Research into wife abuse indicates that such abuse has not always been viewed as a crime and that economic factors tend to be the strongest reasons why women remain in households where they are physically abused. There is little doubt that social and legal forces are part of the problem of wife abuse. The same factors which permit wife abuse are also responsible for legitimizing other types of family violence, such as elder abuse and child abuse. Psychological theories focusing on wife abuse fall into one of three categories: personality explanations; social learning theory; and psychodynamic explanations. Integrating personality and social psychology theories provides a clearer, more comprehensive view of batterers in their social context. Each of the three psychological perspectives should not be viewed as mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. Rather, each contributes valuable information about males who engage in spouse abuse. Research in the area of personality variables indicates that males who engage in spouse abuse can be classified as having high rates of depression, dysphoria, anger-proneness, and histrionicity. Patterers tend to have distorted perceptions of reality, thus showing abnormally extreme jealousy and irrational thoughts and behavior. The social learning perspective highlights a compelling argument of how violence may be transmitted from one generation to another. In general, batterers tend to be young and experience economic strain due to unemployment or low-status blue collar occupations. 43 references. (Author abstract modified)