Abstract
Data from 32 in-depth interviews with abused women in outreach groups demonstrated that respondents first sought assistance from informal helpers by telling the stories of their violent experiences. Telling was a significant social act since it made public their “fictions of intimacy” (Tifft 1993), affected their perceptions of their relationships, and altered others' definitions of the couple. In part because help providers often reduced the complexity of intimate relationships to incidents of violence, well-intentioned help provision frequently had unintended negative consequences. It was not necessarily the help women wanted and the assistance was often based on a definitional contingency, or acceptance of others' definitions of the situations and others' prescriptions for action. This contingency placed the women in the same relation to the supporters as they were to the abusers, that is, others controlled the definitions of their experiences and their identities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Baruch, G., R. Barnett, and C. Rivers (1983). Lifeprints: New Patterns of Love and Work for Today's Women. New York: New American Library.
Berk, R. A., S. F. Berk, P. J. Newton, and D. R. Loseke (1984). Cops on Call: Summoning the Police to the Scene of Spousal Violence. Law & Society Review 18(3), 480–498.
Berk, S. F., and D. R. Loseke (1980–81). “Handling” Family Violence: Situational Determinants of Police Arrest in Domestic Disturbances. Law & Society Review 15(2), 317–346.
Berk, R. A., S. F. Berk, D. R. Loseke, and D. Rauma (1983). Mutual Combat and Other Family Violence Myths. In D. Finkelhor et al. (eds.). The Dark Side of Families. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 197–212.
Bograd, M. (1988). Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse: An Introduction. In K. Yllo and M. Bograd (eds.). Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1126.
Bowker, L. H., and L. Maurer. (1987). The Medical Treatment of Battered Wives. Women & Health 12(1), 25–45.
Chang, D. B. K. (1989). An Abused Spouse's Self-Saving Process: A Theory of Identity Transformation. Sociological Perspectives 32(4), 535–550.
Cox, J. W., and C. D. Stoltenberg (1991). Evaluation of Treatment Program for Battered Wives. Journal of Family Violence 6(4), 395–413.
Coyne, J. C., C. B. Wortman, and D. R. Lehman (1988). The Other Side of Support: Emotional Overinvolvement and Miscarried Helping. In B. H. Gottlieb (ed). Marshaling Social Support: Formats, Processes, and Effects. Newbury Park: Sage. 305–331.
Denzin, N. K. (1984). Toward a Phenomenology of Domestic, Family Violence. American Journal of Sociology 90(3), 483–513.
____ (1989). Interpreting Biography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
____ (1989a). Interpretive Interactionism. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
____ (1990). Postmodernism and Deconstructionism. In D. Dickens and A. Fontana (eds.) Postmodernism and Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Dobash, R. E., and R. P. Dobash. (1979). Violence Against Wives. New York: Free Press.
Dolan, R., and J. Hendricks. (1991). Breaking the Cycle of Family Violence: Services for Children in Shelters for Battered Women. Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 19(1), 31–35.
Edwards, S. (1987). ‘Provoking Her Own Demise’: From Common Assault to Homicide. In J. Hanmer and M. Maynard (eds). Women, Violence and Social Control. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, Inc., 152–168.
Ferraro, K. J. (1987). Negotiating Trouble in a Battered Women's Shelter. In M. J. Deegan and M. R. Hill (eds.). Women and Symbolic Interaction. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 379–394.
____ (1989). Policing Woman Battering. Social Problems 36(1), 6174.
Ferraro, K. J., and J. M. Johnson. (1983). How Women Experience Battering: The Process of Victimization. Social Problems 30(3), 325–339.
Gelles, R. J. (1976). Abused Wives: Why Do They Stay? Journal of Marriage and the Family 38, 541–548.
Gerstel, N., and H. E. Gross. (1989). Women and the American Family: Continuity and Change. In J. Freeman (ed). Women: A Feminist Perspective. Mountain View, CA: May-field Publishing Company. 89–120.
Giles-Sims, J. (1983). Wife Battering: A Systems Theory Approach. New York: The Guilford Press.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Glaser, B. G. (1978). Theoretical Sensitivity. Mill Valley, CA: The Sociology Press.
Glaser, B. G., and A. L. Strauss. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Gross, H. E. (1987). Couples Who Live Apart: Time/Place Disjuctions and Their Consequences. In M. J. Deegan and M. Hill (eds.). Women and Symbolic Interaction. Boston: Allen & Unwin Inc, 211–228.
Holstein, J. A., and G. Miller. (1990). Rethinking Victimization: An Interactional Approach to Victimology. Symbolic Interaction 13(1), 103–122.
____ (1994). “A Narrative Analysis of Abuse: Connecting the Personal, the Rhetorical, and the Structural.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 22: 411–441.
____ (1995). “The Line in the Sand: Definitional Dialogues in Abusive Relationships.” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 18: 171–195.
Loseke, D., and S. Cahill. (1984). The Social Construction of Deviance: Experts on Battered Women. Social Problems 31(3), 296–310.
Loseke, D. R. (1987). Lived Realities and the Construction of Social Problems: The Case of Wife Abuse. Symbolic Interaction 10(2), 229–243.
____ (1992). The Battered Woman and Shelters. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.
MacKinnon, C. A. (1993). Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward a Feminist Jurisprudence. In P. B. Bart and E. G. Moran (eds.) Violence Against Women. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 201–228.
Maines, D., N. Sugrue, and M. Katovich. (1983). The Sociological Import of G. H. Mead's Theory of the Past. American Sociological Review 48, 161–173.
Martin, D. (1976). Battered Wives. New York: Pocket Books.
Mills, T. (1985). The Assault on the Self:Stages in Coping with Battering Husbands. Qualitative Sociology 8(2), 103–123.
Pagelow, M. D. (1984). Family Violence. New York: Praeger Press.
Riessman, C. K. (1990). Divorce Talk. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Schechter, S. (1982). Women and Male Violence. Boston: South End Press.
Stark, E., and A. Flitcraft. (1983). Social Knowledge, Social Policy, and the Abuse of Women. In D. Finkelhor et al (eds.). The Dark Side of Families. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 330–348.
Stark, E., and A. Flitcraft. (1988). Violence Among Intimates—An Epidemiological Review. In V. B. VanHasselt et al (eds.). Handbook of Family Violence. New York: Plenum Press, 293–317.
Straus, M. A. (1977). A Sociological Perspective on the Prevention and Treatment of Wife-beating. In M. Roy (ed.) Battered Women. New York: Van Nostrand, 194–238.
Straus, M. A., R. J. Gelles, and S. Steinmetz. (1980). Behind Closed Doors. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Strauss, A. and J. Corbin. (1990). Basics of Qualitative Research. Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
Strauss, A. L. (1987). Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sullivan, C. M, J. Basta, C. Tan, and W. S. Davidson II. (1992). After the Crisis: A Needs Assessment of Women Leaving a Domestic Violence Shelter. Violence and Victims 7(3), 267–275.
Tifft, L. L. (1993). Battering of Women. Boulder: Westview Press.
Walker, L. E. (1979). The Battered Woman. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
Walker, L. E. (1989). Terrifying Love. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
Yllo, K. (1988). Political and Methodological Debates in Wife Abuse Research. In K. Yllo and M. Bograd (eds.). Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 11–26.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lempert, L.B. The Other Side of Help: Negative Effects in the Help-Seeking Processes of Abused Women. Qualitative Sociology 20, 289–309 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024769920112
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024769920112