The motivation for violence among adolescents

Abstract

Mobb ing is not, of course, a modern phenomenon. In one form or another it has been manifest throughout history. It also occurs in nature. Small birds will mob an owl as a defence of themselves or their young; wart-hogs will set upon a leopard that has been foolish enough to get itself surrounded while hunting. Many other examples could be given of the weak uniting against the strong in vicious communal attacks. Another kind of mobbing is found in both animal and human societies. This takes the form of turning upon a crippled or weakly member of the species. We might call this domination mobbing. A specifically human mode of mobbing derives from h a t r e d lynching. Mussolini ended strung up head downwards, and small mercy is shown to the members of a secret police once the power collapses that brought them into being. Mobbing among adolescents mainly takes the form of domination mobbing or hatred mobbing, which includes, of course, hatred arising from envy. Mobbing is liable to occur in all classes of society when circumstances encourage it. In medieval times apprentices on the rampage would sometimes turn on some hapless old woman. For hundreds of years, established members of a public school were liable to gang up against the new boys and torment them without mercy as a sort of initiation. Unpopular students at university were under risk of being hunted and debagged. In 18th century London, according to Burke, 1 mobs of wealthy young bucks turned on anyone weaker than themselves: Nobody who was alone was safe from their cowardly assaults. They attacked at random any unarmed person who was out after dark. They assaulted unprotected women; they drove their swords through the sides of sedan chairs; they pulled men from coaches and slit their noses with razors, stabbed them with penknives, ripped the coaches to pieces and, in some cases, killed. Today, Hell's Angels, mostly young men of working class origin, will half-kill one of their members who fails to show what is regarded as proper loyalty. A similar pattern of anti-social thuggery runs through all these instances. We may notice that this insensitive, brutal mauling of the weak and solitary by the gang is predominantly a masculine behaviour. This is still true of the mindless mobbing of our times, even though a few girls are now mimicking the bullying ways of some boys. If we are successfully to deal with bullying/mobbing in its various manifestations, we have to enquire into its motivation. Why does society produce bullies and mobbers? This leads us to two questions in particular. (a) What is the origin of the impulse to attack the weak? (b) What are the sources of fear and hatred that provoke such attacks? I have always found Alfred Adler to be the most useful psychologist when we seek for the roots of anti-social violence among adolescents. Adler 2 believed that, as we are all born, small and weak, into a powerful adult world, one of our first impressions of ourselves is of inadequacy. But, almost from the start of life, a child sets out to overcome this sense of inferiority by striving to make his, or her, mark in life, which involves challenging others.