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This paper discusses the genesis of the death drive in its various forms of violence. It argues that the potential for violence in psychic life does not serve this death drive. The paradigm of violence is embodied by the passage to the act, or the moment when the drive bursts forth, discharging excitation. This passage to the act is related to paranoid fantasies that threaten the subject’s sense of identity. Winnicott’s approach to delinquency gives a central place to the mother-baby relationship.