Violence is a matter that has been present in researchers´ interest for a long time. Therefore, the themes of human aggressiveness and of the psychological aspects associated to the aggressive impulses have been object of study of the psychoanalytic theory. The present article intends to present some psychoanalytic contributions on the theme of violence. This way, classic authors such as Freud and Klein, including Bolwby's attachment theory and contemporaries authors like Kernberg and Fonagy are considered in this work. It is noticed that psychoanalysis has trodden a long way in the attempt of understanding the psychological functioning of the violent individual, constituting a referential system that can offer interesting subsidies for the identification of the intrapsychic aspects involved in aggression.
Psychoanalysis; Object relations; Attachment behavior; Violence
