ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes how, in the course of trying to understand and treat psychoanalytically a violent young man, he identifies a plot or narrative in his material which expressed an unconscious phantasy, a personal myth, namely that he was born of a violent intercourse between his mother and himself; no father was involved in his conception. The patient’s view of the pre-Oedipal mother was that she was utterly desirable and infinitely dangerous, and his view of the primal scene was that it was particularly violent and destructive. The author argues that in the psychoanalytic treatment of the violent patient one may have access to the core phantasy which is expressed in the act of violence itself and that these phantasies are related to the individual’s beliefs about his own procreation. He discusses the idea of a core phantasy in violence in relation to a second violent patient, a woman, whom he have also treated psychoanalytically.
