Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic

by James Gilligan

Drawing on firsthand experience as a prison psychiatrist, his own family history, and literature, Gilligan unveils the motives of men who commit horrifying crimes, men who will not only kill others but destroy themselves rather than suffer a loss of self-respect. With devastating clarity, Gilligan traces the role that shame plays in the etiology of murder and explains why our present penal system only exacerbates it. Brilliantly argued, harrowing in its portraits of the walking dead, Violence should be read by anyone concerned with this national epidemic and its widespread consequences.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics, Social Justice, True Crime, Crime

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very bracing and challenging book. For example:

All violence is an attempt to achieve justice

Say what?? Our author explains... justice here means what the violent person perceives to be justice, for himself or on behalf of others, to get what’s “due” or “owed” to him. The purpose of violence is to maintain “manhood”… which is to say that the perpetrator wishes to replace feelings of shame and inadequacy with feelings of pride and self-worth. It is quite clear that we can prevent violence and also clear how we can do so if we want to.

Okay, I'm already drowning in confusion. Where is James Gilligan coming from exactly?

Well, he sets out his stall clearly in this involving, jargon-free and startling book and he's sold me on his theory. But it's radical. The reasons why violent criminals do what they do, why murder erupts in seemingly mild people, why school shootings happen - why indeed Mohammed Atta and his gang flew planes into buildings in 2001 (even though this book was published 5 years before that event) - it's all found here, in this analysis of male psychology. I don't mean to misrepresent JG's arguments by summarising them to death, but here's a flavour of what he says:

- American culture is vastly more violent than other Western societies (other industrialised democracies, that is). The murder rate is between five and 20 times higher than other Western countries – even though the USA imprisons 5 to 20 times more people and still maintains capital punishment.

- Prison perpetuates violence and is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Capital punishment encourages more murders than it deters. The violent prisoners believe more in the death penalty than does society as a whole, as can be seen when they inflict it on each other and on themselves far more than the state does.

- The courts desire to separate the good (not guilty) from the bad (guilty) and the bad from the mad (not guilty by reason of insanity). The judicial regime then assumes that the bad are rational and that, for instance, violent criminals do not want to go to prison, do not want to be subjected to violence themselves, and do not want to die. So the thinking is that violent crime will be reduced if the criminals know they are going to be caught and punished. Unfortunately this is wrong on all counts. These violent men place the integrity of their self, and their group’s honour, and their loss of face, above considerations of self-preservation. Violent crime is committed not for material gain but to gain respect amongst the criminal’s peer group, whoever they may be. Self-respect is prized far above any considerations of risk of violence to themselves. Also, prison is the opposite of a deterrent. Many violent prisoners (and psychiatric patients) protest loud and long about their desire to be free but when their release date nears they instigate a violent episode which ensures their further incarceration. In many cases the violence of violent criminals represents an effort to force others to provide care and at the same time covers the wish for such care.

- Murder is interpretable – especially murders which are called “motiveless”. They are extreme forms of symbolism. For instance, why do trivial incidents lead to major violence? JG says the central concept of SHAME has been overlooked in analysing violence. But shame is not overlooked by the prison authorities, who are hereby accused of perpetuating a horrific regime of violence against the prisoners in their care. All within the prison system from the judges on down are well aware of the reality and the near universality of rape in the prisons. it is tacitly tolerated. The most violent prisoners are therefore given power over their fellows (similar to kapos in concentration camps) in return for not causing any problems themselves. For the prison guards this is divide and rule – they are always aware that they could be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers if the prisoners were united. The prison culture of never snitching is obeyed by prisoners and guards, so the horrors of male rape go on week in week out and no one is held responsible.

- Some stats: 2 million men in prison in the USA on any given day of which 1 million are convicted and the rest on remand. The turnover of the latter group is such that in a given year approx 10 million men have been incarcerated for some time and approx 5 million have been released.

- There's a correlation between the social structure of a prison and the class structure of American society (here's the radical bit). In society as a whole, the middle class despises and fears the lower class and wishes to emulate the upper class. The middle and lower classes do not combine together to appropriate and redistribute wealth from the upper class because the upper classes employ the same tactic of divide and rule. The upper class claims to support a "war on crime" or "war on drugs" but in actuality they perpetuate social policies which encourage crime, which is a disease of the poor. The motivation is the same as the prison officers who tolerate the thousands of male rapes which go on week after week. If the poor are so busy wreaking havoc on each other they will never become politically aware. And their violent ways make the middle class regard them as something other than fellow citizens with a common cause. The middle class never notice that they have much better reasons to be angry at the very rich and the party that represents the very rich than at all the violent criminals put together (p 187). Whew!

- The upper classes encourage violent crime amongs the poor by

1) punishing more and more people in harsher ways
2) outlawing drugs which inhibit violence (marijuana, heroin) and promoting the one drug which exacerbates violence (alcohol)
3) manipulating tax laws to keep the poor poor
4) denying the poor access to education, especially in prison
5) perpetuating racial divisions in society
6) promoting public entertainments which glorify violence as the source of masculine pride and power
7) making lethal weapons easily available
8) maximising the assymetric treatment of men and women
9) encouraging homophobia
10) perpetuating unemployment

So okay, what's the solution to all this, James Gilligan M.D. ?

I admit it, this book is strong on analysis, and feeble on prescription. He tells us that comparative poverty is THE main cause of the men's feelings of inadequacy which lead to shame which lead to violence. To fix that, the USA must be... fairer. Like... er... no... here it is again...Sweden. And that's about it. So reading this book is like like going to a brilliant doctor who tells you why you feel like shit in great and insightful detail, you're rapt, this guy is so good, so glad I came here, yes that's so true - yes, doctor you're so right - what must I do to stop feeling like shit all the time? Well, he says, I would resign your position as a middle manager in Bryant Agricultural Feedstuff Receptacles Ltd, and become a writer of haiku. And move to Sweden.

Thanks.

[Murtaza · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the astonishing things that we take for granted about American society is the epidemic-level amount of baseline violence that exists here. This book suggests an interesting cause for this phenomenon: shame. As Gilligan argues, all violence is at its core an effort to deal with the experience of shame. To a person who commits even the most twisted act of violence, that act is also, at least in their own eyes, an attempt to defend themselves from shame and create what they perceive in the moment as justice. This is a unique and in some ways counterintuitive argument, but Gilligan's thesis is hard-won and based on a quarter century of firsthand experience with the most violent incarcerated people in the country. I found it compelling.

To subsist, the Self needs a steady supply of love and reassurance from birth and throughout existence. Deprived of love, or subjected to the love-killing experience of extreme shame (or physical violence, which in itself is invariably shameful) the Self can die even while a person is still physically alive. When sometime reaches such a state of soul-death, and lacks other outlets for healing or at least non-violently expressing the coldness that has grown inside, violence against others becomes possible. Those who murder are often indeed narcissists. But narcissism is very often an attempt to conceal some type of deep insecurity under a thick exterior of bluff or aggression.

People for whom the Self has died as a result of intense shame describe themselves as no longer feeling human. They may no longer feel emotions, but also at times report not feeling physical sensations either. This helps explains why so many of them feel an inability to empathize with others. If you can't feel anything yourself, it's hard to imagine feeling for someone else. Human beings crave love and also the related feelings of respect and being valued. People feel shamed when they fail to achieve respect from others, and that shame can even be magnified further by slights that are so tiny. This is why so much violence begins over instances of perceived disrespect, including incidents that are often akin to the proverbial straw on the camel's back. An act of violence, often over something seemingly trivial, is usually a desperate attempt to hold onto the last shred of a dying Self that has been shamed and disrespected to the point of oblivion.

In American society, there are whole categories of people who have been subject to institutionalized shaming based on categories of race and class. This is a recipe for creating broken human beings as well as an atmosphere of violence. Poverty is essentially form of structural shaming, as those who lack resources are invariably humiliated at every stage of their lives. They are placed into a collective societal contest for dignity that they are guaranteed to lose. Interestingly, people with resources tend to be more likely to commit suicide rather than violent crimes against others. This is in large part because they feel guilt for their own failures more than shame from others over them, something that leads violence to turn primarily against the Self.

An interesting side point that Gilligan raises is the role of culture as a set of institutions that give shape and meaning to the Self. When culture is annihilated, people suffer a dangerous collective loss of Self. They lose the ability to cope with hardships, make sense of the world and choose between what is harmful and beneficial for themselves. It is a truism that culture gives people a sense of identity. But we seldom contemplate how important that this sense of identity is to the core of our existence. Without it, the Self can lose its cherished sources of respect, love and meaning. This explains a bit why when culture is seriously threatened people may go to violent lengths to protect it, viewing its loss as a threat to the integrity of their own personhood. This explains why so-called "culture wars" are often deadly serious at heart.

There is a beautiful line in here quoted from Freud about damaged people being like "broken crystals," who, in breaking, end up revealing the structures of being that exist inside all of us. (I would argue that the same holds for societies that shatter entirely: they show us the inner workings of our own) This book made a compelling argument for a certain progressive understanding of the world. The violent status quo that we've grown accustomed to is unsatisfactory, for all the many lurid and painful reasons given in this book. Gilligan's closing argument is about a shame-creating institution that he calls "patriarchy," which, in his description, is the motor of much of the angst and violence plaguing both men and women today. He doesn't offer specific policy solutions, but his broad thesis is perceptible. To stop violence we must stop breaking people with shame and denying them care and respect, on the individual as well as the collective levels. Even for those who pride themselves on being firm, our clear failure in using brutality as a response to brutality should give pause. If its possible to break the cycle the ideas in this book may help.

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably the best, and certainly the most important, book I have ever read.

This book explains why violence exists. it does so with heart and with facts, with narrative and data. James Gillgan (husband of Carol Gillligan, which speaks to him, I think) was head of mental health for the state prison system in Massachussetts. He knows what he's talking about. Never has a book impacted the way I think and the way I live more than this one.

Please read it.

[cypt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Turbūt geriausia mano metų knyga. Apie tai, kaip visi/visos dalyvaujam smurto kultūroje, ją skatinam, kaip visa visuomenės struktūra, su bausmių, kalėjimų sistemomis, griežtais ir ribojančiais lyčių vaidmenimis (taip), homofobija, ksenofobija ir kitomis nepakantumo formomis (taip), veikia būtent taip, kad to smurto nepaliaujamai daugėtų ir kad besismurtaudami tarpusavyje mes palaikytume jos sveiką (?) progresą (?).

Ko nesitikėjau - pirma, kad knyga bus tokia psichologinė / analitiškai orientuota (autorius - psichiatras), antra - kad tokia - drąsiai anarchistinė, galima sakyt. Tos vietos apie narkotikų benefits gal biški too much, bet su išlygomis - kaip būtų gerai, jei visa tai taptų vadovėliu. Nemušti, nežudyti ir nežeminti vaikų, nežiūrėt į smurtautojus kaip į nepataisomus degradus, apskritai neprisidėt prie visuotinio žeminimo ir atžarumo, kuris kažkodėl yra - nu bent aš savyje tikrai tą atpažįstu - dabartinis survival mode.

[Naeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

First and foremost: astonishing book. The theory is radical. The voice in which he delivers it is comes from the heart and from 25 years of experience as a psychoanalytic therapist in maximum security prisons. It messes with most everything we are trained to think.

The theory: violence is a the result of shame and shame about being ashamed -- meta-shame. It is a bit more nuanced than this but this is the jist of it. It reverses thereby the usual analysis that we get, for example, from those who popularize Hobbes: that violence is inherent and it is civilization that represses it. For Gilligan, civilization creates invidious comparison, creates relative deprivation, and thereby produces shame and shame for having shame. Where there is an absence of love, an absence of self-worth, and the presence of shame, there all that is needed is some mundane trigger -- a look misinterpreted, a careless word, a perceived slight -- and boom, we get violence.

Here, Gilligan is doing what Jessica Benjamin is doing in Bonds of Love (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42... ) inverting the Hobbesian paradigm. But relative to Benjamin there is far less theory and far more exploration of cases.

What makes the book astonishing are two things: first, there are paragraphs of stunning beauty and insight, some of which I will reproduce below. Second, Gilligan is fearless about the implications of his theory. For example: that poverty is the greatest shame producer therefore because capitalism and hierarchy result in shaming "losers" they are violence producing machines; that potential murders are really the living dead who are walking around on their last shred of self-worth before a triggering event robs them even of that, and then boom, murder; that all acts of violence communicate through action and those actions can be interpreted and usually the message is "I don't know how to take care of myself"; that the prison system is a culture of systematic rape that rather than being at the margins of our lives, tells us too much about our society; that there is no chance of reducing violence if we don't defuse the role of lost honor in gender roles and if we don't understand how patriarchy produces violence; that punishment and prisons are designed to produce and elevate violence; and, that the best way to understand and change life is to regard it as a tragedy.

Very, very powerful stuff. Below I want to do two further things: mention a few of the chapters and reproduce some of the quotes. Finally, I also want to address why it is not necessary that he offer a solution.

1. Quotes:

- Violence and Justice:

The first Lesson that tragedy teaches (and morality plays miss) is that all violence is an attempt to achieve justice, or what the violent person perceives as justice...Thus, the attempt to achieve and maintain justice, or to undo or prevent injustice, is the one and only universal cause of violence. pp. 11-12.

[Works for international relations, no? That is, the greatest danger and the most damaging violence results from acting on righteous ideals.]

- Knowing the costs:

...if we continue to tolerate the conditions that have made us the most violent of industrial societies, it is not because the problem is overwhelmingly mysterious or because we do not know what to do, but because we have decided that the benefits of changing those conditions aren't worth the cost. 22

[works for the role of poverty in capitalism, too.]

- Violence as the act of communicating the absence of love:

...Violence -- whatever else it may mean -- is the ultimate means of communicating the absence of love by the person inflicting the violence. 47

[the US does not feel loved, yes?]

- The self as a structure of meaning; as a cultivation of culture:

...a perceived threat to the integrity and survival of a person's culture is perceived as a threat to the integrity and survival of the individual's personality or character, and to the viability of one's ethical value system...the death of one's culture is tantamount to the death of one's self. 96-7

[a critique of the humanitarian impulse to regard life as mere bio-life.]

- Einstein's truth at the margins:

Perhaps the lesson for all this for society is that when men feel sufficiently impotent and humiliated, the usual assumptions one makes about human behavior and motivation, such as the wish to eat when starving, the wish to live or stay out of prison at all costs, no longer hold. Einstein taught us that Newton's laws do not hold when objects approach the speed of light; what I have learned about humans is that the "instinct of (physiological self-preservation" does not hold up when one approaches the point of being so overwhelmed by shame that one can only preserve one's self (as a psychological entity) by sacrificing one's body (or those of others). 110

[the integrity of a perceived meaningful self is the life blood of the human.]

- Serial Diner

Recently, one homeless man, in New York, has been nicknamed the "Serial Diner" because he provoked the police into sending him to jail periodically by ordering dinner in the most expensive restaurants, and then being unable to pay for it. He was a man who consciously wanted to be in jail, when he got tired of sleeping in bus stations or on sidewalks. The main difference between him and violent criminals was that he was not ashamed of his wish to be taken care of, so he had no need to conceal it behind the disguise of violence. 127.

[Gilligan believe that many if not most prisoners harbor a wish to be in jail but cannot admit it.]

- Murder as process:

As Shervert Frazier put it, murder is not an event but a process; the "event" we call murder is only one point in that process. 135

- The extreme defines civilization:

...genocide is not a regression or an aberration from civilization, or a repudiation of it. It is the inner destiny of civilization, its core tendency -- its tragic flaw. Genocide has charactarized the behavior of most of the great world civilizations, from ancient Mesopotamia to Rome, to Medieval Europe, to the African slave trade and the conquest of the Americas, to the Holocaust and atomic weapons. 235

[The same argument that T. Todorov makes in Conquest of America.]

- Exclusive Knowledge:

What is the nature of our tragic flaw as a nation....I would describe the flaw as Puritanical kind of moralism and punitiveness, which is generated by the illusion that "we" have a monopoly on the knowledge of good and evil...246

3. Chapters:

Prologue: sets out his personal and familial motivations. Must read.

chapter 5: Shame: The Emotions and Morality of Violence: Where he lays out his theory. Must read.

chapter 7: How to Increase the Rate of Violence: the most brutal chapter in the book. It talks about what really goes on in prisons.

chapter 8: The Deadliest Form of Violence is Poverty: where he speaks about structural violence and how capitalism produces shame. [consider using for the Understanding Capitalism course.]

Chapter 10: Culture, Gender, and Violence: links everything to patriarchy and speaks about how the shame and fear of being a "woman" creates violence Must read.

Epilogue: Civilization and Its Malcontents: This is a beautiful chapter that combines the fury of Ward Churchill with the confessional voice of Minnie Bruce Pratt, with the theoretical flavor of Jessica Benjamin. [consider using in Reparations course]

4. In response to Goodreads member Paul Bryant's careful review of this book, I would say that (1) a critic (such as Gilligan) is not obligated to present the practical applications of his critique -- although I think he has suggestions for reforming prisons. This book is the effort of a lifetime. If it takes us one lifetime to formulate a critique would it not take more than a life time to formulate applications?; (2) a critique, in itself, goes a long way in offering solutions -- within the critique is a positive program; and (3) circumspection in applications and in providing a future plan speaks to the nature of tragedy -- his central posture. It is the humility that tragedy invokes that allows one a profusion of creativity and agency. This is to be included in his central message.

[Virga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kartais sunku pakelti skaitant tas tikras istorijas, ypač pasakojimus iš kalėjimo. Bet verta skaityti, net labai. Perskaičius visiškai aišku, kaip smurtas susijęs su savivertės nebuvimu, su įsiskaudinimu, su gėda, su įsivaizduojamo vaidmens neatitikimu (ypač su šituo). Kad didžiausi smurtautojai yra (širdyje) didžiausi lūzeriai, kuriems gaila savęs be galo, kurie nesuprasti, įskaudinti, palikti, nemylimi, etc.

Dalis apie kalėjimus yra kažkokia atverianti akis, parodanti kalėjimo kaip tokio absurdiškumą, dar parodanti, kad kalėjimas yra tik iš išorės žiūrint bausmės atlikimo vieta, o bausmė, atseit, tada kai uždaro. O iš tikrųjų kalėjimai yra žeminimo ir žlugdymo vietos, t.y. galutinio sužiaurėjimo fabrikai.

Autorius, kiek suprantu, matė daug - ilgai dirbo kalėjimo psichiatru, bet nepriprato prie jokių procesų, tipažų ir charakterių, ir rašo taip jautriai, kaip rašytų tas, kuris tik pusmetį susiduria su žiaurybėmis ir jų autoriais. Tai, kitaip sakant, apie smurtą tikrai daugiau supratau negu iš Žižeko ar panašių į jį postringautojų. Praktikai šiuo atveju geriau už teoretikus, nes naudoja žmonių istorijas. Jos čia yra vertingiausi argumentai.

[Kalem Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Setting aside the fact I was literally looking forward to reading this for years after reading the chapter on the book’s central argument, there’s a lot of excellent things to be said about Gilligan’s work. His argument is elegant and fascinating: that violence can be understood as a disease with the infectious agent of shame acting as a necessary but not sufficient condition to encourage violence. His argument centers around the concept that culturally-transmitted ideas (economics, morality, gender roles) produce this necessary condition but that violence can occur when actors are desperate or fearless enough to act in defiance of these roles. The argument is startling and intriguing, but the evidence he cites is thin both literally from the limited volume of references and figuratively given his reliance on cross-cultural studies that make ill-advised leaps of logic and psychodynamic literatures ignoring person-centered, existentialist ideas. Gilligan makes some profound points identifying oppression’s various forms as acts of violence and arguing for the communicative nature of acts of violence but the relative lack of empirical evidence and the distractions from the argument as a whole (a chapter basically dedicated to prison reform, for instance) hurt the work as a whole.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gilligan freely admits that this is not intended to be the last word on violence, but hopefully the first word on a new way of thinking about it. But on reading this book, it's hard not to hope that if this was more widely read, we might move towards an understanding of violence like that which Gilligan gained after working with violent criminals in the Massachusetts prison system. Gilligan's ideas are best grasped through reading his case studies and reflections on his patients, but briefly he identifies a central source of violence in shame and lack of self-love. He then looks at ways society encourages us to feel ashamed of our needs - such as material needs exacerbated by economic inequality, or emotional needs that everyone shares but which are considered 'unmanly'. If you care at all about violence and our institutions of punishment, this is book is indispensable.

[Samson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was tremdously illuminating. It helped me to see my own violent tendancies. I read this while doing the research from a paper on why patriarchy leads to violence, little did I know that Gilligan had already written the book. Strong themes, beautifuly written. This is the 'Guns, Germs, and Steal' of why violence isn't an effective tool of the state. Bravo!

[Erica Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one of the most important books I've ever read...taught (and horrified) me a great deal; confirmed beliefs and validated emotions I'd already had.

Prompted me to become active in restorative justice activism, and work in support of inmates' rights and care.

See http://www.prisonsociety.org.

[Neelesh Marik · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a profound act of social service. Its contents should find their way into the educational system of the world, in some shape or form. The arguments and real life stories present a depth of understanding that is truly missing in our world, and a level of cogency on how to address the most dangerous threat to human civilization today. I quote from the book below key sections that help summarize the case, and the suggested approach.

….After spending much of my professional career working with violent offenders and with judges, lawyers and correctional professionals called upon to deal with them, I have come to see the necessity of bringing the discussion of violence into the interpretive arena of tragedy, in the realization that just as tragic drama is always violent, violence itself is always tragic….

….The inadequacy of reducing violence to the level of the morality play becomes apparent the moment we begin to ask deeper ‘root cause’ questions, the questions behind the surface questions of what we hastily judge as right or wrong…..

….The first lesson that tragedy teaches (and that morality plays miss) is that all violence is an attempt to achieve justice, or what the violent person perceives as justice, for himself or for whomsoever it is on whose behalf he is being violent, so as to receive retribution or compensation the violent person feels is ‘due’ him or ‘owed’ to him……THUS, THE ATTEMPT TO ACHIEVE AND MAINTAIN JUSTICE, OR TO UNDO OR PREVENT INJUSTICE, IS THE ONE AND ONLY UNIVERSAL CAUSE OF VIOLENCE….TO RESTORE JUSTICE TO THE WORLD BY REPLACING SHAME WITH PRIDE…

….When I speak of the motives that cause people to pursue justice by means of revenge, punishment and violence, I am not speaking exclusively about the motives that underlie the traditional criminal justice and penal systems. I am speaking also of the motives that give rise to criminal violence itself – that is to say, the motives that cause those whom we have come to think of as ‘criminals’ to commit their acts of violence, in the hope of attaining justice by punishing those whom they feel have punished them, unjustly. ….What is conventionally called ‘crime’ is the kind of violence that the legal system calls illegal, and ‘punishment’ is the kind that it calls legal. But the motives and the goals that underlie both are identical – they both aim to attain justice or revenge for past injuries and injustices. Crime and punishment are conventionally spoken of as if they were opposites, yet both are committed in the name of morality and justice, and both use violence as the means by which to attain those ends. So not only are their ends identical, so are their means……

…To understand the psychology and symbolism of ‘punishment’, and how it mirrors that of ‘crime’, we need to ask: ‘What emotional gratification are people seeking when they advocate punishing other people harshly, as opposed to quarantining them in order to restrain them?’ I am suggesting that the motives behind crime and punishment are identical: the greatest fear in each instance is that of being shamed or laughed at; that the subsequent wish or need to dominate and humiliate others is in the service of gaining a swelled sense of pride and power by having dominion over others, including the power to inflict pain on them, punish them and ‘give them what they deserve.’…

….If we want to gain the knowledge we need in order to achieve the age-old dream of learning how to prevent violence, I am suggesting that instead of asking unanswerable moral and legal questions like ‘How SHOULD we live?’ or ‘What is good and evil, moral and immoral, just and unjust?’ it would be more productive to ask an empirical question instead: namely, ‘How CAN we live?’ or ‘What are the causes of homicide and suicide and assault; how do they vary from one context to another; and how can we use that knowledge to reduce the frequency with which people inflict those kinds of injuries on themselves and other?’ – Questions that can be answered, because they can be investigated, and their answers can be tested, empirically. Not ‘How much pain and anguish does this criminal ‘deserve’ but ‘ How can we help those violent offenders to survive, without further violence, when they are drowning in their own self-righteous hate and despair, feeling justified in exterminating others…….?’

…Man’s greatest pain, whether is life or in prison, is the sense of personal insignificance, of being helpless and of no real value as a person…..Imprisoned and left without any voice in or control over the things that affect him, his personal desires and feelings regarded with gracious indifference, and treated at best like a child and at worst like an animal by those having control of his life, a prisoner leads a life of acute deprivation and insignificance. The psychological pain involved in such an existence creates an urgent and terrible need for reinforcement of his sense of manhood and personal growth. Unfortunately, prison deprives those locked within of the normal avenues of pursuing gratification of their needs and leaves them no instruments but sex, violence, and conquest to validate their sense of manhood and individual worth…..’

…Attitudes such as arrogance, superiority and self-importance, to which the term ‘narcissism’ is often attached, are which are so often misunderstood to be genuine attitudes of the people who hold them, are actually defences against, or attempts to ward off or undo, the opposite set of feelings; namely underlying feelings of insignificance and worthlessness…

…It is for us to see how ‘criminal violence’ is ultimately traceable to ‘structural violence’, results of socio-economic policies such as:
1) Punishing more and more people more and more harshly, stimulating more and more hatred
2) Outlawing those drugs that inhibit violence while legalizing and advertising those that stimulate violence (alcohol and tobacco)
3) Manipulating tax laws and economic policies so as to increase the disparity between the rich and the poor
4) Depriving the poor access to education
5) Perpetuating the caste divisions of society that usually fall along racial lines
6) Exposing the public to entertainment that glorifies violence
7) Making lethal weapons available to the general public
8) Maximizing the polarization of the social roles of men and women (violence object and sex object respectively)
9) Encouraging the prejudice against homosexuality
10) Perpetuating the exposure of children to corporal discipline in schools and homes

Peter Joseph, in his Zeitgeist movie series, says that the real terrorists of the world are not Jihadis shouting ‘Allah Hu Akbar’. The real terrorists are men in $5000 suits who frame policies and practices sitting in positions of power at the Government, the banks and corporations that cause such structural violence.

Responding to those to uphold the virtue of punishment ‘to maintain social order’ Gilligan asks, very pertinently: ….‘Why should the problem of order be more fundamental than, say, the problem of establishing mutual, universal respect for each other’s human dignity? Or the problem of eliminating the gross and rapidly escalating inequities in the distribution of the world’s wealth and power which cause the feelings of shame and humiliation that stimulate the violence that threatens to destroy civilization and, indeed, our whole species, from within?....

The epilogue of the book is a case study of one Matthew – a tragic perpetrator and victim of violence, which concludes that…….’Civilization, one of the greatest blessings humanity has created for itself, also has a tragic flaw-the violence that it stimulates.’

[David Rush · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are going to read and talk about Violence, THROW AWAY your copy of Violence by Slavoj Zižek. THIS ONE by James Gilligan goes in deep to the heart of darkness where violence thrives. He starts in prisons, with the most violent people you could find. It is a hell of a starting point.

While Zižek throws around Heidegger and Lacan and Nip-Tuck TV, Gilligan steps in close and examines violence in its pain, and cause and consequence.

My short summary: Violence springs from Loss of face, which is really loss of self and out of that comes shame. And this shame brings a feeling of injustice that can only be addressed by violence. The thing to remember, in the eyes of the violent person all the pain that is inflicted by them has a logic of its own. Sometimes (or maybe usually) it is not articulated, but the violence in its horror is a symbolic expression of an inner conclusion that must be expressed by the aggrieved.

He does a pretty good job of pointing out “...the motives and goals that underlie crime are the same that underlie punishment...”. Pg. 18. So that much of the book looks at the criminal, but the other horror is the criminal justice system and prisons in particular. Crime and punishment are mirrors to each other. The criminal is addressing a perceived injustice and dispensing appropriate (in the criminal's eyes) retaliation. Then the criminal justice system uses laws to assign guilt and follow through with punishment.

And it gets worse with each chapter, because we find that criminal punishment is the best way to make sure it happens again. Plus there is unacknowledged sadism in criminal punishment that clearly mimics the sadism of the criminal and both rely on excluding empathy as a consideration.

Punishment feeds shame which grows violence which causes crime which results is moral outrage which justifies punishment....

“Punishment is almost universally rationalized as a means of preventing violence...But the conclusion that my analysis leads to is that punishment does not inhibit or prevent crime or violence...Punishment stimulates violence; punishment causes it.” Pg. 183.

He does not whitewash human nature, and admits violent behavior is "built into the very structure and functioning" of us humans. But these actions must be "triggered" by something and his contention is society itself prepares the way so many people are primed to react in a violent way.

From his time talking to criminals he comes up with a list of things we should NOT do if we want to avoid triggers that bring about violence. Some items are arguable but overall...seems about right.

1. Punish and imprison more and more people to increase shame and bring on more violence so there are more to punish and imprison...
2. Outlaw drugs that inhibit violence and encourage use of those that increase violence
3. Arrange taxes and policies to increase the wealth disparity
4. Deprive poor access to education to increase shame to cause more violence and crime
5. Perpetuate a caste system that falls along racial lines.
6. Expose the public to views that glorifies violence as male masculinity
7. Make lethal weapons easily available
8. Maximize polarization social roles of men and women and divide men into violent objects and women into sex objects
9. Encourage prejudice of homosexuals
10. Legitimize corporal punishment in schools and at home
11. Regulate economy so unemployment will never be abolished

Of course most conservative political types will balk at any suggestion that society has any responsibility in this matter. But that is really making his point, that "society" itself is part of a larger structural violence since its very philosophy encourages the expansion of violent norms that just happens to result in a world of increasing disparity between the poor and moneyed elite.

Lest I forget, one message everybody should learn from this book...NEVER DO TIME! If only for this one statistic on the frequency of rape in prison...

"That would still leave a total figure of 900,000 male rapes a year - as an integral part of the punishment to which prisoners are subjected to in the prisons and jails of this country. "Pg. 176

Yes, rape by the meanest of the mean in prison, is part of the way understaffed prisons contain the violence in those walls. EVERYBODY knows about it who is associated with the penal system.

Moving on...Sometimes he pushes the emotion envelope towards sappiness about love

"…a soul empty of love fills with hate" Pg. 53.

But I kind of think he is right. And I feel better now.

====
I am reminded of Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko where the key to the tale is the belief that the modern disregard for the natural world is caused by destroyers that tricked the white men into pursuing their march of destruction, thinking it a virtue while actually killing our souls.

There is a poem in the book describing the witchery world view that is eerie in its similarity to the death of “the self” described by Gilligan.

They see no life
When they look
they see only objects.
The world is a dead thing for them
the trees and the rivers are not alive
the trees and rivers are not alive.
The deer and bear are objects
they see no life

pg 135 of Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

===
And a final thought, this really does compliment Age of Empathy by Franz de Waal that I read last year. In which he definitely mentions brutal violence by some of the great apes, but he also showed how there was empathy. In fact he was going for something similar as Gilligan by identifying things that would "trigger" these outbursts and what situations diffused them.

Which leads to the question, can we as humans be better at arranging our society to prevent violence? OR are we doomed just to be very clever chimps with cool toys, ignoring empathy and compassion because of an ever escalating arrangement of violent triggers?

And the 8-Ball says..."Outlook not so good"

[Sunhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

i finally finished this gem at bucks county in philly. by far one of the best case studies of human nature, the nature of crime and punishment, the rationale of our penal system, and the economic and social reform necessary to overcome this epidemic. gilligan makes his case with a finality that pleads us to hear its seriousness - and the remedies that actually work. the book reads like a conversation, rather than a text - sometimes, i found myself arguing with gilligan, and almost always, arriving at his side.

[Brett Milam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Violence is tragedy, not a morality play, not good vs. bad; and it’s not even psychiatry but rather psychoanalytical (so, not “bad” vs. “mad”), and because it is tragedy, and because it isn’t inherent badness or brain deformities necessarily, then that makes violence, a pervasive problem and which is the critical flaw of civilization — civilization both made all of what we’ve become as a species possible, but it’s also amplified both our destructiveness via wars and genocides, as well as the potential for our very destruction as a species via nuclear weapons and nuclear war — not just something we can decrease, but prevent from happening. I think that is a fair, if long-winded, way of distilling the primary thesis of James Gilligan’s 1997 book, Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. To perhaps put an even finer point on Gilligan’s thesis since everyone knows males (and particularly, young males) have not only the highest propensity for violence, but are also the most likely to be victims of said violence: dismantling the patriarchy dismantles that which gives rise to violence, mainly, traditional gender roles that make men feel shame for not being “manly” enough (and of course, “masculinity as homophobia” — a fear of being seen as “gay,” which I wrote about nearly 10 years ago reflecting on Michael S. Kimmel’s article). In other words, Gilligan is approaching violence as if it was a disease: violence is a public health crisis necessitating a public health response to both understand and “cure.”

Gilligan was the director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School, and he also worked in the Massachusetts prison system as the director of mental health. Obviously, that work informed much of his perspective on violence and how to best respond to it. He also provides anecdotal cases from his work that illustrate his thesis of how shame is the engine of violence. In American society in particular, this book itself would seem an affront to justice and holding “criminals” “accountable.” Because Gilligan is trying to understand why someone would commit violence and why our society writ large is so violent, but that is just as easily framed as “coddling” the “criminals,” or worse still, attempting to justify and/or apologize for their violent actions. We are such a punitive society that our politicians on both sides of the aisle repeatedly, for decades, rose to power on campaigns of being “tough on crime.” That sloganeering still works. If even one anecdotal case occurs under a criminal justice reform-minded politician (including prosecutors), then the blame goes to having not been tough enough, and the cycle repeats. As Gilligan smartly and powerfully points out, though, punishment is a mirror of the criminality in which it is responding to: being brutal, violent, and often performatively engaging in an “eye-for-an-eye” with criminals, who in turn, were brutal, violent and engaging in “eye-for-an-eye,” and it should be noted, with the same motivating factors: to restore honor and to negate shame. Of course, we justify our forms of punishment, and particularly, our odious penitentiary system, including the cruel and unusual punishment of solitary confinement, enabling rampant male-to-male rape (so much so, our culture for decades was awash with prison rape jokes), and up to the worst punishment possible, capital punishment, under a legal apparatus, with the guise of being morally right in the morality play we’ve devised. Again, if the morality play is “good guys” (us) and “bad guys” (them), we can justify doing anything to ostracize, shame, punish, and dehumanize “them.” Both are underscored by the “same causes, same symbolic logic, and same irrationality and insanity,” Gilligan states. Instead of deterring crime, this punishment that mirrors criminality is a vicious, perpetuating cycle.

Again, Gilligan puts a finer point than my attempt at paraphrasing can: … the attempt to achieve and maintain justice, or to undo and prevent injustice, is the one and only cause of universal violence. Or to try another way, there is reason Netflix’s documentary was entitled, Making a Murderer. If you wanted to quite literally create murderers out of nonviolent offenders (or in the case of the docu-series’ central figure, Steven Avery, an innocent man), you couldn’t find a better cauldron for it than our criminal justice system.

And Gilligan understands that you can’t talk about the problem of violence, especially in American society, given our rates tend to be higher than comparable industrialized, developed nations, without talking about the systemic factors giving rise to that violence, mainly historical injustices and racism, our patriarchal system, and poverty. While I largely disagree with Gilligan when it comes to the latter — in short, I think capitalism has done more to bring people out of poverty than any system in the world, and concerns about wealth inequality are overstated (not that poverty isn’t an issue, of course, but that our policy prescriptions would be different), whereas Gilligan seems to support a robust welfare state (governments taking care of their people so they don’t feel shame, and therefore, aren’t susceptible to committing violence, so it is argued) and thereby addressing wealth inequality (envy of the rich is another form of shame) — I fully agree with him that we cannot understand violence in America, or rather, we can’t extricate violence in America from systemic racism and how those systems are the engine of violence to this day. Again, talking about systemic issues isn’t to absolve individual actors of their crimes, but it does help to explain it, which is what someone interested in psychoanalysis and preventing violence ought to be doing.

Another important factor Gilligan brings up is the “war on drugs,” which is really a war on the poor and largely minority communities in America; as Gilligan states, the real cause of violence is not drugs, but the war on drugs. We know alcohol prohibition in the early 20th century set off alarming rates of violence, and yet, we continue with our war on drugs for the last 50-some years and counting. There has been some pushback, mainly in legalizing marijuana and some light police reforms, but we largely have continued the war on drugs unabated from how it started in the 1970s. I don’t think ending the war on drugs would be a panacea for solving our violence problem (my fellow libertarians overstate that thesis as much as Gilligan overstates the problem of wealth inequality), but I do think it would go a long way to eliminating a great deal of violence — in both directions — from our society.

What has always perplexed people about crime is that it comes in response to what seems so downright trivial and senseless, perhaps most pronounced in gang violence in our cities. But Gilligan makes the salient point that it is precisely because of its triviality that evidences the shame around it; that is, the more trivial the cause of the shame (I’m being dissed, that person thinks I’m a “pussy,” etc., typically all coming back to defending your position and status as a man), the more intense the feeling of shame because they know their reaction is an insecure and outsized one to something trivial! To think of it another way, Gilligan rightly states that we think of narcissists as having an abundance of confidence and thinking too highly of themselves when it is precisely the opposite; they are defending and overcompensating for their insecurity, often leading to violence, rather than maintaining a sense of genuine confidence.

Gilligan’s poignant analysis is about how much magical thinking there is around shame, whether it is those who are meting out punishment, or those committing violence, where all parties involved are wishing to conceal their shame from the “eyes” of the world (this is why, Gilligan states, punishment and violence — again, mirrors of each other — often revolve around gouging out the eyes). Consider when a criminal is found not guilty of a crime or is found not guilty by reason of insanity and prosecutors, police, and the public pronounce how the criminal has gotten one over on us, aka made us to feel like fools, that is, made us to feel shame for being fools. And as should be obvious from what I’ve already said, the person engaging in violence is often trying to quite literally kill the person possessing the eyes in which to judge them for their perceived unmanliness. Again, there is a certain symbolic logic to it all.

To bring it back to the patriarchy, a patriarchal society, Gilligan says, rewards men who are violent and inhibits females from being violent, which is goes a long way to explaining why men constitute the vast majority of perpetrators of violence (and its victims). Gilligan says our culture places men and women on this binary where men are “violence objects” and women are “sex objects.”

I do wonder what Gilligan would say about the dramatic drop in violence across the board in American society around the time he wrote this book, in fact, and contrary to the predictions of many criminologists, psychologists, politicians, and so forth. I also wonder what he would say about the theories around why the violence dropped (American society stopped using lead in things no longer causing lead poisoning, or Roe v. Wade, i.e., would-be young males were instead aborted). When I was thinking about Gilligan’s thesis for how to decrease and prevent violence (dismantling the patriarchy, and not confining men to these “manliness” stereotypes) juxtaposed to the precipitous decline in American violence, maybe that is partly why, after all? That is, after three decades of the feminist movement truly getting the ball rolling, the 1990s marked the start (but certainly not the end) of the dismantling of the patriarchy and revaluating of traditional gender roles and a healthier masculinity.

But what also muddles the conversation about the crime decline in the 1990s — aside from the fact that we still don’t quite know why it happened — is that it wasn’t confined to America, which is clearly the focal point of Gilligan’s claim for a “national epidemic,” because similar drops happened across comparable developed nations, and at a macro scale, there’s also less people dying from war and genocide, too.

Those twin elephants (violence dropped, and violence dropped beyond America’s borders) in the room aside, and my earlier disagreement with Gilligan noted, I thought his book and his thesis around the power of shame as the real culprit for violence was astute and compelling. I think a society guided by trying to understand why violence is happening in order to prevent it instead of being reactionary and punitive, would be a much better, more nonviolent society.

[Bez Ego · Rating 5 out of 5]

W Polsce "Wstyd i przemoc" - bardzo dobre tłumaczenie (Andrzej Jankowski)

znakomita książka o funkcjonowaniu ego (choć autor - psychiatra - zamiast tego terminu używa innych - np. "lęk przed utratą twarzy") i jego roli w powstawaniu przemocy. przykłady są skrajne. jednak jak pisze sam Gilligan:

"mam nadzieję, że pokażę w tej książce, jak wiele z tego, co wydaje się w zjawisku przemocy nienormalne, niewyjaśnialne i nie do pojęcia, nie jest w ogóle nienormalne, ale - choć zabrzmi to złowieszczo - dokładnie takie, jak moglibyśmy się w pewnych okolicznościach spodziewać."

[Nathan Douthit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting read, especially compared to the Skarbek book I read about the rationality and order of violent prison gangs. I think the commentary on our society as opposed to other western societies is a helpful framework, although the book is really difficult to follow with its stream of consciousness organization. Recommended for those interested in topic.

[Raina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totally an important read for me. I often think back about what this books says about the prison culture, the violent brain, and how some people think so differently from us nonviolent types. Especially since I have both prison guards and prison inmates in my family.

[Leonardo]

Los actos violentos son intentos de alejar o eliminar el sentimiento de humillación...

Desigualdad Pág.155

[Ian Scharine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an thoroughly researched, soundly backed and academic approach to the diagnosis and treatment/punishment of violent crime in the United States of America. As a practitioner of psychology and social studies Gilligan's experience spans several decades and involves stints at multiple correctional facilities and prisons.
His observations expose a society that is torn by violence although disturbingly equipped with all the financial and structural resources to combat domestic violence. What this analysis reveals is it is the structure of society, its stratification, cultural mores and economic disparities, that do more to drive its participants to violence through shame than many of America's counterparts among developed nations. Gilligan demonstrates how shame dictates the behavior of its victims and the grave error the penal system makes in not addressing this most powerful of motivations towards violent acts.
Although he cannot offer any concrete "solutions" to our country's problems with violence, he suggests that understanding how the structures of inequality and how they inflict shame on their victims lies at the heart of restructuring approaches to the penal system and rethinking American society as a whole. Violence, he argues, is the result of when humans no longer have the capacity for love or self love. It is the result of abandonment by the family unit, the community and ultimately society as a whole. In its own language, violence makes perfect sense if one has witnessed directly the affects continual neglect and isolation create.
Gilligan's conclusions indicate that the continuing problem of violence haunts all human society and civilization and will continue to do so until we can rethink our social structures and the behaviors and norms that empower certain individuals and groups to shame and punish others unfairly.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. This is quite a challenging book. I don't agree with everything Gilligan writes about, and sometimes you have to suspend skepticism and trust his claims as he makes his points. First off, the title and the opening chapter are slightly misleading. This book is more of a sociological look at the prison system and the role it plays in a society in preventing or perpetuating violent crime. There is some very interesting stuff about looking at violence as a tragedy or tragic play instead of a morality play, and reflecting on the true consequence of adopting a punitive attitude towards violence.

I appreciate that he tries to look at people who are violent as people first and foremost, and tries to understand their stories. In presenting the stories of these people, their violence towards others is contextualized. Not that the violence is excused, but that violence now makes sense. I can't remember where I read it, but someone said that testosterone motivates someone to act in a way to restore social order (in the eyes of the aggressor).

I have a major bone to pick. I think he is creating an etiology, theory or sociology of the violence of abused, oppressed and traumatized men. But some of those who are violent seemed to have a decent childhood or at least no significant markers of horrific trauma, and there is a clear theme of premeditation or control in their actions, so what about these people? So I am still waiting for that one book that can make the link between patriarchy, masculinity, and horrific violence as an expression of power. At least Gilligan addressed patriarchy and masculinity here. Any discussions of violence seem to be very lacking if it doesn't address gender roles.

[Kai Shiden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written but short on empirical data to prove Gilligan's theories. Gilligan's thesis is that violent crime stems from an inability to deal with shame and a corresponding lack of resilience and ability to feel guilt. He goes on to show the reader how America's socio-economic arrangements put people in situations where they are constantly shamed. According to Gilligan, having a low degree of freedom due to being victimised by one's family as a child and by having very little income, results in offenders being unable to feel responsible for their own circumstances. Some of the shame these predominantly male offenders feel, stems from them being unable to look after themselves while also being unable to admit they need help due to the stigma against males who are not self sufficient. Instead they lash out at others in the hope that committing violent crime will send them to jail where their needs are catered to and they will not have to admit to being dependent. This is pretty interesting in light of the recent profusion of male self help gurus like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, telling males that they need to take responsibility for their lives and to pursue less of a collectivist orientation where they do not rely on others. By Gilligan's logic, these people would in fact be making things worse (which sounds quite plausible to be honest).
Jail just seems to increase these feelings of shame in Gilligan's account, due to the terrible state of American prisons and the high rates of prison rape. Overall, the theory seems to have explanatory and predictive power.

My main issue with the book was the lack of empirical evidence. There are a few references to America's violent crime rates increasing which, thankfully are no longer true as these peaked during the 90s, when the book was originally published, and have since declined. The prison rape stats quoted are shocking and probably accurate but are mostly anecdotal. The case studies presented are cherry picked from Gilligan's extensive experience doing psychiatric work in prisons. A lot of the references in the book are to the bible, Shakespeare and Dostoevsky novels to show the theories Gilligan are pitching have actually been around for a while. However, these do more to illustrate Gilligan's theory than to prove it.

Another issue I had was there was talk about how violence increased so much during the world wars but no attempt to examine what motivates individual soldiers to carry out violent acts. If Gilligan is claiming this somehow relates to the rest of his theories around violence and shame, some more explanation is required here.

The book does a good job pitching its thesis but it needs more robust evidence to prove it. Comparative case studies and/or more extensive use of statistics would help convince the reader that the cases covered are not just cherry picked to fit the theory.

[Elizabeth Jennings · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a rigorous, compassionate book by a man who worked for decades as a psychiatrist in maximum security prisons and mental hospitals, with the criminality violent. He knows what he's talking about. It includes harrowing stories, but Gilligan is focused on retaining the humanity of his patients, indeed, in showing that the very reason they became violent is that they already felt their human dignity had been stolen from them. An eye-opening book for anyone who believes the death penalty "deters" violence; Gilligan shows that it most certainly does not, and that the logic of state violence, as "shame-transfer," is identical to the logic of criminal violence. Indeed the title of this book could just as easily be Shame. It is about shame, and Gilligan believes after his thousands of hours speaking with inmates, that all serious violence can be traced back to overwhelming feelings of shame. Much of this shame is rooted in insecurity about being "a man" and needing to prove one is "manly" be being violent. My one critique is that this explanation seems compelling but also perhaps simplistic; can all violence really be traced back to shame? At any rate it is eye-opening.

[Ted · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gilligan is in search of a theory that might account for human violence and he settles on a Freudian psycho-analytic one emphasizing the effects that social factors (poverty, abuse, etc) have on individuals that lead to violence. His goal is a noble one - if we can come up with a theory explaingin violence we might be able to propose ideas to combat it. His would require major social re-engineering of America. He does not assume that because we are human we will be violent, but on the other hand, his reliance on studies of prison inmates and his anecdotal experience with this population may skew his thinking. It seems to me that there is now lots of questions about studies that rely on prison inmates and whether they in fact reflect humanity as a whole. Also, it seems to me in my experience there are many things that lead to violence including sin and passions which I don't think he fully acknowledges.

[Mahala K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up on a whim, but boy, it did not disappoint. I feel like it was fate that I found this book when I did. I discovered it right after the Charlie Kirk assassination happened, and reading this book greatly helped me grapple with these terrible things happening within the country. James Gilligan's perspective on violence is one that I feel is so eye-opening and honestly made me have a big awakening within myself. He states many times that the ideas of "crime" and "punishment" are rooted in the same principles of justice, basically that the means and ends sought are the same. I have also used this book as an example within some papers I have had to write for my classes, and overall, I just believe it is such a great resource. I recommend everyone to read this book; it gives amazing insight into these very real issues we face as human beings, who are inherently designed for our own destruction...

[Loula J · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful exposition on the nature and consequences of 'shame.'
While some of the referenced research may now be outdated, Gilligan's thesis is not. A compelling argument for a paradign shift in how we conceptualize and manage violent crime and how we treat violent offenders.
20 years after it's publication, this book is more relevant than ever. It's disheartening that Gilligan's theory has not had more of an impact over time...hardly surprising though if we consider that it would require a complete dismantling of social and political power structures to realize his particular vision of a public health response to violence. If there were ever a pivotal point in recent history, however...??? Here's hoping.
A must-read for anyone interested in the psychopathology of violence, criminal justice, and the innate destructuveness of the patriarchy.

[Angelica Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The attempt to achieve and maintain justice, or to undo and prevent injustice, is the one and only universal cause of violence.”

This book was really interesting. I’ve always loved sociology and this book had a lot of that in it. I also like how the author highlighted possible biological predeterminations for violence. I definitely think the fact that Gilligan is a psychiatrist and was able to bring that wisdom and experience made the book a million times better.

This book was written decades ago, but it is still so relevant. There is still a national epidemic of violence. There is still systematic violence against people of color, women, and other marginalized groups. We still have “the patriarchal code of honor and shame.”

This book is so important, especially now when there is violence constantly—acts of physical violence and systematic violence.

[Toby Mustill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned 3 things from this book: 1. That there is always a reason behind a violent act, even if it appears random or drug induced etc. 2. Shame in it’s various forms underlies all violent acts (I had to expand and explore my definition of shame to understand this point. 3. Once a violent act has occurred, it’s already too late: there are many precursors to violence and to recognize and respond to the precursors means a great reduction in violence.

While this book had a great many points (>90%), there were a number of plot/reasoning holes that did not lead to logical conclusions and were not (in my mind) explained well enough to justify an illogical conclusion. Still very much worth a read! My next book will be James’ follow up to this book.

[Ellen Marcoux · Rating 4 out of 5]

This guy really paints with a big brush, and don't worry if you skimmed a line or two, he'll be sure to tell you again . . . and again. He has a lot to say about how the structure of American civilization encourages violence, and how the judicial system functions to reinforce and reassure the powerful at the expense of the weak. Interesting! Since this book was written in 1996, I look forward to reading more about Dr. Gilligan's theory of violence and how it has evolved over the past couple decades.

[Sonja Hennessy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal book from the 1990s. It's message on the root causes of violence need to be spread far and wide.
The root of violence is not evil but a society which values toxic masculinity and over policing/punishing poor men. Violence like obesity and smoking is a public health epidemic which is in some ways manufactured by a "moral" society. Gender roles and "being a man" where poor men are shamed repeatedly with bad education and inadequate wages is a causal factor in crime.

Overall, an easy read which crux is hammered home.

[Ashby Manson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A five star and a two star book, alternately brilliant and full of passionate question begging.

The author is a prison psychologist. The first third of "Violence" hews closely to his area of expertise and is thought provoking and profound. His analysis of the broken inner workings of murderers, attempting to translate the unspoken or unspeakable physical language of violence, making sense of the senseless, is fascinating and strikes me as being full of useful insight.

His basic argument is that shame (especially being ashamed of the unmanly or emasculating feeling of shame) is the root cause of violent action. This central insight allows you to decode apparently insane acts of random violence as explicated in a number of case studies from his work. Minor insults or loss of face can lead to horrible acts through the twisted inner workings of his prisoners. Acts of violence can be a macho form of asking for help without the shame of admitting you need help. The death penalty can incentivize murderers to violent action as a form of "suicide by cop".

He describes exhaustively the horrors of the American prison system, its roots in primitive eye for an eye religious violence, the sewage treatment facility of society's human refuse, the systematic way prison rape and racism are tolerated or even encouraged. It divides the prisoners into warring camps and makes the job of the jailers easier. (Penal divide and conquer.) The inhumanity of our prisons and the failure to rehabilitate the inmates comes as no surprise. Indeed, the prisons frequently make the inmates worse. He argues convincingly for reform and education. After all, many of these men are to be released again some day. Do we really want them coming out more savage and broken than when they went in?

When he strays into the realm of politics in his attempt to expand his thesis into a wholesale indictment of the evils of patriarchy and relative inequality/structural violence, his argument is weak and (put charitably) somewhat incoherent.

For instance, he argues repeatedly that patriarchy must be eliminated if we are to stop the epidemic levels of violence in our society. He shows that eliminating violence is possible by pointing to the success of small scale communes run by the Anabaptists and the Hutterites/Mennonites/Amish.

But these pacifist religious communities are pretty damned patriarchal! How does he account for this apparent contradiction? He doesn't. He just slides right on by. Presumably he is citing the Hutterites for their egalitarianism and lack of poverty, but his argument would be more persuasive if he addressed the apparent contradiction rather than sweeping it under the rug.

Some of the book seems dated in focus. It was written during the apparently unstoppable inner city crack epidemic and the real estate bubble driven apotheosis of Japan in the mid nineties.

Some interesting discussion of sensitive data that tests his ideas is hidden away in the footnotes. In general he doesn’t get very far into data from other countries/cultures that might challenge his perspective. Do his ideas bear up when comparing societies with greater or lesser amounts of violence and inequality and patriarchy? This book leaves that almost completely unanswered. He appears to assume that the New England peniteniary system is sufficiently diverse to draw conclusions.

He spends a great deal of time discussing shame as a necessary but insufficient condition for violent action, but no time discussing envy or an attitude of entitlement to the unearned and indeed little on “rational” violent crime for profit. Did the Menendez brothers kill their parents because they were shamed and belittled? Maybe. Might a desire for unearned wealth also have played a role? The explanation offered by the prisoners to their shrink is likely to focus on the former.

The book asserts that an uneven distribution of wealth causes violence, that the very existence of wealthy people shames poor people and inevitably generates violence (due to relative inequality, even if the “poor” people in question have plenty to eat and big screen TVs). I’d consider this unproven and poorly supported. If you don’t buy it going in, you are unlikely to be persuaded by the argument and paucity of data.

Maybe the single most important thing we as a society can do is to insist that police are respectful and polite and that parents don’t beat their children.

What I’d like to see is an examination of a variety of cultures with special attention to etiquette and the use of force. Dr. Gilligan is probably correct that shame is intimately correlated with violence, but it is possible that a focus on non-violent conflict resolution & an abhorrence of intra-social violence is more important than the elimination of patriarchy or inequality. Perhaps the Japanese and Norwegian police are better at treating individuals politely and preventing loss of face? I suspect that Dr. Gilligan is right that violence is a sort of infectious disease, that you acquire it from your family and your surroundings, that you learn to act violently (or fail to learn how to resolve conflicts non-violently), that disrespect from representatives of social institutions, your family, your neighbors, has profound consequences.

This book is worth reading, and is a worthy contribution to our ongoing social dialogue, but it is only the start of a discussion.