We normally think of crimes of violence being associated with the stresses of poverty. Why would otherwise successful men abuse their wives?
That is the typical profile and expectation we have of domestic violence. We don’t typically think of the abuser as someone who’s well-off, wearing an Armani suit, chairman of the board of a major organization. Why? Because most of the research that’s been done to date has actually been with lower-income individuals who do deal with the stresses of poverty, urban living, unemployment, etc. But such stressors (being causative of domestic abuse) are not present for the upscale batterer. What I found in my research was that the upper income batterer tends to suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder; their rage is derivative of internal dynamics representative of that disorder.
