You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
“I shall lay those children dead —Mine, whom no hand shall steal from me away!Then, leaving Jason childless, and the dayAs night above him, I will go my roadTo exile, flying, flying from the bloodOf these, my best-beloved…..”
No human behavior seems so unnatural to us as filicide. However, concern with the spread of social violence (Perr 1972) directs our attention to the relationship between destructive individual, family and cultural patterns that are cross-generational (Forrest 1968), and to the predominant incidence of homicide in strong relational systems (Henry and Short 1954). It therefore seems pertinent to investigate the dynamics of intrafamilial violence, starting with maternal violence.
My thesis is that maternal violence of some degree and kind is a universal experience. Expression of this violence may be found in acts that range from overt murder (Brozovsky and Falit 1971) and physical abuse (Gil 1971, Goode 1971), to covert infliction of physical and psychological damage, resulting in child suicide (Glaser 1971), physical growth failure (Fischoff Whitten, and Pettit 1971), psychoses (Lidz and Lidz 1949, Strindberg, 1891), neuroses (Fromm 1955), and character disorders (Johnson 1959).