I’m not entirely sure what conversation you’re wrapping people into. I don’t know what they say about battered wife syndrome, you would have to tell us.
That said, I think you’re missing the push and pull nature of spousal abuse. It’s not just punching your wife, it’s creating an unstable environment that the victim believes they can overcome and that it is valuable to overcome it.
The negative reinforcement side, that is the abuse and the removal of it for “good behavior”, is often paired with shame. The wife is not just ducking an uppercut, she is made to believe that she deserved it. Would you divorce your husband if you thought you were at fault for all of your marital problems? Abuse victims often think that they are lucky someone is even willing to put up with them.
The positive reinforcement side, that is the honeymoon-like love-bombing that happens between abusive episodes, is what the spouse actually wants. But it’s given only intermittently, like a skinner box (another concept you should look up), which creates a dynamic very much like gambling to make an addict of the victim. They spend most of their time trying to figure out how to create those good times without realizing that it’s being deliberately withheld from them like a dangling carrot on stick.
Both of these contribute to why the spouse stays.
If your contention has more to do with operant conditioning not being inherently evil, uh, that would be true. It’s a normal psychological function. Abusers… abuse it, but there are other reasons why it might be useful to associate a sound with food, for instance.
I’m not entirely sure what conversation you’re wrapping people into. I don’t know what they say about battered wife syndrome, you would have to tell us.
That said, I think you’re missing the push and pull nature of spousal abuse. It’s not just punching your wife, it’s creating an unstable environment that the victim believes they can overcome and that it is valuable to overcome it.
The negative reinforcement side, that is the abuse and the removal of it for “good behavior”, is often paired with shame. The wife is not just ducking an uppercut, she is made to believe that she deserved it. Would you divorce your husband if you thought you were at fault for all of your marital problems? Abuse victims often think that they are lucky someone is even willing to put up with them.
The positive reinforcement side, that is the honeymoon-like love-bombing that happens between abusive episodes, is what the spouse actually wants. But it’s given only intermittently, like a skinner box (another concept you should look up), which creates a dynamic very much like gambling to make an addict of the victim. They spend most of their time trying to figure out how to create those good times without realizing that it’s being deliberately withheld from them like a dangling carrot on stick.
Both of these contribute to why the spouse stays.
If your contention has more to do with operant conditioning not being inherently evil, uh, that would be true. It’s a normal psychological function. Abusers… abuse it, but there are other reasons why it might be useful to associate a sound with food, for instance.