'The Scream' Edvard Munch
Whether one considers wars between nations, groups, individuals, or the battles within, violence seems to be a part of everyday life. Yet for many people I suspect, the subject matter is something in the main that we would prefer not to think about, deal with or reflect upon. The most frequent and immediate associations are nearly almost always in a negative domain, including themes of death, destruction, pain, trauma, and ill health. Why would anyone want to spend time on such matters? Yet, what are the consequences if we do not? Observations upon individuals, including onesself, provide an opportunity to study the seeds of violence, look at its effects, and the likely consequences on the behaviour of those affected.
The word ‘violent’ comes from Latin, meaning to force, injure, dishonour. It may take many forms and exists in varying degrees of severity. Physical and sexual violence or abuse readily spring to mind. ‘Emotional’ violence between individuals results when a perpetrator, deliberately or otherwise, castigates, belittles, undermines, accuses and insults another; or at a more subtle level, when control is exerted over another by exploiting fears and emotional vulnerabilities that serves the perpetrator’s interests. Commonly this can be observed in relationships, between parent and child, between adult partners, in relationships where there is an imbalance of power, for example in a work environment, or even between groups in society, say between the rich and the poor. This type of violence is ubiquitous, and perhaps ironically, poorly recognised both for what it is, and its effects. Whilst physical and sexual violence are likely to be more infrequent and acute, emotional violence is typically low-grade, chronic and enduring. Remarkably, the known effects on individuals from all types of violence appear more similar than they are different.
Perhaps I can consider myself fortunate that in my life to date, my experience of physical violence towards myself has been limited. I was reminded by my father only recently though, how, when I was 3 years old and of generally warm disposition, I approached an older boy in the street, who duly punched me in the face. I can only imagine now that the outcome would have been entirely unexpected, and incomprehensible in the context of my life experiences uptil that point, as far as I can establish from my parents. All I know is that it is not an experience I recall, but at such an impressionable age, what kind of impact did it have?
In adulthood, I have a memory of a conversation with my mother, during which she told me of an incident, about 7 years earlier, when she and a friend noticed an injury to my torso that had occurred as the result of an assault. I had seemingly played down events of the assault at the time, and subsequently my memory of the event itself was completely lost. That was to be the forerunner of a long string of incidents, some of which I suspect I have forgotten, until I was 35 years old. Her story, that followed after this chain of events, came as quite a shock; how was it possible that I could have forgotten something, even to this day, that in the moment must have grabbed my complete attention? Normally, it seemed I could rely on my memory for significant events in my life, but clearly this was no longer necessarily the case. A part of my mind, specifically my memory of this violent event that occurred to me, appeared not to have been functioning normally. Was there a physiological explanation? Or was there a simpler explanation? Could I have simply forgotten it in the passage of time that intervened, when numerous other distressing and depressing incidents abounded? Or had I not wished to contemplate the assault, or the significance of it, at that time?
Psychological and neurophysiological literature does appear to lend some support to all these possibilities. Individual reactions to trauma are varied, depend on the frequency and severity of traumatic experience, the characteristics of the individual, and impact on cognitive, emotional and behavioural domains. In the most extreme responses, individuals may develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Less extreme responses may include clinical features of PTSD that do not fulfil diagnostic criteria, sometimes referred to as a spectrum of PTSD, but currently its validity appears to be in question. Regardless of diagnosis, features include fear reactions, hypervigilance, depression, anger, aggression and low self esteem; chronically, avoidance of perceived threatening situations can give way to resignation and marked passivity in the face of relentless punishment; ‘dissociative’ reactions, that imply a non-integration of psychic information that in normal circumstances would be held in awareness together, include emotional numbness and detachment, disengagement, and memory problems.
Memory problems are varied; there may be difficulties laying down memories, so they are never stored; they may be held in ‘emotional’ memory, so they cannot be processed or articulated; they may not be retrieved, or they may disappear through normal forgetting. Brain structures associated with memory have been observed to differ structurally and physiologically in individuals with chronic trauma syndromes, although it is not clear whether this association lends a vulnerability to the development of the disorder, or whether it is consequential.
In relation to my own experience, I could not say I ever had a typical PTSD reaction, but powerful emotional reactions, memory difficulties and more latterly depression were apparent. But the study of the pathological may have implications for more normal mechanisms, and in seeking a greater understanding for my own experiences the literature offers possible mechanisms for the experienced memory disturbance. Nevertheless my questions remain.
The consequences of violence for the psyche, then, are potentially substantial, but the problems do not end there. Also understood is a concept referred to as ‘cycles of violence’ or ‘cycles of abuse’, that suggests that violent behaviours are likely to recur from one generation to another. These inter-generational effects are often apparently poorly understood by adults who have been victims, and suggest that these patterns of complex behaviour have occurred either without or with limited awareness. Most of the research focuses on children, where the outcomes of abuse are most clear cut, but in adults, without significant histories of violence in childhood, the effects of violence are more varied in outcome. However, very severe and life threatening trauma, for example in a wartime situation, can have long lasting effects; well documented is the increase in violent incidents in the Vietnam war veterans following their return home from war. At an individual level I can think of examples of violent fathers begetting violent sons, and that many sexual offenders against children often have had extensive histories of sexual abuse themselves as children. Hypotheses have been put forward to explain these kinds of findings, all of which have some explanatory power for groups; for example, the finding that symptoms of dissociation (e.g. idealisation of experience of childhood, inconsistency of accounts, and fragmented or disconnected recall of childhood), are more frequently associated with repetition of abuse; but none are sufficient to explain behaviour in individual cases. Equally, some individuals with appalling histories of deprivation, abuse and trauma, do not go on to repeat patterns of violent behaviour, and that inevitably leads to the question as to what factors are protective.
So what happens as a result of violence? Whether one studies an individual, a society or a nation, the seemingly inevitable consequences of violence result in disintegration and fragmentation. Hit a walnut with a hammer, it shatters; for individuals, disconnections between parts of themselves are created or reinforced; the former Yugoslavia now consists of five independent nations, and so on. What purpose does this serve, and how can one position oneself to try to repair and bring those once united parts together?
Richard Baxter (April ’07)
You cannot separate the just from the unjust And the good from the wicked;
For they stand together before the face of the sun Even as the black thread and the white are woven together.
And when the black thread breaks, The weaver shall look into the whole cloth, And he shall examine the loom also.
Kahlil Gibran ‘The Prophet’