Traumatized by Violence? Prisoners Show How to Move On

In a time of severe social dislocation and a rise in violence, James Gilligan, psychiatrist and noted theorist on the role of violence in society, offers important insights for our daily lives, drawn from learnings from his work with prisoners whom he describes as "the most violent inmates."

Invariably, these are individuals with a life history of early rejection, trauma and often violence inflicted on them by caregivers.

Numbness. These individuals typically describe themselves as numb, dead, unable to feel emotions. They see themselves purely as victims and truly think they are innocent. Self-harm is common, and reflects a desperate effort to feel something to really know and feel that they are alive. It's better to feel pain than to feel dead. The big danger is that they will kill again.

Receiving care and experiencing guilt. When supported by programs that provide a regular experience of interaction with someone who cares for them (through therapy or support groups), some of these individuals begin to open up to human connection. Gradually they realize the enormity of their deeds and the pain and loss they've inflicted on others.

Now feelings emerge, especially guilt, and as they progress they are overwhelmed with it. They may be less dangerous to others but they are a big danger to themselves.

Healing, through service to others. Gilligan says of these individuals: "Then something happened that I had not anticipated. I hadn’t read about it anywhere. It took me by surprise. They discovered something that enabled them to transcend both the shame and guilt. That is, they discovered that they could be useful and helpful to other people. They could teach the illiterate prisoners – And many prisoners are illiterate – They could teach them to read and write. They could help them to write letters home. They could help them navigate the law library in the prisons, and so on."

"Once they had discovered that, they had something that enhanced their own self-esteem, but also enabled them, actually, to care about other people and to care for them. To me, that was the resurrection of… Maybe resurrection’s the wrong word. Maybe it was the coming to life for the first time of a soul."

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In our own ways, I think all of us go through these stages. I like the simplicity of Gilligan's discovery that it is in being cared for and offering care to others that we discover our own soul.

I think part of why violence has become such a threat in America is that we are increasingly focused on self that is isolated from others - our wants, our rights, our own little bubble of reality and truth. We experience less and less of the kind of caring that is required for human beings to feel alive and to then feel capable of reaching out to care for others.

The pandemic made this all worse of course, but the roots were here long ago - in a narrative of material success as the key to happiness and over-confidence in hard work as the pathway to it; in an unexamined national history of relentlessly sacrificing the lives and well-being of others in order to facilitate the expansion of our own; in over-emphasis on individualism and loss of practices and institutions that nurture care for others; in simplistic reliance on coercion and violence to address problems that require connective responses.

If we want security as a society, we will achieve it not through more "protection" but rather through finding ways of establishing experiences of caring for others at the center of life. All the talk about strong-armed measures is a distraction; it blocks us from recognizing the core element of what is really missing.

What is missing is awareness of depth, spirit, soul. And the path to reclaiming these is not feisty assertion of rights to pray when and where we want; prayer after all is far more about inner attitude than outer action. Nor does it involve imposing own groups visions of right living on another. The path out of the place of death we find ourselves in starts with simple acts of care for others.

Is that enough? Of course not, but it is a sine qua non, the essential starting place.