Can denouncing violence actually promote it?
Violence spreads like a contagious disease. How can we prevent it?
Goethe's novel – The Sorrows of Young Werther – published in 1774, tells the story of a young man who committed suicide because of a love affair that ended in heartbreak. The publication of this book had a devastating effect on society at the time. In addition to the tremendous success it brought to Goethe, it also generated a wave of suicides across Europe to the point that, in some countries, the authorities simply banned the book.
David Philips, a famous American sociologist, in his research on the power of "evocative" language, called this phenomenon the "Werther effect". Philips examined how the "Werther effect" manifests itself in modern times. How, for example, the story of a suicide that makes the front page of a newspaper will increase the number of suicides among the readers of that newspaper. He even found striking similarities between this first widely commented suicide and those who followed it in terms of the age and social class of the victims.
But Philips did not stop there, he continued his research to show a few years later that the "Werther effect" also applies to other events, such as acts of violence or heroism. This requires only two preconditions: (a) that the initial act is widely publicized; and (b) that the reader or viewer resembles or is under the impression that (s)he resembles the actors of the original story. The evidence provided by Philips clearly shows the strength of these identification mechanisms and their evocative power.
Without denying or minimizing in any way the seriousness of acts of violence that we must denounce – acts that require strong action at many levels – having these episodes of violence especially involving young people make the headlines in the media and describing the facts in a very visual and evocative manner serves the cause of neither the victims nor society in the broad sense. The risk would even be to trigger a "Werther effect" through projection and identification mechanisms that call for emulation behavior among certain young readers convinced that they find themselves - aggressors or aggressed - in a story that affects and concerns them.
Stating a fact is something and describing it in detail is something else. It would be more useful to focus on measures to improve the behavior of Arab youth in our all too permissive environment. "The most important thing," said a prominent psychotherapist, "is what you will do with what others have done with you. " A heavy responsibility for all of us and especially the media.
Adapted from an article by the late Bernard Fattal, therapist from the Palo Alto School
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