The body and sublimation in a violent male offender

Abstract

A case study of a violent young man called Stan is presented to understand the nature and function of his violence as he negotiated his way through anxieties about heterosexuality and passivity stimulated by his adolescence. Stan’s early history and the clinical material are used to illustrate Armando Ferrari’s concept of the Concrete Original Object. As his psychotherapy progressed he utilised his talent for drawing to sublimate his violent activity into violent images, which, in turn, enabled him to reflect on his anxieties. Stan’s violence subsided and he was able to engage in a vocation and develop a long-term relationship with a woman.

Keywords:

• puberty
• incestuous phantasies
• sublimation of aggression
• bisexuality
• body horror
• comic book superheroes

Notes

1. Much of the clinical material in this paper first appeared in Campbell (2000).

2. See the Introduction by Robert Hinshelwood (Ferrari, 2004) for a more comprehensive account of Ferrari’s model of early development.

3. For a more thorough discussion of Freud’s view of bisexuality, I would recommend Ferraro (2001). Freud’s clinical evidence from his treatment of a case of homosexuality in a female adolescent indicated that an inherited bisexuality was evident in varying degrees of masculinity and femininity throughout development.