Overview

This text analyzes the nature and meaning of violence in society. It discusses the impact of violent crimes on men who have committed them, and comments that conventional legal and punitive systems which are based on notions of justice and retribution perpetrate violent behaviour. Gilligan was called into the Massachusetts prison system because of the high rates of suicides and murders within state prisons there; when he left these rates had dropped almost to zero.

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9781853028427

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James Gilligan has written a stunning book about violence. As a psychiatrist who has spent twenty-five years of his professional life treating men who committed murder, Gilligan draws poignantly on his work with prisoners to help us understand what motivates desperate men. In the end, he offers a compelling psychoanalytic explanation of violence while calling on society to take social, economic and cultural measures to help prevent the 'deadly epidemic' from spreading. -- Judith Friedlander, PhD., Dean of the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, New School for Social Research Dr. Gilligan offers a personal and passionate summing up of his decades of empathic clinical work with men who have committed horrible crimes, and he succeeds in deepening our understanding of their inner lives, the dark world of prisons they inhabit, and the violence that pervades... society. -- Donald J. Cohen, M.D., Director, Yale Child Study Center Extraordinary. Gilligan's recommendations concerning what does work to prevent violence...are extremely convincing...A wise and careful, enormously instructive book. -- Owen Renik, M.D., editor Psychoanalytic Quarterly Important and absorbing...a valuable book deserving a widespread and thoughtful readership. -- Norval Morris, Boston Globe, former Dean of University of Chicago Law School

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