One of the most common fantasies I have heard from many of the most violent prison inmates is the scenario of going to their deaths in a hail of gunfire while killing as many people as possible before they selves die... In the prisons and on the streets of the United States, such behavior appears to…
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James Gilligan
James Gilligan is an American psychiatrist and author, husband of Carol Gilligan and best known for his series of books entitled Violence, where he draws on 25 years of work in the American prison system to describe the motivation and causes behind violent behavior. During his career, Gilligan has served as director for the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane, director of mental health for the Massachusetts prison system and as President of the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy. He now lectures at the Department of Psychiatry, New York University. Professor Gilligan is an Adjunct Professor at NYU Law and Collegiate Professor at NYU's College of Arts and Sciences. He has been on the faculty at NYU since 2002. Previously, Dr. Gilligan was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, where he worked from 1966 to 2000. In 1977 he became the Director of the Harvard Institute of Law and Psychiatry. Dr. Gilligan was brought in as the Medical Director of the Massachusetts prison mental hospital in Bridgewater, Massachusetts because of the high suicide and murder rates within their prison
There are only two possible sources of love for the self from oneself and from others.
If the purpose of imprisonment were to socialize men to become as violent as possible -- both while they are there and after they return to the community -- we could hardly find a more effective way to accomplish it.
The main motives for violence: the fear of shame and ridicule, and the overbearing need to prevent others from laughing at oneself by making them weep instead.
Understanding violence ultimately requires learning how to translate violent actions into words.
Those who kill others do so in part because they cannot stand to think that others are alive while they are not, and they cannot bear their living death.
American violence is the result of our collective 'moral choice' to maintain those social policies that in turn maintain our uniquely high level of violence.
All violence is an attempt to achieve justice.