VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION

The Vital Need To Address Childhood Trauma In Prisoner Rehabilitation

DIVORCE, DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY, EMOTIONAL ABUSE, SHAME, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

A study conducted by Stensrud et al., 2018 involving 328 male and female prisoners found that the majority reported having experienced far more ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES (ACEs) than the average citizen from the general population and that this was especially the case amongst those who had experienced childhood sexual abuse. A survey of prisoners in …

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What Kind Of Abuse Is Most Common In Serial Killers’ Childhoods?

VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

“Let me state unequivocally that there is no such thing as the person who at age thirty-five suddenly changes from being perfectly normal and erupts into totally evil, disruptive, murderous behavior. The behaviors that are precursors to murder have been present and developing in that person’s life for a long, long time – since childhood.” …

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Unconscious Addiction To Trauma

ADDICTION, COMPLEX PTSD / PTSD, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

Sometimes, people who have experienced significant and protracted childhood trauma e.g. in the form of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse may become fixated on their traumatic experiences and unconsciously addicted to recreating them in their adult lives. For example, those who suffered sexual abuse may become prostitutes (e.g. Finkelhor and Brown, 1985), and those who …

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Forensic Inpatients, Crime, Complex PTSD, Childhood Trauma

ADDICTION, ARTICLES, COMPLEX PTSD / PTSD, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

We have already seen from numerous other articles that I have previously published on this site that there is an association between the early life experience of interpersonal childhood trauma and the development of violent and aggressive tendencies which may persist into adulthood and even lead to a label of ‘antisocial personality disorder’ or, even, …

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How We Are Influenced By Our Unconscious Childhood Memories

ARTICLES, EMOTIONAL ABUSE, TRAUMATIC MEMORIES, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

As Alice Miller (1933-2010) states in her seminal book Free From Lies children learn by imitating their parents and much of this imitating is due to unconscious learning. To illustrate this Miller refers to a study in which mothers were observed holding and feeding their babies and, the ways in which they did so were …

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hitler_photo

What Were The Effects Of Adolf Hitler’s Childhood And Did He Have BPD?

ARTICLES, BPD, PSYCHOPATHY, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

In the 1940s, at the request of the Office of Strategic Services, a former incarnation of the Criminal Intelligence Agency (CIA), a psychiatrist by the name of Walter Langer produced a psychological profile of Hitler, including details about his childhood. Below, I summarize the most salient findings. Adolf Hitler’s father was described as frequently intoxicated, …

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Damaging Methods Some Use To Reduce Stress

ALCOHOL AND DRUGS, ARTICLES, BPD, COMPLEX PTSD / PTSD, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

We have seen that those who suffer severe and protracted childhood trauma, particularly if their adverse childhood experiences have led them to develop such devastating psychological disorders as borderline personality disorder or complex post-traumatic stress disorder, are far more likely to experience intense feelings of stress in adulthood that are so tortuous that they are …

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Childhood Trauma Increases Risk Of Being Both Victim And Perpetrator Of Crime And Violence

ARTICLES, BPD, COMPLEX PTSD / PTSD, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

  Research shows that the more ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES an individual suffered in their early life, the greater their risk of becoming the victim of crime and/or the perpetrator of crime in early life. ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES, as defined by the well known Adverse Childhood Experiences Study are listed below : – physical abuse – emotional …

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Often Aggressive? Is Your Sensorimotor System Primed To Deal With Threat?

ARTICLES, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

  Are You Easily Provoked Into Angry And Aggressive Behaviour? After my mother threw me out of her house when I was thirteen years old and I was reluctantly taken in by my father and step-mother (which I have written about elsewhere in this site, so I won’t repeat the details), I was quickly labelled …

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Antisocial Personality Disorder – A Psychodynamic Explanation

ARTICLES, PSYCHOSIS, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

  Antisocial Personality Disorder And The Early Life Of Sufferers : According to Meroy (1988), those who go on to develop antisocial personality disorder as adults have frequently experienced a dysfunctional relationship with their mothers during infancy, including a failure to form a healthy emotional bond with her – this could be for a variety …

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Were You An Intensely Angry Child? A Possible Explanation.

ARTICLES, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

  Anger displayed by traumatized children differs markedly from anger displayed by non-traumatized children. The anger exhibited by such traumatized children (in comparison with how anger tends to be exhibited by non-traumatized children): is more extreme and intense comes on more suddenly is more difficult for carers of the child to calm is more out …

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Histories Of Childhood Trauma Highly Prevalent Amongst Prison Inmates

ARTICLES, COMPLEX PTSD / PTSD, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

  Those who have experienced significant and protracted childhood trauma are far more likely to be incarcerated as adults than those individuals who were fortunate enough to experience relatively stable and secure childhoods (all else being equal). PHYSICAL TRAUMA, EMOTIONAL TRAUMA, AND ABANDONMENT:   For example, a study carried out by Wolff and Shi found …

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Effects Of Repressed Anger Towards Parents

ARTICLES, BPD AND EXPLOSIVE ANGER, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

      What Are The Effects Of Repressed Anger Towards Parents? If our parent/s caused us significant psychological suffering when we were growing up, we may have built up a great deal of anger towards them, but we may, too, have repressed that anger and its cause (i.e. buried it deep inside our unconscious). This …

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Characteristics Of Perpetrators Of Domestic Violence.

ARTICLES, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

Domestic Violence And Children : We have seen in other articles that I have published on this site that children who grow up in households in which domestic violence is prevalent (e.g. growing up in a household in which the father regularly beats the mother) are put at high risk of developing significant emotional and …

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Childhood Trauma : Abuse Between Siblings

ARTICLES, RELATIONSHIPS, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

Like parental abuse of children, abuse of one sibling by another can fall into three main categories. These are : emotional abuse (for example, name-calling and teasing that has a negative psychological effect upon the victim). physical abuse (this can range from aggressive pushing and punching to the use of weapons such as knives at …

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Expressing Childhood Trauma Through Externalizing Behaviours

ADHD, ARTICLES, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

Externalizing Behaviour : Have you ever smashed a piece of crockery or something similar out of anger or frustration? (I know I have.) If so, you were using what psychologists term an externalizing behaviour. Such behaviours are an expression of our negative feelings directed outward into the external environment. (Internalizing behaviours, in contrast, involve us …

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Brains Of Children Exposed To Domestic Violence Affected In Similar Way To Exposure To Combat

ARTICLES, BRAIN, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

  A study carried out at University College London (UCL) has found that when a child is continually exposed to domestic violence, such as the father regularly beating the mother, their brains are negatively affected in a similar way to how the brains of soldiers are affected by exposure to combat in war. As a …

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Indirect Abuse: Effects On Children Of Witnessing Domestic Violence.

ARTICLES, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

  Domestic violence often involves a man physically abusing a woman on repeated occasions (although it can, of course, involve a woman assaulting a man or a partner assaulting a same-sex partner in the case of gay relationships). In this article, however, to save complications, I’ll use the conventional example of a man who attacks a …

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Children Who Kill : Typologies, Risk Factors And Rehabilitation

ARTICLES, PSYCHOPATHY, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

  In very extreme circumstances, and very rarely, children kill. Almost invariably, such a child has been deprived of love and nurturing, or has bee abused or rejected, or has suffered a combination of all or any of these. S/he is full of rage due to this treatment and this is displaced onto society in …

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Possible Childhood Characteristics of Future Serial Killers

ARTICLES, SEXUALITY, VIOLENCE AND AGGRESSION / By

      Image source: Bigstock Research has demonstrated that many serial killers have much in common when it comes to their childhood experiences. Below, I provide a list of the common characteristics they may sometimes share. It goes without saying, however, that people with many or even all of these characteristics will not invariably …

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