In recent years, coercive control has received widespread media attention thanks to the work of advocates pushing for social and legal reform to address the harms caused by the persistent nature of partner violence. This push is reminiscent of the pressure applied for reform by Hollywood in the late 1980s when stalking was yet to be recognised in criminal law as a persistent course of repeated and unwanted intrusions.
As is the case in stalking, psychologists are proving to be pivotal in providing insights into a course of conduct that is an architecture of subjugation. Our role as the legal system considers whether the ongoing nature of partner abuse should be included in criminal law is to both inform the reform and provide case-by-case insights in any circumstance where coercive control is suspected or known.
Framework of control
Coercive control is an architecture of subjugation. In recent times, coercive control has primarily received attention as being used by an intimate or former intimate partner to mould the other into submissiveness. The impact on victim/survivors can be devastating. The techniques can be as obvious as physical violence or as subtle as discouraging visitors to the family home. The techniques are deployed intermittently, according to the whims and entitlements of the controlling partner, with the intent of taking control of most (if not all) elements of daily life. Consider the following example:
Mr X bought Mrs X flowers after she cancelled a family barbecue. Mrs X cried when she received the flowers. Mr X looked puzzled, took the flowers back and threw them in the bin muttering that he didn’t know why he bothered.
As a standalone incident, Mr X’s action could be interpreted several ways. Understood outside its context, it is hard to understand why an act many would see as loving is sinister. If the flowers were given as a reward for cancelling family or friend visits, thereby further isolating the victim, the meaning becomes clearer. It is clearer again when the victim/survivor describes the powerlessness they felt to reach out to anyone and the cost/benefit analysis of getting flowers for being obedient versus risking disclosing to others who may not understand how the flowers symbolised being controlled.
Advocates for reform argue that it is needed to challenge perpetrators of coercive control by sending a strong message of deterrence for perpetrators, validation for victim/survivors and as an enabler for the judicial system to hold perpetrators to account. Legislative reform has already occurred in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. In New South Wales, a Joint Select Committee on Coercive Control (‘the Committee’) was formed in October 2020 to hold a public inquiry into how that state could best address the problem. The Australian Psychological Society provided one of the 108 submissions received.
The submission included a description of the psychology of coercive control and the harm it causes. This article follows as a way to highlight to all members of the APS our role as professionals working with victim/survivors, developing rehabilitation programs for perpetrators and supporting the criminal justice system as this pattern of behaviour moves toward recognition as a crime.
What is coercive control?
The term coercive control was coined in 2007 by forensic social worker Professor Evan Stark as:
“A malevolent course of conduct that subordinates women to an alien will by violating their physical integrity (domestic violence), denying them respect and autonomy (intimidation), depriving them of social connectedness (isolation), and appropriating or denying them access to the resources required for personhood and citizenship (control)” (Stark, 2007, p.15).
More recently, Stark characterised coercive control as a “strategic course of oppressive behaviour". The oppression confines the controlled partner in an invisible cage made up over time of bars of micromanagement, emotional manipulation, aggression and humiliation. The end result is a unilateral relationship where the controlling partner dominates using behaviours and tactics that have been likened to the mental deconstruction of hostages, cult members and prisoners of war.
The behaviours and tactics used to coercively control can change over time, varying in their frequency and severity. They can occur in a current or former intimate relationship as the effect and impact is the same. The Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 is a useful reference to consider effect and impact as abusive behaviour is defined as:
“(3) The relevant effects are of –
(a) making B dependent on, or subordinate to, A,
(b) isolating B from friends, relatives or other sources of support,
(c) controlling, regulating or monitoring B’s day-to-day activities,
(d) depriving B of, or restricting B’s, freedom of action,
(e) frightening, humiliating, degrading or punishing B.”
Coercive control is not part of any functional and healthy relationship. It is not a feature of a disagreement or argument where each party is free to express differing views, expectations and hopes. This is conflict. Conflict can occur with confidence and respect for the other. Conflict resolution can be a growth process where each learns about the other without undue influence or an entitlement to win. Neither party are subjugated.
Architecture of coercive control
Controlling the free will of another person has been found to have a remarkably predictable architecture. The early study that formed the groundwork for today’s conceptualisation is the examination of United States Air Force personnel held as prisoners of war in Korea (Biderman, 1957). Biderman’s listed eight general methods used to coerce and induce compliance. This is now referred to as Biderman’s Chart of Coercive Control. Examples in the table outline some of the general methods used against the Korean prisoners of war, contrasted with examples from recent cases involving coercive control the author assessed for the Victorian legal system.
Coercive control is therefore the architecture of entombing one partner in the whims of another, making it a crime of depriving freedom of liberty. Within an intimate relationship, the architecture studied by Biderman is echoed. It is eloquently described by investigative journalist Jess Hill in her recent, award-winning book See What You Made Me Do:
“A victim’s most frightening experiences may never be recorded by police or understood by a judge. That’s because domestic abuse is a terrifying language that develops slowly and is spoken only by the people involved. Victims may feel breathless from a sideways look, a sarcastic tone or a stony silence, because these are the signals to which they have become hyper-attuned, the same way animals can sense an oncoming storm” (Hill, 2019, pp. 22-23).
Coercive control is gendered
The gender basis of coercive control is clearest when understood through an historical lens. The oldest decipherable written record of length in human history is the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, circa 1750BC. It is a list of 282 laws that divide roughly into laws regarding property and laws regarding people (Pfeiffer, 1920). Several laws gave men codified rights over women as their expendable chattels, with rights to chastise and punish women when they disobeyed, disrespected or disparaged men. Punishment included acts of violence as severe as making a woman drown herself. Women belonged to men – a notion that promoted power and dehumanised.
The Code of Hammurabi defined violence against women as the responsibility of women to avoid by being compliant and dutiful. Victim-blaming has therefore occurred for at least as long as humankind has had written records.
Nearly four millennia have passed. The status quo has progressed but not to a point where gender equality exists, even in the most progressive of societies. Sentiments such as: “Why doesn’t she just leave?” or “She shouldn’t provoke him like that!” are still part of the rhetoric we need to challenge. Women do not need to be dutiful and compliant to be safe. Psychology has an important role in making this very plain at every opportunity.
Acknowledging the gendered basis of coercive control, however, is not to deny that men can perpetrate coercive control against men or women against their partners. To do this would marginalise the LGBTIQA+ community and the men who suffer in heterosexual relationships. These are shadows that should not be cast. What does differ in these situations, is the degree of engrained entitlement to have authority over a partner and the fear men have who control their partner of losing the dominance they have been given for centuries. This combination of entitlement, fear of irrelevance and toxic shame creates a lethal combination.
To round out any gender discussion it is also important to acknowledge that many men do not presume or want dominance in their relationships. These men are partners in every sense of the word. Coercive control is the descriptor of the actions of those men who directly and personally subjugate their partners for their own purposes and personal gain.
Psychology and legal reform
The patterns of behaviour within family violence have become a focus of legal reform. This has implications for every psychologist who works with families where family violence is known or suspected.
Codifying coercive control sends a strong message – your behaviour is now criminal and you can be prosecuted for it. It is a similarly strong message for victim/survivors – your lived experience is being recognised by another pathway to safety being built.
Psychology has a critical role to play by informing this legal reform as it requires awareness of psychological matters. For example, the evidence required to prove coercive control extends to the impact of the behaviours, not only that they occurred. This is a sophisticated task as a defence is likely to be justifying the behaviour as reasonable. In criminal cases the burden of proof requires the case be established ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’ Many perpetrators become adept at masking the control they exert, as reasonable or in response of being the victim.
Consider the case of Mr X buying Mrs X flowers. The indignant denial would be predictable: “Buying my wife flowers is illegal now?” The impact of this behaviour is isolation. Mrs X cried as a logical response to being rewarded for isolating herself from her family. She knew she either survives through compliance or resists and triggers the next bout of perniciously effective manipulation, aggression or humiliation. Articulating these nuances provides the law a way to measure the harm caused to make the perpetrator liable for that harm.
Coercive control results in women experiencing a range of coping responses previously thought attributable to being exposed to persistent aggression and trauma (Stark & Hester, 2019). The pattern of coercion and control can be complex to detect, describe and more importantly deter. Detailing individual behaviours fails to show the longitudinal experience of partners subjected to coercive control.
Psychologists are exceptionally well-placed to articulate the cumulative effect of persistently impactful behaviour. Psychology is pivotal in supporting the dismantling of the architecture of techniques used by coercive controllers. That is, providing the clarity necessary to identify these patterns of behaviours to empower victim/survivors and support reform to propel us all forward. Encouraging perpetrators to stop and rethink when the propensity may be to hide behind a cloak of deniability, rationalisations and blame-shifting will be tougher. Psychologists have a central role in removing the cloaks and skilfully addressing the underlying personal deficits that some men suffer from that compels them to dominate.
References
Biderman, A. D. (1957). Communist attempts to elicit false confessions from Air Force prisoners of war. Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 33(9), 616-625.
Hill, J. (2019). See what you made me do: Power, control and domestic abuse. Black Inc.
Pfeiffer, R. H. (1920). An analysis of the Hammurabi Code. The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, 36(4), 310-315.
Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.
Stark, E., & Hester, M. (2019). Coercive control: Update and review. Violence Against Women, 25(1), 81-104. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801218816191
This article was originally published in InPsych, April/May 2021