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Tied to behaviors

Literature map

Inclusion here is not inclusive of all global peer-reviewed coercive control literature.

Foundational

  • Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.

    The core account of coercive control as a liberty crime: a course of conduct that subjugates, not a series of discrete assaults.

  • Stark, E., & Hester, M. (2019). Coercive control: Update and review. Violence Against Women, 25(1), 81-104.

    Restates the framework after a decade of law reform and empirical work.

  • Pence, E., & Paymar, M. (1993). Education groups for men who batter: The Duluth model. Springer.

    The Power and Control Wheel: isolation, degradation, economic control, and intimidation as a regime, not an incident list.

  • Sweet, P. L. (2019). The sociology of gaslighting. American Sociological Review, 84(5), 851-875.

    Gaslighting as a sociological tactic: stereotypes and institutions, not only private psychological games. Anchors GAS and PATH.

  • Dutton, D. G., & Painter, S. (1993). Emotional attachments in abusive relationships: A test of traumatic bonding theory. Violence and Victims, 8(2), 105-120.

    Intermittent reward as the mechanism of traumatic bonding. Anchors REC.

  • Fontes, L. A. (2015). Invisible chains: Overcoming coercive control in your intimate relationship. Guilford Press.

    Clinical and public account of the tactic set, including isolation and micromanagement.

  • Dutton, M. A., & Goodman, L. A. (2005). Coercion in intimate partner violence: Toward a new conceptualization. Sex Roles, 52(11-12), 743-756.

    Coercion as a demand plus a credible threat. Useful when reading function, not tone.

  • Crossman, K. A., Hardesty, J. L., & Raffaelli, M. (2016). “He could scare me without laying a hand on me”: Mothers’ experiences of nonviolent coercive control during marriage and after separation. Violence Against Women, 22(4), 454-473.

    Nonviolent control during marriage and its continuation after separation.

  • Monckton Smith, J. (2020). Intimate partner femicide: Using Foucauldian analysis to track an eight stage progression to homicide. Violence Against Women, 26(11), 1267-1285.

    Post-separation intensification and the homicide timeline, not a risk score, a documented trajectory.

Method

  • Carlton, C. (2026). Is it coercive control? Carlton Research, LLC.

    The public behavior tree: 15 families. A described behavior is not a pattern.

Linguistic

  • Forensic linguistic evidence of psychological abuse and discursive manipulation in cyberstalking cases. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict (2026).

    Linguistic markers in digital records, cited on the Carlton linguistic-markers brief.

Digital / TFCC

  • Harris, B., & Woodlock, D. (2019). Digital coercive control: Insights from two landmark domestic violence studies. The British Journal of Criminology, 59(3), 530-550.

    TFCC as the digital extension of the same regime.

Children

  • Katz, E. (2016). Beyond the physical incident model: How children living with domestic violence are harmed by and resist regimes of coercive control. Child Abuse Review, 25(1), 46-59.

    Children as subjects of the regime, not only witnesses to incidents.

Law and statute

  • Douglas, H. (2018). Legal systems abuse and coercive control. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 18(1), 84-99.

    Litigation as a tactic of post-separation control.

  • Miller, S. L., & Smolter, N. L. (2011). “Paper abuse”: When all else fails, batterers use procedural stalking. Violence Against Women, 17(5), 637-650.

    Paper abuse: the docket as a site of ongoing control. Anchors INST and VPO.

  • Bettinson, V. (2022). A comparative analysis of the defence of duress in England and Wales and Scotland: Implications for victims of coercive control. Journal of Criminal Law.

    Traditional duress fails patterned compulsion. Anchors CRIM.

  • ANROWS. (2021). Defining and responding to coercive control: Policy brief. Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety.

    Definitional work used in Australian criminalization debates.

  • Serious Crime Act 2015, s. 76 (England and Wales) (controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship).

    The first major criminal offense built on a course of conduct rather than a discrete assault.

  • Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018.

    A course-of-conduct offense that includes psychological domination and effects on children.

  • Crimes Legislation Amendment (Coercive Control) Act 2022 (NSW), offense commencing July 1, 2024.

    Australian criminalization with an abusive-behaviors course of conduct.

  • Cal. Fam. Code § 6320(c), as amended by 2020 Cal. Stat. ch. 248 (SB 1141).

    U.S. civil definition: a pattern of behavior that unreasonably interferes with free will and personal liberty.

  • Conn. Gen. Stat. § 46b-1(b) (Jennifer’s Law, 2021).

    Early U.S. family-law definition with a non-exhaustive tactic list, including digital and economic control.

Is it coercive control?

How to cite

Carlton, C. (2026). Literature map. Carlton Research Instruments. /literature. Last reviewed August 31, 2026.