Editor's Column: Adolescent Violence and Identity Vulnerability

Adolescent violence in the United States—which the Columbine school massacre of April 20, 1999, forced the public to recognize as serious and ubiquitous—is a social problem that cries out for psychoanalytic solutions. A psychodynamic perspective is crucial, first of all, for understanding what causes adolescent violence and why it—especially in its severest forms, homicide and suicide—has increased so dramatically in recent decades and is so much greater in the U. S. than in all other Western nations. A psychodynamic perspective is crucial, in addition, for understanding and addressing the causes of our collective failure to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem. And such a perspective is also invaluable for understanding why, to the extent that we have recognized the seriousness of the problem and understood what causes it and how to prevent it, we have as a society failed in large measure to act upon this knowledge and implement effective preventive measures.

The scope and significance of adolescent violence in the United States today can be indicated by a few statistics. First, youth are disproportionately involved in interpersonal violence, both as victims and as perpetrators. In recent years, youth between the ages of 12 and 24 committed roughly half of all crimes of violence, fatal and nonfatal, reported in the U. S. (Hamburg 32). Adolescents up to the age of 21 commit about one-fourth of the 23,000 homicides that occur in the U. S. each year (Garbarino 6). One survey found that nearly one-fourth of students in the U. S. reported carrying a weapon to school during the previous month (Hamburg 36).

In addition, the involvement of American youth in violence has been increasing: between 1985 and 1990, the rate of adolescent homicides increased by 168 percent, and between 1965 and 1993, the average age of killers in the U. S. decreased from 33 to 27 (7). The same is true of suicide. Each year about 2,300 youth aged 18 or younger take thei