James Gilligan Preventing Violence Summary

James Gilligan is an American psychiatrist who presents the causation and prevention of violence from his point of view of working in US prisons for decades in his book “Preventing Violence”. Gilligan provides readers with a multitude of data and theories, but his book (or at least the first four chapters) boils down to the fact that violence towards other is caused by shame. He calls upon his many years of interaction with prison inmates and explains how inmates who committed violent crimes often said it was because they were disrespected, and therefore shamed. However, it’s very important to highlight that it takes not only shame but also an inability to “regain respect” after a shameful event, to cause violence as Gilligan proposes. This

When a man feels shamed from being unemployed, Gilligan states that this is an extension of being “not manly” or not fulfilling his societal expectations. A man who has a good job has money, is white, and is educated tends to be, in general, seen as someone in society deserving of respect, or a useful member of society. This man has “admirable traits” that he can acknowledge to alleviate feelings of shame. These are the ways to “regain respect” that Gilligan talked about, and someone lacking in many, or all such traits may resort to violence when shamed since they have no other mechanism with which to earn

This culture of, if you aren’t succeeding in everything then you didn’t try hard enough, creates intense shame for those who can’t succeed, for outcasts already dealing with shame of differing from the norm. Gilligan calls our culture a culture of shame, as opposed to a culture of guilt. The difference is that guilt is internalized; the feeling that you’ve done wrong can’t be reconciled by forcing others to respect you because guilt comes from oneself. This is why in such guilt cultures like Japan, Gilligan theorizes, that suicide is much more common since the only way to alleviate guilt would be to reconcile the wrongdoing or eliminate the source of guilt, themselves. This culture of shame is precisely what James Gilligan proposes we must fix in order to prevent violence. He believes that in order to stop people from using violence to take back respect, or in some cases, to beget fear in lieu of respect, we must give them ways to be respected