An examination of the psychiatric response to family violence begins with a discussion of the conflict between psychiatric and family-violence perspectives including their different assumptions and practices. A discussion of the possibility for collaboration between the two fields is followed by a description of the psychiatric interviewing process as it is ideally conceived and as it is actually implemented within a variety of constraints. The structure of these interviews focuses on diagnostic and disposition issues which apparently preclude many family-violence concerns. A summary of the quantitative research focuses on the amount of family violence reported by patients, the discussion of this violence by psychiatric staff, and the disposition of these cases. Nearly half of the patients reported past assaults against a family member. Different characteristics typified recent family-violence perpetrators compared to nonfamily-violence perpetrators. Two other major sections of the book present case studies of perpetrators and victims. A discussion of the implications of the research findings includes a proposed protocol for augmenting psychiatric interviewing, improving psychiatric referral to family-violence services, and collaborating between psychiatry and family-violence specialists. 14 tables, 2 figures, 200 references, and a subject index