Re:Alice Miller on the Roots of Violence

We know that the roots of psychopathy and antisocial personality are found in childhood. These personality styles are often linked with violence. Check out Hare's work on psychopathy for example if you want a large database of empirical evidence. A person with a psychopathic life style may manifest a pattern of sober judgement used toward self interest. These individuals will carefully choose violence to get gain or manipulate power. These individuals are particularly dangerous. They are a very small minority of the population. This pattern is overwhelmingly manifest early in their childhood and tends to continue into adult behavior. This is an extreme example of course. We also tend to see patterns of impulsivity in early childhood and this tends to carry on into adulthood. I am discussing impulsivity here because persons with poor impulse control are more likely to turn to violence as a solution for problems rather than to cooperation. They represent a large proportion of child abusers and small time criminals. Antisocial personality would be the extreme side here. It is not likely that a person who has a pervasive life long pattern of sober judgement toward cooperation in childhood will switch to a pervasive new lifelong pattern of impulsivity as an adult. If this does happen it is usually due to some head trauma. The oposite is also unlikely unless some major work is done to make the change. Unfortunately most people are somewher between these two extreems and our social interest waivers. It just takes one good psychopath to move a bunch of directionless people to do bad things for the psychopath's purposes.

If a society or religion condones violence as a norm it is more likely that we will have violent children and violent methods of problem solving. I think this is obvious. Consequences that follow are that the parents will inflict violence on to their children and the problem is perpetuated as children identify with the aggressor and so on. However, abuse of children is certainly not "the cause" of violence. Although a disproportionate number in comparison to those who have not suffered physical violence will continue the abuse cycle, the majority of children who have suffer physical abuse choose not to repeat the pattern with there own children. This does not suggest cause. Religion is certainly not the cause. To lump all followers of Islam into a group of terrorists is a large scale distortion. The vast majority of Islam does not condone terrorist violence and they interpret the same religious tenet very differently than those who use their religion to support terrorism. Society and poverty is certainly not the cause of violence. Although the inner city has a disproportionate number of gang members and gang violence it is a minority of the total population who turn to gang violence as a way of life.

I work in a forensic setting. In comparison to the general society, a disproportionate number of my patients came from abusive homes and from poverty but the majority did not. Most have come from rather average homes. Miller discusses very subtle forms of violence that can have an effect on a child and I believe this is true and needs to be cleaned out. Violence would be greatly reduced if we did this but it is not "the" cause. A child can grow up pampered environment and experience a similar lifestyle. The cause is the child's aperceptive schema. It is how they tend to perceive things. Children come to us with a proclivity toward some useless interpretations of their environment and with a tendencies toward the useful side of life. Unfortunately a few children come with more proclivities than with useful tendencies. The Ainsworth research with children and attachment demonstrated that children seem to be born with personality styles. Some are slow to warm, some are easy, and so on. It is not a blank slate. The challenge of parents is for us to root out our own violent tendencies by any means necessary and to train our children away from their proclivities by letting them experience natural and logical consequences and by encouraging their useful tendencies and social interest. This will go a long way toward reducing violence but it is no guarantee. We cannot force people to see things differently and cooperate. Some will not cooperate because that is how they choose to see the world and they want to keep it that way. It is their faulty solution of superiority.

So yes it is complex. The lifestyle patterns are formed early in life through an interaction of nature and nurture. This is completely in line with Adler's principals. He was a soft determinist. His theory took into account genetic predispositions and environmental influences. Miller focuses to a great extent on environmental influences and how we often respond to them emotionally. We are greatly influenced by our environment. Miller is not Adlerian but much of her work supports the environmental portion of Adler's theory. I do not agree with the extension of her argument that abuse is "the cause" of abuse. It is too circular of an argument and it is not sufficient to determine cause based upon what we know about survivors of abuse as a group. Cause must also take into account a person's basic predisposition toward looking at the world. It is because of this predisposition different individuals can look at the same passage of scripture and interpret it so differently. One toward terrorism and another toward conquering the enemy within their own soul. These individuals in turn can impact their children and in not many generations a hole society can be influenced for good or bad. And yet, within the society of warmongers there will still emerge those who are predisposed to peace and cooperation and within the society of peace there will still emerge some who are predisposed toward selfishness.

Craig

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