Violent behavior is a symptom. It is important, as a mental health provider, to keep one’s countertransference feelings under control, violent patients, probably more than any others, lead to all types of countertransference difficulties usually related to the therapist’s difficulties with his own hostility towards the patient. Mental health people should try not to engage in scapegoating but realize that violent patients are people who have problems with violent behavior. They are not inherently different from other patients or members of a different species. (30 pp.)