Violent States and Creative States (2 Volume Set)
On sale
3rd May 2018
Price: £80
This is a provocative collection exploring the different types of violence and how they relate to one another, examined through the integration of several disciplines, including forensic psychotherapy, psychiatry, sociology, psychosocial studies and political science. By examining the ‘violent states’ of mind behind specific forms of violence and the social and societal contexts in which an individual act of human violence takes place, the contributors reveal the dynamic forces and reasoning behind specific forms of violence including structural violence, and conceptualise the societal structures themselves as ‘violent states’.
Other research often stops short at examining the causes and risk factors for violence, without considering the opposite states that may not only mitigate, but allow for a different unfolding of individual and societal evolution. As a potential antidote to violence, the authors prescribe an understanding of these ‘creative states’ with their psychological origins, and their importance in human behaviour and meaning-seeking. Making a call to move beyond merely mitigating violence to the opposite direction of fostering creative potential, this book is foundational in its capacity to cultivate social consciousness and effect positive change in areas of governance, policy-making, and collective responsibility.
This two-volume set includes:
Volume 1: Structural Violence and Creative Structures ISBN 9781785925641
Volume 2: Human Violence and Creative Humanity ISBN 9781785925658
Other research often stops short at examining the causes and risk factors for violence, without considering the opposite states that may not only mitigate, but allow for a different unfolding of individual and societal evolution. As a potential antidote to violence, the authors prescribe an understanding of these ‘creative states’ with their psychological origins, and their importance in human behaviour and meaning-seeking. Making a call to move beyond merely mitigating violence to the opposite direction of fostering creative potential, this book is foundational in its capacity to cultivate social consciousness and effect positive change in areas of governance, policy-making, and collective responsibility.
This two-volume set includes:
Volume 1: Structural Violence and Creative Structures ISBN 9781785925641
Volume 2: Human Violence and Creative Humanity ISBN 9781785925658
Newsletter Signup
By clicking ‘Sign Up,’ I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
Reviews
These well edited, wide-ranging volumes of contributions from an international network of colleagues in the developing field of psycho-social forensic studies are not only brilliant in their depth of insight and scholarship, but also extremely useful in clinical work. They also enhance our awareness of the rights and obligations of citizenship and participation in a moral community in which perpetrators, victims and bystanders enact a myriad of roles in plays within plays.
Violence is vital for human survival - protective as well as destructive. But violence begets violence, the cycle only being defeated by love's power, as Martin Luther King Jr. reminded. The editors have selected contributors who have axes to grind, in protecting matters close to their hearts. Contributions model creative, non-violent, responses to violent attacks, via channelling their authors' violent impulses into rational arguments and urgings. Do not skim-read this book. Dip in; pick out; read; muse; rest; and repeat.
In this superbly informative and inspiring collection, various forms and manifestations of violence and of violent states of mind and of society are analyzed and countered by creative alternatives. Volume 1 explores the concept of structural violence, examining state violence in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and dynamics of terror, protective function and creativity in the public sphere, locally and internationally. Volume 2 focuses on the origins and aftermath of individual violent states of mind and violence directed towards self or others and describes how psychotherapeutic, psychosocial and activist interventions can provide and promote creative alternatives. These volumes are a treasure trove for everybody in all the many fields of violence reduction.
These two multi-authored collections are to be heartily welcomed and recommended. Especially gratifying to me is the appearance of so many 'new' (to me) authors with sparkling ideas, in addition to the 'older' familiars. The excitement of our subject is reiterated to me; requiring, borrowing and applying from so many disciplines and different bodies of knowledge. Volume 1 analyses violent states of mind and behaviour from multidisciplinary clinical perspectives and places them within their social and political contexts. Volume 2, rather originally, emphasises 'creative states' as positively promoting individual and societal wellbeing, and not just in 'neutralising' or mitigating violent states. I am reminded of Melanie Klein's conjunction of 'Envy and Gratitude' as alternative states of mind of fundamental significance for the individual, and (necessarily) their behaviour; and the relative down-playing of gratitude in Kleinian praxis. By contrast, the editors and authors of these two volumes are, refreshingly, ever alert to the place of the positive, to the 'psychosocial creative' in helping the individual and in framing policies and politics. I congratulate all involved in these seminal writings.