Fr. Vasilios Thermos**
The issue we will deal with today is a difficult and painful one. I think we have all noticed the increase in violence both in our homes and in society as a whole. I would say that we can distinguish some factors that contributed to the growth of this phenomenon – a lot has already been written about them, so I am not presenting anything new. First, the long period of economic crisis began to “raise the temperature” in society. Then, without society having really managed to recover from the crisis, the pandemic came – with everything that accompanied it, including quarantine. And then we saw new cases and new forms of violence. All this, as we will discuss later, is developing against a background both international and domestic, which favors the creation of a violent environment.
At the beginning, we will try to distinguish the different types of violence depending on their place in the psychic structure, i.e. what psychological goals they serve.
This classification, as we will understand in the course of the presentation, has its own meaning. We will not limit ourselves to the dilemma of whether violence is primarily a personal problem – of the one who exercises it, or rather a collective phenomenon. I would like to show that this phenomenon is located on the border and in the intertwining of these two factors – the individual and the collective. And so it will turn out that things are not as simple as they seem.
Let us first recall the starting point – the starting position for understanding violence, as formulated by psychoanalysis and theology.
According to psychoanalysis, man has two basic drives: aggressive and erotic-sexual. And in theological terms, we know that both forces, manifested in the form of drives, are gifts from God and represent elements of God’s image in man. The broad erotic drive actually corresponds to the capacity for love and the striving for life. From this drive arise the various forms of love – including sexual, but not only it. It is the basis of all manifestations of love, vitality and creative energy. This is probably well known.
However, less well known is another thing: that behind the manifestations of aggression in human behavior there is also an element of the “image of God” in man. The Fathers of the Church call it “manhood” or “the power of manhood” (ανδρεία). In reality, it is a spiritual dynamism – a gift from God. This dynamism, or willpower, has a specific purpose: to give man the power to declare war on evil. Man must possess such an inner power with which to oppose evil and the devil. It is this power that gives him the energy to wage spiritual battle.
And here we recall that the same applies to all passions. Passions are not creations of the devil – in their essence they are not evil forces, because the devil is not a creator. Passions are forces of the soul, or rather forces of the human personality as a whole, of our psycho-physical nature. However, these forces have been distorted in terms of their purpose – they are used not to realize, as St. Maximus the Confessor would say, the logos (divine foundations) of human nature, i.e. what God calls us to, but on the contrary – they are used against God, against ourselves and against our neighbor.
What happens with all passions also happens with this power of masculinity (ανδρεία) – when it is distorted, it turns into aggression and violence.
Now, although we carry this theological, I would say ontological, heredity, we are born and exist in a world that is corrupt from the very beginning. And therefore we need mechanisms that tame this corrupt dynamism – this tendency to aggression and violence.
Such mechanisms that tame the destructive dynamism are: culture, the upbringing that each child receives from his parents and from the wider social environment, and religiosity. These are the three basic frameworks, the three mechanisms that tame aggression so that it does not degenerate into violence. The process of curbing, and even redirecting, this internal dynamism is called sublimation. This is a mechanism that also applies to the erotic-sexual drive – and it can be transformed, sublimated.
Therefore, when there are deficiencies, omissions or errors in culture, in upbringing or in religious life, all these shortcomings, especially when combined, lead to aggression that is not transformed but turns into violence.
Let us now look a little more closely at the recent developments – of the last decades, or more precisely of the last ten to fifteen years – that have contributed and continue to contribute to the global increase in violence.
First of all, we are observing global disintegration and disorganization. Wars have increased. There is growing unemployment and economic instability. People’s health is deteriorating over time, and the supporting force of ties in society is also weakening, i.e. the social fabric is beginning to disintegrate. In addition, we have cyberspace – the Internet, where films and series full of violence are distributed. Of course, there are also aggressive video games. Another important factor is the postmodernity in which we have been living in recent decades. It has led to nihilism and the relativization of morality, i.e., moral guidelines are blurred.
What does this mean?
That we have not only the external causes mentioned in the previous two points, but also internal ones – the devaluation of morality and the loss of meaning, which further strengthen the action of the other factors. In combination, these conditions open the way to violence, and in an obvious way – there is no need to even argue it in detail.
Let us now go into a little more detail about the mechanisms that lead to an increase in violence. First of all: today there are much higher levels of anxiety in society – and on a global scale. Economic anxiety, social, political anxiety, caused by instability. The stable supports on which society has been based for decades have disappeared. And anxiety very often develops into violence – directly, without the need for additional “switches” or intermediaries. This is a factor that often leads directly to violence.
In addition, there is a general uncertainty – about the social, economic, political and even ideological place of the individual in modern society. This uncertainty gives rise to the need to find culprits. Sometimes one does indeed point to real culprits, but other times one is wrong. And this also paves the way for violence: someone has to “pay” for this uncertainty.
Another mechanism that contributes to the growth of violence is the consumerist mindset that has dominated society for decades. In essence, we are talking about the society of consumption combined with the society of the spectacle. It is precisely these two factors – the society of consumption and the society of the spectacle – that made the existence of postmodernity possible. They are the reason we live in a postmodern world. Postmodernity would not exist as a social and ideological reality – it would remain only in the sphere of art, if these two phenomena had not appeared and spread so massively.
In parallel, another mechanism that contributes to violence is the education system, which is often indifferent or marginalizing. When I say “indifferent”, I mean that the education system is not inclusive, i.e. it does not have mechanisms for educating those children who learn differently, because not all students perceive knowledge in the same way. In practice, this means that one part of the students manages to follow the curriculum and meet its requirements, while another part is excluded – not formally, but de facto. These children “drag” from class to class, formally graduate from high school, but are not really included in the process.
Related to this is another problem, well known in our society. We are talking about the phenomenon known as functional illiteracy, i.e. people who have formally graduated from high school, but in practice behave as if they are illiterate. This happens both during the school years, when a student was isolated and marginalized by the system, and after graduation. All of these are factors that predispose to aggression and violence.
We observe this clinically and pastorally – both psychologists and psychiatrists working with children and adolescents, as well as priests, notice that violence often manifests itself in situations where parents are emotionally distant and without empathy.
Also, when abstract thinking is weak, linguistic expression is poor and a culture of reading and spirituality is lacking, this further favors the manifestation of violent behavior.
The combination of all these factors predisposes to criminal behavior and the use of violence. This is an area in which the educational system achieves extremely poor results. In our country, the system has shown neither the desire nor the ability to do anything for children who are distinguished by such characteristics.
There is also individual psychopathology that can also contribute to this – for example, some personality disorders, i.e. people with pathological character structures. There are quite a few of them – about ten types, but the most significant in the context of violence are: the psychopathic personality – a person who does not feel guilty, manipulates and uses everyone around him, often exhibits criminal behavior; the paranoid personality – a person with extreme suspicion, who easily sees a threat even in innocent situations; the narcissistic personality – it is clear how it manifests itself; the borderline personality – some of its forms are distinguished by strong emotional instability and inner emptiness, which can lead to participation in violence.
Something very important that we must keep in mind is that in children and adolescents, sometimes the decisive factor – whether a mental state will lead to violence or not – is the level of extraversion in the personality. Extraversion is a factor that is subject to quantitative measurement – it is measurable in characterological and personality studies. The same applies to introversion. Therefore, a child or teenager who is highly anxious and depressed, but has an introverted personality, will tend to withdraw more and more into himself, and any possible manifestation of violence will be directed inward – towards himself. But if the child experiences anxiety and depression, and at the same time has an extroverted personality, then this will almost always manifest itself through violence outward – towards others. Sometimes this is the first symptom that is noticed – from it begins the reverse “untangling the ball” and leads to the initial diagnosis. As you can see, however, we are talking about specific psychiatric diagnoses here. And most of the things that we will discuss further relate to people who do not have any psychiatric diagnosis – and this is what is extremely interesting.
Since I mentioned postmodernity, I will briefly present a comparative table – here we will focus only on what is essential for our discussion. In the era of modernity, violence was usually justified by ideology – for example, by Nazism or Communism – the two great ideologies of the 20th century. Of course, this did not make violence any less destructive or any less immoral and unacceptable. However, I want to emphasize that back then, violence was accompanied by some ideology. Whereas in the postmodern era, after the “death of ideologies” that we have all heard about, violence manifests itself without a logical alibi – without justification. It becomes interpersonal violence, family violence, football violence (by agitators), political violence, i.e. it becomes more direct, more undisguised, because there is no longer an ideology to “structure” or “disguise” it in its expression. However, it is also possible that it is less massive, because the totalitarian regimes of modernity gave rise to mass violence on a huge scale.
Let us also say a few words about suicides, which are a form of violence directed at oneself. There are direct and indirect suicides. By direct we mean the well-known cases – successful or unsuccessful suicide attempts. We distinguish between different types, for example: suicide as a release from a severe personal drama or from a deep depression – a person cannot bear their mental pain; suicide as an act of revenge – “I will leave so that they will understand what kind of person they had, what kind of child they had, what kind of partner”. This is often the motive in children or partners; suicide as atonement, dictated by strong guilt. We have all heard of cases in which students, feeling that they have failed important exams, leave a suicide note and apologize for not being the children their parents dreamed of having. We also have suicides as a form of protest, which are more ideologically motivated. We also observed such cases during the economic crisis.
However, there are also so-called indirect suicides. What does this mean? That in most cases there is no conscious desire for death, but there is an unconscious striving for it – sometimes because the person has given up on life, other times because they experience unconscious aggression directed both at themselves and at others. These forms are expressed through: systematic unhealthy eating, smoking, disregard for health and medicine – for example, a person does not go to the doctor or underestimates or mocks doctors, and says: “They will not do anything to me, I know best”. This also includes the use of various substances, risky driving, dangerous sexual life – all these behaviors are forms of indirect suicide, of indirect violence against oneself, and sometimes against others. Actions that, although unconscious, often have a punitive nature – directed at others, but also at oneself.
We should not miss indirect forms of violence directed at the other person, because in our minds this violence is often reduced only to physical or verbal aggression. However, it also has other, more indirect forms. For example, an endemic phenomenon in Greek society, which for me personally would be extremely interesting to see in a comparative study with other European countries: we are talking about vandalism of monuments, damage to school and public property – behavior, completely unacceptable for the culture of a Western country, even, I would say, for a non-Western one. This is a serious problem – violence against public order and space.
We also have dangerous Internet games – there is no direct violence, but a person can actually be exposed to risk, entering the logic of some dangerous online game, in which either he is offered to do something, or he himself offers others to perform risky actions. Sometimes such behaviors also lead to fatal consequences.
An indirect form of violence is also sexual seduction and exploitation – not necessarily rape or physical violence, but rather strategic, manipulative behavior aimed at sexual exploitation, most often of women or minors. This is also a clear form of violence, albeit indirect.
Another form is verbal discrediting and ignoring. In addition to the obvious verbal aggression – with insults, irony, humiliation, there is also a more subtle form, in which a person systematically invalidates the words of the other, ignores his opinion. If this happens constantly and continuously over time, it can be extremely destructive and psychologically damaging for the victim.
After all this, we move on to the main part of the presentation – the examination of the different types of violence, as I mentioned at the beginning. I repeat – this is a classification based on the psychological reasons why it manifests itself.
We start with the first category: violence as a “solution” to identity problems. The word “solution” is in quotation marks because, of course, we are not talking about a real solution, but about a way in which the psyche experiences the situation. Here we are talking about cases of identity confusion that a person can experience temporarily, for example in adolescence – something quite common and even normal to a certain extent at that age, or in early adulthood, after adolescence.
A person can experience a psychic void for various reasons – either because in adolescence they failed to form a stable identity, or because they suffer from borderline personality disorder, in which one of the main diagnostic criteria is precisely confusion about personal identity. This confusion creates a painful inner void that exerts pressure – a person looks for some “solution”, looks for an action that will fill this void.
That is why we sometimes see adolescents who join gangs or groups in which they begin to commit violent and aggressive acts. They prefer to have a “bad” identity rather than none. They prefer to perceive themselves as “bad” because this gives them a sense of security and belonging, rather than living with the feeling that they are confused, unstable and “unknown” even to themselves. They consciously commit criminal or immoral acts and know that they are committing them. In this sense, we have a false “solution” to the pain caused by psychic void and blurred identity.
Sometimes something else happens: the perpetrator of violence feels dead inside – he feels an emotional or existential “death”, and therefore resorts to violence in order to feel alive. This is a dramatic move, but it corresponds to the drama of the state that this person experiences from the inside. In this way, the act of violence itself gives him an illusory feeling that he is in control of something in his life. You know, very often what we are talking about here concerns teenagers and young people who, for various reasons, feel as if they have no control over their lives. They have no control even over half of their day spent at school – they are obliged to go, but they do not find any meaning in what happens there. School “does not speak to them” – no one is interested in them, except when they need to scold or punish them. Sometimes they feel out of control at home too – they have no real, living connection with their parents, except when they close themselves in their room or in their headphones. As they grow up, when they are confronted with the reality of society, they may feel that they have no control as citizens – that nothing in the world depends on them.
This experience leads to two possible paths: either to apoliticality – young people believe that everything is set up, that there is no point in being an active citizen, or to aggressive anarchism – the idea that this reality must be overthrown through violence.
When a person feels that they have absolutely no control over anything in their life, it is possible that they will come to the decision (usually not on their own, but through influence) to join a group that uses violence. This way they feel that they are living, that they have control over at least something, and that through this behavior they achieve value and identity as a person.
In other words, the serious problem here is the spiritual alienation of the young person – both within the family and in the broader social context.
*We offer to our readers the report “Violence – an individual phenomenon or a psychopathology of society?”, delivered by Fr. Vasilios Thermos in February 2024 within the framework of the lecture series “Time for Action” organized by the Academy of Theological Studies in Volos. In this first part of the presentation, the renowned theologian and specialist in the psychology of adolescent development speaks about the different types of violence and their genesis that society and the young person in particular face.
**The author graduated in Medicine and Theology from the University of Athens. His doctoral dissertation in Theology is dedicated to the psychology of the priestly vocation. He specialized as a visiting researcher at Harvard, Boston University, Boston College and Andover Newton. His main research interests include: the dialogue between theology, pastoral care and psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychology and psychopathology of religiosity, as well as the psychological characteristics and problems of adolescence. He has worked in educational programs for clergy and church workers, and for twelve years he also taught at the Theological Academy of the Orthodox Church in Albania. He has published numerous books and articles translated into various European languages. He is a cleric of the Metropolitanate of Thebes and Levadia.
