Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life (Interpersonal Violence)

This is an amazing book. It provides a history of the domestic violence movement--what we've done right and wrong. It evaluates various interventions (such as shelters and groups for battering men) using statistics. It obligates us to face the fact that much of what we've done has not helped keep women safe. In persuasive language, the book urges that we look at ALL the ways women are controlled in their intimate relationships--not just physical violence.This book also provides three detailed case histories of extremely violent and controlling relationships, and shows how the concept of Coercive Control provides the missing piece to help us understand the victim's behavior, and suggests new legal and law enforcement approaches to intimate partner violence.This book entirely changed the way I view violence against women in intimate relationships. This book is especially well-suited to academics and people in the legal system.

I'm just realizing i have been in a non-violent yet extreemly controlled coercive relationship for decades. Disabled spouse uses guilt and sudden worsening of health ... and oddly dramatic instant recovery when I capitulate ... among other nifty tricks. Somehow despite being an RN myself I never put 2 and 2 together until undergoing years of therapy and 12 step support groups. This book has golden tidbits of information maddenly hidden among piles of statstics about physical violence: exactly what it proposes to not be about. I bought it anyway as I need all the ammuntion ... not literal... I can hurl to put my pathetic pathological spouse in place like a bad dog. Works for me! Freedom...power...I had it all along. I pray for other emotionally pissed on peeps to realize their own worth as full fledged adult humans and stop letting abusers get away with this insanity...with love and non violence.

This was a very informative book but it reads like a PHD dissertation with long drawn out repetitive points filled with footnotes.A great book for law professionals, law enforcement, social workers.This book needs to be read by those groups because coercive control is real, personally devastating to one's self, dreams, desires. CC is the modern-day misogynists weapon of choice, as it allows them to maintain their social standing and respectability while secretly destroying the life of their mate. The scoffing and disbelief of CC abuse by social workers and professionals(as with my divorce attorney, with whom I parted ways) must end in order for this type of abuse to be brought into the light.

Finally the chillingly accurate explanation of “why I stayed” 46 years in a non-violent marriage. The incremental mind control that stripped away my personhood, inch by inch, is fully explained in Dr. Stark’s expertly researched book. I also recommend Sandra L. Brown’s book “Women Who Love Psychopaths” 3rd Edition.Her research on Super Traits completes the understanding of how & why strong, capable, intelligent, resourceful women remain entrapped in abusive relationships. So much more complicated than Co-Dependency & the simple minded Power & Control Wheel.

An essential resource for anyone who works with women who have experienced coercive control. These women are not alone. This is abuse even with no visible broken bones or blood. No, they are not crazy. They should be believed. Coercive control may be a more devastating form of domestic violence abuse with longer lasting trauma.

This should be mandatory reading for everyone in social services or other front line advocate for children and women, and especially the criminal justice system. A "must have" for any thinkers library. One of the most powerful books ever written. Jane Wells, Author of Run Jane Run: A Story of Murder and Courage

Explains emotional abuse like no other text I've found. All lawyers and judges should have this appreciation (evidence based) in order to do justice to kids caught in the middle and victims who're trying to avoid stigma and regain their lives.

Dry but potent...read.

I recommend this book for everyone, but particularly for anyone who works in fields where they regularly come into contact with those who are trapped in controlling relationships or are attempting to leave one.This book opened my eyes and gave me a language for not only what I have experienced in two abusive relationships, but also understanding for why my mother was unable to leave my father despite him being incredibly cruel. I have so much compassion for her now, and a fire burns in my belly at the injustice faced by so many women whose experiences of coercive control is largely invisible to the legal system and who are forced to endure ongoing assaults on their freedom by men who wish to claim and exploit their partner’s resources and labour.

The notion of coercive control, as in hostage taking and imprisonment, being the central issue in family violence is definitely more accurate than the current focus on the isolated incidents of violence. However, Stark asserts, on the basis of his own forensic experience, that only men do this. Not so! Women do it too, to their partners and especially to their children.

Everyone should read this book. This behaviour is so unacceptably normal that no-one recognises coercive control (in whatever form) as abuse or talks about it ... or even knows it’s happening to them if they are a victim.

A good read. Very detailed and informative with lots of case examples. I recommend this book but it's not a quick guide. Read it step by step, chapter by chapters with breaks in between as it is detailed.

Easy to read yet shows a thorough understanding of the tactics, complexities and effects of psychological abuse.