Books

Violent children and adolescents: Ways to reach them Psychodrama and self-management training with violent children and adolescents

5th June 2026

Violent children and adolescents:
Ways to reach them Psychodrama and self-management training with violent children and adolescents

Author: Roger Schaller

The work was published in 2005 by Juventa Verlag Weinheim and Munich.
ISBN 3-7799-2062-X
It is no longer available and has not been reprinted.
The copyright now belongs to the author Roger Schaller.

Foreword

This is actually an afterword. After years of theoretical and practical work on anti-violence training and questions of morality, this book came into being. When I had practically finished the manuscript, the question arose: why are you doing this? My wife, who is also a
psychologist, gave me a short, concise answer to this question yesterday at dinner: “Because of your profile neurosis”.
I think this is (not entirely) wrong. That is why I would like to give my afterword as a foreword here: I have been working in education and behavioural training for over 20 years. Always with marginalised groups who are not thirsty for education and behavioural change: the mentally ill, the unemployed, drug addicts, alcoholics, traffic offenders, victims of violence, children and young people with severe behavioural problems. Time and again, the life stories and events I witnessed have preoccupied me, sometimes making me sad and often angry. But what has always weighed most heavily on me are the life stories that trigger powerlessness and hopelessness in those affected. Witnessing how people have no strength and no idea how to get out of their mess is extremely stressful. Even more difficult for me to watch is how people can accept obvious disadvantages, poverty, lack of opportunity and injustice.
I cannot do that. I am a fighter and a user of force. For example, I have never and would never allow my children to be severely disadvantaged, abused or even starved. I would use any form of force to protect my children.
Thanks to my education, my good decision-making skills, my professional status and the good fortune of living in a rich and well-structured country, I have never had to resort to serious physical violence. However, I am far from teaching disadvantaged children and young people not to use violence. Violence is not a disease, but part of our behavioural repertoire.
“Based on the findings of comparative behavioural research, there is reason to believe that we humans have a predisposition to react with violence in hopeless situations. Those who did not do so had no chance of passing on their genetic material. Conversely, whoever our ancestors were, a propensity for violence was part of their behavioural repertoire. Violence is not a disease of the poor. But the combination of poverty, powerlessness, lack of opportunity and injustice is explosive (…). From this perspective, the willingness to use violence against others and oneself is no more a disease than the vitamin C synthesis deficiency that affects us all. Despite this fundamentally fatal metabolic defect, we are generally symptom-free because we know what our nutritional context must look like in order not to develop symptoms. If this context is not right, i.e. if vitamin C is lacking, things get progressively worse.” (Spitzer, p. 227)