When Can We Talk About Inherited Violence

The concept of inherited violence should be reformulated, as no scientific research - whether biological, medical, psychological, or sociological - has ever demonstrated the existence of a gene for violence that can be passed from parent to child. No matter how simple and attractive this solution may be: a person is violent because he inherited this behavior, the explanation for the occurrence of violent behavior is much more complex.

The term inherited violence can be used only when talking about the genetic transmission of certain mental illnesses that include in the symptoms of manifestation the appearance of aggressive behaviors.

Indeed, there is a real correlation between the existence of transmissible mental disorders - such as schizophrenia - and the adoption of violent acts. But in no case should violence be explained by the variable mental illness, the frequency of aggressive behaviors being high among normal individuals from a mental point of view.

Thus, inherited violence should rather be called socially learned violence, indeed most often from parents. In socializing and learning values, norms, and behavioral patterns, the child takes as his first reference those close to him - parents. These are the first models observed by the child, and their attitude and general values ​​are internalized by the little one.

If a child notices from an early age the presence of an aggressive behavioral pattern in one or both parents, he will take that pattern and then apply it in everyday life. The child exposed to violence between members of the conjugal couple will remember violence as a way to resolve a conflict! The more frequently he observes certain aggressive behaviors in his parents, the more he will get used to them and consider them normal.

The human being is by nature adaptive and therefore easily adapts to the environment in which he lives, the child raised in a violent environment adapts to it and will reproduce it when he will form his own family. And here fits the term inherited violence - in a symbolic sense: the child will inherit those aggressive behaviors that he saw in his parents.

When a conflict arises or when one of the parents did something wrong, does he resort to violence? The little one will remember this way of "solving" the problems.

Starting from the concept of inherited violence, we can also talk about lived violence. The child who has often been physically assaulted as a means of punishment will also retain this mode of education. If he is accustomed to receiving a physical punishment after some blunder, this deficient educational style will be taken over in his own family.

Worse is the case of the abused child, constantly abused physically, either as punishment or as a discharge of the parents. This child will face childhood stress, feelings of fear, panic, confusion - why is he punished, he just didn't do anything wrong! The abused child will then use violence as a way to relieve his or her stress over the years.

Violence can occur early; the child will aggress his weaker schoolmates, or later in his development as an adult, in his own family. The stress-frustration-aggression equation must be kept in mind. The physically abused child will accumulate repressed frustrations, which at some point in his life will erupt and lead to violent behavior towards the closest and most accessible person close to him: the couple's partner or their children.

And the process can start over and the expression of inherited violence even makes sense! An abused child will abuse his child, who will grow up and abuse his child, and so on…

Inherited violence can also refer to the alcohol-violence correlation. Alcoholism can indeed be transmitted from parent to child, whether it is a genetic transmission or social learning of behavior. And one of the primary causes of violent behavior is the abuse of alcohol (and other psychoactive substances).

Alcohol disinhibits the person, causes his primary instincts to take control and rationality to be ignored in favor of instinctive emotional reactions. And when the person is facing some source of stress and resorting to alcohol, the way to get rid of that stress will be aggressive behavior!

Although, as mentioned, no clear interdependence has been achieved between genetic transmission and aggressive behavior, inherited violence appears in some studies to be possible. The essential role is that of the existence of certain abnormalities in the sex chromosomes, abnormalities transmitted to the child.

Thus, the presence of an extra chromosome would favor the appearance of violent behavior by the existence of deficiencies in the central nervous system. But these chromosome abnormalities are extremely rare, so the genetic inheritance cannot be described as a primary cause of violence.

It has only been found that men who have such an extra chromosome have below-average intelligence and lack of emotional control, factors that are extremely conducive to the adoption of violence as a way to manage a difficult situation.

But the term inherited violence should be used with caution, as it only reinforces the popular idea that "you have nothing to do with him, that's how he is from his mother", the idea that the aggressor is sick and therefore can not be helped. or made responsible for his actions - an extremely dangerous idea.

Most violent people are not mentally ill - this must be remembered - and their only common "disease" is alcoholism. Otherwise, it's all about social learning and some personality factors (which are only sometimes inherited) - low self-control, emotion, or emotional indifference.