Don Hennessy and Barbara Roberts talk about Domestic Violence and Abuse, Part 1.
Don Hennessy is an Irish counsellor and author who spent years working with abusive men and their female partners. When he realised that treating the men was making things worse for the women, he continued to analyse the thinking and behaviour of the abusive men.
He concluded that the abusive man’s core goal is sexual. Don calls these men psychephiles. He says the psychephile befriends the mind of the target woman and surreptitiously brainwashes her while pretending to be in love, so that he can dictate the level of sexual activity in the relationship.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
07:00 Smokescreen behaviours hide the abuser’s real intention.
15:25 The Power & Control Wheel doesn’t show the steel rim which holds the wheel together: the man’s goal to dictate the level and type of sexual intimacy in the relationship.
18:09 The Wheel doesn’t show the predatory entrapment phase of the relationship. Ellen Pence got all her information from abused women.
24:40 An image for the predatory entrapment phase is being developed.
30:26 Evan Stark didn’t interview abusive men to analyse their thinking and behaviour.
35:53 Don’s upcoming book We Need To Talk About Him.
37:02 The psychephile befriends the mind of the target woman and surreptitiously brainwashes her, while pretending to be in love.
39:59 The brainwashing and mind control was developed by men because they could no longer beat their wives with impunity.
42:20 How psychephiles differ from pedophiles.
47:46 Psychephiles can also be pedophiles.
53:52 Exposed psychephiles get sympathy; exposed pedophiles loose status.
57:32 Don Hennessy’s books.
All my posts on Don Hennessy are here.
Don Hennessy’s first three books:
How He Gets Into Her Head: The Mind of the Male Intimate Abuser
ebooks.com amazon (affiliate link)
Steps to Freedom: Escaping Intimate Control
I specially recommend the final chapter ‘Some concluding thoughts about abusers’.
How He Wins: Abusive Intimate Partners Going Free
ebooks.com amazon (affiliate link)
5 min promo video for How He Wins
11 min promo video for How He Wins
Notes on things mentioned in the video
Predatory entrapment. I learned the term from Dr Allan Wade.
Opportunistic child molesters. Carla van Dam discusses these on p 42-43 of The Socially Skilled Child Molester [affiliate link].
Scott Peck, author of People of the Lie, was a Christian. Read his biography here.
Kerry McAvoy’s interview of Don Hennessy.
Don Hennessy was the Clinical Director of the National Domestic Violence Intervention Agency in Ireland (NDVIA) [internet archive link]. Don has told me that the NDVIA was defunded in 2011.
I’m going to be publishing at least one more video interview with Don, and interviews with other people whose work I admire. My video producer is Campbell Baird.
This post will be added to my Don Hennessy Digest.
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What a wonderful convo between two people who have devoted their lives to helping the wounded, for decades. (And kudos to Campbell for a polished final product, TY!)
Like fine wine improving with age 🙂, you both keep studying / learning / accepting useful input. If I got it right, it was only 5 yrs ago (when Don was 75 y.o.!) when he learned significant new concepts & then…course corrected(!)… So rare amongst academics or ‘lay’ people, esp. if they’re already published. (but like you too, Barb, did with one concept in your book after you learned more/different, or on the odd blog you’ve posted…where you humbly, openly note new info or even a change of mind.)
Lastly, focusing strictly on the person-to-person dynamics (not content), it was REFRESHING, even healing, to observe such a mutually respectful convo between a mature man & woman, on a highly personal and volatile topic. (I actually went back and watched it a 2nd time this morning, just to “breathe in” Don’s calming, sane tone, after dealing with an evangelical Christian man’s angry cluelessness about divorce /’men’s rights’/’women’s manipulation.’)
(Sorry for the length) Good job! Carry on! 🙂
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Thanks Gany T :)
I’ve have just done another video interview with Don. He told me it was the mid to late 1990s when he was realising that the core goal of male intimate abusers is to sexually exploit the target woman.
It will take a while for me to publish the video, as both Campbell and I are pretty fastidious about getting the captions and text boxes perfect before we publish my videos. We’re becoming more efficient, but it’s a learning curve.
I’m glad to hear your found it refreshing and even healing to see our respectful conversation. I think I know what you mean, as I’ve watched other some people’s videos for just that reason: to see respectful conversation between thoughtful people. There are few examples of respectful conversation in the world today, what with so many character disordered people modelling disrespect, shouting other each other, not listening to each other, and egocentrically pushing out misinformation which parrots the prejudices they have absorbed from other people.
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