Clinical work · Family violence
Violence and sexual abuse in the family
Violence is probably one of the hardest subjects to work with in therapy. For years we have grown used to classifying it by context: intimate partner violence, violence within the family, sexual violence, violence against children. A systemic gaze shifts the question — and that shift changes what becomes possible to do.
Classifying by context, or by relational logic
The usual classification is not useless: it names, it allows counting, organising protection and legislating. But it describes above all a setting and a category of people concerned. It says rather little about what happens within the interaction — and therefore rather little about what ought to be done there.
When these complex problems were examined through the prism of the systemic approach, the way phenomena of violence are represented took a considerable step forward: new conceptualisations, and above all proposals for intervention suited to the people caught up in such interactions.
Worth remembering
Describing the relational logic of a form of violence, rather than only the scene in which it occurs, makes it possible to know what to do — with those who suffer it as much as with those who inflict it.
These markers first served clinical practice: the scale of aggressiveness and the different types of violence provide the first key to reading them, while the therapeutic paths opened with people who have suffered abuse are their direct extension. They are gathered in a reference work for professionals, which has since appeared in a new edition.
Source
Perrone, R., & Nannini, M. Violence et abus sexuels dans la famille : une approche systémique et communicationnelle. ESF Sciences humaines.
How to cite this article
Besse, J. (2022, October 16). Violence and sexual abuse in the family. Complexe Systémique. https://app.complexe-systemique.com/en_GB/articles/violence-and-sexual-abuse-in-the-family
To go further
- Violence: understanding and interveningThe scale of aggressiveness: six positions for situating a person, and for understanding what plays out between two of them.
- Sexual violence, a systemic perspective: acting and preventingThe questions about prevention opened up by a conference devoted to sexual violence.
- Sexual abuse: therapeutic pathsActivating resilience and stepping out of the victim position: what a therapist can support.
- The foundations of the most absolute prohibition: adult-child sexual actsWhy this prohibition holds: the child's immaturity, the psychological effects, the ethical and legal requirements.
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