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Psychoanalytic discoveries regarding man's aggressivily, the viability of the belief of pacifists that it can be controlled simply by an effort of will, and the role of the superego in coping with man's aggressive and hostile urges are all detailed in this paper. A n attempt is then made to show how the law—both by blocking and helping to express man's anger and hostility—gives the superego much-needed help in this task. The conclusion is advanced that the law offers to pacifists and the doctrines they espouse their greatest chance of survival in today's strife-torn world.

The notion that law is definable as the “command of a sovereign” is clearly unsound. Yet even so, it remains a popular view of the law. This paradox is examined here in the light of psychoanalytic theories and discoveries concerning man's primordial and individual history. An attempt is made to show that the fallacious belief that law is the “command of a sovereign” reflects the influence of this history.

This article offers a psychoanalytic explanation of why blacks commit a disproportionate number—half—of violent crimes in the United States. Slavery and its crippling psychological effects are discussed, as are the devastating psychological consequences of the hundred years of discrimination, segregation, and antiblack terror that followed. The conclusion reached is that black aggression was stimulated inordinately by all this, while simultaneously the black superego was decisively weakened and rendered incomplete and conflicted. These psychological difficulties have persisted and become endemic among the poor, uneducated, lower-class blacks who populate the rotting core of many American cities. Unlike their parents and grandparents, however, they no longer fear imminent bodily harm or death at the hands of violent whites and no longer turn their aggression back upon themselves and become depressed, but feel free to externalize their aggression in periodic riots and violent crime. The solutions suggested in this article include the elimination of social policies that stimulate the aggression of blacks by threatening their sense of self-worth, and the promotion of social policies that help to strengthen their superegos; e.g., minimizing the number of fatherless black households. Ways of using the criminal law to reinforce the black superego are also considered.