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The Anatomy of Violence
Anatomy of Violence
496 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 205 reviews
May 12, 2013
Sometimes one comes across a non-fiction book where the author, however eloquent and entertaining, have managed to misunderstand a key concept that unfortunately thwarts a lot of his ideas. Adrian Raine presents some interesting scientific research, and presents some controversial suggestions at the end of the book.
Unfortunately the text is deeply flawed with his lack of understanding of basic statistical and probability concepts. A non-fiction writer who leans heavily on mathematic results must either understand mathematics or co-write with someone who does. Adrian Raine does not understand the full difference between causality and correlation. He claims that he does, but the way he interprets the numbers makes it painfully clear that he does not.
In a book that suggests causality between a lot of things and violent crime, when it is obvious that it is correlation in most of the cases, this is, of course, a disaster.
It is a shame, because this is a highly interesting field that will see a lot of development in the time ahead.
Unfortunately the text is deeply flawed with his lack of understanding of basic statistical and probability concepts. A non-fiction writer who leans heavily on mathematic results must either understand mathematics or co-write with someone who does. Adrian Raine does not understand the full difference between causality and correlation. He claims that he does, but the way he interprets the numbers makes it painfully clear that he does not.
In a book that suggests causality between a lot of things and violent crime, when it is obvious that it is correlation in most of the cases, this is, of course, a disaster.
It is a shame, because this is a highly interesting field that will see a lot of development in the time ahead.
May 8, 2013
Why does this type of book continue to be published after literally centuries of debate? Shouldn't phrenology have put an end to it?
This book is mostly about bad evolutionary psychology ("Men are warriors; women are worriers"), plus genetic studies that can't prove anything because they don't look at noncriminal individuals. Except when they do and find a whole lot of normal people who have no inkling of criminality despite possessing the same gene.
Knowing that people will read this anyway, I recommend learning more about why the nature nurture dichotomy has been rejected by most modern thinkers, and looking up how many murders actually exhibit psychopathic tendencies (hint: it's less than you think).
This book is mostly about bad evolutionary psychology ("Men are warriors; women are worriers"), plus genetic studies that can't prove anything because they don't look at noncriminal individuals. Except when they do and find a whole lot of normal people who have no inkling of criminality despite possessing the same gene.
Knowing that people will read this anyway, I recommend learning more about why the nature nurture dichotomy has been rejected by most modern thinkers, and looking up how many murders actually exhibit psychopathic tendencies (hint: it's less than you think).
June 7, 2013
I'm amazed by some of the low ratings this book received. I found Raine's arguments to be balanced in that he always provided the counterarguments and pointed out how far you could "push" the findings he reported. The literature covered was comprehensive. I was especially surprised by the suggestion that Raine didn't have a good grasp of his statistics. He frequently mentioned the percentage of variance accounted for by a finding and compared it to other medical phenomena. Some of the stories he told were gruesome, but I think he wanted the readers to experience their own autonomic responses to the situations. In short, Raine makes a compelling case that biology--genetic, anatomical, and chemical--plays a significant role in the etiology of different kinds of violent crimes. At the same time, he acknowledges the interactive role of environment and biology. This is definitely a worthwhile read.
December 13, 2017
One of my favourite books ever - Raine writes in an eloquent and intriguing pace about the seeds of crime and violent tendencies in the future that I couldn't just pass it up. As a law graduate and progressing to Masters in Criminology, I find this book incredibly insightful and I have learned a lot from this book in relation to psychopathy and it's relationship to different factors such as environment, genetics, biology and socialization. I read it for both pleasure and interest, and I especially enjoyed Raine's key notion that, good or bad, we are the playthings of our brains, that free will is sadly an illusion. This book is definitely a good read for people who are interested in criminals and/or psychology.
June 20, 2013
I give this book a 2.5 stars, sure some information in this book is very interesting but other times I feel like the author confused correlation for causation, and many times felt like he completely ignored certain aspects of the equation.
One large problem I had was that most of these studies are on white men with criminal records, and I am assuming that a majority of the controls in the studies cited are with white men with no history of violence. Where are the women? I don't know if the author wants to admit it, he kind of does and admits that the lack of evidence could be due to social restrains, but women can be violent too. He even admitted that in a study he did that he was about to study women, but was short on money and decided to double down on men. Because men are just violent aggressive beasts, and women are angels walking on earth. Give me a break. In one horrifying example of a serial killer, in describing his upbringing a huge factor in his violent adult hood was his very violent, neglectful and emotionally abusive mother. Where are the studies on women like that? Where are the brain scans of women who drown their kids in the bath tub. Who decide to hide a pregnancy and bury the baby once born in the yard, who tie their kid to a pipe in the basement and let their kid soil themselves.
I totally understand the fact that there is larger body of violence in males, but does that justify ignoring violence in women in order to understand violence in people?
Also, I felt the tone of this book when speaking directly to the reader was a bit pompous and self righteous. Stop asking me rhetorical questions!
And the last chapter, oh man, does this guy want to live in the world of 1984? Advocating for men once they reach the age of 18 to get a brain scan just gives me the creeps.
I did appreciate the chapters which examined how poor social environments influence brain development, and predisposes and pushes some into violent behavior. I really appreciated those chapters, but was baffled at why earlier in the book it seemed that he was advocating that violence had a primarily biological cause divorced from environment, but then he went on saying that environment really mattered after all.
This book's arguments are disjointed, contradictory at times, and I don't know if he really thought it all through or didn't expect people to notice. Also this book would have served a basic explanation of what he means by certain terms like psychopath, since he uses the term in many cases which don't match up to what people think of a psychopath.
This book I was arguing with for the days I was reading it. After reading this I feel like how the book is, conflicted. I think I just might buy this book if only to have access to the extensive bibliography section to really examine the papers in which Raine gets his arguments from. And to maybe argue with this book more.
I think this book is good to test your critical thinking skills and to be aware of the arguments that are out there in terms of behavior and predicting crime in certain populations, but this book claims to have all the answers, but it really doesn't.
One large problem I had was that most of these studies are on white men with criminal records, and I am assuming that a majority of the controls in the studies cited are with white men with no history of violence. Where are the women? I don't know if the author wants to admit it, he kind of does and admits that the lack of evidence could be due to social restrains, but women can be violent too. He even admitted that in a study he did that he was about to study women, but was short on money and decided to double down on men. Because men are just violent aggressive beasts, and women are angels walking on earth. Give me a break. In one horrifying example of a serial killer, in describing his upbringing a huge factor in his violent adult hood was his very violent, neglectful and emotionally abusive mother. Where are the studies on women like that? Where are the brain scans of women who drown their kids in the bath tub. Who decide to hide a pregnancy and bury the baby once born in the yard, who tie their kid to a pipe in the basement and let their kid soil themselves.
I totally understand the fact that there is larger body of violence in males, but does that justify ignoring violence in women in order to understand violence in people?
Also, I felt the tone of this book when speaking directly to the reader was a bit pompous and self righteous. Stop asking me rhetorical questions!
And the last chapter, oh man, does this guy want to live in the world of 1984? Advocating for men once they reach the age of 18 to get a brain scan just gives me the creeps.
I did appreciate the chapters which examined how poor social environments influence brain development, and predisposes and pushes some into violent behavior. I really appreciated those chapters, but was baffled at why earlier in the book it seemed that he was advocating that violence had a primarily biological cause divorced from environment, but then he went on saying that environment really mattered after all.
This book's arguments are disjointed, contradictory at times, and I don't know if he really thought it all through or didn't expect people to notice. Also this book would have served a basic explanation of what he means by certain terms like psychopath, since he uses the term in many cases which don't match up to what people think of a psychopath.
This book I was arguing with for the days I was reading it. After reading this I feel like how the book is, conflicted. I think I just might buy this book if only to have access to the extensive bibliography section to really examine the papers in which Raine gets his arguments from. And to maybe argue with this book more.
I think this book is good to test your critical thinking skills and to be aware of the arguments that are out there in terms of behavior and predicting crime in certain populations, but this book claims to have all the answers, but it really doesn't.
January 1, 2014
“Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime” by Adrian Raine. This farrago of pseudoscience written by a criminologist is everything that’s wrong with “evolutionary” theories about human behavior wrapped up and deposited between two covers. Jam-packed with dubious speculation based on misperceptions of how evolution works, “Anatomy of Violence” is all the more alarming because Raine seems to think the ideas in it ought to have a role in public policy. Not just a bad book, but a potentially dangerous one."
-Laura Miller from the Salon :
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/01/8_boo...
This review of the book, by Laura Miller, is the most accurate I've ever seen.
It is very troubling book, to say the least. It is concerning that the thing has ever been published. However, that said; with evolutionary psychologists dolling out advice like gumdrops these days, armed with only speculation to support their claims, it may have only been a matter of time that something so insidious was published.
Many claims this author makes are misunderstood or cannot truly be supported by evidence. The claims usually have either been previously disproven, or cannot yet be determined due to limitations in technology.
The worst parts are the sweeping generalizations of people and behavior. Not to mention the accusations of violence from any one with a mental diagnosis. Offensive to say the least. His use of the word "normal" and "abnormal" when discussing mental illness would make any first year psychology student cringe.
In all, it is an horrible book only interested in the business of fear mongering to people who do not have the fortune, will or opportunity to learn about the difference between causation and correlation. To concerned with sensationalism than actual psychology, aggression, and violence.
(I very rarely write book reviews, due to my poor writing and grammar skills. In this case, however I was spurred to do so by my deep frustration with this book. It is not satisfying to direct sarcastic and (in my mind) bitting remarks to an inanimate object. So maybe him indirectly forcing me to practice writing is one good thing about this book. For myself at least. Not so much for you. )
-Laura Miller from the Salon :
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/01/8_boo...
This review of the book, by Laura Miller, is the most accurate I've ever seen.
It is very troubling book, to say the least. It is concerning that the thing has ever been published. However, that said; with evolutionary psychologists dolling out advice like gumdrops these days, armed with only speculation to support their claims, it may have only been a matter of time that something so insidious was published.
Many claims this author makes are misunderstood or cannot truly be supported by evidence. The claims usually have either been previously disproven, or cannot yet be determined due to limitations in technology.
The worst parts are the sweeping generalizations of people and behavior. Not to mention the accusations of violence from any one with a mental diagnosis. Offensive to say the least. His use of the word "normal" and "abnormal" when discussing mental illness would make any first year psychology student cringe.
In all, it is an horrible book only interested in the business of fear mongering to people who do not have the fortune, will or opportunity to learn about the difference between causation and correlation. To concerned with sensationalism than actual psychology, aggression, and violence.
(I very rarely write book reviews, due to my poor writing and grammar skills. In this case, however I was spurred to do so by my deep frustration with this book. It is not satisfying to direct sarcastic and (in my mind) bitting remarks to an inanimate object. So maybe him indirectly forcing me to practice writing is one good thing about this book. For myself at least. Not so much for you. )
May 22, 2013
The information contained within, the evidences and theories, may help us have a safer and more humane society in the future or it may not, but you will read some shocking facts found in piecing together the anatomy of violence.
Have you ever wondered at the evil that men do and the theories why?
Behind the fictional characters like Donald Draper of Mad Men, Norman Bates of Psycho, and Rambo of First Blood there is an unseen tapestry, of thinking and behaviour.
Behind the shocking truths that hit our news reports of school shootings, mass murders, terrorism, news on violence and abuse there are darker truths that lurk in the anatomy of the offender and this book dissects and examines the flags of danger. The author tells you of the evidences found in researching the anatomy of violence.
This work explains the shades of the brain, the behaviours displayed, the social and the home aspects that contribute to an evolution into violence, he does not blame and pass down the roots of violence to Cain and Abel in their act of killing of kin and then on being a born condition with no other possible ailments, but explains the roots of violence with more insidious and complex workings at work.
With the simple imaging of the brain the hallmarks of a persons potential for violence could be documented.
This reading may have you looking at people you recognise in society and in your home and thinking of ways they could be helped, this reading is a much needed essential work on a human stain that will never magically be wanded away but needs efforts by all the faces of humanity in its toil and struggle to be cured.
Written with vast and great knowledge on the subject in an easy read terminology that everyone could understand, one that can could be used many times over for referencing particular conditions of behaviour.
Evidences and theories pieced together giving plenty of food for thought on the anatomy of violence.
Excepts
"The bright sunlight of my sisters radiant life was overshadowed by a particularly acute form of leukaemia. On September 18, Roma's life was snuffed out-perhaps mercifully-in just two weeks, although that's painfully long compared with the victims of most acts of violence. We all miss her, just as Clare does to this day.
I have reflected a great deal on Roma, and her death has profoundly affected my thinking. The other cancer that bloodies the lives of so many other people-violence-is to me as much medical as the sickness that killed my sister. For me, Roma's death is a metaphor for how I think we need to treat violence. It requires more compassion, less retribution, and a new clinical perspective that I want to move you toward considering."
"Do violent offenders have abnormal functioning in terms of how they think, feel, and behave? Yes, they certainly do. Does this "dysfunction" have a biological basis? Is something not going right in their development? I have argued that crime germinates early in life from a neurodevelopment and genetic base. I've suggested that there is a heck of a lot that is just not working right in violent offenders. They are also impaired in how they perform in life-whether at school, at home, or at work. Violence certainly causes distress to others, and the offender himself is frequently in a distressed state. Repeated violent offending is a clinical disorder."
Have you ever wondered at the evil that men do and the theories why?
Behind the fictional characters like Donald Draper of Mad Men, Norman Bates of Psycho, and Rambo of First Blood there is an unseen tapestry, of thinking and behaviour.
Behind the shocking truths that hit our news reports of school shootings, mass murders, terrorism, news on violence and abuse there are darker truths that lurk in the anatomy of the offender and this book dissects and examines the flags of danger. The author tells you of the evidences found in researching the anatomy of violence.
This work explains the shades of the brain, the behaviours displayed, the social and the home aspects that contribute to an evolution into violence, he does not blame and pass down the roots of violence to Cain and Abel in their act of killing of kin and then on being a born condition with no other possible ailments, but explains the roots of violence with more insidious and complex workings at work.
With the simple imaging of the brain the hallmarks of a persons potential for violence could be documented.
This reading may have you looking at people you recognise in society and in your home and thinking of ways they could be helped, this reading is a much needed essential work on a human stain that will never magically be wanded away but needs efforts by all the faces of humanity in its toil and struggle to be cured.
Written with vast and great knowledge on the subject in an easy read terminology that everyone could understand, one that can could be used many times over for referencing particular conditions of behaviour.
Evidences and theories pieced together giving plenty of food for thought on the anatomy of violence.
Excepts
"The bright sunlight of my sisters radiant life was overshadowed by a particularly acute form of leukaemia. On September 18, Roma's life was snuffed out-perhaps mercifully-in just two weeks, although that's painfully long compared with the victims of most acts of violence. We all miss her, just as Clare does to this day.
I have reflected a great deal on Roma, and her death has profoundly affected my thinking. The other cancer that bloodies the lives of so many other people-violence-is to me as much medical as the sickness that killed my sister. For me, Roma's death is a metaphor for how I think we need to treat violence. It requires more compassion, less retribution, and a new clinical perspective that I want to move you toward considering."
"Do violent offenders have abnormal functioning in terms of how they think, feel, and behave? Yes, they certainly do. Does this "dysfunction" have a biological basis? Is something not going right in their development? I have argued that crime germinates early in life from a neurodevelopment and genetic base. I've suggested that there is a heck of a lot that is just not working right in violent offenders. They are also impaired in how they perform in life-whether at school, at home, or at work. Violence certainly causes distress to others, and the offender himself is frequently in a distressed state. Repeated violent offending is a clinical disorder."
July 24, 2017
First, I want to emphasize that this is not a light, pop science kind of read. This is one of those detailed books requiring commitment and attention.
Adrian Raine gives us an in-depth look at brain functions, linking specific factors to the cause of violent behavior. Along with the scientific research, Raine offers fascinating case studies of violent criminals whose behavior can be explained by brain anomalies. In closing, he offers intriguing and controversial ideas for a new approach in dealing with the violent mind.
At times Raine strays from the science, making leaps to a singular conclusion. For instance, he claims children are most often killed by a parent when they are very young because the parent hasn't yet invested much time and energy into the child's upbringing. This alone, he claims, is evidence of evolutionary behavior. There is no science backing his claim. As a parent myself, I know firsthand how overwhelming an infant can be, especially one that is sickly or difficult to handle. As horrible as it is to imagine, I think there are many reasons a parent might kill an infant, most having nothing to do with evolutionary behavior.
The text can also get slightly longwinded at times, particularly toward the end when he is expressing his opinions on the future of neuroscience in dealing with criminal behavior.
Aside from these issues, I found this a powerful book. There is no doubt that our current way of thinking about and dealing with criminal behavior is not working. Adrian Raine offers us a unique understanding of violence that could very well change our criminal justice system.
Adrian Raine gives us an in-depth look at brain functions, linking specific factors to the cause of violent behavior. Along with the scientific research, Raine offers fascinating case studies of violent criminals whose behavior can be explained by brain anomalies. In closing, he offers intriguing and controversial ideas for a new approach in dealing with the violent mind.
At times Raine strays from the science, making leaps to a singular conclusion. For instance, he claims children are most often killed by a parent when they are very young because the parent hasn't yet invested much time and energy into the child's upbringing. This alone, he claims, is evidence of evolutionary behavior. There is no science backing his claim. As a parent myself, I know firsthand how overwhelming an infant can be, especially one that is sickly or difficult to handle. As horrible as it is to imagine, I think there are many reasons a parent might kill an infant, most having nothing to do with evolutionary behavior.
The text can also get slightly longwinded at times, particularly toward the end when he is expressing his opinions on the future of neuroscience in dealing with criminal behavior.
Aside from these issues, I found this a powerful book. There is no doubt that our current way of thinking about and dealing with criminal behavior is not working. Adrian Raine offers us a unique understanding of violence that could very well change our criminal justice system.
September 1, 2014
There is an excerpt from this book on The Guardian's site
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/201...
In the excerpt, the author tells about his vacation in Turkey in 1989, where his girlfriend and him become the victim of a burglary. The story seems more or less plausible until you read the last paragraph.
"After the verdict, one of the judges ushered me and my translator over to the bench. He told us that the defendant would be brought back later for sentencing and that it would be a prison sentence of several years' duration. Justice is swift and efficient in Turkey, I thought. I had seen on that trip more than one elderly man with a hand missing, a vestige of the days when theft was punished by detaching the offending part of the perpetrator's anatomy. That had seemed harsh when I had seen it earlier on my trip. But at that moment in the courtroom, in spite of the seeming lack of due process, hearing that my attacker would see significant prison time was music to my ears. Justice, as they say, is sweet."
The thing is, the act of cutting the hands of thieves performed during the time of the Ottoman empire and it was exceptionally rare. In fact there are only 6 (six) known cases, the usual punishment for thievery was monetary. So his claim of seeing "more than one elderly man with a hand missing" must either be an outright lie or he actually saw a man without a hand and when he asked about him, he became the victim of the sense of humor of the locals. It must be quite enjoyable to make fun of ignorant, prejudiced tourists.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/201...
In the excerpt, the author tells about his vacation in Turkey in 1989, where his girlfriend and him become the victim of a burglary. The story seems more or less plausible until you read the last paragraph.
"After the verdict, one of the judges ushered me and my translator over to the bench. He told us that the defendant would be brought back later for sentencing and that it would be a prison sentence of several years' duration. Justice is swift and efficient in Turkey, I thought. I had seen on that trip more than one elderly man with a hand missing, a vestige of the days when theft was punished by detaching the offending part of the perpetrator's anatomy. That had seemed harsh when I had seen it earlier on my trip. But at that moment in the courtroom, in spite of the seeming lack of due process, hearing that my attacker would see significant prison time was music to my ears. Justice, as they say, is sweet."
The thing is, the act of cutting the hands of thieves performed during the time of the Ottoman empire and it was exceptionally rare. In fact there are only 6 (six) known cases, the usual punishment for thievery was monetary. So his claim of seeing "more than one elderly man with a hand missing" must either be an outright lie or he actually saw a man without a hand and when he asked about him, he became the victim of the sense of humor of the locals. It must be quite enjoyable to make fun of ignorant, prejudiced tourists.
January 4, 2014
The slavish devotion to Richard Dawkins and evolutionary psychology made me skeptical, but to be honest, it was the purple prose that pushed me over the edge.
February 19, 2018
The author, Andrew Raine, is an interesting person. He has worked as an airline accountant, a prison psychologist, and is currently a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also probably not a serial killer.
If I thought he was a serial killer, of course, I wouldn't write this online, but there were about a dozen times during this book when he pointed out some trait about serial killers, and then shortly thereafter said something about his own life, personality, or background that was similar. He found people with psychopathic tendencies to be much easier to find working at temp agencies than in the general population, and then mentions that he worked at a temp agency once. The average resting heart rate of violent offenders is significantly lower than that of the general population; he mentions that as a young man he had a heart rate of 48 (60-100 is the typical range). There were several others. After one of them, he asks rhetorically, "Am I a serial killer? I have never been convicted of a violent crime." By and large I liked the book, but in the back of my head there was a tiny little voice asking if he decided to investigate biological tendencies towards violent crime for some reason other than basic curiousity.
He does a good job of surveying the last several decades' research on the topic. From a low point in the 60's and 70's, when suggesting that violent crime (or any other kind of behavior) might be linked to biology or genetics could get you labeled a fascist, the avalanche of genetic and brain-scan data in recent years has reached a point when it is difficult to keep up with it all. Specific genes are found to be much more common among psychopaths and serial killers. Exposure to lead paint, cigarette smoke, or (in the womb) too much testosterone seem to be linked to a propensity towards violence. Damage to the brain can lead to reduced empathy and reduced impulse control. The evidence that much of the behavior of our society's most violent members is biological, is by this point overwhelming.
There is, as in any book that is about the topic of violence, a problem of reading about behavior that you didn't particularly want to hear about. It is one thing to hear that a person lacked empathy; it is another to read just what they said and did to someone, usually female or much younger or both, just before they killed them. If you cannot tolerate a few such repulsive anecdotes, then this book (or any on the topic, really) are probably not for you. But Raine seems to be telling only that amount of detail which is necessary to make clear the level of psychopathy we're dealing with here, and most of the book is about the history of scientific research into how and why people in a mostly non-violent society become violent.
The last part of the book, is unfortunately the weakest. Here, Raine attempts to describe what should be done with the knowledge that has been painfully acquired over the last half century, by himself and many other researchers. For example, we now know that a genetic predisposition is usually not enough to send someone down the path towards psychopathy; an abusive and unstable childhood interacts with it to produce the murderer, rapist, or even serial killer. Raine suggests we look seriously at making it the government's business to decide who is capable of being a parent. Well, we already do in a limited way, of course; children are sometimes removed from their biological parents for abuse or neglect, and many young men are locked away and prevented from becoming fathers by the fact of their imprisonment. But, I'm not sure I would want to see the government engaged in proactive eugenics; the record of the government in accurately foreseeing the long-term consequences of their actions, is not encouraging.
He also discusses the possibilities of chemical castration as a way of lowering testosterone levels and with it the propensity to violence, especially violence related to sex. There is now a reasonable body of evidence that it can substantially reduce the levels of recidivism, some studies finding more than an order of magnitude difference. But most countries, while they are willing to lock someone up for life or even execute them, find the idea of castration distasteful, and refuse to consider it. Kill them? Ok, they have it coming. Castrate? We are not barbarians!
There are several other possible changes to how society deals with violent crime (either before or after it occurs) which he analyzes, and in none of them do I find his arguments likely to change the status quo. Really, a trained psychologist ought to know enough about how the human brain works to understand what does and does not sway people's opinions, but I have seen no evidence thus far that they are any better at it than the rest of us. That doesn't mean that we should be satisfied with the status quo, either, and clearly our current system of mass incarceration is not improving the behavior of the (nearly all) men who are locked up, and since most of them are eventually going to be released we really ought to be working harder at doing the best job we can of making them less likely to reoffend. To do that, we will need to learn as much as we can about why they are the way they are in the first place, and Raine's book does a fine job of helping us to do that.
Also, that human brain that he is holding in the picture on the dust jacket, is almost certainly a model, rather than say, one of his victim's. I'm pretty close to certain about that. But if I should go missing and there is suspicion of foul play, I'm just leaving this suggestion here for the police that they check if Dr. Raine ever reads reviews on Goodreads.
If I thought he was a serial killer, of course, I wouldn't write this online, but there were about a dozen times during this book when he pointed out some trait about serial killers, and then shortly thereafter said something about his own life, personality, or background that was similar. He found people with psychopathic tendencies to be much easier to find working at temp agencies than in the general population, and then mentions that he worked at a temp agency once. The average resting heart rate of violent offenders is significantly lower than that of the general population; he mentions that as a young man he had a heart rate of 48 (60-100 is the typical range). There were several others. After one of them, he asks rhetorically, "Am I a serial killer? I have never been convicted of a violent crime." By and large I liked the book, but in the back of my head there was a tiny little voice asking if he decided to investigate biological tendencies towards violent crime for some reason other than basic curiousity.
He does a good job of surveying the last several decades' research on the topic. From a low point in the 60's and 70's, when suggesting that violent crime (or any other kind of behavior) might be linked to biology or genetics could get you labeled a fascist, the avalanche of genetic and brain-scan data in recent years has reached a point when it is difficult to keep up with it all. Specific genes are found to be much more common among psychopaths and serial killers. Exposure to lead paint, cigarette smoke, or (in the womb) too much testosterone seem to be linked to a propensity towards violence. Damage to the brain can lead to reduced empathy and reduced impulse control. The evidence that much of the behavior of our society's most violent members is biological, is by this point overwhelming.
There is, as in any book that is about the topic of violence, a problem of reading about behavior that you didn't particularly want to hear about. It is one thing to hear that a person lacked empathy; it is another to read just what they said and did to someone, usually female or much younger or both, just before they killed them. If you cannot tolerate a few such repulsive anecdotes, then this book (or any on the topic, really) are probably not for you. But Raine seems to be telling only that amount of detail which is necessary to make clear the level of psychopathy we're dealing with here, and most of the book is about the history of scientific research into how and why people in a mostly non-violent society become violent.
The last part of the book, is unfortunately the weakest. Here, Raine attempts to describe what should be done with the knowledge that has been painfully acquired over the last half century, by himself and many other researchers. For example, we now know that a genetic predisposition is usually not enough to send someone down the path towards psychopathy; an abusive and unstable childhood interacts with it to produce the murderer, rapist, or even serial killer. Raine suggests we look seriously at making it the government's business to decide who is capable of being a parent. Well, we already do in a limited way, of course; children are sometimes removed from their biological parents for abuse or neglect, and many young men are locked away and prevented from becoming fathers by the fact of their imprisonment. But, I'm not sure I would want to see the government engaged in proactive eugenics; the record of the government in accurately foreseeing the long-term consequences of their actions, is not encouraging.
He also discusses the possibilities of chemical castration as a way of lowering testosterone levels and with it the propensity to violence, especially violence related to sex. There is now a reasonable body of evidence that it can substantially reduce the levels of recidivism, some studies finding more than an order of magnitude difference. But most countries, while they are willing to lock someone up for life or even execute them, find the idea of castration distasteful, and refuse to consider it. Kill them? Ok, they have it coming. Castrate? We are not barbarians!
There are several other possible changes to how society deals with violent crime (either before or after it occurs) which he analyzes, and in none of them do I find his arguments likely to change the status quo. Really, a trained psychologist ought to know enough about how the human brain works to understand what does and does not sway people's opinions, but I have seen no evidence thus far that they are any better at it than the rest of us. That doesn't mean that we should be satisfied with the status quo, either, and clearly our current system of mass incarceration is not improving the behavior of the (nearly all) men who are locked up, and since most of them are eventually going to be released we really ought to be working harder at doing the best job we can of making them less likely to reoffend. To do that, we will need to learn as much as we can about why they are the way they are in the first place, and Raine's book does a fine job of helping us to do that.
Also, that human brain that he is holding in the picture on the dust jacket, is almost certainly a model, rather than say, one of his victim's. I'm pretty close to certain about that. But if I should go missing and there is suspicion of foul play, I'm just leaving this suggestion here for the police that they check if Dr. Raine ever reads reviews on Goodreads.
May 28, 2015
It's easy for those of us in humanities and social sciences to respond with knee-jerk antipathy to Raine's thesis, so let me start by saying that I regard it as far from impossible that genetic, neurological and developmental factors play a part in aggressive behaviour. The notion that low levels of certain enzymes or under-developed brain regions are to some extent causative of certain kinds of impulsive violence is not at all implausible, and some of the research Raine documents here is interesting and challenging.
The problem is that Raine is guilty of (at least) two sins commonly found in this sort of polemic: he cherry-picks his data, and he overstates what he's actually shown. Wrt to my allegation of cherry-picking, this only became apparent to me when Raine ventured into terrain with which I'm actually familiar. So, regarding the possible effects of alcohol exposure during pregnancy, he supports a claim about even low levels of exposure with reference to a single study, making no mention whatever of the numerous studies that have found no behavioural effect whatever. Claims about putatively innate gender differences are also supported by some very old sources, with no reference at all to the recent critiques of, e.g. Cordelia Fine.
Wrt my allegation of over-claiming ... well, there are times when he doesn't so much jump the proverbial shark as use it as a skipping rope. Take this example. Apparently, if your 4th finger (what older folks still sometimes quaintly refer to as the 'ring finger') is longer than your 'index' finger, this is indicative of high testosterone exposure in utero. Which in turn is a predictor of impulsive, aggressive behaviour later in life. Well, ok, that's not impossible. But this trait, we are told but a couple of pages later, is also found disproportionately in members of symphony orchestras - hardly, one would imagine, a populace renowned for poor impulse control. (There are other examples which I may add when I remember the details.)
It's all a bit of a shame, because there are claims here with which humanities and social sciences people (as well as policy-makers and judges!) should be taking seriously, and evidence that is worthy of serious scrutiny. By ramping this up for maximum dramatic effect, Raine may have obtained a lot more media coverage than most academic writers, but I fear it's been at the expense of having his claims taken especially seriously.
The problem is that Raine is guilty of (at least) two sins commonly found in this sort of polemic: he cherry-picks his data, and he overstates what he's actually shown. Wrt to my allegation of cherry-picking, this only became apparent to me when Raine ventured into terrain with which I'm actually familiar. So, regarding the possible effects of alcohol exposure during pregnancy, he supports a claim about even low levels of exposure with reference to a single study, making no mention whatever of the numerous studies that have found no behavioural effect whatever. Claims about putatively innate gender differences are also supported by some very old sources, with no reference at all to the recent critiques of, e.g. Cordelia Fine.
Wrt my allegation of over-claiming ... well, there are times when he doesn't so much jump the proverbial shark as use it as a skipping rope. Take this example. Apparently, if your 4th finger (what older folks still sometimes quaintly refer to as the 'ring finger') is longer than your 'index' finger, this is indicative of high testosterone exposure in utero. Which in turn is a predictor of impulsive, aggressive behaviour later in life. Well, ok, that's not impossible. But this trait, we are told but a couple of pages later, is also found disproportionately in members of symphony orchestras - hardly, one would imagine, a populace renowned for poor impulse control. (There are other examples which I may add when I remember the details.)
It's all a bit of a shame, because there are claims here with which humanities and social sciences people (as well as policy-makers and judges!) should be taking seriously, and evidence that is worthy of serious scrutiny. By ramping this up for maximum dramatic effect, Raine may have obtained a lot more media coverage than most academic writers, but I fear it's been at the expense of having his claims taken especially seriously.
July 29, 2013
Where to start with this book? First, it quite poorly written. The style basically involves dumping facts and then repeating cliches. I heard this author speak on NPR, and I was quite impressed with his tone and erudition, so I was really disappointed. The author never lets the reader know that brain scans are quite inaccurate; the science simply isn't that advanced yet. Although I ultimately agree with many of the author's conclusions (i.e., that crime is often the result of bio-social forces), I found myself poking holes in his argument because his use of data was so problematic.
Additionally, I was quite disturbed by the author's blatant sexism. The book is clearly written with a male reader in mind, and the author loves repeating gender sterotypes under the guise of science. The first few chapters were particularly troubling. His use of evolutionary biology is laughable. He's basically saying, "well, people behave in this way now, so let's imagine a reason why this could have been beneficial to our ancestors." That's not science. It's storytelling. He never stops to think that perhaps culture could also have an effect, especially considering the fact that evolutionary biology is based on the idea that primates evolve by learning. When he started talking about women climaxing during rape, I almost had to put the book down.
Additionally, I was quite disturbed by the author's blatant sexism. The book is clearly written with a male reader in mind, and the author loves repeating gender sterotypes under the guise of science. The first few chapters were particularly troubling. His use of evolutionary biology is laughable. He's basically saying, "well, people behave in this way now, so let's imagine a reason why this could have been beneficial to our ancestors." That's not science. It's storytelling. He never stops to think that perhaps culture could also have an effect, especially considering the fact that evolutionary biology is based on the idea that primates evolve by learning. When he started talking about women climaxing during rape, I almost had to put the book down.
September 23, 2014
To say that I struggled with this book would have been an understatement. I so wanted this to be good and I held out hope all the way to the end. Looking at crime from a purely biological point of view is bad and lazy science. Causation is not correlation and vice versa. This book was also filled with victim blaming myths....if a parent does the best that they can, it is not their fault if their child decides to shoot them in the head. If a man has a tumor and knows that it is wrong to get into bed with a 12-year-old....it does not excuse his active choice to sexually abuse a child. His assumptions in the first chapter about sexual and domestic violence CLEARLY shows that he is absolutely unaware of any of the research done about rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence. Domestic violence can not be boiled down to "spousal jealousy". Perpetrators do not choose their victims based on their good looks or their assumption of the fertility of their victims, but rather are chosen because of their vulnerability.
October 6, 2018
Phenomenal piece of pop science writing. Fascinating subject brilliantly presented.
Raine goes to great lengths to emphasise causal versus correlational links, and experimental controls. in any of the work referenced. A disappointingly rare effort made in pop science books, but lends much credibility when done so well as this.
For a book focussed primarily on neurology, Raine doesn't do that irritating thing common in popular neurology - publishing interesting work that couldn't pass peer review. This is bunk-free!
The writing isn't particularly beautiful - in fact it's clunky in places - but the subject matter is riveting.
This will change how you think about your diet, exercise and should also change how you view the impoverished.
Absolutely brilliant.
Raine goes to great lengths to emphasise causal versus correlational links, and experimental controls. in any of the work referenced. A disappointingly rare effort made in pop science books, but lends much credibility when done so well as this.
For a book focussed primarily on neurology, Raine doesn't do that irritating thing common in popular neurology - publishing interesting work that couldn't pass peer review. This is bunk-free!
The writing isn't particularly beautiful - in fact it's clunky in places - but the subject matter is riveting.
This will change how you think about your diet, exercise and should also change how you view the impoverished.
Absolutely brilliant.
March 25, 2024
Had to read for a class. Pretty interesting.
November 11, 2013
I heard the author on NPR Fresh Air a few months ago and was intrigued enough to pick up the book when I saw it at my local library. I suspected that it might fall into the "pushing the science too far" trap, especially with brain imaging and neuroscience, but pushed ahead anyway. Biology must have some role, somewhere along the line, to play--culture didn't spring fully formed without it.
The book opens really, really badly with a trip down the evolutionary psychology wormhole. The problem with ev psych is simple: You observe certain differences in populations. Then you come up with an evolutionary hypothesis to explain it. The problem is, of course, it's difficult if not impossible to prove that hypothesis. Raine steps into a veritable greatest perils of ev-psych, from explaining rape to slapdash anthropology.
The book climbs onto slightly firmer ground in subsequent chapters--at least, here, Raine has some data to work with. The problem is, the data is still in its infancy and despite frequent caveats and reminders of the interaction between biology and environment, he's too quick to rush to conclusions with preliminary data. Despite all the hype about brain imaging, and the very real information it has given us, we still have a long way to go.
The potentially strongest part of the book is on the interaction between biological and social factors. Raine is most convincing when he demonstrates how biology is more than just genetics and evolution, and is also the result of environment. His examples of how poor social factors can influence biology and that parenting and social climate can combine with biological risk factors to influence outcomes get at the real complexity of the situation. For example, he looks at groups of teens with both biological and social risk factors for violence and shows how the combination is far more potent than either risk factor alone.
That said, he also relies too heavily on what may be questionable research (such as the potential of omega-3 supplementation). He is also not above provocation for the sake of it, such as armchair-diagnosing Adam Lanza with a personality disorder, and obligatory potshots at feminists.
The final chapter is a mess. Raine wants to outline a potential future for the uses of neurobiological research. First, he throws out the idea of considering violence as a mental disorder. Then he outlines a dystopic future of precrime detention, child intervention, and parenting licenses before stepping back to ask if this is already happening to some extent and what it means. Raine himself has no great answers--his best effort throughout the book is that his research shows the importance of interventions for very young children, a principle that research into other domains of development has shown--and so he is left flailing.
Raine is a fairly good, if sometimes overly personal and chatty, writer, and there is some interesting information in here, but the book as a whole does not work. I am not familiar enough with much of the research he cites to say whether the individual studies are presented accurately, but he gives the impression that he is overstating his case.
The book opens really, really badly with a trip down the evolutionary psychology wormhole. The problem with ev psych is simple: You observe certain differences in populations. Then you come up with an evolutionary hypothesis to explain it. The problem is, of course, it's difficult if not impossible to prove that hypothesis. Raine steps into a veritable greatest perils of ev-psych, from explaining rape to slapdash anthropology.
The book climbs onto slightly firmer ground in subsequent chapters--at least, here, Raine has some data to work with. The problem is, the data is still in its infancy and despite frequent caveats and reminders of the interaction between biology and environment, he's too quick to rush to conclusions with preliminary data. Despite all the hype about brain imaging, and the very real information it has given us, we still have a long way to go.
The potentially strongest part of the book is on the interaction between biological and social factors. Raine is most convincing when he demonstrates how biology is more than just genetics and evolution, and is also the result of environment. His examples of how poor social factors can influence biology and that parenting and social climate can combine with biological risk factors to influence outcomes get at the real complexity of the situation. For example, he looks at groups of teens with both biological and social risk factors for violence and shows how the combination is far more potent than either risk factor alone.
That said, he also relies too heavily on what may be questionable research (such as the potential of omega-3 supplementation). He is also not above provocation for the sake of it, such as armchair-diagnosing Adam Lanza with a personality disorder, and obligatory potshots at feminists.
The final chapter is a mess. Raine wants to outline a potential future for the uses of neurobiological research. First, he throws out the idea of considering violence as a mental disorder. Then he outlines a dystopic future of precrime detention, child intervention, and parenting licenses before stepping back to ask if this is already happening to some extent and what it means. Raine himself has no great answers--his best effort throughout the book is that his research shows the importance of interventions for very young children, a principle that research into other domains of development has shown--and so he is left flailing.
Raine is a fairly good, if sometimes overly personal and chatty, writer, and there is some interesting information in here, but the book as a whole does not work. I am not familiar enough with much of the research he cites to say whether the individual studies are presented accurately, but he gives the impression that he is overstating his case.
June 26, 2013
Excellent and exhaustive look at the neuroscience of violence! Raine did an incredible job compiling his research, along with others in the field, and presenting it in a reasonable and topical format.
"The Anatomy of Violence" spends a majority of the time examining aspects and structures of the brain that are correlated with violence; however Raine takes it a step further to examine the heart, sweat glands, and other minor organs of offenders to look for correlations and patterns.
Raine also spends time looking at socio-economic factors and family influences to finally bridge the gap of the "nature vs. nurture" debate. Most of his examples and case studies were well picked and referenced to illustrate many of his points.
The only low point of the book was when he offers a hypothetical world and society in 2034. I'm not a fan of hypothetical's, but Raine did a great job using the hypothetical "future" to address philosophical and ethical questions to the reader. I've rarely read other non-fiction works that pose questions back to the reader, so I found this very engaging and impressive.
Pros: Comprehensive and organized look at the external and internal forces that produce violence in humans.
Cons: More case studies and criminal interviews would've been nice, but there were no major cons.
Bottom line: Excellent for anyone interested in crime and how alterations in the brain can affect behavior.
"The Anatomy of Violence" spends a majority of the time examining aspects and structures of the brain that are correlated with violence; however Raine takes it a step further to examine the heart, sweat glands, and other minor organs of offenders to look for correlations and patterns.
Raine also spends time looking at socio-economic factors and family influences to finally bridge the gap of the "nature vs. nurture" debate. Most of his examples and case studies were well picked and referenced to illustrate many of his points.
The only low point of the book was when he offers a hypothetical world and society in 2034. I'm not a fan of hypothetical's, but Raine did a great job using the hypothetical "future" to address philosophical and ethical questions to the reader. I've rarely read other non-fiction works that pose questions back to the reader, so I found this very engaging and impressive.
Pros: Comprehensive and organized look at the external and internal forces that produce violence in humans.
Cons: More case studies and criminal interviews would've been nice, but there were no major cons.
Bottom line: Excellent for anyone interested in crime and how alterations in the brain can affect behavior.
December 13, 2017
I found the book to be very thrilling. This book never lost my attention because of the characters explored in here and the causes of such a violent person. The book was educational in the fact of calculating what makes a person violent. As you read more into these sinister people, you will constantly be asking yourself "why does such a monster exist?". The piece of resistance was the final question to this book: "What should we do [based on the evidence presented] about these violent people?". Read the book to find out what the author's answer is.
January 3, 2015
I can't think of a more important subject for 2013: the most current brain-imaging technology applied to the minds of killers (and other deviants). You'll see what makes their brains different--structurally and functionally. How and why do they lose empathy for other human beings? If we can understand the genetic and biological roots of violent behavior, there is hope to preventing it and treating it. Required reading for the human species.
February 4, 2018
There are some very interesting bits of information in this book. Unfortunately, when you see all the errors of logic, misinterpretations, dependence on studies which have long been disproved, etc. it draws everything in the book into question.
I listened to the audio of this book so when I first heard the author citing a study that has long since been called into question (XYY study on prisoners), I gave him the benefit of the doubt. That was my second mistake since this book has a copyright of 2013 (my first mistake was checking this audiobook out of the library).
One of the theories the author espoused, was rape is more traumatic to women in their reproductive years than it is to children or post-menopausal women. His proof for this would be amusing if this were any other topic but unfortunately, it's just appalling.
Another equally abhorrent theory is that there is a greater incidence of pregnancy from rape than there is from consensual unprotected sex because women often times climax during rape. It is very unclear to me where he was able to obtain accurate statistics on the actual rate of consensual unprotected sex or for that matter what is the true rate of rape. Neither of those activities is reported with any accuracy. That, of course, leads us to how was he then able to extrapolate the statistics on the resulting pregnancies?
He also proposed that rape was not a violent crime, rather it was just a strategy for men to increase their genetic contribution. However, there was not any explanation as to why rape happens to women out side of the child bearing years (children and older women).
I did not finish the book because it became very clear that this author used studies that have been disproved, statistics that cannot be substantiated, and sophist arguments to support his very misguided world view.
I listened to the audio of this book so when I first heard the author citing a study that has long since been called into question (XYY study on prisoners), I gave him the benefit of the doubt. That was my second mistake since this book has a copyright of 2013 (my first mistake was checking this audiobook out of the library).
One of the theories the author espoused, was rape is more traumatic to women in their reproductive years than it is to children or post-menopausal women. His proof for this would be amusing if this were any other topic but unfortunately, it's just appalling.
Another equally abhorrent theory is that there is a greater incidence of pregnancy from rape than there is from consensual unprotected sex because women often times climax during rape. It is very unclear to me where he was able to obtain accurate statistics on the actual rate of consensual unprotected sex or for that matter what is the true rate of rape. Neither of those activities is reported with any accuracy. That, of course, leads us to how was he then able to extrapolate the statistics on the resulting pregnancies?
He also proposed that rape was not a violent crime, rather it was just a strategy for men to increase their genetic contribution. However, there was not any explanation as to why rape happens to women out side of the child bearing years (children and older women).
I did not finish the book because it became very clear that this author used studies that have been disproved, statistics that cannot be substantiated, and sophist arguments to support his very misguided world view.
July 11, 2013
I have to say I found this book quite offensive. Author boasts about his IQ implies he is the best specialist there is and then he asks reader bunch of rhetorical questions implying he is talking to someone without basic knowledge and understanding. However quite a lot of stuff in his book does not seem to be right. I started checking facts and page by page it was all so terribly wrong. At the beginning author describes his trip to Turkey - he then mentions a city in Greece (Iraklion). He claims in Turkey they cut off hands for thievery (never was the case - I wonder if Turkish can sue him for that?) and that is just the prelude. If he cannot get the facts right about supposedly his own trip, how can he credibly describe anything else? And in fact he cant. He makes basic errors in his interpretation of statistics and then builds his whole argumentation on that. Author confused causality with correlation. This fact enough should place this book on the shelf with fiction and not in popular science. With someone who quotes his own IQ in a book this is quite disturbing. That also casts doubt on the interpretation of the cited research. I started checking the cases he mentioned and there were issues there as well. He exaggerates number of victims (he treats supposed or unconfirmed victims as the confirmed ones), he misquotes or misinterprets the articles. If you are into science and/or like to read about facts avoid this book at all costs.
August 19, 2016
Raises important red flags on what makes some people more susceptible to a life of crime and full-fledged monster-dom than others: 'black holes' in prefrontal cortex, subjugation of amygdala and hippocampus, genetic abnormalities, abusive family, poor nutrition (Omega-3, zinc deficiency) and excess of metals in blood (lead, cadmium) that contribute to a personality disorder ripe for a life of crime.
Whether the effect that each of these has on a person's choice and free will should impact the sentencing / punishment is the real question, and the book offers one of many answers.
Whether the effect that each of these has on a person's choice and free will should impact the sentencing / punishment is the real question, and the book offers one of many answers.
October 12, 2016
Largely unsubstantiated claims and startlingly weak data analysis led to interesting discussion while reading this with a group. As a result of these obvious shortcomings, the book served more as a cautionary tale than an inspiration regarding an interesting area of research.
November 15, 2017
Interesting information but a lot of grandstanding and strawman arguments. Opinions are presented as facts and correlation is presented as causation. Complexities are glossed over.
January 1, 2014
My broken brain made me do it! That might be one big takeaway from reading Adrian Raine’s recent book on The Anatomy of Violence. But it would be a gross simplification of a compelling, neurobiological case for the root causes of violence and a straw man at best. A leading authority on the biology of crime, violence, and antisocial behavior, Raine rattles the standard sociological paradigm in criminology with a wealth of evidence from behavioral genetics showing that at least half of our aggressive, antisocial behavior is highly heritable. Yes, the social environment still matters in explaining violent crime, he would agree, but it’s mostly influences outside the family, like peer groups, that make the biggest difference in how our lives turn out and not our parents and shared home environment. More or less stressful social environments can also turn on or off genetic propensities for violence across generations through an intriguing causal mechanism known as epigenetics—shades of Lamarckian inheritance?
Seeds of Violence Lie in the Brain
The bigger message Raine wants to drive home, however, centers on damage to the brain, in particular to the prefrontal cortex: the gray matter (just behind our foreheads) responsible for executive functioning—e.g., planning and anticipating the consequences of our actions—and regulating our aggressive impulses. Prefrontal dysfunction, as he documents extensively, turns out to be a common denominator in the brains of murderers, serial killers and spouse-abusers. Defects in the prefrontal cortex show up in the brains of psychopaths as well, but they lack an emotional conscience, the feeling of what is right or wrong, because of an equally damaged, “cooler” amygdala—the center of our emotional brain. The stereotypical fearlessness of psychopaths turns up in a telling biomarker: a chronically lower, resting heart rate. Such psychopaths and anti-social, violent offenders may just be born with dysfunctional brains.
Breaking Young Brains
But young brains, as Raine reminds us, can also be broken in lots of other ways. Birth complications (e.g. forceps injuries), maternal neglect, alcohol abuse and smoking during pregnancy, malnutrition, exposure to lead and other heavy metals—all of these social risk factors can interact with biological risk factors, greatly increasing the odds that a child will eventually become an anti-social, violent adult offender. How else do we explain, as in identical twin-adoption studies, why a child from a benign or even advantaged home environment ends up as a violent offender in adolescence? As Raine argues—persuasively in my judgment—when such a child is not exposed to an adverse home background and social forces that normally would predispose him to an antisocial or criminal way of life, genetic and neurobiological factors become the most plausible explanation for his behavior—social scientist claims to the contrary.
Illusions of Free Will and Responsibility
So are all these bad guys off the hook? Holding criminals accountable for their actions rests on the bedrock assumption that they had a “free choice” about how to behave. But Raine views the idea of free will as “almost a religious belief” with no physical basis in the brain; so he regards it as largely an illusion, a useful one for getting us to behave responsibly, but an illusion nonetheless. Throughout the book he documents dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex in case after case of violent and recidivistic offenders who evidently lack “free will” and the “…moral sense and feeling of what is right or wrong.” Case closed.
Legal Retribution and Brain Science
Not so fast, says Raine. Society demands “justice” to protect us from violent predators and psychopaths. We want retribution for despicable actions; we want the perps to feel some pain for the pain they inflicted on the victim. That’s our emotional brain speaking to the court. All we usually want to know, legally, is did the offender know what he was doing and could he tell whether what he was doing was right or wrong? If he did, then he had “rational capacity” in the American legal system, as Raine explains, and is therefore accountable for his actions. Yes, perpetrators may know what they’re doing on a cognitive level, but on an emotional level, their dysfunctional frontal cortex (and amygdala) leave them unable to feel what they did was wrong. Shame and remorse are not part of their affective vocabulary. So how do we justify holding them fully accountable in a legal system that is now based on 170-year old brain science, the archaic M’Naghten rule on criminal insanity (1843) and minor variations thereof?
For now we will continue to compartmentalizing what we know, neuroscientifically, from the rules of civilized society. As Adrian Raine, David Eagleman, Michael Gazzaniga, Sam Harris and a host of other cognitive neuroscientists have told us, virtually all of our actions are beyond our conscious control. Beliefs in free will and responsibility represent moral values—not scientific constructs, but rather social constructs that exist only as rules of the game, rules that vary over time and across cultures. But we err, rightly, they believe, on the side of protecting society from violent predators despite what we now know about the inescapable determinism of the human brain. But it may not be too long before our neural networks go on trial, transforming the legal system in the process. Stay tuned dinosaurs.
Violence as a Public Health Problem
Raine paves the way to this neurolaw future by getting us to view violence as a chronic public health problem, and not simply one of law enforcement or worse, medieval notions of senseless “evil” in our society. This should lead the way to more extensive neurobiological assessment, treatment and prevention, especially early on when we can identify many genetic and biosocial risk factors for broken brains. It’s hard to disagree with him here. But Raine veers off the reservation with a visionary, utopian set of solutions for the future, such as: a federal government initiative for a national brain-scanning program in which all males, 18 and over, would be required to register for a brain and DNA scan at a local hospital of their choice [think brain draft], the results of which might result in indefinite detention in a “…center where they can be assessed, treated and perhaps released someday; other high risk detainees could choose to be surgically ‘castrated’.” Evidently, he means it.
He also imagines that, because of the ever-spiraling problem of violence in our society [think here of recent mass murders], we will become increasingly receptive to a national screening program to identify high risk kids for “intensive biosocial therapy” in a residential treatment center, beginning with registration of all children at ten years old! Raine is by no means naïve about the civil liberties uproar that would ensue as a consequence of trying to implement his utopian visions, but he’s optimistic it can all be overcome with sufficient scientific evidence of its effectiveness in reducing violence. Dream on, Dr. Raine. The civil liberties reaction would be just part of a much larger political reaction in the Congress and statehouses around the country. Lawyers everywhere would be salivating. Bring it on!
He’s in over his head here. It would have been better for Raine to have left the implications of violence as a public health problem to other professionals and neuroethicists. His long suit lies in convincing us that violence or the “seeds of sin,” as he playfully refers to it, is written in the genes and rooted in the brain—aided and abetted by our biosocial environment. That he does well. Not many of us would doubt that the Navy Yard mass murderer Aaron Alexis’ brain was broken, that Newtown killer Adam Alanza’s brain was broken, that the Aurora “massacre soldier” James Eagan Holmes’ brain was broken—just to take some of the most recent episodes of mass violence. Yes, we want to hold all such predators accountable, but 170 year old brain science and outdated social science just won’t do. That and broken gun laws too.
The sociological model that has long dominated the field of criminology now faces a vigorous intellectual challenge— a felonious assault, some of its defenders might say— from the likes and allies of Adrian Raine’s emerging neurocriminological paradigm, one that dispels many of our illusions about the causes of violent crime. It's a terrific eye-opener for jaded observers of violent crime, especially in the USA.
George Franklin Bishop, Ph.D.
Cincinnati, Ohio
Seeds of Violence Lie in the Brain
The bigger message Raine wants to drive home, however, centers on damage to the brain, in particular to the prefrontal cortex: the gray matter (just behind our foreheads) responsible for executive functioning—e.g., planning and anticipating the consequences of our actions—and regulating our aggressive impulses. Prefrontal dysfunction, as he documents extensively, turns out to be a common denominator in the brains of murderers, serial killers and spouse-abusers. Defects in the prefrontal cortex show up in the brains of psychopaths as well, but they lack an emotional conscience, the feeling of what is right or wrong, because of an equally damaged, “cooler” amygdala—the center of our emotional brain. The stereotypical fearlessness of psychopaths turns up in a telling biomarker: a chronically lower, resting heart rate. Such psychopaths and anti-social, violent offenders may just be born with dysfunctional brains.
Breaking Young Brains
But young brains, as Raine reminds us, can also be broken in lots of other ways. Birth complications (e.g. forceps injuries), maternal neglect, alcohol abuse and smoking during pregnancy, malnutrition, exposure to lead and other heavy metals—all of these social risk factors can interact with biological risk factors, greatly increasing the odds that a child will eventually become an anti-social, violent adult offender. How else do we explain, as in identical twin-adoption studies, why a child from a benign or even advantaged home environment ends up as a violent offender in adolescence? As Raine argues—persuasively in my judgment—when such a child is not exposed to an adverse home background and social forces that normally would predispose him to an antisocial or criminal way of life, genetic and neurobiological factors become the most plausible explanation for his behavior—social scientist claims to the contrary.
Illusions of Free Will and Responsibility
So are all these bad guys off the hook? Holding criminals accountable for their actions rests on the bedrock assumption that they had a “free choice” about how to behave. But Raine views the idea of free will as “almost a religious belief” with no physical basis in the brain; so he regards it as largely an illusion, a useful one for getting us to behave responsibly, but an illusion nonetheless. Throughout the book he documents dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex in case after case of violent and recidivistic offenders who evidently lack “free will” and the “…moral sense and feeling of what is right or wrong.” Case closed.
Legal Retribution and Brain Science
Not so fast, says Raine. Society demands “justice” to protect us from violent predators and psychopaths. We want retribution for despicable actions; we want the perps to feel some pain for the pain they inflicted on the victim. That’s our emotional brain speaking to the court. All we usually want to know, legally, is did the offender know what he was doing and could he tell whether what he was doing was right or wrong? If he did, then he had “rational capacity” in the American legal system, as Raine explains, and is therefore accountable for his actions. Yes, perpetrators may know what they’re doing on a cognitive level, but on an emotional level, their dysfunctional frontal cortex (and amygdala) leave them unable to feel what they did was wrong. Shame and remorse are not part of their affective vocabulary. So how do we justify holding them fully accountable in a legal system that is now based on 170-year old brain science, the archaic M’Naghten rule on criminal insanity (1843) and minor variations thereof?
For now we will continue to compartmentalizing what we know, neuroscientifically, from the rules of civilized society. As Adrian Raine, David Eagleman, Michael Gazzaniga, Sam Harris and a host of other cognitive neuroscientists have told us, virtually all of our actions are beyond our conscious control. Beliefs in free will and responsibility represent moral values—not scientific constructs, but rather social constructs that exist only as rules of the game, rules that vary over time and across cultures. But we err, rightly, they believe, on the side of protecting society from violent predators despite what we now know about the inescapable determinism of the human brain. But it may not be too long before our neural networks go on trial, transforming the legal system in the process. Stay tuned dinosaurs.
Violence as a Public Health Problem
Raine paves the way to this neurolaw future by getting us to view violence as a chronic public health problem, and not simply one of law enforcement or worse, medieval notions of senseless “evil” in our society. This should lead the way to more extensive neurobiological assessment, treatment and prevention, especially early on when we can identify many genetic and biosocial risk factors for broken brains. It’s hard to disagree with him here. But Raine veers off the reservation with a visionary, utopian set of solutions for the future, such as: a federal government initiative for a national brain-scanning program in which all males, 18 and over, would be required to register for a brain and DNA scan at a local hospital of their choice [think brain draft], the results of which might result in indefinite detention in a “…center where they can be assessed, treated and perhaps released someday; other high risk detainees could choose to be surgically ‘castrated’.” Evidently, he means it.
He also imagines that, because of the ever-spiraling problem of violence in our society [think here of recent mass murders], we will become increasingly receptive to a national screening program to identify high risk kids for “intensive biosocial therapy” in a residential treatment center, beginning with registration of all children at ten years old! Raine is by no means naïve about the civil liberties uproar that would ensue as a consequence of trying to implement his utopian visions, but he’s optimistic it can all be overcome with sufficient scientific evidence of its effectiveness in reducing violence. Dream on, Dr. Raine. The civil liberties reaction would be just part of a much larger political reaction in the Congress and statehouses around the country. Lawyers everywhere would be salivating. Bring it on!
He’s in over his head here. It would have been better for Raine to have left the implications of violence as a public health problem to other professionals and neuroethicists. His long suit lies in convincing us that violence or the “seeds of sin,” as he playfully refers to it, is written in the genes and rooted in the brain—aided and abetted by our biosocial environment. That he does well. Not many of us would doubt that the Navy Yard mass murderer Aaron Alexis’ brain was broken, that Newtown killer Adam Alanza’s brain was broken, that the Aurora “massacre soldier” James Eagan Holmes’ brain was broken—just to take some of the most recent episodes of mass violence. Yes, we want to hold all such predators accountable, but 170 year old brain science and outdated social science just won’t do. That and broken gun laws too.
The sociological model that has long dominated the field of criminology now faces a vigorous intellectual challenge— a felonious assault, some of its defenders might say— from the likes and allies of Adrian Raine’s emerging neurocriminological paradigm, one that dispels many of our illusions about the causes of violent crime. It's a terrific eye-opener for jaded observers of violent crime, especially in the USA.
George Franklin Bishop, Ph.D.
Cincinnati, Ohio
February 7, 2024
I can’t remember where but this was recommended to me twice in two different places so I figured I should give it a go. The low ratings have to be people who don’t like what it says, but I’m guessing they can’t see past the disclaimers about how it’s not definitive. The good news is science doesn’t care if you believe it or not. Downside- the author talks about himself much more than is necessary and the hypotheticals at the end are kind of a mess. 4 stars
April 16, 2017
Are we all as confused as I am on how to bring about all our better natures? The Anatomy of Violence is a very provocative book that tentatively outlines a biologically functional and structural map of the criminal mind. The key to this map is backed by solid scientific findings focused on the origins of the seeds of violence.
One part of me is in favour of neuro-profiling as a protectionist measure against violence committed by those predisposed towards aggression. It is another thing entirely to implement it into society. One can’t help but envision neuro-profiling being used as a population control measure. Population control measures can be seen in any historical fascist country or police state. Biological control of behavior by using the fantastical, pin-pointed, psi-forecasts like that in Minority Report employ preemptive/highly predictive measures to buttress the law but are founded on outlier states of mind and not on science. Yet it is not beyond conjecture, to step past the pale, and move towards a scientifically founded, police state. One that controls overall population, brain screening for a potential target individual/groups and forcibly segregates them from society because of their ‘risk’ factor. This is what Raine suggests as a possible option for neuro-law. This segregation implies the use of eugenics which Raine states are something done already within the American prison system when conjugal visits are denied.
One of my earliest exposures to the concept of a police state arose from my watching the movie THX 1138, a masterpiece written by George Lucas and released in 1971. Both the book and the movie of Nineteen Eighty-Four had escaped my radar, up until then. THX 1138 was the first movie of my generation to expand on the dystopian vision of a police state.
In THX 1138, all normal range human emotions are diagnosed as neurotic conflicts and are sublimated by enforced biological chemical control. Electronic surveillance is done by central video CCTV control centers, where every word is monitored and recorded by two humans, and android police enforce the highly regimented law abiding society. For breaking the rules of the society, one is imprisoned in a limbo world awash in white light. Constant testing and trials determine if a worker still has a ‘use’ left in him or her, or they are declared "incurable", and "used" up and "consumed," possibly for organ reclamation.
THX 1138 and A Clockwork Orange both come the closest to depicting the type of society that Raine envisions as one that embraces neuro-law.
- Raine startlingly says that ‘free will,’ is an illusion that we just need to simply get over. And when asked what might be considered good criterion for establishing ‘rational capacity,’ he answers a question with a question,
Raines’ bias is that he believes in a biological determinism that is optimistically unrealistic and utilitarian in its ethics when he proposes an ‘objective drawing of the line.’ The ultimate question remains, “What are the boundaries we will not transgress between human distinctness, and the generalities of unstoppable progressive science.
How does a justifiable lack of rational capacity even enter into our dialogue without it being considered as eugenics based? Eugenics would figure naturally as an in-step measure if neuro-law were to be implemented. We need to learn to say, ‘No this is as far as we go,’ in our pursuit of bettering humanity.
As in the revelatory book, ‘Singularity is Near,’ and the forward trending movie, ‘Transcendence,’ we need to talk amongst ourselves about what kind of future we want for humanity.
Raine writes very comprehensively and in a very approachable way about the human capacity for violence. He makes sound arguments, puts forward solid findings, and theories accurately. Yet it is like he is color-sight compromised and does not see the dangers inherent in his backing an incredibly powerful population control mechanism. Einstein saw the dangers in atomic power:
We don't need to be an Einstein to see a threat to humanity.
One part of me is in favour of neuro-profiling as a protectionist measure against violence committed by those predisposed towards aggression. It is another thing entirely to implement it into society. One can’t help but envision neuro-profiling being used as a population control measure. Population control measures can be seen in any historical fascist country or police state. Biological control of behavior by using the fantastical, pin-pointed, psi-forecasts like that in Minority Report employ preemptive/highly predictive measures to buttress the law but are founded on outlier states of mind and not on science. Yet it is not beyond conjecture, to step past the pale, and move towards a scientifically founded, police state. One that controls overall population, brain screening for a potential target individual/groups and forcibly segregates them from society because of their ‘risk’ factor. This is what Raine suggests as a possible option for neuro-law. This segregation implies the use of eugenics which Raine states are something done already within the American prison system when conjugal visits are denied.
One of my earliest exposures to the concept of a police state arose from my watching the movie THX 1138, a masterpiece written by George Lucas and released in 1971. Both the book and the movie of Nineteen Eighty-Four had escaped my radar, up until then. THX 1138 was the first movie of my generation to expand on the dystopian vision of a police state.
In THX 1138, all normal range human emotions are diagnosed as neurotic conflicts and are sublimated by enforced biological chemical control. Electronic surveillance is done by central video CCTV control centers, where every word is monitored and recorded by two humans, and android police enforce the highly regimented law abiding society. For breaking the rules of the society, one is imprisoned in a limbo world awash in white light. Constant testing and trials determine if a worker still has a ‘use’ left in him or her, or they are declared "incurable", and "used" up and "consumed," possibly for organ reclamation.
THX 1138 and A Clockwork Orange both come the closest to depicting the type of society that Raine envisions as one that embraces neuro-law.
- Raine startlingly says that ‘free will,’ is an illusion that we just need to simply get over. And when asked what might be considered good criterion for establishing ‘rational capacity,’ he answers a question with a question,
from an interview:
- “Yes, we might grudgingly accept that there may be constraints on free will invoked by biological (as well as social) influences. Yet as Tancredi states: “The question remains: what scientific information, such as brain images and genetics, and at what level of abnormality establishes a justifiable lack of rational capacity and control of behavior?”
- “I don’t have a complete answer, although intellectual disability could be a model. Defined essentially as an IQ below 70 (two standard deviations below the mean) together with impaired social functioning, this statistically corresponds to the bottom 4-5% of the population. Could that be applied as a metric to risk factors like prefrontal dysfunction, alongside a more qualitative assessment of impaired social functioning as is done with case with intellectual disability, as a future guide to answering pertinent yet vexing question on where we should objectively draw the line?
Raines’ bias is that he believes in a biological determinism that is optimistically unrealistic and utilitarian in its ethics when he proposes an ‘objective drawing of the line.’ The ultimate question remains, “What are the boundaries we will not transgress between human distinctness, and the generalities of unstoppable progressive science.
How does a justifiable lack of rational capacity even enter into our dialogue without it being considered as eugenics based? Eugenics would figure naturally as an in-step measure if neuro-law were to be implemented. We need to learn to say, ‘No this is as far as we go,’ in our pursuit of bettering humanity.
As in the revelatory book, ‘Singularity is Near,’ and the forward trending movie, ‘Transcendence,’ we need to talk amongst ourselves about what kind of future we want for humanity.
Raine writes very comprehensively and in a very approachable way about the human capacity for violence. He makes sound arguments, puts forward solid findings, and theories accurately. Yet it is like he is color-sight compromised and does not see the dangers inherent in his backing an incredibly powerful population control mechanism. Einstein saw the dangers in atomic power:
Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing power to make great decisions for good or evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. - Einstein
We don't need to be an Einstein to see a threat to humanity.
February 12, 2021
Don’t mind me taking some lil notes for my thesis lmfao 😭
- strong points for gene & environment (twin studies & family studies on antisocial behavior in kids, XYY, MAOA gene, in general good explanation of gene mutation)
- definitely some questionable studies & theories being relied on too heavily (Omega-3, Warrior gene kinda huh?, too much importance on nutrition and stuff like zinc wtf)
- strong points for gene & environment (twin studies & family studies on antisocial behavior in kids, XYY, MAOA gene, in general good explanation of gene mutation)
- definitely some questionable studies & theories being relied on too heavily (Omega-3, Warrior gene kinda huh?, too much importance on nutrition and stuff like zinc wtf)
October 10, 2023
The science and studies are deeeeeply fascinating and illuminating. The last chapter, concerning quite hypothetical situations and a mishmash of loooose ethical questions and concerns, lost me in this book’s success and likability.
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