A differentiation between two types of self-blame, behavioral and characterological, has been suggested. Behavioral self-blame is control-related and pertains to attributions made to one's behavior, while characterological self-blame is esteem-related and involves attributions made to one's character. To assess the efficacy of separating the attributions of victims of domestic violence into these two categories, and to determine the existence of any relationships between self-blame and help-seeking behavior, 30 women residents of a battered women's shelter were interviewed. The relationships among sex-role beliefs, self-blame, and reasons for staying in an abusive relationship were also examined. The results, when compared to the results of a study examining the effects of the two types of self-blame among victims of sexual harassment (Jensen and Gutek, 1982), revealed that a larger proportion of the domestic violence victims agreed with the behavioral and the characterological self-blame items than did the sexual harassment victims. The sex-role beliefs scale was negatively correlated with the characterological self-blame item suggesting that women with feminist sex-role beliefs would engage in less characterological self-blame. The two measures of behavioral self-blame were correlated, while the correlations between the characterological self-blame item and the behavioral items were not significant. These findings provide support for the differentiation between behavioral and characterological self-blame among victims of domestic violence, a differentiation which is useful because of the different therapeutic implications of each type of self-blame. (NRB)