Бесплатный фрагмент - The Psychology of Violence

The Psychology of Violence

Andrew Bensman

Abstract

What is the nature of violence?

The book strives to answer this question.

The author is convinced that violence is an intrinsic part of human nature. Everything we know about human nature and civilization stems from violence.

Our knowledge about violence — facts, abstract descriptions, assumptions — is just a defense mechanism, because we want to distance ourselves from it. We are instinctively too afraid of violence to study the phenomenon thoroughly enough. The book defines violence, explores its structure, and identifies its motives, strategies, and purposes. The author also focuses on the psychology of terrorism, sadism, masochism, hysteria, bullying, and other types of violence.

Style

This book is based on a series of lectures by the author. It appeared, however, that with written texts you need to follow a different logic, so the structure had to be changed dramatically. What the lecture series and the book still have in common is a unique style of the author — he speaks on behalf of the personality described in each chapter.

Thus, in the first chapter I denotes the perpetrator, and you stands for the victim, while in the second chapter, dealing with victims of violence, it is the other way round. This kind of direct and indirect speech is given in quotation marks or in italics.

Chapter 1. The Perpetrator

Resentment breeds tyrants.

This is the most sublime feeling, and it can be formulated as follows:

“My importance is measured by the strength of your contempt for me, but you yourself deserve contempt of the same strength”.

Violence

Violence is an obsession for the other.

The root of violence is an impetuous conviction that the other is obliged to know, remember, want, believe in and comply with something that is absolutely necessary and obvious “for everyone”. A violent impulse is a result of transition from the plane of desire to the plane of necessity where disobedience is unacceptable. Mocking those who do not understand this “truth” is also violence. Violence is a manifestation of persistence, a way to delegate your obsession to the other. The less the victim is able to share your obsession, the greater the conviction and the urge for violence.

“You should know about things that are obvious to me and you should comply with my expectations. Since you are not able to understand all the importance of this, I feel it my duty to ‘beat this importance into you’. The less able you are to accept the importance of the imposed truth, the harder I will beat it into you”.

Violence does not allow for things like “I cannot”, “I am not ready”, or “I do not want to”. These are just forms of protest, and protest has to be overpowered. In other words, aggressive impulses arise, when the perpetrator’s ego perceives everything as referring to itself.

“You do this just to drive me mad!” — this is how the perpetrator “exposes” the victim’s intentions.

Let’s use this model to explain, for instance, terrorism. The logic goes as follows:

“I believe, and the strength of my faith is measured by the inability of those I address to accept this faith. This makes me twice as faithful, because I believe myself and I believe on behalf of my victims. Their inability to understand and share my values gives me strength and rids me of any doubts or ethical bonds”.

Violence is a counterintuitive way to gain confidence at the expense of the victim, a way to console yourself, with the other being involved unwillingly and in a way that is unacceptable to that other. Violence serves this purpose entirely, and the means the perpetrator uses become negligible. Violence blurs all the boundaries:

“It does not matter what I do, as long as I am confident”. Thus, a woman yells at her child not for the child to hear her better. The child only gets scared and she does not get the desired attention. She yells because she is desperate.

Terrorists are not the only ones who follow the perpetrator’s logic. This is also true for neophytes. Objections, doubts, or disapproval only make their faith stronger, sometimes going as far as religious ecstasy.

There is also a type of violence that has no obvious purpose, when the so-called victim abuses their partner or children. Thus, when a woman complains that her husband abused her seven years ago, her complaints bring more suffering than the actual abuse she refers to. She does not simply switch roles here. The nature of violence is more intricate: she strives to play both roles — that of the victim and that of the avenger. Therefore, the actual victim is deprived of the natural right to suffer, to take offence, to accuse, and to explain. The victim is somewhat outside of the whole process: he has no rights or attributes and is treated as just an inanimate object.

“You had it coming to you!”, says the perpetrator and thus manifests his eagerness to decide everything for the two of them.

In other words, violence takes place when I push the tempo and do not wait for the other to catch up. I do everything for both of us, on behalf of the other. I treat the other as an obstacle, a burden. The perpetrator is not unlike a parent, who is in a hurry and rushes the kid all the time. But unlike this parent, the perpetrator goes beyond simply hurrying up the other.

The other is slow, unresolved, indecisive, and the perpetrator sees this as an aggression, a strike, which leaves no other choice but to strike back.

Violence is perceived as a reaction to the provocative behavior of the victim. It is this behavior that causes violence. Therefore, violence is an active form of opposition. It does not avoid confrontation. On the contrary, it is aimed outwards.

In this regard, there are two types of violence therapy that are revealing: pause therapy and detail therapy. They are effective because they break the cycle, when a person prone to violence enacts an inner dialogue on behalf of two people: themselves and the other.

“So, this is how you are treating me! Want to put me in my place, right?”

This accelerated substitutional confidence makes violence a complete and stable form of behavior.

Impulsive violence

This book focuses primarily on everyday violence, i.e. violence that occurs on a daily basis. Impulsive violence, on the contrary, is based on an insight, an impulsive urge to reject everything you know and clearly understand, when you are calm.

Thus, a man might snap at his wife simply because of a clumsy remark, although he is generally aware of her good disposition. At this moment he forgets all the nice moments they have had together and rejects the mutual understanding they have built up.

The same happens in a state of anxiety. Anxiety, in turn, frequently gives place to obsession, compulsiveness, and mania, with the latter being closest to violence. We can thus conclude that violence is a reaction of an individual, who enforces anxiety without understanding its actual cause.

Inverted avoidance

Violence takes place, when the escape impulse, i.e. the urge to leave the situation we are not directly involved in, is replaced by a spontaneous engagement. This kind of engagement with a situation we would rather avoid is the breakdown point, when we resort to violence: instead of breaking out you break in.

Perpetrators see themselves as victims. But at the same time, they refuse to be victims and reverse the situation by exchanging roles with the other.

E.g.:

A man is working at his home office. He hears his wife shouting at their son. The noise is disturbing, but the man is still trying hard to focus on his work. Then, at some point, he finds himself yelling at both his wife and his son. Thus, he gets engaged with the situation he most wanted to avoid.

Violence means you pretend to care about others, while in fact you only care about yourself.

Parents reprimand their children for bad grades only because they, in fact, do not want to know anything about it, but are forced to by teachers or partners.

“Why do I have to make you do your home assignment? It is you who makes me do this, so you should suffer, because I am suffering.” — you try to reject your leadership and end up relapsing into it.

The graphomaniac female writer in Anton Chekhov’s short story The Drama torments a well-known writer with her literary works. When she is reading to him, the well-known writer is thinking about anything but her manuscript, driving the annoying female writer out of his conscious. But at some point, the man breaks down and kills the woman.

The explanation is simple — “It’s your fault I can’t ignore you!”.

The transition from dissociation to hyperawareness, from paralysis to perseverance — this is the mechanism of violence powered by helplessness. What happens to the victims is not important — their feelings are overshadowed by those of the perpetrator. This is why the psychological game we see in codependent relationships is so important. The winner is the one who manages to prove that the other is guilty and thus preserves the right to take offence.

The following response to someone’s suffering (a child or a partner) can be a marker of violence: “Don’t you think I’m suffering as well?”, or “I’m depressed too!”.

Abusive relationships continue or reoccur at the point, where they should end. This is their new source. Like when you keep talking exactly because you want to end the conversation.

Playing a role

From an interview with a client:

“Our parents treated us badly. There were times, however, once every three or four months, when our parents had fights. Then our mother would say something like ‘let’s go and buy some new clothes for you’. We couldn’t refuse, because then we would have to wait for another several months for our next chance”.

The immutability of parent-partner roles is quite common. This is a case of indirect violence. The woman only switched to the mother role after arguments with her husband, but the rest of the time the parents were psychologically merged.

The mother abused her children because she was overly fused with her husband and perceived her kids as a nuisance. The children were to be obedient and invisible. They were to act as adults. All the other types of behavior were severely restrained. In other words, the children were punished because they interfered with her relationship with her man. When she did get engaged, her typical response was like this:

“Now you’ve got my attention! Isn’t that what you wanted? You’re going to regret it!

Spontaneous violence

When kids are naughty and stubborn, parents often end up in emotional breakdowns. Why is it so? Children’s behavior reflects their parents’ attitudes. Through a kid’s stubbornness we see their parents’ inflexibility and inability to compromise. The behavior of a child somewhat combines the position of the child and the parent. This is a splitting point, where parents lose their power, and it gets usurped by the child. To regain the power, you need to resort to a caricature of an adult. The situation becomes even more complicated, when there are witnesses.

A girl runs up to her mother shouting:

“Mommy! Mommy!”

“Don’t ‘mommy’ me! What do you want?”, retorts her mother.

This is how she reacts to the girl’s excitement. This is a reaction to the need to get out of one context and into another. The mother is deeply involved in her own thoughts, and the girl is an interference — now she has to emerge from her thoughts and get involved in something entirely different. This, however, may not end well for the girl.

In this case, the girl is a nuisance and her behavior is viewed as inappropriate, which immediately results in a projection — the girl’s inappropriate behavior is the result of the mother’s inappropriate behavior and her overall inappropriateness (in the eyes of a third party). This makes the mother even more persistent, because her reaction is the only way for her to regain leadership and power.

The other side of obedience

The other side of obedience is violence.

Most of the time the perpetrator has to obey, which ends up in an outburst, a revenge for the constant “humiliation” and “pressure”.

Here an adult acts as a child being constantly reprimanded by the mother. To stop it, this person needs to be in the position of a parent for those who are already in a parent position. To destroy the imposed system, you need to be twice as big.

What is “legal” in this system, cannot be perceived as your own. You can only become yourself through breakdown and aggression. What can be your own is humiliation and grudge.

E.g.:

There is a man with a credit card addiction. This man comes to a party with his wife and son. He is uncomfortable, because he has a lot of housework to do, so an hour later he suggests going home, but his wife refuses. Another hour later he suggests his wife stays at the party, and he and the kid go home. His wife, in turn, suggests staying a bit longer and then going home together. Yet another two hours later the man breaks down and makes a scene.

This reaction was caused by the role inconsistency in their relationship. The man acts as a teenager — he suffers from the lack of freedom and takes revenge for “enforced” obedience.

The authoritarian personality and violence

The authoritarian personality is a foundation of any oppressive system. This type of personality, however, is not unique for dictatorship. It is characterized by a number of psychological traits, which make people with such a personality “overly susceptible to anti-democratic propaganda”.

A person with the authoritarian personality type has a reversed perception of horizontal and vertical relationships. For such a person equality does not mean relationships between equals. They only view it in terms of “upward equality” and “downward equality”. Intimate relationships are only possible with a superior or a subordinate person (somebody of a higher or a lower status) or those the authoritarian person either awes or despises.

Authoritarian individuals strive to be close to those either above or below them, and compete with equals. Hierarchy is sacred. Anything personal or intimate is an illegal attempt at exercising power over such a person. They react with anger to the slightest sign of an opinion, complaint, or request from their partners.

Authoritarian personalities see love in terms of domination and obedience, while freedom is a burden and a source of frustration.

My client’s husband is an army officer. He is very fond of his colleagues and loves discipline. At the same time, he entirely ignores his wife, when she says anything about chores, children, vacation, health, or sex.

The world of an authoritarian personality remains stable as long as the defense mechanism works. This mechanism transforms personal into routine and vice versa, only not completely. When personal becomes entirely routine, the attitude changes. If an authoritarian person plays a submissive role in intimate relationships, they treat their oppressive partner with awe. An important job, which makes this person significant, is viewed as a burden and is often ignored. The situation can change only after a shock — for instance, caused by the fear of being fired. Then everything comes back to normal. In relationships, such people neglect their partners until they can no longer take it and reject them.

Harmless Jewish community was announced to be an extremist force in Germany. So, those who had to suffer for their lost integrity (in case of the Nazi Germany — the Aryans), viewed those, who persecuted the whole nation (the Jews) through the prism of authoritarianism.

What is the connection between authoritarianism and violence?

People deeply involved in their work have certain authoritarian traits. However, this does not mean they are prone to violence. So, when does authoritarianism become violence?

For a professional the nonpersonal (professional field) becomes personal, and personal life becomes of less importance. Such people treat work as life, and family as work.

An authoritarian person treats relationships and family as work in the first place. In the eyes of such a person, conflicts within the family and “inappropriate behavior” challenge their authority or the authority of a more dominant family member. A typical illustration of the latter case is a mother threatening her children that their father will not approve of their excitement.

The perpetrator and the professional are opposites. The perpetrator sees intimate relationships as a breach in hierarchy, an attempt at taking power, disobedience — i.e. everything that destroys discipline and results in failure.

A dependent environment is also prone to violence due to the mixup between work and personal life. It becomes especially obvious, when you look at alcoholics.

“There are other people who understand me. They are my soulmates, they feel for my drama. Home is where they always want something from me, always say I have to do something. Otherwise, they have to keep their thoughts to themselves not to provoke me. They make me the center of tension, and I want to release this tension”.

The attitude is ambiguous: “You are useless, but it’s all your fault!” — this is a distinct marker of violence.

Violence becomes a mission, a job that brings complete (subconscious) satisfaction. To run a gas chamber is also a job. When your job involves direct abuse, cruelty becomes a part of professional competence. This means it can be analyzed in terms of carefulness, thoroughness, devotion, and duty.

Authoritarianism flourishes, when either of the following extremes take place.

— People work within a strictly hierarchical system (army, police, etc.) and apply the same hierarchy to their family life. Those who are humiliated or oppressed at work, are especially violent at home. They compensate for the “injustice” by impersonating the whole repressive system for their families. It happens sporadically, as a caricature. Such feats are especially violent.

— Systems that are not intrinsically hierarchical, such as freelance work. The lack of a hierarchy is compensated for by intimate relationships: a person resorts to subordinate relationships at home for no particular reason. This is where violence and abuse come on stage.

Rejection is an important trait of authoritarian personalities. They reject everything that is not in tune with their own ideas. Importance, arguments, hobbies — anything initiated by the partner is rejected. If you confront an authoritarian person, they will simply make a joke out of it:

“What’s happening?”

“What’s happening? Nothing! You’re just eating my brains out with your questions, that’s what’s happening!”

It is no use to refer to external factors. The oppressor will just present it as a ridiculous attempt to prove something.

Authoritarian individuals are especially blind towards the people closest to them. They do not realize what is behind their partner’s requests. They only see that their partner wants something from them. The only appropriate behavior is to avoid interaction, which makes the partner helpless and obedient.

It is no use to confront an authoritarian person — all the accusations make such people even more resolved: “It is the accuser who is guilty!”.

An authoritarian person never does anything wrong, but is always provoked. Based on their reaction, we can say that the most exciting thing for such people is to deal with accusers. All their energy is focused on fending off accusations, and perpetrators are very energetic. The perpetrator perceives a dialogue as weakness and any arguments as a threat — a hand raised for a blow. The perpetrator speaks in either short phrases or sets of ready arguments. A neglected victim feels the whole situation even stronger. This is how the abuse is seen by the victim: “Because of you, I feel guilty for the both of us. I have to doubt my own standing”.

The victim has to feel for two people: for themselves and for the perpetrator. Thus, when a wife asks her husband for money to buy their children new clothes, an authoritarian person is most likely to shift the focus on the wife: “You spoil them too much!”.

Mechanisms of violence

Why do perpetrators lose control and become even more aggressive, if the victim remains calm?

Violence is usually based on the self-repression of the victim, reinforcing it. Perpetrators are encouraged by the intimidation of their victims.

“When I am polite and delicate, people go frantic, lose control, and start arguing. Why is it so?”

“How do you feel when you are pointedly polite and gentle?”

“I get angry. Because why on earth don’t they understand?!”

“They feel that your impulse contradicts your behavior and kind of reveal your own emotions, demonstrate them to you”.

There is nothing wrong for the perpetrator with abusing the weak (e.g. animals) or those who are already crushed (e.g. a bullied employee). At the same time, the perpetrator ignores their own elation and excitement. The perpetrator wants obedience, but once they get it, instead of stopping the violent cycle they become even more oppressive.

This can be vividly illustrated by a situation, when the perpetrator “saves” the victim, worships their hidden virtues and strength, but at some point, gets disappointed, which results in even greater violence. This kind of retraumatization is even more harmful than direct violence.

The violence cycle goes as follows.

“I say you are lazy, thus giving you a chance to try and become a better version of yourself. I know, however, that you won’t take this chance. Thus, my eagerness to help you makes me even more tired of you”. So, the perpetrator falls back on self-pity and becomes mad at the victim for their disregard and indirect violence. Their efforts and goodwill being neglected, the perpetrator is free to give way to their emotions. They do their best to demonstrate the way they were “abused” by the victim doing “exactly the same thing”.

The whole world is upside down — the perpetrator sees themselves as the actual victim, and the victim is viewed as a tyrant.

“Victimhood”

Violence is always a response to self-repression. The only thing that differs is whether the perpetrator joins the victim adding to their self-repression or makes the victim a hostage of the perpetrator’s own sufferings — humiliation, unhappiness, depression, and irritation.

A relapse to violence takes place, when the perpetrator sees themselves as a victim and tries to reverse the situation — from helplessness to forced outrage. The actors switch roles — it is the victim that is “guilty” of driving such a “shy human being” to violence.

Making a mountain out of a molehill is a perfect metaphor for violence. The perpetrator might not even perceive the victim’s behavior as insulting, but the self-absorption results in an insight effect: the perpetrator does not analyze separate events, they see the whole picture and embrace it.

Violence is similar to an explosion — implosion is followed by a rapid release of energy. It is a transition from depression to mania. Violence stems from retraumatization: a fear that the situation will recur and constitute a whole chain of painful events. It creates a feeling of totality and causes an urge to break free “from it all”, which spills over the boundaries of a particular situation and strikes the victim with all the tension accumulated over years.

Psychotherapy has seen plenty of cases, when, for instance, a woman’s partner gets punished not for his own actions, but for the behavior of all the men before him, starting with her father. The actual violence takes place, when the victim is the opposite of those presumably attacked and accused by the perpetrator. For example, the perpetrator sees their partner as dependent, while in fact they are not. The greater the inconsistency, the greater the violence.

Criteria of violence

Where is the boundary between merely using force and violence?

We can apply the following criterion: if everything that usually stops people from using force (rejection, request, arguments, innocence, etc.) provokes only more aggression, it is violence. The perpetrator is subconsciously encouraged by the victim’s refusal. A simple example is the urge to continue the conversation, when the other person obviously wants to end it.

A more complex example — reasonable arguments, composure, and moderate friendliness cause even more aggression. The perpetrator is galvanized by the victim being reasonable.

The man shakes her, hurts her, but she keeps saying things like “Calm down!” or “You are not really like this!”. So, he just cracks and yells “Shut up!”.

Where does this paradoxical excitement come from? People are restrained by social norms. However, when a “no” is a “yes” and “I” create all the rules, the external factors fade and give way to an insight, and everything falls into place.

This is not unlike a conspiracy theory, where the complex and the obscure is exposed and you are excited by the uncertainty, while getting more and more convinced of your own superiority. Having gone beyond the boundary of violence, the perpetrator becomes more of a witness. However, when you participate, your superiority cannot be challenged.

The same mechanism works, when, for example, you forbid a child to make noise by hitting a radiator. The action acquires a new meaning, and the child keeps trying with even more vigor. In this regard, it is easy to understand the meaning of one of the mottoes of the consent culture: “Yes means yes”.

For the same reason, an elimination of norms (within a family, group, society) is viewed as liberation and is very much welcomed. The creation of a new (common) norm or bringing back old values is often performed with great pathos, but for lowly reasons. This is the logic of violence.

Consent

While protest and reasoning provoke more violence, consent and humility do not help to prevent it. If “no” does not mean “yes” for the perpetrator, then what does “yes” mean? It is often viewed as a manipulation, an attempt to play for the other team. As such it confuses and upsets the perpetrator, and causes more violence.

Here is the perpetrator’s logic:

“Whatever you say or do, your aim is to provoke me, to drive me mad”.

This is a trap. The perpetrator promotes “common” rules that should ensure peace and wellbeing for everyone. At the same time, the perpetrator sets personal boundaries, which you cannot but cross. Moreover, the victim feels that the quiet — a kind of ceasefire — is the worst. It is the time, when tension grows higher. The possibility of violence is scarier than the actual outburst. It causes anxiety. The desire to believe that the peace is permanent is the strongest catalyst for violence.

The victim’s behavior is always perceived as passive aggressive or as disappointment masked with fake humility. No matter what, the perpetrator always thinks that the victim wants to get out of control, which they interpret as mockery or concealed contempt. Violence is aimed at overpowering opposition of any kind.

“I want you to agree with me. However, when you finally do this, I can’t simply accept it, because you have something on your mind. By agreeing with me, you just wave me off and keep ignoring me”.

In other words, violence does not stand passiveness.

“If I am so easily excited, it means you should be too. But I am straightforward, and you pay me with all sorts of tricks. You are just pretending in order to win”.

When the victim ignores the perpetrator, the latter sees it not as a sign of fatigue or indifference, but rather as a sign of active disregard — irony, or even sarcasm.

“You are as reckless as I am. When you agree with me, you take away my energy <…> you demonize me, you want to leave me helpless”.

Violence is a response to tension, and the victim is “punished” for the inability to relief this tension.

A typical reaction to violence is the following masochistic rhetoric:

“No matter what I do, you are going to think I’m provoking you. So, the only way to avoid this is to actually provoke you, to conform with that image of me you’ve got. By doing so, I can outplay you, make you pitiful and helpless”.

The perpetrator finds it more difficult to deal with obedience:

“I want obedience, but it is your disobedience that turns me on”.

Refusal and desire are intricately linked. S. Freud explained this in The Interpretation of Dreams. For instance, when you refuse to by an ice-cream for your son, he is going to dream of a pile of ice-cream that very night. Thus, the child finds a place where his desire is not suppressed.

Perpetrators believe they are suppressed. Their desires are refused, and in order to overcome this crisis they challenge those in power, i.e. those who deny them what they desire. Thus, when children throw tantrums for a new toy, they simply follow their parents’ logic. They are insistent in their own way. Kids try to outweigh the lack of compromise in their parents by their own multiplied emotions and refusal to compromise. The perpetrator also thinks that the victim is trying to copy them.

No exit

Abusive relationships provide no exit. Attempts at reasoning are perceived as signs of dissatisfaction. For example, when you ask your partner to find a job or to stop drinking. Any sign of discontent, any attempt to leave the relationship is seen as manipulation.

Unwillingness makes the necessity even stronger:

“You don’t like it, and this is exactly why you have to take part in it. You simply don’t understand why this is so important”.

Thus, when a girl says she cannot go to her father-in-law’s birthday party because of her studies, it can be a good enough reason for her husband to start nagging her.

The cause of violence

Violence is always triggered by some indirect cause. The perpetrator sees certain reasons behind the behavior of the other, certain intention. However, the perpetrator’s ideas about the victim’s motives are always wrong. It looks like an absurd assumption: “Did you do this on purpose?” or “Are you just mocking me?”.

Offence, humiliation, teasing, harassment, etc. — the victim is guilty of all of these sins, and the perpetrator recreates the whole situation in their mind adding the necessary details regarding the victim’s motives. The less the victim as actually able of doing such things, the more convinced the perpetrator gets.

Violence is largely based on interpretation. It is the perpetrator’s interpretation of the environment that stimulates violence. The perpetrator is always on the look for “hidden motives” of the victim. They always expect some sort of provocation.

From an interview with a victim of domestic violence:

“Your wife keeps saying that you want her to suffer.”

“Yes. But it’s not true! This is not my purpose.”

“It’s her projection of reality. She thinks you might actually want this and takes a proactive approach. As a result, it is you who is suffering in this relationship.”

In other words, violence is largely based on the perpetrator’s assumptions and interpretations. Strict punishment for a non-existent crime — this is how you define violence. The perpetrator might easily burst out because of an assumed discontent of the victim, which becomes overly exaggerated in the perpetrator’s mind.

“Don’t you scoff at me!”, warns the perpetrator.

What is the purpose of violence?

It is passive actualization. Thanks to violence the perpetrator does not have to do or think about anything. It is enough to have an “enemy” close to you. The perpetrator is obliged to get involved into all sorts of troubles, where they can demonstrate all their best qualities (strong character, strong beliefs, subtlety) that nobody appreciates in real life.

Perpetrators destroy their relationships with other people. They destroy their own life and that of people close to them. However, this is just a “small price” for the “triumph of justice”.

Thus, a man says to his wife:

“I know why you are so unhappy all the time, why we keep fighting. The thing is, you don’t want any of this. You don’t want to be a mother to our kid. You don’t want a career. You don’t want to be a woman. You know this, but you don’t want me to blame you, so you are trying to find flaws in me!”

Punishment for hints

Violence is prone to reduce any situation to absurdity. The victim gets the worst punishment not for the things they do, but for disobedience and the slightest hints that they do not accept the dominance of the perpetrator — even for showing interest to things the perpetrator considers hostile.

Passive ignoring

The root cause of violence, however, is passive ignoring:

“You know how important this is to me, and still you do not obey my commands, you do not do as we have agreed”.

The perpetrator sees that they are attacked indirectly, as if it is all a joke. This kind of behavior drives the perpetrator mad and provokes violence.

Phenomenology of violence

A man snaps at the woman who berates him in the company of his friends.

What is actually happening? What exactly drives violence?

The starting point of violence is the woman who thinks “this is no big deal”. Her “frankness” is perceived as passive gaslighting, mockery, presenting the participant of this “performance” as a masochistic personality.

The final and the most frightful torture in Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch is the following: Wanda persuades Severin, who is in love with her, to undergo a degrading torture one last time. She ties him to bed and whips him. Then a stranger appears and whips Severin on behalf of Wanda.

The victim allows the perpetrator to neglect them.

“The main problem is not your wife cheating on you, but the fact that you have no idea about it. Deep inside you suspected it, you knew, but you still acted as if you didn’t know. You didn’t have enough courage. This is a perfect example of how psychological defense works”.

The perpetrator believes that the victim’s desire is aimed at themselves rather than someone else. The direct and indirect <desire> switch places. The perpetrator makes a projection and thinks that the other wants to mock them, to humiliate, to hurt them. Violence is a way to escape a situation where the perpetrator becomes the victim. It is unbearable for the perpetrator to realize that they are actually in a victim’s position. In this case, cheating becomes an obsession, a desire, a craving — something they cannot resist to. The partner wants to cheat, the desire is greater than them, it controls them. And the cause is the person being cheated against.

This is a case of spontaneous violence. It is entirely based on the position shift — something that has to be immediately reversed. Thus, the main character in A Streetcar Named Desire mocks her sister’s husband, trying to set her own rules in his house. He “restores the order” by means of violence.

Everyday violence, on the contrary, is based on the idea that the victim cannot break the rules set by the perpetrator, while the perpetrator themselves does not have to follow any rules. What is seen as denial, i.e. rejection of the idea that the perpetrator’s actions can be harmful, is the greatest value of violence — you do not need to be within the context of the other, you only want “what is best for all”. Violence is a way to delegate rules, norms, and contexts from the perpetrator to the victim, a way to avoid obsession.

A typical perpetrator would say: