You did what?
What violence means to perpetrators: part 1
Years ago, when I began life history research with men who had been convicted of violent crimes, I was naïve.
I was naïve about what it would take me for to understand violence from the points of view of perpetrators. I did not realize that I would vicariously witness horrific acts of violence and would identify with victims and relive my own deepest fears and hurts.
I had no idea that the price of acquiring a sense of the lived experience of violence was to come to grips with a lifetime of hurts, slights, and fears about my physical and psychological safety and even survival.
I also did not foresee that I would have to face up to the violence in my own heart and mind.
In this series of posts I will describe the transformations of my understandings as I listened to stories perpetrators tell.
I did qualitative life histories, which means I interviewed perpetrators of violence several times about the stories of their lives. Most loved to talk and gave great detail.
I wanted to know what violence meant to them and what they experienced as they committed acts of violence. I thought this information would change things and contribute to prevention.
Intimations of What Was Ahead
I did not know it at the time, but my first visit to a maximum security prison was a preview of how the research would affect me personally. The following is a description of my first visit.
The steel doors clanged shut behind me. The sound shivered up my spine and bounced against the steel-reinforced concrete walls of the stairwell. Head lowered, I walked down the steps and stopped in front of the door at the bottom of the stairwell.
My escort said his name into a small square grate next to the door. Someone I could not see hit a switch. The door rumbled open. I walked through. The door rumbled back into its frame and clanged shut behind me.
So it went. Through five sliding, rumbling, clanging steel doors, down five steel-reinforced concrete stairways until I arrived at the treatment unit of the maximum security prison, Minnesota Correctional Facility-Oak Park Heights. Five thick steel doors stood between me and the outside.
I felt as if I had descended into hell.
I had. For the years that followed, I listened to the stories inmates told me. Through their eyes, I witnessed murders, attempted murders, child molestations, incest, rapes, and physical assaults of women and men. I had no idea.
Astonishment and Terror
Their focus on what they wanted and their disregard for survivors and victims at the time they committed violent acts both astonished and terrified me.
The recklessness and self-endangerment were things I had not expected.
Early on, the impact of the stories led me to question why I was doing the research. One of the first times I questioned myself was after an interview with a man who had molested his own children and children of friends and employers.
The man told a detailed story of the murder of a runaway girl and her burial in a cornfield. In fieldnotes, I wrote about what I had been thinking as he talked.
I was wondering what I was doing there listening to someone talk about the murder of a 14 year-old runaway. The answer came later-- because you want to stop this horror, but it is so horrible to listen to it.
At first, the effects were almost more than I could bear. For instance, one sunny day after a particularly difficult interview, I had lunch with a friend at an outdoor café. She asked me about the interview.
As I shared the vivid descriptions the informant had given of the strangulation murders of his fiancée, an unrelated woman, and his two toddler children , I experienced intense anxiety. {See the posts “Family Murder: In his own Words.”}
All of a sudden, I felt I was high in the sky, as if tethered to a helium-filled balloon. I looked down at the two of us sitting at the small round table, engaged in conversation.
Dissociation
Mental health professionals call this an out-of-body experience, linked to disassociation, which is a way of distancing ourselves from stressful and traumatic experiences.
In my case, this response was secondary traumatization or vicarious traumatization that can happen when persons are exposed to the traumas that others have suffered.
Apparently, I had entered vicariously into the experiences of the women and children whose victimization a perpetrator had described in detail.
That night I dreamed I was naked in a public place. My body was more trim and shapely than I thought it was in actuality. This was no consolation.
Apparently, I had felt overly exposed when I talked to my friend. In fieldnotes, I wrote that she had done nothing to trigger anxiety and, apparently, shame. She was a model of interest and compassion.
Rage
That evening, I was chairing a fundraising dinner with 200 people expected. I was printing the menu. The printer wouldn’t work. I sent the files several times and nothing. I screamed so hard my throat hurt, and I banged on the printer. I wanted to throw it on the floor and smash it to bits.
Then I realized how much rage is in me and how much I wanted to destroy the printer. I came back to myself.
The printer printed. I supervised the dinner. All was well.
I was learning about my own violence.
Reflections
I am not saying that the violence in me is the same as the violence that is criminal. There is a big difference between screaming at a printer and incest. There is a big difference between verbal abuse and name-calling when the target is a child, or anyone older, like a war veteran, a person with disabilities, or women.
Respect
I, and most of us, respect ourselves and respect others. We do not and would not do harm to others, especially the kinds of harm I listened to doing this research and the harm I see reported multiple times a day in the media.
For most of us, when we think we have hurt someone, we apologize, make amends, and work at not doing the harm again. Relationships sometimes break down, and we seek to repair so we can go on with our lives with peace and love.
Our Violence is Hidden
I am saying that we have violent thoughts that are mostly hidden from us, and we deal with them constructively as I already described.
I am talking about the violence within because I want to show how prevalent violent thoughts are and how they affect and infect everyone.
We and those who are criminally violent and habitually abusive have violent thoughts in common. We can’t help it. Each of us is exposed to violent media probably multiple times a day. That we would internalize what we experience is inevitable. That is how we are made.
Why Recognize our own Violent Thoughts?
I want to recognize and let go of my violent thoughts because I don’t want to contribute even a tiny bit to the energy of violence that affects and infects us all.
I have experienced the energy of love, the energy of violence, and the energy of peace. It’s hard to describe but I feel it within. When someone is angry at me, I feel it in myself. When I’m with loving people, I feel it.
I prefer the energy of love.
Energy is shared between people and animates all living beings. Spirit might be another name for this form of energy.
Energy is continually transforming, depending upon the energy that is in circulation.
I want the energy that I give off to be loving and peaceful. Countless others also give off loving and peaceful energy. All of us put into circulation energy that can transform the energy that contributes to harm.
Ridiculous?
I know this may sound ridiculous to some. What can I say to them? Try it. Put yourself in a loving and peaceful state. How do you like it? Do you want more?
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