Socially accepted violence by “agents of law”: Sublimation of aggression as a model

Publication date: Available online 8 March 2019Source: Aggression and Violent BehaviorAuthor(s): Efrat Even-tzur, Uri HadarAbstractAs part of their duty, police officers sometime use electro-shock weapons in order to restrain violent behaviors; prison guards use physical force to restrict convicted felons' freedom of movement; staff members of forensic psychiatric units sometime use physical restraining means on dangerous patients. Such actions are sometimes criticized, but in other instances, when they do not exceed reasonable use of power, they may be perceived as appropriate and expected of the aforementioned officials.Now would it be accurate to claim that even when following regulations, such acts involve expressions of aggression? Would it be an overstatement to ascribe the term “violence” to them, customary and accepted as they may be in their institutional and social context? These questions raise even additional difficulties regarding the use of force by law-enforcement agents: do their actions produce significant psychological implications? Could these uses of physical force potentially elicit unique anxieties that require unique coping mechanisms?The core of the difficulty, we suggest, lies in the intricacies of the topic of socially accepted violence. The intention of this paper is to propose a psychoanalytic exploration of this complicated problem, and to examine how the Freudian idea of sublimation of aggression contributes to its understanding.
Source: Aggression and Violent Behavior - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research