Brief outline

The course was originally constructed by couple counsellors in 1994 /5. The early focus was “anger management”, which was very much what was required by the courts and Social Services at that time. It still is in some circles and cases. However it became clear that many of the individuals we were working with did not recognise which emotions were actually engaged in themselves.  By 1998 we had consequently developed a model which provided the underlying emotions  of the behaviours which result. This has now become “emotional regulation”, in line with the “decade of the brain” and the advances and new understandings emerging from neuroscience.

The vast majority of domestic violence cases are about “situational couple violence.”  The “power and control” construct, developed by Duluth, applies to a small percentage of cases. The originator of the notion, the late Ellen Pence, recognised and acknowledged this in her book in 1999.

Work also needs to be focused on each individual as an individual  and not as one of a “patriarchal” stereotype.

In the pages linked here you can read of the themes Temper uses and of Ellen Pence’s epiphany, which Duluth and other providers have still not been able to digest, 20 years later. Representatives of Duluth clearly and enthusiastically demonstrated this at a Hestia funded conference in London in May 2018. Ellen Pence was very clearly their guru – but her positive and very important observations have obviously been ignored.  We were treated to the Russian version of the power and control wheel!