Annual Karen Horney Memorial Lecture Violence: The Malignancy of Our Times! is There Hope? Presenter: Elissa P. Benedek, M.D. Discussants: Ethel Person, M.D., and John Oldham, M.D. October 30, 1992.  New York Society for Ethical Culture.

Employing a disease model and the metaphor of cancer to describe the spread of violence in contemporary society, Benedek voiced concern “that we will not see a cure … in our lifetime.” In the context of her metaphor, she described violence as being at an all-time high that permeates our vocabulary and aligns it with the “cowboy mentality” of the United States. In articulating her disease construct, she asserted that violence arises when three components interact: (1) the victim, or “host,” (2) the victimizer, or “virus,” and (3) an environment suitable to the development of pathology. For such an environment to exist, she asserted, mankind employs a high degree of “normal” denial that permits individuals to function “without paralyzing fear for our own safety.”

It is Benedek's contention that any effective approach to the current epidemic level of violence must involve dedication, motivation, and innovation, as well as hope, without which “no treatment will work.” She indicated that prior generations had conceived of violence as a “we-them” phenomenon, with “them” construed as the urban, the poor, male minorities, drop-outs, the products of broken homes, and the class of people designated as “slum-dwellers.” More recent work, however, belies this premise and indicates that violence is heterogeneous in its origins, and exists in all social and economic strata.

To briefly recount her findings, homicide was the twelfth leading cause