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My clients who have participated extensively in therapy or substance-abuse recovery programs sometimes sound like therapists themselves—and a few actually have been—as they adopt the terms of popular psychology or textbook theory. One client used to try to lure me into intellectual debates with com…

He’s crazy.

He feels so bad about himself. I just need to build up his self-image a little.

He just loses it.

He’s so insecure.

His mother abused him, and now he has a grudge against women and he takes it out on me.

I’m so confused. I don’t understand what’s going on with him.

THESE ARE JUST a very few of the many confounding questions that face anyone—the partner of an abusive man, a friend, or a professional—who is looking for effective ways to respond to abusive behavior. I came to realize, through my experience with over two thousand abusers, that the abusive man wan…

Martin, a man in his late twenties, joined my abuser group while also seeing an individual therapist. He told me the first day that he was confused about whether he had a problem or not, but that his long-time girlfriend Ginny was preparing to break up with him because she considered him abusive. H…

I like everybody workin’ together. You chip in for a meal together. One guy goes to the store, one guy cooks, one guy washes the dishes. A common goal. We got a lieutenant there, he says the fire department is the closest thing to socialism there is.