Aggression and Violent Behavior 47 (2019) 21–28

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Aggression and Violent Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aggviobeh

Socially accepted violence by “agents of law”: Sublimation of aggression as a T

model
⁎
Efrat Even-tzura, , Uri Hadarb
a
Tel Aviv University, 5 Lazarus st., Tel-Aviv, Israel
b
Tel Aviv University and the Ruppin Academic Center, 5 Lazarus st., Tel-Aviv, Israel

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The term “Socially accepted violence” refers to the use of physical force in a manner that is perceived as le-
Sublimation gitimate in certain cultures. The exploration of psychological processes characteristic to those who carry-out
Aggression such forms of violence must, therefore, take into careful consideration the mutual influences between social
Violence constructions and the individual's psyche. This paper proposes a psychoanalytic study of a certain type of socially
Law
accepted violence, that which is committed by “agents of law” – members of institutions responsible for the
Freud
Psychoanalysis
execution of the state monopoly of violence. It examines the potential contribution of the underdeveloped
Freudian concept of sublimation – the directing of drive towards a socially valued goal. Ideas by Freud, Elias and
Girard regarding the elementary role of violence in social institutions servers to highlight the part of sublimation
of aggression in the complex psychology of individuals who carry out socially accepted violence in the name of
law.

As part of their duty, police officers sometime use electro-shock
weapons in order to restrain violent behaviors; prison guards use
physical force to restrict convicted felons' freedom of movement; staff
members of forensic psychiatric units sometime use physical restraining
means on dangerous patients. Such actions are sometimes criticized,
but in other instances, when they do not exceed reasonable use of
power, they may be perceived as appropriate and expected of the
aforementioned officials.
Now would it be accurate to claim that even when following reg-
ulations, such acts involve expressions of aggression? Would it be an
overstatement to ascribe the term “violence” to them, customary and
accepted as they may be in their institutional and social context? These
questions raise even additional difficulties regarding the use of force by
law-enforcement agents: do their actions produce significant psycho-
logical implications? Could these uses of physical force potentially elicit
unique anxieties that require unique coping mechanisms?
The core of the difficulty, we suggest, lies in the intricacies of the
topic of socially accepted violence. The intention of this paper is to pro-
pose a psychoanalytic exploration of this complicated problem, and to
examine how the Freudian idea of sublimation of aggression contributes
to its understanding.
1. Introduction: aggression and violence in psychoanalysis
The term “aggression” has been used in psychoanalytic literature
throughout the years to describe a wide range of psychological posi-
tions and behaviors, including actual violent actions – but mostly
phantasmatic hostile tendencies and symbolically-destructive actions.
Laplanche and Pontalis (1988[1967]) noted that in Freud's writings, the
German term Aggressivität was used alternately to refer to both potential
violence and actual violent behavior. A review of post-Freudian psy-
choanalytic literature shows that there has been much focus on

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: efrate@mail.tau.ac.il (E. Even-tzur), urih1@tauex.tau.ac.il (U. Hadar).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2019.01.005
Received 6 November 2017; Received in revised form 5 May 2018; Accepted 14 January 2019
Available online 08 March 2019
1359-1789/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
E. Even-tzur and U. Hadar
aggressive tendencies, feelings and phantasies. Nevertheless, it is still
relatively rare to find references to aggression in the sense of actual use
of violence (Yakeley & Meloy, 2012).1
Psychoanalytic ideas of violence in this narrow sense of the term,
that is, aggressive behavior that leads to body injury,2 can be found in
trauma literature on victims of violence (e.g. de Zulueta, 2006; Herman,
1992) and in the writings of psychoanalytically oriented therapists who
worked with particularly violent patients.3 However, not only that the
scope of literature on the psychology of perpetrators of violence is
limited, but it includes almost no references to demonstrations of so-
cially accepted violence, that is, violence that is not perceived as
transgressive.
Socially accepted violence can be defined as violence that is per-
ceived as legitimate by the social environment of executors of violence
(Even-tzur, 2018). Even though many definitions of violence assume a
negative moral judgment and view it as fundamentally illegitimate
(Bauman, 2002: 52), many authors criticized the inclusion of illegi-
timacy component in the basic conceptualization of violence (e.g.
Bowman, 2001; Collins, 2008; de Haan, 2008). Indeed, one can conjure
many examples of physical injury that are accepted and even valued in
certain societies, including customary norms in times of war, rites of
passage and educational means in various cultures, and various med-
ical, scientific, body care, entertainment and sports practices.
Another important and especially common example of socially ac-
cepted violence is the physical force used by “agents of law” – members
of institutions responsible for the execution of the state monopoly of
violence (Elias, 1996[1989]:175), including law enforcement officers,
members of security forces, prison guards, etc. This paper dedicates
special attention to this distinct type of socially accepted violence,
which is unique due to the special, paradoxical relation of the notion of
law to the notion of justice on the one hand and that of violence on the
other.4
The social acceptance of violence used by “agents of law” is implicit
in Max Weber's (1958[1921]) classic definition of modern states as
political entities whose rulers successfully claim a monopoly over le-
gitimate use of violence. The violent actions that agents of state law are
required to execute as part of their duty are often perceived as per-
missible and necessary, and are sometimes valued and rewarded – since
they are perceived as the almost-exclusive legitimate executors of vio-
lence.
1
It is even more rear to find psychoanalytic discussions on the psychology of
those involved in the application of non-direct or non-physical violence, such as
in cases of institutional violence or symbolic violence. Interesting conceptual
discussion on the topic, in relation to the role of legal judges, can be found in
Cover (1986); Cover's and other's discussions rely on the ideas of social psy-
chologist Stanley Milgram (1974) in regards to the role of the factor of distance
of violence-inflicting from the direct use of force. Another direction of the
discussion is taken by Scanlon and Adlam (2011), who uses Foucauldian ideas
to examine the psychologies of staff working in secure psychiatric settings.
2
It should be noted that violence is defined differently by various authors and
there is no single agreed-upon definition (Bufacchi, 2005; de Haan, 2008). For
analytical purposes, in the current paper violence is defined as a behavior that
involves physical injury and/or inflicting physical pain on a living-being. Other
definitions refer, for example, to injuries that are not directly physical, or in-
volve a component of intentional infliction of harm.
3
In a comprehensive paper on the psychoanalytic contribution to the un-
derstanding of violent behavior (Yakeley & Meloy, 2012), the authors referred
to several psychoanalysts who had written on violent psychopathic patients.
They also mentioned the noted Institute for the Scientific Treatment of De-
linquency, established in the UK in 1931, whose clinic treated psychopathic and
perverse patients. The review suggests that terms such as psychopathy, per-
version and personality disorders are central to psychoanalytic understanding
of actual violence (see also: Glover, 1960; Glasser, 1998; Kernberg, 1992;
Perelberg, 1999).
4 6
See, for example: Benjamin, 1921; for a broader discussion on these intricate
relations see: Even-tzur & Hadar, 2017.
22
Aggression and Violent Behavior 47 (2019) 21–28
This assumption of this paper is that it was not accidental that
psychoanalytic literature seldom attempted to understand the char-
acteristic psychological processes of those who carry-out socially ac-
cepted violence: by definition, such behavior is loaded with socially-
ascribed meaning, and as such it marks a complicated intersection be-
tween the psychological and the social. The discussion of this inter-
section is especially challenging for psychoanalysis, since generally
speaking, it was claimed to focus on internal reality and (despite more
than few attempts) often could not fruitfully account for the complicate
mutual influences between social constructions in external reality on
the one hand and the individual's mind, motives and behaviors on the
other (Castoriadis, 1997[1975]; Avissar, 2016).
This paper thus wishes to propose a psychoanalytic study of the
psychological processes characteristic of perpetrators of direct physical
harm, in a context in which the environment perceives the injury as
acceptable and legitimate since the perpetrators are official law en-
forcement representatives. For this purpose, we use the Freudian con-
cept of sublimation, and especially the underdeveloped idea of sub-
limation of aggression, in an attempt to examine if and how this
concept can contribute to unraveling the complex psychology of per-
petrators of socially accepted violence.
The Freudian concept of sublimation seems like a good candidate
for this task, since (as we elaborate next) it includes in it the principle of
directing the drive towards a socially valued aim. As such, it connects
intrapersonal with social aspects – a connection that, as aforesaid, is
essential for discussing socially accepted violence. However, the theo-
retical development of the sublimation concept in psychoanalytic lit-
erature is also lacking (Valdré, 2014), and it is almost impossible to find
extensive writing on sublimation of aggression. Therefore, this paper
uses related contributions from extra-analytic fields, which we propose
to read as corresponding with the Freudian idea of sublimation.
Based on the idea of sublimation of aggression, we make an attempt
to formulate the unique complexity of the demand from “agents of law”
to use violence as part of their duty, as well as to explore the unique
anxiety such a demand potentially elicits.
2. Sublimation of aggression according to Freud and his
successors
As aforesaid, even though the concept of sublimation is familiar and
common in psychoanalytic literature, it is considered an under-
developed idea that is still under significant dispute (Laplanche &
Pontalis, 1988[1967]; Valdré, 2014). Freud first mentioned sublimation
as part of his early drive theory,5 in an attempt to explain certain ac-
tions as the displacement of sexual drive into a nonsexual, relatively
distant aim that is considered as higher or is socially valued (Freud,
1905:178, 1908, 1910a:28, 54, 1910b:78, 1917). His main examples for
sublimatory activities included the investment in intellectual curiosity,
in religious, ethical or ideological ideas, as well as in artistic, profes-
sional and scientific endeavors. In other places, Freud (explicitly or
implicitly) ascribed sublimation not only to the displacement of the
drive's aim, but also to the substitution of its object (Freud, 1910b:123,
1923b:256, 1933a:97).6
5
Freud have famously changed his model of drives in 1920 and added the
concept of death drive which is sometimes manifested as an aggressive drive
(Freud, 1933a, 1933b; Laplanche & Pontalis, 1988[1967]); nevertheless, the
concept of sublimation was mainly discussed earlier, in relation to his prior
model. Thus, while highly relevant for a more comprehensive discussion of the
Freudian notion of aggression, an elaboration of the concept of death drive
would exceed the scope of the current paper. Yet, some of the relevant im-
plications are suggested through our discussion below on his 1930 and 1933
papers (which do not deal directly with sublimation, but, as we maintain, are
still instructive for our purposes).
As noted by Laplanche and Pontalis (1988[1967]), the meaning of the af-
finity and difference between the aim and object of the drive varies throughout
E. Even-tzur and U. Hadar
In later developments of psychoanalytic theory by Freud's succes-
sors, sublimation was described as a mature defense mechanism or
mentioned as a general description of healthy defenses that do not lead
to formation of neurotic symptoms and are not very costly to the psy-
chological energy economy, since the drives are channeled to socially
accepted directions instead of being inhibited and blocked (Fenichel, in
Hacker, 1972 and in Loewald, 1988). Others (Glover, 1931; Loewald,
1988) proposed a different approach and emphasized the development
of Freud's sublimation concept as tied to the ability to shift the direction
of the drive from external objects to internalized objects as part of the
formation of internal mental structures, as described in “The ego and
the id” (Freud, 1923a).
Another unsettled dispute in the literature concerns the question
whether sublimation of sexual drives requires their channeling to an
entirely nonsexual aim. In some cases, Freud clearly wrote of a new
nonsexual aim and used the term “desexualization” in the context of
sublimation (Freud 1908:187, 1910a:54, 1910b:78, 1917, 1923a,
1923b:256). Nevertheless, in other places he was less decisive and his
writing suggested that only primitive aspects of the sexual drive – not
all its aspects – are transformed in the sublimation process (e.g. Freud
1921:138–9; 1933a:97). Glover (1931:264) clarified that in certain
cases, such as in friendships, sublimation involves actions that do
gratify (even if only partially) the original sexual drive. Loewald
(1988), as part of his reservations regarding the term “neutralization”
proposed by Hartmann (Hartmann, 1955; Hartmann, Kris, &
Lowenstein, 1949) and following Freud and Winnicott, proposed in this
context that sublimation is not drive-neutral, but is related to an or-
ganization of excitation in which absolute discharge and gratification
are not essential elements in the attainment of pleasure.
Another component that elicited much criticism of the Freudian
conceptualization of sublimation and is of particular importance for our
current discussion is that of social judgment. Glover (1931) quoted
Bernfeld and others who argued that it is an unnecessary component of
the definition of sublimation, contributing to its ambiguousness due to
the incapacity to establish objective, universal standards for the ethical
valuation implied. A half century later, following the critical ideas
presented by Herbert Marcuse and others, Hacker (1972:219) also
noted the absence of a clear clinical or scientific criterion, and thus
believed that the social judgment component of sublimation should be
viewed as a “foreign body” that is external to psychoanalytic theory.
Instead, he proposed a definition of sublimation that is not based on
social evaluation – but on use of symbolic modes of expression, con-
trolled by the ego.
Hacker (1972:220) especially warned against the danger involved in
the social judgment component when taking into account the mod-
ification of the later drive model, presented by Freud in 1920, which
had led to a consideration of sublimation of aggressive drives and their
expression in a socially acceptable manner. He noted that under certain
circumstances crude aggression can be considered as socially accep-
table and as serving a higher aim.7 He warned that under such cir-
cumstances what is disguised as sublimation could actually justify ar-
bitrary and suppressive use of power.
Alongside his warnings, Hacker (1972:221) also noted that ac-
cording to his own definition, sublimation of aggressive drives plays an
important role in the establishment and maintenance of social institu-
tions and roles, and he mentioned the role played by the superego in
(footnote continued)
Freud's writing and is somewhat ambiguous. A discussion of the implications of
this difference for the concept of sublimation is beyond the scope of this paper.
In any case, Freud (1915:122) was consistent in his emphasis that the object is
the element of the drive that is most likely to change and be replaced.
7
Hacker (1972:219) also described a similar, but opposite possibility: a si-
tuation in which courageous social protestation is labeled as “acting out” only
because it is not considered popular in the societal main stream of that time.
23
Aggression and Violent Behavior 47 (2019) 21–28
this process.
Indeed, it turns out that Freud's theoretical development of the su-
perego should play a key role in the discussion of sublimation of ag-
gression. An examination of Freud's writings shows that he rarely ad-
dressed the issue of sublimation of aggression directly, despite the
increasing role aggression came to play in his theory following the
changes he introduced to his drive theory. However, his successors
understood his description of the superego as a psychological agency to
and through which the aggressive drive (too) is channeled – in ways
that, at least sometimes, lead to socially valued and nonpathological
expressions (Glover, 1931:291; Hartmann et al., 1949; Hacker, 1972;
Loewald, 1988).
According to Freud (1923a), the superego is an internal agency
identified with morality and responsible for the control and restraint of
the drives. It is established during the normal course of development in
the peak of the Oedipal complex as an internalization of parental pro-
hibitions, and according to Freud (1930:127), it is “a continuation of
the severity of the external authority, to which it [conscience] has
succeeded and which it has in part replaced”. Freud further wrote:
“First comes renunciation of instinct owing to fear of aggression by the
external authority […]. After that comes the erection of an internal
authority […] and hence come a sense of guilt and a need for punish-
ment. The aggressiveness of conscience keeps up the aggressiveness of
the authority” (Ibid:128).8
Freud ascribed the superego an important social role: when ex-
plaining how human social order is successfully maintained despite the
aggressive drive inherent in all human beings, he wrote that through
the superego, civilization sets up “an agency within him to watch over it
[individual's dangerous desire for aggression], like a garrison in a
conquered city” (Ibid:124). He explained that the self-control achieved
by the superego is expressed, among other things, in the ability to find
substitute objects for the drive (Freud, 1933a). This depiction highlights
the importance of sublimation in this process.
It can thus be concluded that behavioral expressions of sublimated
aggression can include behaviors that express aggressiveness and de-
structiveness in a symbolic and accepted manner, as well as forms of
socially accepted violence. The writings of some psychoanalytic authors
contain references to occupations such as meet-butchery and surgery as
socially accepted ways of channeling aggression in a process of sub-
limation (e.g. Hart, 1948:401).
As aforesaid, various authors (Bernfeld in Glover, 1931; Hacker,
1972; Kubie, 1962) noted that the social judgment component in the
definition of sublimation is problematic and pulls the rug out from
under the scientific pretension of psychoanalysis. However, in view of
Freud's arguments regarding the superego, it seems that it would be
more accurate to infer from the difficulties arising in the con-
ceptualization of sublimation that it is impossible to overcome the
complexity of the relationship between psychological and social
spheres, and to learn of sublimation's paradoxical position on the
border area between these two spheres. Indeed, various authors de-
scribed sublimation as an “eagle with two heads” – one head tied to the
individual's drives and the other to society (Valdré, 2014:13, 42, 48).
This view found its most far-reaching expression in the writings of
Castoriadis (1997[1975]), a Greek psychoanalyst and philosopher
working in France. Castoriadis criticized psychoanalytic writers who
adhered to the psychogenetic perspective, that is, a view that focuses on
the development of the individual mind separately from society and
ignores the influences of social institutions, social imagination and so-
cialization processes on the identificatory roles society presents to
8
The superego functions as an omniscient internal object, and Freud (1930)
explained that this practically implies cancellation of the difference between
intentions and actions. This was probably the main reason why classic psy-
choanalysis tended not to explore the distinction between violent actions and
aggressive phantasies.
E. Even-tzur and U. Hadar
individuals.
In this spirit, we now turn to an examination of what we can learn
on sublimation of aggression processes from Freud's phylogenetic
writings, that is, his writings on the development of civilization (most
importantly: Freud, 1913, 1930), in which he studied profoundly the
formative role violence played in social institutions. We argue that even
though sublimation was mentioned in these writings only incidentally,
they can teach us quite a lot about its relationship with socially ac-
cepted violence practices performed in the name of the law.
In order to enrich the insights that emerge from Freud's writing, we
present the ideas of two authors who also studied the elementary role of
violence in social institutions – the Jewish-German sociologist Norbert
Elias and the historian and philosopher René Girard. Despite some
significant differences, both Elias and Girard depicted in their writings
cultural-historic processes; both were explicitly or implicitly influenced
by Freudian ideas in their descriptions of crude violence's transforma-
tions into legal and sublimatory forms of violence. An examination of
this ensemble of ideas can promote the discussion of the psychological
processes characteristic of perpetrators of socially accepted violence,
who use violence as part of their duty, in the name of the law and social
institutions.
3. Sublimation of aggression and social law: from psychogenesis
to phylogenesis
In his phylogenetic writings, Freud described the development of
human civilization, which he presented as essentially parallel to the
“Oedipal story” of superego development in the individual. The story
begins with a primeval horde whose male members were subjected to
the oppressive, threatening rule of a tyrant father, who prohibited them
from having sexual intercourse with the female horde members.9 Later,
he described how the brothers united and jointly managed to murder
the powerful father and to liberate themselves from the burden of his
rule. Then, in order to successfully maintain a stable social life and to
refrain from exhausting internal rivalries, the brothers established new
social institutions, including sanctity and prohibition systems (totem
and taboo, respectively). Freud explained that, with time, the totem and
taboo system were transformed into cultural and moral values and
customs and into social institutions that served a similar functions, such
as religion and law.
This story implies displacement of aggression into alternative aims
and objects on two levels. On one level, as part of personal develop-
ment, the individual internalizes a critical psychological agency – the
superego – that displaces and channels some of the aggression inward;
experiences of guilt and an inclination for self-punishment thus created
enable self-restraint and allow the individual to take part in social life.
The common agreement of the brothers to each renounce the wished-
for exclusivity as to the “father's heritage” – and thus to partially re-
nounce the gratification of the drive – is what, according to Freud,
underlies civilization and characterizes modern society as well. At the
same time, in the social sphere, the unrestrained violence of the father –
that ruled social life in primordial times – is displaced and transformed
into an regulated, institutionalized system of law that is largely ac-
cepted by its subjugates.
Thus, it can be argued that in the sublimatory process of cultural
development, social law comes to occupy the place of the physical force
of the father. However, Freud (1933b:209) insisted that the origin of
the law lies in violence that ruled society in primordial times and that
9
Freud's writing on this subject has been subjected to extensive feminist
critique (see, for example: Pateman, 1988). The gender aspect raised by this
critique is especially relevant to the issue of sublimation of aggression, since the
social acceptance of violence is highly affected by differences in the socializa-
tion of boys and girls. However, the scope of this paper does not allow for a
thorough exploration of this important aspect.
24
Aggression and Violent Behavior 47 (2019) 21–28
“even today it cannot do without the support of violence”. In other
words, the external limitations imposed by social laws on the gratifi-
cation of the drives express internalization of the aggression of the
tyrant father: for example, in their prohibition of incest and murder,
these laws maintain the same limitations the father imposed on his
sons.
Thus, the collective sovereignty of the brothers' community, like the
rule of the father before it, controls its members through a suppressive
force that limits their freedom; however, now this force is perceived as
legitimate – as socially accepted violence. The ruling mechanism or-
ganizes the authorized and accepted expressions of aggressive behavior.
Freud (1930) noted, for instance, that through social laws and the ju-
dicial and penal system, society grants itself the authority to enforce the
law while using violence against criminals in the process.10
“Agents of law” are representatives of the social order who are
authorized to use this power. As such, they are trapped in a complicated
and confusing situation: on the one hand, the violence they are required
to use as part of their duty is authorized and is even considered essential
to the functioning of society. As it is moderated, regulated and socially
valued, this violence can be perceived as the result of successful sub-
limation of the aggressive drive, and therefore it is not expected to elicit
disturbing internal conflicts. On the other hand, following Freud, we
can recognize in this violence the remnants of the threatening, unruly
violence of the primeval father, and thus it can be expected that in
certain situations it will involve various intense and overwhelming
psychological experiences – from grandiose enthusiasm, envy, vindic-
tive hate and hostile competitiveness, to overwhelming fear, remorse,
shame and guilt.
In order to explore more profoundly the processes characteristic of
the paradoxical tension implied in this state of affairs, we now turn to
an examination of Norbert Elias' perspective on these ideas. Elias pro-
poses a historical perspective on the ideas Freud presented in his phy-
logenetic papers (Algazi, 2000), and while Freud related to an pri-
mordial mythical past, Elias relied on his study of historical primary
sources with the purpose of tracing important sublimatory processes in
the few hundred years long transition from the middle age to modern
times. In order to explain them, he presented an original integration
between the psychological processes described by Freud and the so-
ciological processes described by Webber, thereby making an important
contribution to the description of sublimation of aggression processes.
3.1. Elias: violence and civilizing
At the center of Elias' essay lies what he sees as an historical process
of civilizing (Elias, 2000[1939]). In his view, the civilizing process is
what had shaped Western modern society throughout the last few
centuries, which is expressed, among other things, in “pacification” – a
significant decrease in the levels of violence in both public spheres and
interpersonal behavior.11 His monumental research of manners and
courtesies and their transformations from the tenth century onward
(Elias, 2000[1939]) allowed him to describe the civilizing process as a
continuous sublimatory process in the social sphere. He recognized a
transition from norms of direct, bursting expression of aggressive drives
to norms of accepted behavior that require a more indirect and subtle
deliberate expression that is subjected to judgment or regulations and
prohibit direct expression of drives.
10
On a similar vein, following Walter Benjamin's discussion of the relation-
ship between violence and law, Derrida (1990:925) drew our attention to the
inclusion of the word “force” in the word “enforcement”, which “reminds us
that there is no such thing as law that doesn't imply […] the possibility of being
‘enforced’, applied by force”.
11
The notion of progress, which seems to lay at the heart of such claim
connecting modernity with peace, was widely attacked in the critical literature.
For a presentation of those critical ideas and their connection to Freudian
thought, see: Even-tzur & Hadar, 2017.
E. Even-tzur and U. Hadar
Elias emphasized the important role played by social and historical
processes in the formation of the ability and expectation for self-re-
straint, and emphasized in particular the gradual transition from rela-
tively isolated rural communities to urban communities that were in-
creasingly developing around the princes' courtyards in Europe. He
argued that this process involved increasing interdependence of in-
dividuals and communities, growing contact and proximity between
different sectors of society that competed over influence on centers of
power, and thus also involved an increased level of social supervision of
individuals' behavior. In addition, Elias referred to the historical es-
tablishment of a stable central rule, that is, the development of the
modern state as a mechanism that possesses monopoly over taxation,
surveillance of public space and of course, over supervision of author-
ized violence.
Elias described how later in historical development, external su-
pervision was converted to an expectation of increasing self-control,
without the need for heteronomous use of power. He showed how
changes in norms from the 16th century onward reflected a gradual
shift in the extent of self-control over drives that was required of “ci-
vilized people”. One of the expressions of this was a change in the way
manners guides of that period advocated the pursuit of social norms: as
opposed to justifications that were based on the presence of others and
on external judgments, which characterized texts of that genre in pre-
vious centuries, from that period onward, the presented justifications
relied on feelings such as shame, embarrassment and self-respect and
addressed one's internal voice or conscientiousness. The increased ap-
peal to these emotions is indicative, according to Elias, of assimilation
of the laws in the personality structure of the individual (Elias
1988[1981]; 1996[1989]).
The process described by Elias is thus the historical shaping of the
Freudian superego – the internal supervising agency that occupies the
place of external judgment as a means for restraining drives. Elias ar-
gued that the reluctance individuals began to express regarding the use
of physical violence, which expressed parallel changes in their per-
sonality structure, reflected internalization of the external limitations
imposed by the central government: he argued that “the taboo against
acts of violence is so deeply impressed upon adolescents in developed
state-societies, is in good part connected with the growing effectiveness
of the state monopoly of power” (Elias, 1988[1981]:180;
1996[1989]:176).
What kind of insight can be derived from Elias' view regarding the
socially accepted violence of “agents of law” and their psychology?
Firstly, despite his description of decreased violence as the central
outcome of the civilizing process, Elias clarified (similarly to Freud)
that not only that “civilization” and “violence” do not rule each other
out – but he even argued that social life and the pacification process are
in fact based on violence (Elias, 1996[1989]:461,n3). He pointed at
examples such as social forms that channel aggression in an in-
stitutionalized and restrained manner, such as sports competitions or
the “dueling” custom. In his later writings, he drew special attention to
what he called “executive organs” of the state monopoly of violence –
groups that specialize in and are authorized by the state to use physical
violence, primarily the military and the police (Elias, 1996[1989]:175).
According to Elias, the power at the disposal of “agents of law” is
two faceted. On the one hand, it allows for a collective state of pacifi-
cation that is beneficial to the general public, since it protects them
from fellow violent citizens and from external aggressive groups. On the
other hand, this power is dangerous – since it could come to serve the
narrow interests of a small group or be used against parts of society
itself. In other words, and in a direct connection to the ideas proposed
by Freud,12 Elias reminded us that the restraining and restrained
12
See, for example, this cite from Freud (1933b):
When human beings are incited to war they may have a whole number of
25
Aggression and Violent Behavior 47 (2019) 21–28
aggression might develop into unruly, crude violence, since the power
that is granted to “agents of law” for the benefit of the general public
could easily become expressed as an authoritative and oppressing force.
Elias did not put at the center of his discussion the psychological
aspects involved in the special situation of “agents of law”. Still, he
presented several important insights when he wrote on the contra-
dictory demands required of them: on the one hand, they are trained to
become experts in violence and harm, and their acts of violence are
considered as authorized, essential and are even valued and rewarded.
On the other hand, like others around them, they were raised to believe
in the socializing notions of pacification and civilization that tie violent
actions with punishment and nowadays lead many people to develop an
aversion towards using physical force, and even anxiety. This may re-
sult, according to Elias (1996[1989]), in expressions of psychological
imbalance, distress and internal conflict.
3.2. René Girard: the sacrificial crisis
Unlike Elias, Girard (1979[1972]) did not see his ideas on the re-
lationship between violence and sanctity as continuing and developing
those of Freud: not only did he express much contempt and fierce cri-
ticism of certain aspects of Freudian psychoanalysis, but he attempted
to address them directly and present an alternative. However, despite
Girard's tone and the differences between his theory and that of Freud,
we believe that his ideas regarding the role of aggression in the foun-
dation of human civilization can still be viewed as a creative reading of
Freud's writings that was greatly influenced by his insights.
Like Freud in his notion of hostile impulses (1905, 1913), and later
of the aggressive drive (1933a, 1933b), Girard believed that people
have an aggressive tendency. Even though Girard objected to drive
theory, he believed that when aggression is not actualized and thus not
gratified, it is expected to accumulate until erupting in a destructive
outburst. Also, similarly to Freud, Girard believed that the object of
violence is less important than the drive itself and that the aggressive
tendency is not tied to the original object that elicited it, but can be
converted and find gratification in relation to substitutive objects.
Girard especially emphasized the mimetic nature of violence, that
is, its origin in the human tendency for mimicry. He believed that the
human desire always imitates another desire, and that any such “con-
tagion” of passion necessarily leads to competitive rivalry and jealous
dispute that call for mutual violence. When he described the triangular
schema created by this process – one that includes a subject, a role
model (who is also a rivalry), and an object – Girard was directly re-
ferring to the Freudian schema of the Oedipal triangle, in which the
child faces the father who is, at the same time, a rival and a role model
for identification, and his desire – like his father's – is directed towards
the maternal object. However, in Girard's view, Freud's focus on the
“family romance” narrowed the phenomenon, since for him the Oedipal
triangle was only an example of the basic human mimetic triangle.
According to Girard, the mimetic nature of violence explains the
tendency of acts of violence to escalate and create more and more
violence, in an incessant cycle of violence, revenge and retaliation. He
believed that the “contagious” nature of violence is bidirectional and
therefore, one cannot exert violence or even come near violence
without submitting to it. In an atmosphere of all-embracing violence,
one cannot be a destructive aggressor without eventually becoming a
defeated victim.
Thus, Girard's proposal for understanding the origins and develop-
ment of human civilization sets “year zero in the history of human
culture” (Meloni, 2002:34) in a violent natural state of all-embracing
(footnote continued)
motives for assenting – some noble and some base […]. A lust for aggression
and destruction is certainly among them […] [I]t sometimes seems as though
the idealistic motives served only as an excuse for the destructive appetites.
E. Even-tzur and U. Hadar
war. According to the story he narrated, collective violence escalates
until reaching monstrous, disastrous dimensions – until the next mo-
ment of the story, in which a way out from the horrendous situation is
found. In the next, proto-social moment, collective violence is trans-
formed in the course of a spontaneous lynch against a scapegoat, an
arbitrary victim of homicide (not necessarily of patricide, as in Freud's
version). Due to aggression's basic ability to accept alternative objects,
the victim of this constitutive murder is posited, under arbitrary cir-
cumstances, as the object of violence instead of the entire community;
the all-embracing war of “each against another” is thus transformed
into the unified patterns of “all against one”. The primeval murder in-
duces appeasement due to a general catharsis resulting from the co-
ordinated, collective use of violence that expresses unanimity, and
peace persists for a while thanks to the fear of returning to the previous
awful state. A significant difference between this and the Freudian story
is that in Girard's depiction, the murder – the collective crime – does not
precede a period of raging violence and rivalry but follows it, serving as
its conclusion and its termination.
According to Girard, this initial transformation of the object of
violence (from “each against another” to “all against one”) underlies
the establishment of a new cultural order, meant to restrain aggression
and prevent the return to the violent cycle. The new social mechanism
is then established through another transformation of violence, in a
periodic ritual that reenact the cathartic sacrificial scene. The cultural
narrative of this sacrifice ritual implies that the chosen victim is the last
victim, one who draws to himself collective violence without there
being a subsequent act of retaliation. After the original arbitrary victim
that served as aim for aggression, violence is now channeled to another
object – a victim coming from the margins of society or one external to
it. Girard showed how the rituals of preparing the victim for sacrifice in
various societies were meant to create a notion that the victim does not
really belong to the community – in order to prevent the need to avenge
his death, which could potentially elicit a new violent cycle. At the
same time, the chosen victim should also not be too foreign to the
community, so that he could symbolize it and play a metonymic role in
the ceremony.
The violence in the sacrifice ritual is thus granted legitimacy and
social acceptance thanks to the social mechanism that organizes it. This
way, not only the object of the aggressive drive changes – but also its
aim, which is no longer absolute discharge: ritualistic violence is re-
strained by laws and prohibitions that become perceived as sacred. For
instance, Girard showed how in many communities, the arbitrary
victim is chosen and prepared according to meticulous rules. He further
noted that many religious systems include strict purity laws that oblige
priests that execute ritualistic violence, that is, the agents of regulated
violence.
Thus, as in Freud's views, for Girard as well, crude violence that has
been transformed into socially accepted violence is found at the heart of
civilization and serves as its foundation, despite its repression. Human
aggression is thus perceived by both Freud and Girard as an obstacle in
the creation of human common social system; at the same time, they
both view aggression as a central attribute of the social and legal me-
chanisms meant to cope with this troubling obstacle. All social in-
stitutions – religion and its rituals, but also cultural forms that express
other organizing rules, such as wars, carnivals, monarchic sovereignty
and even the contemporary judicial and penal system – are based, ac-
cording to Girard, on the violent act of sacrificing the atoning victim, at
the center of which lies actual gratification of violence – even if it is
limited, moderated and sublimated.
These institutions have in common the principle of containing and
“domesticating” violence precisely by using it, in a ritual in which what
is forbidden to all in everyday life is performed explicitly and jointly.
This depiction can be understood as describing sublimation of aggres-
sion in the cultural arena: the social mechanisms are used to regulate,
channel and discharge intense drives through socially accepted vio-
lence. The enacted violence is generative; it is violence that establishes
26
Aggression and Violent Behavior 47 (2019) 21–28
culture and law, creates social cohesion and maintains order and re-
lative peace.
According to Girard, the restraint of violence, maintenance of social
order and avoidance of regression to the terrible, all-embracing war
become possible thanks to the distinction between sacred, permissible
and beneficial violence that is authorized and ritualized – and pro-
hibited, “cursed” violence that is identified with the dangerous archaic
period of all-embracing war, seared in memory as cruel and undesired.
Indeed, one of the central ideas in Girard's quasi-mythical description is
the ambivalent view of violence, one that perceives it as possessing, at
the same time, destructive and life-giving aspects – and perceives the
boundary between these two aspects as slippery and dangerously thin.
For Girard, the sublimatory transformation of the mimetic, vindictive
violence to beneficial violence by social mechanisms is always at risk
for disruption, and the latter's constitutive forces always have in them
residues of the destructive forces of the former.
Another important aspect of social order, according to Girard, has to
do with the world of representations and concerns the myth that serves
to justify the social system. The central roles of the myth are to hide the
arbitrary nature of the original violence, to absolve society of the guilt
related to the primeval bloodshed and “baneful” violence, and to es-
tablish the legitimacy of those who exert accepted violence. Thus, even
though the original victim was chosen arbitrarily, the myth may
structure it in retrospect as evil (for instance, as a terrible, tyrant fa-
ther), as guilty, as being punished for breaking the law – even though,
in fact, he was murdered before a law has been established. In addition,
the myth may ascribe the original violence to a single mythological
protagonist and thus rid society of responsibility for it. Alternately, the
myth may establish a transcendental, sacred authority from which the
justification and legitimacy of accepted violence used by agents of so-
cial order is supposedly derived. It seems that in Girard's view, myth
and ideology play an important role in ensuring the success of the
sublimatory aspect of the victim sacrifice mechanism.
According to Girard, the combination of moderated violent prac-
tices and the myths that justify them with their regulating rules allows
society to ensure the “purity” of the socially accepted violence, to
maintain the distinctions necessary for the stability of the social order
and to prevent general deterioration to forbidden, destructive violence.
However, Girard (rather similarly to Freud, 1921) described historical
cycles of cultural order and disorder, and thus, he discussed the ex-
pected degeneration of any sacrificing system, the undermining of the
justifications of socially accepted violence that are at the heart of social
order and the weakening of the sanctity ascribed to it. He argued that
after a period of social and cultural stability (stability based on a ritual
involving a system of representations and rules that grant meaning to
socially accepted violence), the ignorance of the violence's arbitrariness
and meaninglessness is expected to fade.
In this unstable period, members of society are increasingly exposed
to the idea that the violence involved in the sacred ritual is illegitimate
and that the justice principles on which society is based serve as a weak
rationalization for vengeance and primeval discharge of aggression.
Girard described this process in terms of disillusionment and demysti-
fication. However, he explained that ignorance of the meaninglessness
of violence is essential and that understanding the system is equal to its
dismantling; therefore, the disillusionment actually contributes to the
distrusting of social institutions and thus leads to the downfall of the
violence restraining mechanism. Girard named this downfall period
“sacrificial crisis”. It is characterized by increasing imbalance between
the two aspects of violence – the harmful and the beneficial – and
therefore, by a threat of quasi-epidemic spreading of the “cursed” vio-
lence and by increased danger of returning to the primeval state of
unruly violence.
Girard too did not directly discuss the subjective experience of
“agents of law” who execute ritualistic violence in the name of society;
however, his writings clearly suggest that when the collective legiti-
macy that is granted to the violence involved in the sacrifice ritual
E. Even-tzur and U. Hadar
weakens, the purifying rituals protecting the performers of the cere-
mony from becoming “stained” with the despised, “contagious” vio-
lence lose their power. In this period, the violence that has been con-
sidered until then socially accepted increasingly becomes perceived as
distorted and receives less and less legitimacy. Then, the symbolic
participation of society members in the “ritual” decreases, and with it
also their shared sense of responsibility for the violence. Thus, in-
creasingly more responsibility – or guilt – comes to rest on the shoulders
of “agents of law”.
Summary
Like Freud, who has influenced them, the ideas presented by Elias
and Girard identified violence as the underlying foundation of human
civilization. As in Freud's, in their writings one also finds discussion of a
transformation process of crude violence into regulated and socially
accepted expressions of violence, that is, social processes that allow for
sublimation of aggression. As presented in this paper, their views have
in common the ascription of central role to social and phylogenetic
processes in the mechanism of sublimation of aggression.
As mentioned above, throughout the years there have been voices in
the psychoanalytic literature that presented the social judgment com-
ponent in the definition of sublimation as one that leads to bias in the
scientific understanding of the individual mind, and thus wished to
“purify” the concept from its social aspects (Bernfeld, in Glover, 1931;
Hacker, 1972; Kubie, 1962). In contrast, the (rather Freudian) ideas of
Elias and Girard propose a view that assumes a strong, inseparable
connection between the individual mind and social conventions, myths
and practices. The sublimation concept, which is often described as an
intrapsychic mechanism, is thus revealed as an expression of the com-
plex relationship between the individual and society.
This complexity is expressed, among other things, in the fact that
sublimation depends, by definition, on agreed-upon collective judg-
ment regarding the value of the alternative aim – judgments that are
naturally unstable. As such, it exposes the individuals who use it to
conflicts and distresses that are affected by changes in the social sphere.
It seems that “agents of law” who execute socially accepted violence as
part of their duty are particularly vulnerable to these historical shifts in
social conventions and in the meaning granted to the social institutions
they represent.
Elias (1996[1989]) directly addressed the internal conflict inherent
to the contradicting demands posed before “agents of law”, who serve
as representatives of the state monopoly over legitimate use of violence.
Despite the sublimatory function involved in the legitimacy granted to
moderated state violence, Elias saw the undermining potential involved
in the permission to use violence that is granted to “agents of law”. The
historical superego development, which Elias identified following
Freud, positions violence as the breaking of a social taboo, and it could
therefore become a source of anxiety expressed in guilt, shame and a n
inclination for self-punishment.
The ideas of Girard, who also seems to have been influenced by
Freud but went further than Elias in the development of his ideas, help
to identify the context in which this anxiety is expected to arise all the
more forcefully. In his terms, “agents of law” face danger that is in-
herent to the contagious nature of violence. He argues that this quality
of violence undermines the stability of the boundary between bene-
ficial, regulated violence and baneful, unrestrained violence, or be-
tween sanctity and sin. Indeed, “agents of law” have at their disposal
sublimatory cultural coping mechanisms meant to protect them from
the contaminating aspects of violence; special “purifying rituals” serve
as a part of a meticulous system of rules and myths that grant legiti-
macy to their moderated violence. Still, Girard described periods of
“sacrificial crisis”, in which the myths and social involvement in the
ceremonies are undermined, and the legitimacy of socially accepted
violence weakens. Rather similarly to Freud (1921), Girard assumed
these phenomena reoccur cyclically through history: he argued that,
27
Aggression and Violent Behavior 47 (2019) 21–28
sooner or later, in every society periodic sacrificial crises are expected
to arise, leading to escalation of violence. In these periods, the internal
conflict of “agents of law” is expected to intensify, since the sublimation
they rely on loses its power.
Thus, despite differences in their views and in some of their con-
clusions, Freud, Elias and Girard share the warning from the destructive
aspects of violence that are involved not only in unconstrained ex-
pressions of violence but also in its moderated and socially accepted
forms. They stressed the paradox inherent in the violent nature of the
social mechanisms that are meant to limit and regulate violence. Thus,
their ideas served to deepen our understanding of psychological pro-
cesses characteristic of “agents of law” who are responsible for exerting
these mechanisms.
Their writings are indicative, on the one hand, of the unstable
nature of the sublimation of violence mechanism, which rests on the
unreliable support of social conventions that are subjected to historical
changes. At the same time, the attempt to use their writings to under-
stand the psychology of “agents of law” who use socially accepted
violence teaches that the aspiration to leave social reality outside psy-
choanalytic understanding of the individual mind – and especially
outside the definition of the sublimation mechanism – is doomed to
failure.
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Efrat Even-tzur is a PhD candidate at the School of Psychological Sciences in Tel-Aviv
University. She is also a clinical psychologist and a fellow of the Minerva Humanities Center
at Tel-Aviv University. Her research explores the meeting points between the psycho-
analytical, the political and the ethical. Her doctoral work deals with psychoanalytic
perspectives on perpetrators of socially accepted violence. She has published in Journal
such as The Psychoanalytic Review, The International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, and The
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies.
Uri Hadar is professor of psychology in Tel Aviv University and the Ruppin Academic
Center. He received a BA in mathematics and psychology and an MA in clinical psy-
chology from Tel-Aviv University, and a PhD in experimental psychology from the
University of London. His research interests include Relational and Lacanian psycho-
analysis, functional neuroimaging of language and coverbal gesture. He is the author of
two Hebrew books on psychoanalytic psychotherapy. His third book, Psychoanalysis and
social involvement: Interpretation and action, was published in 2013 by Palgrave Macmillan.