ABSTRACT
No disregard for the role of other factors in the aetiology of violence is implied by the author's decision to write on how psychic indigestion can and does account for many acts of violence. Psychically indigestible experiences are varied. Sometimes something is witnessed, like a motor accident in which one or more persons are killed or maimed, or perhaps a train or air crash. The difference between individuals who have a worse prognosis lies in their capacity to feel sad and regretful rather than to develop an increasingly paranoid attitude when psychic pain related to what they wanted to inflict upon someone else becomes severe during therapy. Depressive anxiety on the other hand is about anxious regret over harm done by the self in phantasy or in external reality to one's good objects—including principles. The length and intensity of therapy vanes with individual need, of course, but in my view only psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy affords satisfactory results in the long run.
