Again, my thanks to those who have been moved to make comments, and my apologies that the quality of my writing style does not align as well as I would like to the importance of the subject. My apparent need to share what I believe I have learned (reinforced by the encouragement of some of you – perhaps to the understandable dismay of others) appears to be strong enough to overwhelm my misgivings about either my ability to do the subject justice or the prospect of waiting until my ability to communicate improves.
I hope the importance of the subject matter steels readers to the pain of wading through the verbiage. In the meantime, rest assured that I am sensitive to my need to accept responsibility for, and improve, my writing skills. An editor would, no doubt, help enormously, as has been suggested, but I’m chary of asking anyone to saddle themselves with that burden unless they could be remunerated, and that doesn’t, at present, seem viable.
With that, “Once more into the breach, dear friends … I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start. The game's afoot: …! Wm Shakspere
(Not?! You say? Delusions of grandeur you say?!)”
Again, an important disclaimer.
All of my work and thinking is based exclusively on my personal and clinical experience. I make no claim that any of it is research based. Therefore any claims and conclusions should be approached with appropriate caution.
Why violence?
I consider it pretty safe to say that people who are content with their circumstances are highly unlikely to deliberately, and unjustifiably, commit a violent act (with the conceivable exception of traumatic brain injury victims, about which I know far too little to venture even a guess).
It seems likely that humans will always be at risk of accidental acts of violence, and there are a variety of organizations and other forces out there who are trying to reduce their incidence, whatever their form. There is abundant evidence, I believe, that significant, although perhaps not enough, progress has been made in those endeavors. In any case I will leave that issue to others who are better equipped to address that.
Should we look at involuntary violence? While I have heard many people assert that their violence was, indeed, involuntary (again, the plaint comes to mind, “of course I hit him, Dave”), whenever we have explored their circumstances it has almost invariably become clear that their violent response was a chosen response, sometimes not so much in that moment, but in the training and conditioning they had undergone previous to that moment (sometimes perhaps, even in hopes that such a moment would come where they could commit a violent act and then claim that it was an involuntary response, although, to be fair, that is perhaps a largely subconscious process, and therefore more a defense mechanism or coping skill than a conscious decision).
I’m not prepared to rule out involuntary acts of violence, but I have yet to be persuaded that they truly exist, at least in sufficient numbers to warrant attention here (Have I just issued an invitation to be inundated with examples? If so, I would ask that relatively complete accounts of the circumstance and history be supplied, because I am likely to be very skeptical.). In any case, it is evident, at least to me, that deliberate violence is extant in sufficient quantity to warrant considerable attention so that will serve as the primary focus of this discussion.
Some years ago, just as I was starting to become involved in the domain of my profession which preoccupies the bulk of my time at present, a friend and colleague (who shall remain anonymous for unrelated reasons) introduced me to a concept which I have often since found useful (If anyone recognizes from whence it originally came, I would be very interested in identifying the source).
His fundamental contention was:
Motivation = Pain x Hope.
A corollary of that principle is that:
The Thresholds of both Pain and Hope necessary in order to trigger a Motivation to Act must exceed zero, but otherwise those Thresholds are in inverse proportion to each other.
So, in the presence of small amounts of Pain we require significant amounts of Hope in order to Act (overcome resistance to change), but in the presence of great Pain we require relatively little Hope in order to trigger an Action.
For people in severe pain, violence is often imbued with hope, especially if they are a product of an environment which de-stigmatizes violence. Much, if not most, violence is triggered by frustration over feeling blocked off from more appropriate (and more effective) means of resolving anger.
Since violence typically involves dramatic action, it may be seen by some as an attractive option in response to that frustration because, “at least I’m doing something.” When we decide to invoke violence, the more pain we are experiencing, the less hope we require that our violence will better our circumstances. Often it is sufficient that, for a few moments, at least, we feel like we are in control of our life, and/or have sent a message to others that we are not to be taken lightly.
The myth of the efficacy of violence has also become imbued in our culture, and in our very language. It is romanticized in our cultural memory of the evolution of our country, from the early clashes, both of Europeans with Native Americans, and between competing European interests in our continent, through the settling of the west, and even in the midst of the carnage of the Civil War, to present day “battles” over political and economic issues, as well as too many other examples to list.
This myth seems to be paired with an almost mystical belief that if we are the ones invoking the violence we will only use it in “just” causes. It appears to be inconceivable to most of us that we could ever make a mistake, and apply violence unjustly or otherwise inappropriately.
That having been said, there seems to be a lingering uneasiness about “needing” to resort to violence. In some respects, in spite of the widespread cultural bias towards, and support for, violence, we often regard its presence in our society, our community, and our individual lives as an emblem of failure and almost feel a need to apologize for it. Thus for deliberate violence, justification appears to be a key element.
I find, however, that most justifications for violence fail the efficacy test. When we compare and contrast what we were trying to accomplish via our act of violence, with what we actually accomplished, we are almost always disappointed, in part, or in whole, with the results.
I find too, that most justification is adopted only, or at least primarily, ex post facto. Very often it is designed primarily to soften disapproval from both others and ourselves for something that we have already done, and thus serves more as a cover-up than a rationale for our real motivations.
So why intimate violence? That’s where we will start next time.
Dave