Female-perpetrated intimate partner violence: an examination of three cases using multiple sequential functional analysis.

Background: Recent empirical evidence suggests that women assault their intimate partners at approximately the same rate as men. However, a general historical reluctance to acknowledge women as significant perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV) has limited clinical understanding of this phenomenon and the processes by which such behaviour may develop.

Aim: The following paper uses multiple sequential functional analysis (MSFA), an idiographic case formulation method based on functional analysis, to explore the development and functional value of IPV in the case histories of three women.