Abstract

It might be left to the specialist philosophers to act as spokesmen and mediators in this matter, once they have largely succeeded in reshaping the original relationship of mutual aloofness and suspicion which obtains between the disciplines of philosophy, physiology, and medicine into the most amicable and fruitful exchange.What is the relation between violence and the unconscious in a world increasingly dominated by representations that are fictional yet might turn out to have effects that are all too real? Does an affective participation in a violent spectacle—say, a theater play, a movie, or a computer game—serve as a cathartic therapy that purges the subject of pathological affects? Or do such images...