by

The Chris Hedges Report: Breaking the Cycle of American Violence, with James Gilligan

violence

Image by ieat31415 via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

TheRealNews on Jul 22, 2022

Chris Hedges speaks with the Psychiatrist Dr. James Gilligan about our rash of mass shootings and his book Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and it’s Causes.

American society is the most violent of any nation in the industrialized world. Nothing we do, from administrating the world’s largest prison system to militarizing our police, seems to help.

Dr. James Gilligan, the former director of the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School and the former director of the Bridgewater State hospital for the criminally insane, argues that childhood abuse, and the shame it engenders, is the engine that fuels America’s deadliest epidemic.

This abuse and shame, he argues, fosters a dangerous numbness that breeds a deep self-loathing and inchoate rage. It is only by understanding the causes of our national epidemic, and addressing those causes, that we will have any hope of stemming the nihilistic violence that grips American society.

Dr. Gilligan’s grounds his writing not only in case studies of the violent patients he works with, but Greek myths and Shakespeare.

Joining me to discuss his book Violence: Our deadly Epidemic and Its Causes, as well his book Holding a Mirror up to Nature: Shame, Guilt, and Violence in Shakespeare, which he co-authored with David A.J Richards, is Dr. James Gilligan, professor of Clinical Psychiatry at New York University.

Transcript

From the archives:

The American Nightmare, by Kenn Orphan

This Is What It Looks Like When An Empire Cannibalizes Itself, by Rainer Shea

The Chris Hedges Report: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the US and Around the Globe, with Vijay Prashad

Chris Hedges: America’s Gun Fetish

Maybe it’s Time to Show the Crime Scenes, by Kenn Orphan

Supreme Court’s Latest Decision Devastating For Death Row Inmates, by Laura Finley

Massacre in Buffalo Exposes Rotten Core of White Supremacy in US, by Natalia Marques

At Least 36% of Mass Shooters Have Been Trained By the U.S. Military, by David Swanson

Abby Martin: Why America? Mass Shootings and White Nationalism Share Roots

Drawing Links Between US Militarism Abroad and Gun Violence at Home + Militarizing US Schools and Society Only Creates More Gun Violence and Police Brutality