Human Destructiveness

Investigates the pscyhological, biological, and social foundations of cruelty and aggression, and explores the impact of latent and overt paranoia, depression, and emotional repression on contemporary man

British psychiatrist Storr brings a cool, clinical approach to this analysis of murderers, rapists, sadomasochists and child abusers. Arguing that aggressive personality disorders have multiple causes--broken homes, cruel parents, disturbed brain function, etc.--he maintains that acts of violence and destructiveness involve power relationships, and often express repressed anger caused by ill treatment in childhood. Pondering atrocities such as the Holocaust, Vietnam massacres and lynchings in the U.S. South, Storr blames the propensity of the "average citizen" toward violence partly on the tendencytendency? to treat others as inferior, alien or less than human. His prescriptions to reduce violence include alleviation of poverty and the creation of socially valued work. This concise, provocative, therapeutic study expands and updates Storr's out of print 1972 book of the same title.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.