NCJ Number
180355
Editor(s)
Robert A. Geffner Ph.D.
Date Published
1998
Length
347 pages
Annotation
This book discusses some of the biological, psychological, social, and moral issues that determine whether a person will become a victim, perpetrator, or witness to violent events and what happens to an individual who is in one or more of these roles.
Abstract
The book is divided into nine chapters that review the topics noted, among others: (1) Looking at the Numbers; (2) Traumatogenic Forces in Society (childbearing conditions and practices; disavowal of emotions and emotional numbing; sexism; gender, male conditioning, and violence; injustice, poverty, and race; social stress; existential confusion and the problems of evil); (3) Where Violence Occurs (family, workplace, school, church); (4) Active Support for Violence (firearms, substance abuse, pornography, media violence); (5) Our Response to Violence (crime and punishment, failure to protect, robopathology, protective factors); (6) Normal Reactions to Abnormal Stress (fight-or-flight, learned helplessness, attachment behavior, and 17 other stress-related behaviors); (7) Tertiary Prevention: Fixing What Is Already Broken (trauma-based principles for intervention, establishing safety); (8) Secondary Prevention: Containing the Traumatic Infection (a bill of rights for children, prisons and the criminal justice system, spiritual support for nonviolence); and (9) Primary Prevention: Ending the Cycles of Violence (promoting resiliency, a community response to violence). Bibliography, index