parental figure should be as intimidating as
possible. It may be necessary to bring in a priest or an employer to represent
society. The therapist will telephone the husband and wife’s relations or their in
loco parentis figure during the session and ask them to pick the husband and wife
up directly from the therapist’s office or the therapist may drive them to a relative’s
home. It is important that the offender, as well as the victim, have family or other
support because of the risk of further destructive behavior including suicide.

3. The telling

All of the family members and siblings, with as many older adults as possible, are
asked to come together for a family session. When inviting the family, the
therapist requests the family to come to the session to help the therapist. She
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may tell the mother or father of the abuser that their job of raising their son is not
finished. She may tell the wife’s parents that if they do not want to end up raising
their grandchildren, they need to be involved.
In this session, the therapist will go around the circle asking each one of the
family, including the husband, to recount all that they know about the violence. In
the case where the wife’s family is unaware of what has been happening, anger
may erupt and it may be necessary to have people leave the room for a period of
time to cool off. For this reason, it is important to start the session by saying that
they have come together to repair things.

4. Morality

The therapist asks each person, starting with the elders, including the husband,
why what the husband did was wrong. Many times the husband will make
excuses, saying that she provoked him, that he was drunk or tired The therapist
asks the other family members to explain to him that he alone is responsible for
his acts of violence, and why it is wrong, Often the family has trouble doing this
because some members of the family may not completely accept that beating
one’s wife is always wrong. The therapist must continue explaining that it is a
violation of the scared bond of marriage, that an attack on his wife is an attack on
the whole family. When a mother is afraid, adrenaline goes into her milk and
affects the child. The therapist explains that this pain of being hurt by the father of
one’s children, the person one is closest to, goes to one’s core. She states that it
is not only a physical and emotional pain but a spiritual pain, a pain to the soul. If
violence occurred in previous generations the elders will understand the pain that
she is referring to. It is a spiritual pain not only in the victim and in the family but
for the offender as well and until he understands the pain and humiliation that he
has inflicted on his spouse they can not mend.

5. Repentance

The therapist then asks the husband to get on his knees on the floor to apologize,
to express repentance for hurting his wife and to promise never to do it again. He
may apologize to his children as well. He should not say forgive me. This step is
about repentance. Forgiveness should not be trivialized. The therapist does not
encourage them at this point to jump to forgiveness. The husband must take
complete responsibility. The wife and the entire family are then questioned as to
whether they believe his apology is sincere. If they do not believe it is sincere, he
must do it again until they believe him. Therapy cannot proceed until this step is
accomplished. This may take more than one session.

6. Reparation

The abuser must accomplish an act of reparation for his wife. This act should
involve some sacrifice for him, show how sorry he is and show that he loves her.

7. Protectors
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The therapist has the family choose a protector for the wife who can stay very
closely involved with her. The victim may move in temporarily with this protector
or the protector with her. This is still very important If husband and wife do get
back together. For example, it may be her brothers who drop in regularly
unannounced.

8. Consequences of future abuse

The family decides what the consequences will be if there is a re-occurrence of

violence. The therapist encourages consequences such as pressing charges,
enforced separation, and letting his employer know what he has done.

9. Mentor for the violent spouse

The therapist will help the family and husband to identify someone who can
functions as a mentor for him.
(Steps 10, 11, and 12 take place after the therapist and the family agree that the
couple can spend together alone.)

10. Executive Meeting

During the week, if one partner is upset about something that the other has done,
they will not talk about it then. Instead they will write it down. Once a week, as in a
corporation, the couple will go to a public place with notes of what has to be
discussed and take a meeting.

11. Rituals

The therapist or clients invent a ritual for setting aside the past. Madanes
(personal communication, 2003) believes that the drama of the therapy must
match the drama of the problems they present. She describes a ritual that Milton
Erickson devised. He told the couple to drive immediately to a barbershop, cut off
all their hair, put it in a jar and drive to Virginia to a particular tree where George
Washington used to court Martha, dig a hole there, and bury their hair. The ritual
may also be as mundane as renewing their wedding vows in the therapist’s office.

12. Creating good memories

Couples may forget, in the tedium and difficulty of everyday life, what drew them
together, what it felt like when they were first in love. The therapist asks the
couple to do something very special that they will remember happily twenty years
from now. To get rid of violence, it is not necessary to always focus on violence.

These are the main steps. Couples therapy, individual therapy and other
interventions may be take place after step nine as needed.

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In cases where the abuse is not serious enough that the therapist deems it
necessary to immediately separate the couple, the following intervention
(Madanes 1990) has been successful:

1. The therapist joins with the husband and re-frames the abuse as a loss of
power. She may say something like,” I understand your suffering. It must be
terrible as a man to have been violent with the mother of your children, how
painful it must be for you, this awful thing you did must shame you and can hurt
your position in the family. You may lose the respect. “

2. The therapist asks the couple recount the worst episodes.

3. The therapist proposes a solution.

“I need to explain to you that I can give you insurance that you will not be violent
ever again. And this is what you want, right?” The therapist tries to get the
husband to agree without knowing what it is.

4. Contracting. The therapist finds out the name of the person that the abuser
hates the most in the world, and writes it down. The contract is that the abuser
puts a sum of money that is painful for him to lose into an account in the hated
persons’ name. (Jay Haley did a version of this by obliging people who wanted to
lose weight to donate a sum of money every time they ate brownies, if brownies
were their downfall, to the American Nazi party.) If he hits his wife, the money will
immediately be turned over to that person.
Madanes reports that often at this point the man may become threatening
or intimidating to the therapist (personal communication, 2003). If this occurs, the
therapist must remain calm and not respond to covert or overt threats of violence.
This not only defuses the situation but models for the abuser how a person may
respond to aggression in a calm and positive way. The therapist says gently and
evenly that she wants to do whatever she can to help him to insure that he keep
his position and respect in the community and not go to jail. At this point, the
therapist will re-negotiate the contract. She may agree to a lesser amount of
money and/or that the money will go to a charity instead of the hated person. In
this way, the husband may have the appealing sense that he is in control, and
that he has put something over on the therapist.

It is well documented in the literature that most abusers are not abusive
with everyone. They may control themselves well when the motivation to do so is
strong, for example, at their work. This may be why anger management is not
useful. The issue is not that he cannot control his impulses; it is that he chooses
not to because of the satisfaction or release he gets from indulging them. These
interventions deal with the abuser’s choice to abuse.
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References

Madanes, C., Keim, J., & Smesler, D. (1995). The violence of men/ New
techniques for working with abusive families: A therapy of social action.
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Madanes,C. (1990). Sex, love and violence: Strategies for transformation. New
York: W.W. Norton & Co.

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