The overview covers the prevalence and impact of family violence, pertinent social and legal activism, the funding of relevant research and services, and the dissemination of information on family violence. The discussion of theoretical causal models addresses psychoanalytic perspectives on family violence, a social-learning-theory perspective of physical aggression between spouses, and sociological perspectives of family violence. Forms of family violence examined are wife battering, the physical abuse of children, child sexual abuse, incest, marital rape, husband battering, elder abuse, and homicide by abused wives. Separate chapters cover the following special issues: an epidemiological review of violence among intimates, wife abuse prevention, neurological factors in family violence, alcohol abuse and family violence, legal responses to domestic abuse, a cross-cultural perspective of family violence, and issues in family-violence research. Chapter references, author index, subject index. For individual chapters, see NCJ-113382-98.