10. Latent and explicit forms of aggression and violence

Latent forms of violence are frequently used in some social institutions, for example psychiatric hospitals. Therapists in Juliano Moréira Hospital demanded that patients respect the rules and that insubordination can have painful consequences. Therefore, they eat, sleep or take showers as directed and in many cases they are not allowed to express emotions in the way they would like to. Their emotional reaction is mostly perceived as a deviation or pathology, and is sanctioned as such. The state control and supervision, which are through modern technology implementation increasingly similar to the Foucaultian panopticum, are also latent forms of violence. However, violence in social institutions is not always latent, which is obvious in the cases of war or military and police interventions. Other forms of transparent violence are also fights, murders, rape and other criminal acts. Notwithstanding if violence is transparent or latent, any form of violence causes harm to victims. Violence may be the domain of the individual, the group or the institution, present in all segments of social life. 

Aggressive behaviour may be latent or transparent. An individual with aroused aggressive tensions may express his feelings about a situation in an extroverted and honest way, or the aggression is depressed, channelled or introverted. The way to express aggressive aspirations depends on the individual's personal characteristics, education, cultural factors, socio-political-economic situation, social status, gender, age and other factors. Geen (1998, p. 7) has reviewed the three variables as sex, personality and socialisation within a norm-setting system. With individuals who introvert their aggressive aspirations, such tensions might become symptoms and might be expressed in the form of illness, but I will argue about this issue in the chapter on depression. At this point I only argue that aggressive behaviour, especially latent aggressive behaviour, does not necessarily cause harm to the others.