I suspect you are right. But the problem is, dominance/subordinance is genetically coded. So the abused still feel that the abusers have a right to abuse ...
Virtually nothing is genetically "programmed" regarding cognitive processes and personality types. Even theories within epigenetics are highly speculative and rely on correlations within correlations. The psychiatric community has been working hard since the 80s to firmly establish a biological basis for mental diseases. They are farther away now then they were then, because allele changes within genes that code for e.g., dopamine and depression correlate with everything from depression to psychoses to anxiety disorders to nothing at all. Spatial orientation abilities can be shaped by language: if a person grows up speaking a language that uses an absolute reference system, they tend to be much better at orienting themselves than people who, like English speakers, have subjective reference systems (left/right, up/down, backwards/forewards, etc.).
Learning to read, like learning one's first language, fundamentally restructures the brain (see e.g.,
How Learning to Read Changes the Cortical Networks for Vision and Language).
If, as the evidence suggests, things like learning to read or learning one's first language (not to mention
one's culture) fundamentally alters cognition and brain structures that are primarily sensorimotor and therefore both less complex and more "intrinsic" to all experience than an illusory and every-changing thing like personality, why should we think that any part of personality is genetically programmed? What evidence is there, particularly given that both the American DSM and the ICD-10 rely necessarily on completely symptom-based diagnoses for all mental illnesses? What is the genetic basis for the distinction you put forward?
