Gewaltfantasien im Jugendalter

Violence and aggression are fundamental problems of human existence. Every culture bears traces of some way of coping with them. In adolescence, violent fantasies are part of normal development but can also lead to violent acts. This article discusses the defence dynamics of such violent acts and of the fixation on violent fantasies, their function for the emotional balance and their consequences for development. Two cases, the case of a 17-year-old boy, who stabbed an older woman to death, and the case of a 10-year-old boy with aggressive tantrums are presented. Melanie Klein’s concept of innate envy and Donald Winnicott’s considerations on the antisocial tendency are contrasted to each other and evaluated with respect to similarities and differences. Both concepts describe the importance of bad inner objects, which become increasingly more charged and experienced as persecutors. This results in paranoid anxieties and feelings of guilt which are decisive for the genesis of pathological fixations of that quality. Differences exist mainly with respect to anthropological basic assumptions about the relationship between constitutional and environmental factors and between destructive and reparative tendencies. Finally, the article derives consequences for the therapeutic technique.