THE EFFECTS OF EXPOSURE TO POLITICAL VIOLENCE ON CHILDREN - DOES VIOLENCE BEGET VIOLENCE

Concerns have been expressed about the effects of years of exposure to political violence on South Africa's children. In particular there ar e fears that children have been dehumanized and that they believe that violence is an acceptable way of resolving differences. In spite of t he common-sense status of this idea there is considerable disagreement about it within the international research literature on the psycholo gical effects of violence. In this article it is argued that much of t his disagreement arises out of the lack of clarity about what is meant by the question 'does violence beget violence?'. The author criticall y evaluates the different theoretical perspectives within which the qu estion might be posed and their relative usefulness in understanding t he effects of political violence in South Africa. It is also argued th at the most useful way of understanding the relationship between the e xperience of violence and subsequent violent behaviour is not in terms of direct causality but rather in terms of the more complex interrela tionships between intrapsychic and social factors. In this process the question is shifted out of the prior simplistic form within which it is most often understood and reconstructed within the more sophisticat ed explanatory paradigm of psychoanalysis.