Violence

In addressing the issue of violence, our first purpose is to provide practical information that will help the reader to design specific intervention strategies aimed at preventing the escalation of violence in any community.

But the study of violence has taught us that such approaches will be ineffective unless we have a coherent and meaningful framework within which to understand the continuum of violent perpetration. Only a shift in human understanding can help us to be more effective in slowing the pace of the disease down through the generations, from person to person, from family to family, from nation to nation.

All of our cultural systems for making meaning are infiltrated with this lethal virus. Human culture has become "trauma-organised" around the unrecognised, unmetabolised, and untransformed thoughts, feelings and behaviours of a post-traumatic response. We hope that this monograph can make a contribution to understanding the nature of the infection and provide some guidelines for managing the infection once it has set in.

Violence features contributions from Gwen Adshead, Sandra L. Bloom, Felicity de Zulueta, and Joseph F. Foderaro.

- Sandra L. Bloom, Editor, from her Introduction