The Effects of Exposure to Political Violence on Children: Does Violence Beget Violence?

Concerns have been expressed about the effects of years of exposure to political violence on South Africa's children. In particular there are fears that children have been dehumanized and that they believe that violence is an acceptable way of resolving differences. In spite of the common-sense status of this idea there is considerable disagreement about it within the international research literature on the psychological effects of violence. In this article it is argued that much of this disagreement arises out of the lack of clarity about what is meant by the question ‘does violence beget violence?’. The author critically evaluates the different theoretical perspectives within which the question might be posed and their relative usefulness in understanding the effects of political violence in South Africa. It is also argued that the most useful way of understanding the relationship between the experience of violence and subsequent violent behaviour is not in terms of direct causality but rather in terms of the more complex interrelationships between intrapsychic and social factors. In this process the question is shifted out of the prior simplistic form within which it is most often understood and reconstructed within the more sophisticated explanatory paradigm of psychoanalysis.