ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on shifts to victims and considers the effects and consequences of either witnessing or being the target of violence in the home. Researchers have studied the impact of two different types of domestic violence: "ordinary" family violence, such as minor spouse abuse or physical punishment, and "deviant" family violence, such as severe spouse abuse, intimate rape, and child abuse. Sexual abuse puts a child's psychological well-being at serious risk and thus has potentially major mental health effects. Like sexual abuse, therefore, physical abuse is likely to leave a child with one or several of myriad possible psychological symptoms. Levels of psychosomatic illness, stress, and depression all rise precipitously when individuals are involved in severely violent marriages. Masochism, which is defined as excessively self-defeating behavior, has been associated with women in the psychiatric and psychological literature.
