There is a moment, in the mind of the perpetrator, when the other person ceases to be a person. They become a mental image, an internal representation that no longer coincides with external reality.
It is at that moment that violence takes shape: not as a sudden gesture, but as an implosion of control, like a short circuit between emotion and identity. What the mind fears, it destroys.
In neuroscientific terms, destructive acts involving one’s partner are rooted in the loss of modulation between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex. When anger or fear exceeds the threshold of tolerance — often due to early experiences of disconnection, humiliation, or disorganized attachment — the brain enters a primitive mode, governed by the survival circuit. The amygdala becomes hyperactive, the body produces cortisol and adrenaline, and the flow of dopamine amplifies the feeling of urgency. The prefrontal cortex, the seat of moral judgment and impulse inhibition, is deactivated. What remains is a neurochemical storm devoid of cognitive control.
As Robert Sapolsky explains in his studies on aggressive behavior, violence is rarely an instantaneous explosion: it is an accumulation of dysregulation. A brain chronically exposed to stress, frustration, or feelings of helplessness becomes hypersensitive to stimuli related to loss or rejection. In a relational context, this sensitivity turns into abandonment terror, and the partner is perceived as a source of destabilization rather than support.
In some individuals, the emotional bond is built on an altered balance between oxytocin and dopamine—the two main mediators of bonding and pleasure. Oxytocin, which normally promotes trust and nurturing, becomes distorted when associated with experiences of fear or control: attachment becomes confused with the need to dominate in order to feel safe. In clinical terms, this is typical of ambivalent or borderline profiles, where emotional vulnerability masquerades as strength.
In this pattern, the partner is no longer a human being but an identity regulator: if they leave, they dissolve the self of the one who remains.
Stephen Porges’ research on vagal intelligence and polyvagal theory has shown how the autonomic nervous system reacts to relational threats in the same way it would react to physical danger.
When emotional security is perceived as threatened, the body activates fight, flight, or freeze responses. In individuals predisposed to violence, this response translates into a survival attack against the other, unconsciously interpreted as the source of pain.
Neuroimmunomodulation — the discipline that studies the interaction between the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems — shows that chronic emotional states also shape biological responses. Elevated levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and TNF-alpha, pro-inflammatory cytokines, have been linked to states of irritability, aggression, and depression. An inflamed brain is less able to regulate emotions and more prone to reactivity. It is no coincidence that many chronic aggressors have sleep disorders, substance abuse, or nutritional deficiencies that amplify neuroinflammation. Violence, before being a physical act, is a disease of the regulatory system: a loss of psychoneuroimmunological homeostasis.
Every brain is born predisposed to relationships, but it develops within a language. And if cultural language teaches that strength is dominance and vulnerability is weakness, the nervous system adapts accordingly. As Antonio Damasio pointed out, identity is a balance of somatic and cultural maps: the mind is built from the body, but the body learns what culture allows it to feel.
Male affective education—even today, in many societies—represses fear, tenderness, and dependence, favoring performance, control, and competition. This generates a form of empathic anesthesia: a reduction in the ability to perceive the pain of others as meaningful. It is not cruelty, it is disconnection.
Violence against women, from this perspective, is the end result of a process of transgenerational emotional illiteracy: a legacy that is transmitted not only through family models, but also through the very structure of language and collective representations. Every stereotype, every justification for control reinforces specific neural circuits, making inequality a biological habit.
On a clinical level, what is striking is the perverse symmetry: the aggressor feels empty and reacts by destroying what empties him. Many women, on the other hand, before being physically abused, are slowly disconnected: isolated from friends, reduced in language, constantly humiliated. The victim’s brain then enters a state of neurogenic freezing, similar to that observed in severe trauma: emotional and physical paralysis.
Recent studies show that this response is mediated by the periaqueductal gray nucleus and the dorsal vagal system—the same circuit that protects animals when they feign death to survive. It is not submission. It is a biological survival mechanism.
Effective prevention does not come from punishment, but from reconfiguring the relational mind. We need neuroaffective education that integrates psychology and neuroscience: teaching children to name emotions, tolerate frustration, and recognize limits as a space for dialogue.
It is not enough to teach respect: we need to build new neural maps of respect. Every time a child learns to calm down through words rather than force, their brain creates connections that, in adulthood, will become empathic skills and the ability to control themselves. The principle is neuroplastic: the brain is transformed by experience. And if society provides experiences of respect, inclusion, and emotional responsibility, biology follows.
Treating those who have committed violence does not mean justifying it. It means recognizing that the human mind, when it loses its sense of the other, is a sick mind. Therapies based on regulating the autonomic nervous system—such as the somatic approach, clinical mindfulness, psychotherapy integrated with biofeedback, or non-invasive vagal stimulation—show promising results in restoring the body-mind connection and reducing impulsivity.
Science confirms what culture has intuited for centuries: those who do not feel, destroy. Those who learn to feel can heal.
Violence against women is not a news story. It is a pathology of the human system. And as long as we continue to treat only the visible wound, ignoring the neurobiological and cultural ones, we will continue to produce disease.
“Civilization is not measured by what it builds, but by how it regulates its aggression.”
