This paper presents a survey of 422 college students at Virginia Polytechnic & State University on courtship violence. Those who experienced courtship violence were not different from those who had not experienced courtship violence in a list of background and experiential variables. Thirty-nine percent of the respondents were found to have experienced some form of abuse in their dating relationships in the past year. Twenty-nine percent of the respondents claimed they had experienced both abuse and violence in their dating relationships in the past year, and 1.7% of the respondents experienced the most extreme form of violence. Thirty-two percent of those who had experienced courtship violence would seek outside help when experiencing violence in their dating relationships. These individuals were those who got used to bringing somebody in to help settle conflicts, who felt humiliated after the violence, and who took no immediate action to reconcile after violence. Among those who did experience some form of courtship violence, 76.8% planned to continue the relationship. If courtship violence occurred in private and remained unnoticed to those individuals who love their partners more, who invest a lot in the relationships, who have higher commitment, who have more conflicts in their relationships, and who take initiative to reconcile the relationships after the violent episodes, the individual involved would be more likely to continue the relationship, despite the presence of violence. / Master of Science

Project (D. Min.)--New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 2008. / Abstract and vita. Includes final project proposal. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-144, 40-47).

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Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 1995. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [64]-66).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Colgate Rochester Divinity School/Bexley Hall/Crozer Theological Seminary, 1998. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-158).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 67-83)

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Trinity Lutheran Seminary, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-112).

Thesis (S.T.M.)--Trinity Lutheran Seminary, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-112).

This thesis explores how the battered woman attachment to her abusive partner impacts on her interactions with the legal system and non-legal resources. This qualitative research project is based on in-depth interviews conducted with seven abused women who procured interdicts in terms of the Prevention of Family Violence Act 133 of 1993 to restrain their husbands from assaulting them. The research reviews the nature of abuse suffered by the participants, their psychological attachments to their husbands, and their patterns of help-seeking in relation to the law and non-legal resources. Two main theoretical frameworks, psychoanalysis and feminism inform this study. The study found that the participants retained unrealistic hopes that their husbands would reform and become loving, caring partners, and that they treated their husbands with care and sympathy despite their husbands’ often brutal behaviour towards them. The findings suggest that the women’s behaviour towards their husbands was the product of two reality distorting psychological defences, splitting and the moral defence which they used to preserve their attachments to their abusive partners. These defences intersected with rigid patriarchal prescriptions of femininity which dictate that women should be stoically caring towards their husbands, and should hold relationships together no matter what the cost to themselves. The participants interactions with the legal system and with non-legal sources of help were structured by their reliance on splitting and the moral defence, and by the dictates of patriarchal ideology. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that at one level the participants sought help to get protection from abuse, the study shows that their help-seeking was motivated by their conflicting desires to punish and reform their husbands. The participants sought help in ways which enabled them to strike a compromise between expressing their anger at their husbands, whilst simultaneously preserving their psychological attachments to them. The study concludes that the women’s interactions with the law and with other helping resource reflect their attempts to preserve their paradoxical attachments to their husbands, and to stabilise their own fragile sense of self and gender identity.