Violence is the plague of our civilization. It threatens us daily
through its many tentacles: domestic violence, criminal violence, sexual
abuse, terrorism, state violence, revolution, war, and genocide.
The recently evolved discipline of traumatology has amply described
commonalities in the consequences of violence. But there was no
corresponding discipline of violentology, which explained why violence
occurred in the first place.
Inexorably, Valent was drawn to take the leap from healing the minds of
victims to try to understand the minds of perpetrators.
Valent unpicks the minds of perpetrators in each field of violence. He
develops a lens by which to understand violence from individual to
international, and from primitive to spiritual dimensions. We come to
understand how aggressions that helped our species to survive now
threaten our species with extinction. Such understanding may help to
eliminate our current plague, just as understanding helped to eliminate
the original one.
Valent explains his thesis through many stories accessible to both
professionals and lay readers. One story interweaving throughout is
Valent's own story. From a child who survived the Holocaust, he ferrets
out the minds of his perpetrators in his quest to prevent future
violence.
Violence, for Valent, is not an isolated feature of the human condition.
Surprisingly close to violence are struggles for love. Readers also
learn about that aspect of humanity.
