Once, in a discussion, while explaining the characteristics of violence in politics and the family, I pointed out the forms of relationship in which specific actions of an aggressive nature are not violent. For example, when we use the mysterious ‘touching the butt’ when ‘talking’ to our preschool children. I was countered with a rather strong counter-argument – “you are advocating violence”. It was then that I became convinced once again that by using the same language, we could not always be in the same semantic “space”. That is, it does not matter to whom you are speaking. What is important is that what you say is accessible to those listening to you to understand the meaning and its implications. As far as finding the meaning and significance of the ‘psychology of violence’ is concerned, it is significant to dispel the mystical understanding of violence itself, or in other words, to clarify what exactly violence is.
Let us first turn to the most crucial instrument of the functioning of violence: nurture.
I want to use the metaphor “violence has a child’s face” in this context. After all, the essence of violence is nothing less than “acting out”, i.e. repeating earlier experiences, something irreversible and, therefore, horrible. A closer look at the person who reproduces the abuse, or rather at his face, reveals the hopelessness of the little child behind the grimace of imaginary power and omnipotence, the child who, in inflicting pain on himself, tries to win back the actions of the one who has abused him (whether it be linguistic, sexual, emotional, behavioural or, worst of all, the manipulation of security and trust).
The sadness and despair are that this “wagering” by engaging others is directed against oneself. Freud wrote about this long ago, drawing attention to the action of ‘forced repetition’, which is expressed in children’s play. Consequently, it is necessary to escape the myth that ‘violence is a position’ when looking at violence. No position in it but an imaginary, heavy-handed attempt to finish what was once impossible to experience. Thus, the reality of violence is a debilitating attempt to forget what cannot be forgotten.
The painful memories of violence once experienced are precisely the part of the self that must be eradicated, made non-existent, extinct. This is confirmed by the regularity that “nothing that once appeared in the psyche disappears”; it is either not topical, forgotten, or hidden away “out of sight”.
The “vitality” of violence in the human imagination reproduces the myth of total terror and freezing, fear and despair at encountering violence. But this is only the beginning. After all, violence conceals two fundamental laws of its nature: pleasure (pleasure) and the uncontrollable desire to reproduce it. At this point, we come to a very crucial detail: violence always involves urgent stimulation, which is ill-timed. Is it complicated? Yes! After all, mental violence is irreversible harm to the person, to the person who has been “turned” precisely by untimely stimulation.
Therefore, the reality of violence is an irreversible disruption in the development of the child’s identity, which distorts the meaning of love and the strategy of its reproduction throughout its life path. Essentially, gender identity has been destroyed, leaving behind only a pathetic semblance of gender.
And it is worth going back to parenting after all. Another myth of violence is the “lack of nurture in the family”. It is essential to separate two crucial arguments about upbringing for me: first, that upbringing is a technology and nothing more; second, that upbringing excludes the child as a subject. But is this always the case?
As a universal technology, parenting is measured by the “breadth” of implementation. That is, the wider the “field of its users”, the more aggressive and detrimental to the child’s development pattern (education).
If we affirm that the main aim of upbringing is “the child”, we follow the so-called ideal “pattern” of upbringing, and this, unfortunately, contradicts the natural nature of child development.
In this case, the child turns from a subject (potentially possessing consciousness and will) into an “object” for us and an ideal object. By idealizing it, we endow it with perfect qualities that do not correspond to its actual characteristics. The desire to see our children as successful, flawless and heroic contributes to this.
But as the practice of any idealization shows, “a good idea is a dead hero”. And in this is the irreparable damage to upbringing, for there is no more trauma than the trauma of upbringing on the scale of the consequences for adult life.
As a consequence, the “psychology of violence” and the origins of violence itself are defined, not so much by the possibility of overcoming it, as by the impossibility of changing the ego traumatized by the experience, which chooses “acting out” its own deeply displaced grief, the grief of the young child with the lost “mirror” of his personality, as a means of finding sources of the self.
So, the reality of violence is a lost child, subject to the total idealization of her parents.
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