Referential process and intimate partner violence: a preliminary investigation

Several studies (Henderson, et al., 2005; Levendosky et al., 2011), found a prevalence of unresolved/disorganized attachment in people with a history of traumatic loss or abuses, and a strong intergenerational transmission of attachment representations and styles. In accordance with Multiple Code Theory (Bucci, 1997), we suppose that the Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) victims are more involved in the narration of the attachment experiences rather than control group. The traumatic events lead to impose an activation of their referential process. The opportunity to tell their experience should start to reflect of themselves. We suppose also that IPV victims are more open to reflect on their experiences, less defended speaking more fluently approaching to interview protocol because they are starting a self-protecting process in anti-violence centers. We hypothesize to highlight different linguistic patterns in the sample of IPV victims. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI, George et al., 1984) was administered to 15 Italian female victims of IPV, recruited in some anti-violence centers, and to 15 Italian women with no history of IPV. On the AAI transcripts we applied the Italian version of the linguistic measures (Mariani, et al., 2013) to detect the referential process between subsymbolic and symbolic systems. Compared with control group, the IPV group presents different linguistic styles, in particular greater levels of emotional activation and higher referential process (WRAD, t = 4,913, p < .01; DF t = -4,7168, p < .01) and more capacity to reorganization of the narrative (WRRL, t = 3,410, p < .05). The results show IPV victims are more connected to their attachment experience than the control group and more capability to be involved in their specific experience even though is strongly traumatic. They use the AAI protocol as an opportunity to tell to someone their experience.