Dr Beales makes several important points and I disagree with none of them, but discussion of each would have taken the length of my editorial beyond its permitted limits. The absence of a male figure in the developmental history of the child may contribute to the emergence of violence because the dominant role models are more likely to be violent peers rather than mature adults, or, as I have suggested (Reference Fonagy, Pfafflin and AdsheadFonagy, 2003), because of the deficit in social perspective-taking that being deprived of the opportunity to identify with a person observing one's relationship with another can generate.

I agree that psychopathy is a helpful clinical concept and that even among children we find those whose aggressive behaviour is not associated with the behaviour of attachment figures (Reference Wootton, Frick and SheltonWootton et al, 1997). However, an overemphasis on constitutional predisposition is risky, insofar as it can lead to an underestimation of both the importance of psychosocial factors in the causation of violence and the opportunities for change.

I particularly regretted that I did not have space to explore the effect of group factors on violence. The anonymisation of the individual by the large group is a risk factor, specifically because it removes the inhibition that the developmental process of enculturation imposes on a natural human propensity for violence. Examples such as Rwanda or the current proliferation of terrorist attacks palpably demonstrate how a group process can obliterate personal awareness of the other as an intentional being, reducing others to the status of stereotypes invested with powerful negative valences. The ability of the suicide bomber to bring a violent end to his or her own life at the same time as destroying those of others suggests just how easily undermined the developmental process that brings our capacity for violence under control might be. To isolate the violent individual as somehow inherently and radically different from the rest of us, which a clinical perspective can sometimes do (Reference HeringHering, 1997), may also serve to reassure us that we are at no risk of perpetrating mindless violence. Tragically, history tells us that this is simply not so. Violence is impossible for us to contemplate precisely because it is ultimately an act of humanity (Reference AbrahamsenAbrahamsen, 1973).