Introduction

1 Perpetrators and Victims

2 Making Sense: Towards a social ecology

3 The Past and the Future: The legacy of child abuse

4 Victims and Perpetrators

5 Troubled Children, Troubled Adults

6 Violence in Society

7 The Globalisation of Violence

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• What led Fred and Rosemary West to carry out such brutal abuses and murders in their own home?

• How is it possible that two minors could carry out the terrible acts that culminated in the death of Jamie Bulger?

• What motivates the terrorists who are willing to give their own lives to carry out such atrocities as the 11 September attacks?

• Why do people behave violently? Violence affects us all. While we find it abhorrent, violence also intrigues us. How any given society at any period in its history defines deviancy, and particularly those whom it perceives as 'evil' or 'mad', always reveals more about that society and the vested interests and values of those who are most powerful than about those who are being defined. In this book Elie Godsi is critical of current cultural and medical perspectives that exaggerate biological, genetic and psychological explanations and marginalise the contribution of brutalising social and environmental influences. He challenges us to consider a more critical and compassionate view of violence and personal distress, one that places these experiences within a global social, cultural and economic context.

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the book goes on to deconstruct individual violent acts and symptomology, and places it within a wider context in a thought provoking and accessible way.

Annie Turner, Relate

 

[Godsi] knows his violent offenders inside out and his comments about them are permeated with insight, understanding and compassion.

Masud S Hoghughi, Clinical Psychologist, Darlington