The Model of Systemic Relational Violence: Conceptualizing IPV as a Method of Continual and Enforced Domination

Abstract

This paper provides a theoretical and historical background of explanatory and descriptive models of domestic, family, and interpersonal violence and introduces a new model that seeks to correct aspects of those models that have been heavily critiqued. The Model of Systemic Relational Violence reconceptualizes violent relationships with coercive control and emotional and psychological violence at the core and more traditional event-based markers of relationship violence as peripheral enforcement tactics in a more extensive system of interpersonal domination. This new model is built on the insights and perspectives of survivors of relational violence and the service providers who support them. It has been developed to be applied in a variety of diverse relationships and contexts.