Mr. K. beat up his wife and caused her serious physical injuries.
Mr. L. beat his teen-age daughter and caused her serious physical injuries.
Mr. M. murdered his wife.
Mr. N raped a young woman he was dating.
None of these
gentlemen was psychotic, a psychopath or of a particularly violent
nature. So why did they commit such atrocious crimes?
There can be many causes for violence against women. In the cases of K., L., M, and N. The crimes were related to culture shock.
Culture
shock is mental distress a person experiences in an unfamiliar cultural
environment. Typically, culture shock occurs after immigration from a
traditional rural society to a modern urban society, but it can appear
also after processes such as urbanization, industrialization and other
changes in which a person does no longer recognize the social and
ecological environment he or she grew up in. In my research on cultural
shock I use the term "loss of simplicity". The world a person had known
used to be experienced as simple, but after the change it became
unbearably complex.
The notion of simplicity in this context includes the following sub-notions:
Completeness
- My culture enables me to process all the information needed for
smoothly functioning in my social and ecological environment.
Parsimony - My culture does not allow me to process information irrelevant to functioning in my environment
Consistency
- My culture does not let me process information needed for proper
functioning in ways that include self-contradictions.
Plausibility
- My culture enables me to interpret and understand what is going on in
my environment in what my culture considers plausible ways, in ways
that are considered correct and make sense.
In situations of
cultural shock at least some of these characteristics of simplicity get
lost. This causes considerable mental stress. What people in a state of
cultural shock tend to do is simplify the new cultural information they
are exposed to, in order to make it more tolerable. Simplifying often
involves forgoing one or more of the above listed aspects of simplicity
for the sake of another aspect, e.g. forgoing completeness and
plausibility for the sake of consistency. For example, if an immigrant
does not get a job because he is not qualified according to the
standards of the new country and because there is a high level of
unemployment in the hosting country and because many candidates compete
for the same job, he ignores all these facts (forgoes completeness) and
consistently interprets the rejection as a manifestation of prejudice
against people of his community (forgoing plausibility). It is easier
for him, emotionally, to convince himself consistently that the reason
is prejudice than to process all the complex information that would
constitute a more valid explanation. Simplifying often includes
interpreting the new cultural information through the lenses of one's
original cultural world view, for instance interpret talking with an
older man in a friendly, informal tone as a shocking manifestation of
disrespect.
Let us see how these concepts are related to the cases
of K., L., M. and N. Each of these men had immigrated, with his family,
from a traditional society in a rural, pre-industrialized area to a big
modern city. Their original, pre-immigration culture was optimally
simple with respect to the status of men vs. women. In the original
cultures women were dominated by men. They had to obey their fathers and
older brothers, and if married, their husbands and their husbands'
mother. They should be dressed modestly, covering their body and head
when in public. Unmarried women were not allowed to go out of home
unaccompanied by a chaperon. Married women were forbidden to go out of
home unaccompanied by their husbands. Physical contacts between
unmarried women and men were strictly forbidden. Marriages were arranged
by parents. Young men or women were not allowed to choose their
partners for marriage. Schools were gender segregated.. Married women
were not allowed to work out of home or drive a car. Married women were
expected to satisfy their husbands' sexual needs. Refusing was a cause
for divorce and a divorcee was sent back to her parents' home. A
divorced woman had a bad reputation. Being forced to have an intercourse
by the husband was not considered an offence.
None of these rules
was applicable in the dominant culture in the city to which these men
and their families immigrated. The encounter with the new cultural
environment involved loss of simplicity, loss of completeness and
parsimony and therefore got these men into a state of cultural shock.
In
the big city Mr. K, who had been a potter in the village he grew up in,
had to work in a factory. His wife had to work out of home too, because
his salary was not sufficient to provide for the family. She found a
job in a store for women clothes, but had to wear modern attire. In Mr.
K.'s mind this situation involved loss of completeness and parsimony
because a wife working out of home and wearing modern clothes was
unheard of in his native culture. Only prostitutes violated these rules.
Although his rational mind understood why his wife had to behave in
this way, emotionally he could not tolerate it. He lost consistency and
plausibility, because on the one hand he accepted the need for his wife
to work out of home, but on the other hand he could not accept it. And
then his emotional state lead him to prefer implausibility for the sake
of consistency. One evening, when his wife came back from work dressed
in modern clothes he felt, implausibly, that she became a loose woman.
Looking at her through the lenses of his native culture, he called her
"prostitute" and beat her up.
Mr. L.'s teen-age daughter was
influenced by her new cultural environment. She began rebelling against
her father, refused to obey him, went out in the evenings with her
friends, a mixed company of girls and boys, and dressed in modern
clothes. Again, for L. this was loss of comprehensiveness and parsimony.
He had to face facts concerning his daughter's new values and behavior
that were out of the question and irrelevant in his native culture. When
he tried to force her to play by the rules of his native culture she
called him "primitive" and refused to obey him. But at home she behaved
like a dutiful traditional daughter.
She herself lost the
consistency of her traditional culture. But her father lost consistency
too. On the one hand he did not want to be considered "primitive" and
attempted to be liberal and tolerant with his daughter. On the other
hand he could not, emotionally, tolerate her "transgression". So he too
gave up his inconsistency and opted for behaving according to the
parental rules of his native culture. One night, when she came back late
from her evening out, he beat her up.
Mr. M.'s wife saw that
married women in her new environment were not required to obey their
husbands and their mothers. They were dressed in fashionable clothes,
went to courses, developed a career, went out without their husbands and
had male friends. She wanted to be like these women and began behaving
like them. For M. This was a complete loss of simplicity. All these new
values and behaviors did not exist in his native culture. He tried
unsuccessfully to force his wife to behave according to the rules of his
native culture. He lost plausibility because he misinterpreted the
changes his wife went through as deliberate attempts to humiliate him
and emasculate him. They had violent rows. In one of them he lost
control and killed her. Killing a transgressing wife was tolerated in
his native culture.
N. was a young unmarried man. He was dazzled
by the sexual freedom of young women in his new environment. This was
again loss of simplicity, because such sexual freedom was unheard of in
his native culture. He took full advantage of the sexual freedom of the
girls he met, but also lost plausibility and interpreted their behavior
as immoral. He also lost consistency because on one hand he understood
the concept of mutual consent, but on the other hand he still held the
traditional tenet that women should obey men and that forcing a woman to
have sex is not considered an offence. When the girl he was dating
refused to have sex with him his traditional mind overcame his modern
mind and he raped her. He restored his lost consistency.
How can
such terrible symptoms of cultural shock be prevented? By culturally
competent family therapy, in which specially trained therapists help the
family, especially the men, learn how to restore emotional balance in a
state of culture shock, and how to build bridges between the
traditional culture and the modern culture. A model of such therapy can
be found in my book Culturally Competent Family Therapy.
For more details, see my website
http://www.enjoymychild.com
