Short abstract:

A professional approach to violence and aggression, de-escalation brings psychological knowledge to a host of different situations. Through ethnographic engagement with de-escalation practices and trainings, I query how psychological knowledge is put to work in this context, and to what effects.

Long abstract:

De-escalation is frequently practiced, trained and mandated in German health and social welfare services to mitigate the risk of staff injury and improve care provision. As a professional approach to violence and aggression, de-escalation brings psychological knowledge to a host of different situations, providing explanatory models of aggression and giving a language to neurophysiological, embodied and social processes that precede a violent incident. In this contribution, I draw on ethnographic engagement with de-escalation practices and trainings to query how psychological knowledge is put to work in de-escalation efforts, and to what effects.

I show that psychological knowledge takes on specific shapes when it is mobilized to respond to escalating situations as unique, urgent and highly contextual. Trainers foster experiential, pragmatic, and heuristic modes of knowing through psychological theories by working with examples, exercises and a plurality of explanatory models. In this sense, the shape of psychological knowledge attunes to context. However, psychology also serves to contextualize escalating situations: It is mobilized by trainers to locate aggression not simply in individual persons, but understand its genesis in the context of what is often described as ‘structural violence’, thus drawing attention to tension and frustration inherent in institutional life and in relations of power and dependency. Yet again, as a situated intervention, de-escalation furthermore targets emotions such as anger as potential security risk, with trainers referencing stress research and advising particular communication strategies to reduce risk. Following material-semiotic approaches, I examine psychological knowledge in de-escalation in terms of these different (de-)contexualizing moves.