A Psychoanalytic Contribution to the Understanding of Violence

Dread of the strength of the instincts develops as an affective state in which displacements generally available to an individual have been weakened, rendering that person more vulnerable to committing an act of violence.

Although the case presented here includes an act of violence, ways that this act could have been foreseen and thus possibly forestalled through analysis are explored.

Factors in this child’s development are reviewed with regard to their possible predisposing contributions.