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Politically informed psychoanalytic theory has much to contribute to a discussion of how people internalize the social structures and media messages of their culture. While most current psychoanalytic theories emphasize the impact of actual relationships on the intrapsychic life of individuals and on the intersubjective space they inhabit, few examine the direct impact of the cultural surround on each of us. However, just as Donald Winnicott suggested that there is no infant without the mother, we contend that there is no mother-child dyad, no family triad, without its larger cultural surround—that is, what is sometimes referred to as the culture mother, culture parent, culture home or the second family. The elements of culture to which we apply psychoanalytic theory in this paper are (1) the impact of symbolic media violence and actual violence on the conscious and unconscious minds of children and (2) the efficacy of programs developed to ameliorate their harmful effects.
By the time a middle-class child in the U.S. graduates from high school, having spent approximately 13,000 hours in school, she or he will have watched 18,000 hours of television (an average of four hours a day) and 22,000 hours if the child has grown up in poverty. When the average child reaches the age of six, she will have spent more time watching TV than she will spend in talking to her father in a lifetime. American television is the most violent in the world. The typical American child witnesses 12,000 violent acts on television every year, and will see 8,000 simulated murders before s/he finishes elementary school. Saturday morning cartoons are even more violent than most adult shows, averaging over twenty violent acts per hour (Majority Staff, Senate Committee on the Judiciary; Karla Kalin).
Young people represent the major consumers of films and video games, as well. Today's typical cinematic fare offers ubiquitous images of the stabbing, shooting, abuse and tortu