Violence as Violation: the Psychodynamics of Human Violence
A BSA Sociology, Psychoanalysis & the Psychosocial Study Group Seminar Series
12 May 2025 (15:00-16:00 BST)
Online
About the Event
The Sociology, Psychoanalysis & the Psychosocial Study Group seminar series on violence has been running since November 2024. The seminar series is held online and normally takes place on the first Monday of the month (there may be some exceptions around UK holidays).
Speaker: Dr Chris Steed
Speaker bio: Dr Chris Steed is the author of numbers of books on psychology and social theory. His doctoral work at Exeter University proposed a theory of violence. He has led a course training counsellors at London School of Theology, linked to Middlesex University. Currently, he lectures on that course, particularly on the relationship between therapy and theology/Spirituality. A qualified counsellor, Chris is a member of BACP.
Event summary: In narratives of violence and abuse, there are many scripts playing. Reading the texts of violence requires a multiple hermeneutic. This is a small signpost to a much larger Doctoral thesis on violence and book length studies on the role of high value in social issues. [i] Amongst is a de-humanising reduction of the other to compensate for deficiencies or a complete lack of a positive sense of self by the perpetrator. Violence is part of an exchange system. “I thought if I killed him, some of his fame would come to me” confessed Mark Chapman, murderer of Lennon.
Violence as a bid for respect is argued by James Gilligan. [ii] The mechanism by which unemployment and economic inequality stimulate violence is because both trigger feelings of shame, of inferiority. Some violent acts may be a reaction against perceived humiliation or loss of status. In acts of gang violence, its actors feel lack of respect- ‘he disrespected me’. Forms of disrespect might lie in a perceived look, a verbal insult or a territorial claim. Violence is a perverted assertion of self-respect and demand for significance. It is a forcible exchange of value, recovering someone’s value through a dehumanizing reduction. This is true of instances of abuse; it also stands out in honour killings. “Dawn will come and the girls will ask about her, ‘Where is she’? And the monster will answer: ‘We killed her’. A mark of shame was on our foreheads and we washed it off”- a female Iraqi perspective on honour crimes. [iii]
The American psychologist Rollo May saw violence as a bid for significance by the powerless; “an explosion into violence may be the only way individuals or groups can get release from unbearable tension and achieve a sense of significance.” [iv] It is the essence of violence that it engenders statements of an intrinsic worth being assaulted. In its narratives, victims report feeling stripped of worth and dignity. Progress comes as a client can say, “this is part of me; it is not all of me!”[v]
Even when it is not so obvious, such scripts permeate acts of violence, coercion and abuse. We may have met bullies for whom this is true: that reduction of the other must be enacted so as to bolster the bully. But at the heart of narratives of this sort lies a symbolic exchange. Value is transferred one to the other (or that is the intent below the radar). It is as if the abuser must deface and scrape worth from the face of someone in order to accrue it to themselves. Both Girard and Mauss examine violence in a wider social and political process and such a mechanism is relevant to the interpersonal sphere.[vi]
Understandings of violence through this lens invokes the notion of violence as ‘violentia’ or violation. Each individual has a sacredness that is liable to being desacralized (desecrated). The drive towards realising a high value, even through a destructive route, is deeply grounded in psychodynamic imperatives, not normally foregrounded.
Registration
This event is free to attend but registration is required.
[i] Steed, C. D. (2019) The Significance of High Value in Human Behaviour London: Routledge
[ii] Gilligan, J. (2001). Preventing violence. London: Thames and Hudson.Ch 2. See also Blau, P.M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. New York: Wiley.
[iii] Sana al-Khayyat (1990) Honour and Shame: Women in Modern Iraq. London: Saqi Books p35
[iv] May, R. (1976). Power and innocence: a search for the sources of violence. London: Fontana.p44
[v] Author’s client notes- name withheld and used with permission
[vi] Per Bjørnar Grande (2023) Imitation, Violence, and Exchange: Girard and Mauss Contagion: Journal of Violence Mimesis and Culture (2023) 30: 221–231