Our book publishing project is an independent initiative which aims to make the literature on intimate partner violence available in Hungarian translation. Even today, there are very few books in Hungary that make the knowledge accumulated by the women’s movement accessible to a wider audience in plain language. We perceive this shortcoming both in our training and in our helpline work.

In 1998, in collaboration with the Háttér Publishing House, we began selecting and translating volumes for a series running under the name ‘Fire-place books’ (in Hungarian: Tűzhely — lit. ‘hearth’). When selecting the books, we aimed to provide Hungarian women and men interested in the topic with enjoyable, interesting and awareness-raising works that describe both the theory behind women’s rights and the practice of helping victims. As we often experience a lack of academic approach to domestic violence and to women as an oppressed social group and, our series also includes publications specifically for professional groups. All volumes of the series published so far are available in bookstores or can be ordered from Háttér Publishing House. 

Volumes of the series
(we are listing the original English versions of the books)

Patricia Evans: The verbally abusive relationship

Verbal abuse in relationships

We know that intimate partner violence is not an accidental, unpredictable act of anger committed by members of both sexes with equal frequency but a regular and systematic process, mostly used by men against their female partners. Because domestic violence almost always begins with a woman’s verbal abuse, the early detection and interpretation of verbal abuse can be life-saving. Although many people recognize verbal abuse in an offensive, mocking tone, we are much less sensitive to its more sophisticated manifestations.

The book helps identify more hidden forms of verbal abuse, like “humiliation”, “madness” or “forgetfulness” that victims mostly just feel and instinctively suspect rather than logically substantiate. In addition to recognition, the reader is given specific techniques to confront the perpetrator of the verbal attack, to set healthier boundaries in their relationship, or to recognize if their relationship is unsalvageable, or perhaps even physically dangerous.   

There is a separate chapter on psychotherapeutic treatment of patients who live or have lived in verbally abusive relationships, and the impact of verbal abuse on children. The Hungarian translation is a revised and extended version of the first edition of 1992, published in 1996.

Who do we recommend it to?

• As a self-help book to women who want to know what has been bothering or worrying about their partners’ behaviour for a long time.
• As a self-help book to women who want to step out of a verbally-emotionally abusive relationship and want to rebuild their self-esteem.
• To psychotherapists working with battered women, either as a specialist book or as a recommended self-help book to speed up therapy.
• To outsiders, family members who know women who live in verbal/emotional abuse and want to better understand and support them.  

Judith Lewis Herman: Trauma and recovery

The impact of violence from domestic abuse to political terror

The book by the well-known psychiatrist author, published in 1992, is used as a textbook at many (North )American universities that train psychologists, but it is also an important self-help book for survivors of violence due to its theme and deeply empathetic style. The book analyses the psychiatric disorder described by the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association) as “post-traumatic stress disorder”, which has been extended in the literature describing psychological trauma in recent decades to women and children victims of domestic violence.

The author provides a great overview of where our current knowledge on PTSD comes from: information on soldiers fighting in wars, results of feminist studies related to domestic violence, professional experiences of working with political prisoners, prisoners of conscience and Holocaust survivors, and traditional disaster-based trauma knowledge.   

She highlights the shared experiences of Holocaust survivors, incest survivors (children sexually abused by a caregiver), battered women and war veterans both in her case studies and in her theoretical approach , and proposes a specific therapeutic model for treating such patients.

The book is divided into two main parts:

Detailed description of factors predisposing post-traumatic stress disorder (explaining in a separate chapter the effects of dread, separation from people, captivity and childhood abuse) and the introduction of the author’s extended diagnosis of ‘complex post-traumatic stress order’.

Description of the three main phases of psychotherapeutic treatment of trauma survivors (building safety, remembering and mourning, reconnecting with community) and group therapy implications for trauma survivors.

‘Survivor’ or ‘victim’?

The author uses the term ‘survivor’ to refer to all those who have suffered some form of trauma, even if they have suffered the most extreme injuries and are barely able to face the challenges of everyday life. The purpose of this choice is to empower patients: by emphasising the motif of survival, the patient learns not to see him/herself as a passive, helpless victim but as a strong, independent person who has been able to survive despite all the horrors of trauma.

Who do we recommend it to?

– We highly recommend the book to all professionals working with traumatized patients or clients, as to our knowledge this topic is not part of the compulsory curriculum in Hungary.

– To psychologists

– To psychiatrists and psychiatric workers/nurses

-To professionals working in other helping professions: police officers, gynaecologists, doctors, nurses, helpline workers

– To sociologists and social workers

– To survivors of domestic traumas (survivors of childhood emotional, physical, sexual abuse, and battered women), and of other social traumas (Holocaust, war, political persecution), either in addition to psychotherapy or as a self-help book.

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Our activities related to the book

Basic training

Training of professionals

Bancroft-Silverman-Ritchie: The Batterer as Parent

The impact of partner abuse on parent-child relationship

The question of how to regulate children’s contact with parents who abuse their partners so that it would not lead to the damage of mother-child relationship, which is key to the child’s recovery, concerns not only professionals but society, too.

The authors have been working with abuser groups and as court-appointed experts in child custody, parental custody and contact proceedings for decades. They summarize the related literature and their own experience of more than 2000 cases of partner abuse in this book. They provide a nuanced image of abusers’ behaviour, mindsets and values, how partner abuse destroys the family, and how it relates to the risk of child abuse, including incest and neglect.

Who do we recommend it to?

To all affected, helpers and professionals. Based on the authors’ recommendations, seconded experts, authorities, lawyers, supervised contact providers, and mental health professionals working with children and their parents can assess how dangerous the partner abuser is to the child.

Lundy Bancroft: Why does he do that?

Inside the minds of angry and controlling men

This is Lundy Bancroft’s second book published in Hungarian after ‘The Batterer as Parent’.

Bancroft has been leading groups for abusive men for decades. His experiences are summarized in this book which aims to help victims recognize the early signs, techniques and roots of abuse. It provides answers to fundamental questions, such as how the abuser thinks, how he manipulates and intimidates his victim and his environment, whether he can be a good parent and whether he can change. The author talks about the nature of intimate partner violence in plain language, putting his knowledge at the service of the battered.

Who do we recommend it to?

To all battered, family members, friends and professionals who want to help.

Helen Benedict: Safe, strong, & streetwise

Self-defense for teenagers

Young people are highly vulnerable to abuse and violence coming from both adults and their own peers. This is especially true for sexual abuse. Various Western European and international statistics show that by the age of 18, one in two to four girls is subjected to some form of sexual violence. According to some Hungarian surveys, 5-10 percent of children suffer from sexual abuse. However, we also know that well-trained children and young people are less likely to become victims of abuse.

The experience of Zartbitter, an organization from Cologne that works with victims of child sexual abuse, suggests that primarily perpetrators successfully attack the adaptive, so-called ‘good’ and uninformed girls and boys, and they less often approach resilient children who were raised from an early age to trust their intuitions and protect their interests even from border crossings by adults.

Helen Benedict’s award-winning book has already provided many young people and children with information on basic self-defense strategies, especially regarding sexual violence. The simple pointers on general safety and the easy-to-understand explanations of the causes, dangers and self-defense tactics of the most common forms of violence against young people make this otherwise difficult and difficult-to-teach topic a compellingly informative book. The main chapters of the book detail the most common emergencies at school, at home, on the street, on public transport and at parties, and how young people can protect themselves and their friends in these situations.

The book empowers young people on two levels: on one hand, it specifically introduces them to their rights, in particular, with regards to the rules of partnership that are binding on both parties. Safety experienced in sex life is an important part of integrity, as anyone who is able to have sexual self-determination and can protect their boundaries is more likely to be able to do the same in other areas of their lives. Furthermore, in addition to rights, the author teaches readers the three simplest methods of self-defense: shouting, speaking and running, as well as some basic self-defense tricks to make the perpetrator temporarily harmless.

It is a readable, awareness-raising book that can be beneficial not exclusively to young people. The appendix in the Hungarian version contains useful information about Hungarian support institutions.  

Who do we recommend it to?

–  To girls and boys who want to know more about prevention and self-defense

–  To young people at particular risk of sexual violence or abuse

–  To parents who want to know how to effectively and realistically warn their children about the danger of sexual violence and abuse

–  To parents whose children have had or are afraid of having sexually abused their child

–  To educators and other professionals working with children and young people