ABSTRACT
The United Nations conventions on Genocide include in their definition, the clause 'causing serious mental harm' and other statements which relate to the destruction of ethnic groups by means less dramatic than wholesale slaughter. The definition of genocide in the context of violence is so consistent that the people tend to place changes in the nature of groups by means other than annihilation into categories labelled ‘natural forces’, or ‘social problems’. The difference between psychological genocide and adaptation processes is that although both proceed through all of the levels of social control, psychological genocide is the mandated destruction of a group as such with the sanctions of the social control systems and the objective of ‘outlawing’ their capacity for perpetuating their own identity. It is important to note that the antecedent conditions of genocide include all of the dynamics concomitant with colonialism, prejudice and racism.
