In response to your post, I wholeheartedly agree with your assertion
that the inability to draw out violent behaviours and tendencies in no ways
correlates to these individuals not being affected by violence. That being
said, it is also worth noting the ambiguity of violence and how violent
behaviour in one context can very much differ in the next. For instance, if I
were to walk down the street and hit someone out of the blue that would be
considered by most as violence, but if I were to imbue this hitting in a
different context, say, in response to being robbed, this would then be seen as
self-defense.
Violence is pervasive throughout many mediums—television, the Internet,
newspapers, etc—and although there exists many individuals who do not exude
violent behaviours, one cannot make an explicit discernment as to what happens
on an internal and subjective level. As you noted while drawing upon Sigmund
Freud that people respond to their inner drives in three different ways
(expression, repression or sublimation), by extension, the same can be applied
to the reception of violence: some directly exhibit physical, on-the-surface
violent and aggressive tendencies; others more subtle through verbal means such
as gossip and the sort. There are even those to respond to violence by inducing
harm on their own bodies (i.e. cutting, excessive dieting, negative thoughts).
Finally in addition to your notion of the difficulty to detect creative
forms of aggression, I feel that one must always keep in mind: correlation does
not prove causation. Sure there is a very strong link between watching violence
on television—or any media outlet for that matter—and aggressive acts, but
there are a plethora of different human dispositions that to generalize these
results as being conclusive for everyone would be quite an irrational claim.
The unconscious is, as you phrased it, working in ways that is harder for us to
see.
