Multi-tiered Group Therapy Model to Identify and Treat the Root Causes of Domestic Violence: A Proposal Integrating Current Social Neuroscience Findings

Abstract

Domestic violence (DV) is a national public health crisis. The leading treatment model, the Duluth Model, has failed to reduce or prevent DV. New models of treatment for DV are needed. In this paper, an emphasis is placed on an integrated multimodal approach to treating DV, integrating the current psychological science on the neurobiology and brain science of human violence with recent findings in the neurobiology of group relationships to present a treatment program for DV employing a group therapy model. This group therapy treatment approach moves away from the treatment of symptoms to the treatment of the root causes of violence. The two-tier Duluth model (a community teaching model of psychoeducation and court-mandated behavioral therapies for male perpetrators) is expanded to include a third tier. This is a psychological science-driven model that identifies and treats the root causes of DV using a group process and group systems-oriented approach.

Commentary on “Toward Understanding and Treating Violence in America: Some Contributions From Group Dynamic and Group Therapy Perspectives”

“…Rice (2015) reminds us that violent behavior is sometimes necessary to ensure survival. Lothstein (2015) adds that research from neuroscience tells us that the evolutionary brain structures such as the limbic system and other deep brain structures hardwire human beings to respond adaptively with aggression, especially when necessary for survival. So, truthfully, the impulse to act violently is part of human nature.…”

“…The survival of the self is in one way or another threatened, thus activating the need to respond. Less emphasized but suggested by those writing about violent offenders, e.g., Roller (2015) and Lothstein (2015), and terrorists (Post, 2015) is the role of insecure and/or disorganized attachment histories and styles that leave such persons more vulnerable to painful narcissistic injury than those with secure attachments.…”

“…Like Thomas, she emphasizes how the capacity for empathy can be increased when silence is broken, talking with others who are accepting and the working through of feelings in the group. Lothstein (2015) and Gerhart, Holman, Seymour, Dinges, and Ronan (2015) also address the problem of managing narcissistic injury in their descriptions of treatment programs for male perpetrators of domestic violence, as does Roller (2015) in his review of the video series The Voices of Violence. The video describes two treatment programs for incarcerated violent offenders, both advocating group therapy for treatment of these men.…”

Commentary on “Toward Understanding and Treating Violence in America: Some Contributions From Group Dynamic and Group Therapy Perspectives”

“…Yet we already know that the notion of the nation state is shifting, and hierarchical ways of leadership are flattening. Marriage equality, as cogently advocated by Lothstein (2015) in the context of treatment of domestic violence, while representing a major step towards human justice, also means the metaphor of pairing needs to be rethought and expanded. While there is much made, for example, by Rice, of fight, flight, and freeze responses, there is little attention to emergent work in the consciousness literature about its healing alternative: flow states that invite stillness and reflective action in the face of conflict and confrontation (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990;Jackson, Thomas, Marsh, & Smethurst, 2001;Privette, 1983).…”