On violence in health care: between violence against caregivers and violence of care

After indicating some psychological characteristics of violence, the article focuses in particular on the phenomena of social, institutional, and political violence, and points out that after Freud’s writings on war and the psychology of the masses, this topic has been somewhat neglected by psychoanalytic research. It then points out that in recent years, after 9/11, great interest has been aroused on the topic by psychoanalysts and group analysts. The socio-cultural roots of violence are explored, and the role exerted jointly by the norms and pressures of groups and institutional cultures as well as the passive-dependent and conformist tendencies of individuals. The article then deals specifically with violence in healthcare contexts, exploring violence targeted against caregivers, particularly after the COVID pandemic, both by users and by the media and public opinion, on a physical, verbal, and psychological level, as well as institutional violence – which fuels conflicts between the various actors in the health care system – and violence intrinsic to the processes of care, which often require the patient to undergo objectively distressing or coercive measures and conditions. In the concluding section, some approaches and methods that have proved useful in preventing these forms of violence are indicated.