The objective of this article is to show how the phenomenon of violence, sometimes associated with the behaviour of alcoholization and to alcohol-dependence problems, cannot be studied except in the socio-historic context in which they occur. The approach will be centered here on the co-emergence and mutual reinforcement of intrapsychic and social phenomena in which alcoholic individuals are simultaneously involved. We shall see, through the study of a bibliographical example, that these phenomena of violence are not reducible to the biochemical phenomena related to the pathogenic consumption of alcohol. In many cases, the existence of sociopsychic conflicts is at the origin of this type of violence. We shall see that the method of life histories in group is a privileged approach for studying these phenomena.
alcoholism; violence; life histories