Family violence, particularly the battering and abuse by men of women and children, has taken on different meanings over time in various cultures. This study looked at how therapeutic teams in Chile, working to intervene in cycles of violence, understand and define family violence in the 1990's. Using a qualitative and collaborative methodology, this research analyzed family violence discourses by looking at practitioners' personal, professional, and political ideas about physical and sexual abuse within the home. First, the literature about family violence in Chile was reviewed, as well as the political and legal issues that affect clinicians working in this area. Then, four interdisciplinary teams were interviewed with a reflecting team format. Three major themes emerged in the interviews with the teams. One theme was how family violence is defined including individualistic, societal, gender-sensitive, and systemic explanations, and the problems confronted in this task. Family violence was primarily defined as a political problem that is experienced as a private matter mostly by women and children. A second theme was the recursive relation that exists among the teams' interventions to care for their clients and the teams' evolving definitions of their clients. A third theme was the process by which the personal lives of the practitioners are affected by stories of family violence and trauma. Clients' experiences often reminded practitioners of their own vulnerability and potential for vicarious traumatization. The conclusion integrates these findings and outlines implications for research, training, and policy including: the potential of the reflecting team technique as a research tool, the need to include clients in further collaborative research and for gender based participatory research, the development of a curriculum to train practitioners that includes the exploration of personal experiences of family violence and how to confront vicarious traumatization, and the further development of a sound legal framework to confront family violence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-9058 |
| Date | 01 January 1995 |
| Creators | Bacigalupe, Gonzalo |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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