ABSTRACT
While much national and international policy on domestic violence points to the need to tackle perpetrators as if they are a relatively homogenous group, there is relative consensus among those who undertake practice interventions with men who use violence against women that they are not all the same. Within the academic literature two approaches to recognising heterogeneity have gained ascendency: one focused on the nature of the violence; the other on the psychological profiles of perpetrators. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive, though their emphases differ. The first approach has come to be closely associated with Michael Johnson’s (2006) book, A Typology of Domestic Violence, and its re-elaboration in Kelly and Johnson’s article (2008). The second approach begins, not with the categorisation of violent incidents, but instead with the classification of the psychological characteristics found among perpetrators in treatment programmes. Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart’s (1994) typology is currently the most well known of these.
