Response

Dear Sir,

I see no cause for dispute in two authors having different approaches to the same type of behaviour, particularly if they come at it from different angles, and it is not uncommon for their respective views to overlap. For example, Dr Meloy's category of ‘Affective’ violence is very similar to my category of ‘Self-preservative violence’. We differ substantially on the other category of violence which we identify, namely, his ‘predatory’ and my ‘sadomasochistic’ violence.

Needless to say, Dr Meloy or any other author, is entitled to favour his approach and Dr Meloy makes a substantial contribution to the field in his book (1988). But I do not think it relevant here to embark on comparing the respective values of our differing approaches. My concern then is to limit myself to making corrections to misunderstandings in Dr Meloy's comments on my paper.

My impression is that Dr Meloy has read my paper rather hastily and therefore missed points I make. For example, as regards my ‘unwillingness to … consider empirical research’, Dr Meloy on re-reading my paper will note that I refer in my first paragraph to a study at the Portman Clinic of acts of violence (p. 887). Since I was not considering this study as such, I regarded it as inappropriate to elaborate that the study restricted itself to empirical data that was obtained from clinical material concerned with exploring in depth the psychodynamic nature of violence; and it did not interest itself with psychobiological issues except to characterize the fundamental nature of Self-preservative violence. I have elaborated the methodology of this research elsewhere (Glasser, 1994). Schachter & Luborsky in their thoughtful paper conclude that they ‘believe that the clinical and the research approach each have their values and that each has contributed to the development of psychoanalysis’ (1998, p. 967). Our study has in fact sought to combine both.

Dr Meloy criticizes me for stating that ‘predatory violence’ is not violen