38

In this article I look at the instinctual drive coordinates of violent domestic tendencies within the framework of a psychoanalytic psychotherapy in a care unit in a prison setting. I put forward the hypothesis of a sadistic link with the object which meets its limit on the threshold of the latter’s vacillation. The trajectory of violence is marked by several phases: first, there is a phase of sadistic tendencies, followed by a tipping point which opens the way towards an economic accumulation of the destructive force resulting in “mastery mania”. This tendency comes up against the suffering suddenly imposed on the subject by the danger of the object’s disappearance. A fourth phase is marked by self-reproaches with a melancholic turn. These elements throw light on a processual perversion in the drive coordinates inverting aim and tension, a tension that becomes a fetichized tendency.