In Defense of Passion, but not Clara Harris’ Crime
By Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW
Published in the Houston Chronicle on 2/14/2003
Most of us are fortunate enough to have experienced passion. There are certainly different levels of passion. There is the intense passion we feel for a partner – the kind that is often woven with the complexities of intimacy and love. There is also the kind of passion we feel about our work, our faith, our causes and our beliefs. In some form or another, most of us have experienced passion. In fact, most of us hold sacred the passionate moments in our lives and yearn for more passion.
My question - in our most truly passionate moments, do we feel the uncontrollable urge to hurt and/or kill? Do we, in the midst of passion, turn vicious and violent? I believe the answer is no.
When Clara Harris killed her husband she was not feeling passion. She was feeling violent rage. Rage, like most emotions, can be experienced on a continuum – hers was certainly uncontrollable and destructive. While one could argue that all rage is destructive, our ability to control it, recover from it and shape it into something constructive varies. Like passion, most of us have experienced rage. Unlike Harris, most of us do not kill. However, when we think of her crime, it makes more sense to understand it in terms of rage, rather than passion.
So if Harris acted out of rage, why do we call her crime, "A Crime of Passion?" More importantly, why to we use the term "passion" to explain, describe or justify any type of violence, most especially intimate partner violence?
According to the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC's) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, intimate partner violence is actual or threatened physical or sexual violence or psychological and emotional abuse directed toward a spouse, ex-spouse, current or former boyfriend or girlfriend, or current or former dating partner.
On a Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Fact Sheet, the CDC reports that: Approximately 1.5 million women and 834,700 men are raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner each year; Nearly two-thirds of women who reported being raped, physically assaulted, or stalked since age 8 were victimized by a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, boyfriend, or date; Among women who are physically assaulted or raped by an intimate partner, one in three is injured; and that each year, more than 500,000 women injured as a result of IPV require medical treatment. Does this sound like passion?
While Clara Harris' act was certainly a case of intimate partner violence, statistics show that women are more likely than men to be murdered in the context of intimate partner violence. In fact, according to the CDC fact sheet, women ages 20 to 29 years are at the greatest risk of being killed by an intimate partner.
If, as a society, we want to differentiate between violent acts that are premeditated versus those that are the result of uncontrollable emotion – that's important. However, before we make special allowances, pathologize people and cultures, and develop rehabilitative measures, let's target the right emotion.
For years we have called intimate partner violence, "Crimes of Passion." Yet when we think about our own lives and our own experiences of passion and rage, it is difficult to image why we have confused the two. Violence is about rage, anger and power. In addition to the real human causalities caused by intimate partner violence – when we refer to acts of rage and anger as "crimes of passion" we kill compassion for the victims and survivors and we nurture a culture of acceptable violence.