The Profile of the Abusive Man: A Multifactorial Review of IPV Perpetration

Globally, Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against women represents a pervasive public health crisis and a severe violation of human rights, including profound psychological, physical, and socio-economic costs. Rather than focusing exclusively on victimology, which traditional research has rightfully prioritized, this review shifts the focus to the individual male perpetrator to address the root causes of abuse and inform effective prevention. While existing frameworks often catalogue risk factors across multiple levels, individual empirical studies remain largely discipline-specific in their explanatory focus. This thesis adopts a multidisciplinary approach, aiming to move beyond this fragmentation by constructing a holistic, integrated profile of the abusive man. This profile conceptualizes male perpetration not as a uniform clinical entity, but as a complex, dynamic developmental system arising from the interplay of sociocultural pressures, developmental traumas, psychopathological traits, and neurobiological vulnerabilities. By synthesizing evidence across these domains, this thesis argues that perpetration is best understood through the interaction of two main aggression pathways – instrumental and reactive – each anchored in a distinct constellation of risk factors. Many perpetrators display a hybrid pattern, with instrumental control collapsing into reactive violence at moments of perceived threat. This integrated profile suggests that effective intervention should be tailored rather than uniform: adult treatment, child protection strategies, and parenting-contact decisions should instead be calibrated to the specific developmental and psychopathological pathway driving a given perpetrator’s violence.