[The therapist in the face of aggressive behavior.]

All therapists working in psychiatry will have to deal orte day with an aggressive patient. Besides, the probability of such an encounter is more and more to be expected in view of the increase of violence in psychiatry. Witnessing this, the author set about researching the subject. He presents in this article a review of literature on this theme (aetiologic hypothesis, statistics, etc.) and illustrates his ideas with specific examples. He ends his article by wishing that a better understanding of this problem may help the therapists to improve treatment of these patients and to prevent their act of violence.