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This ongoing discussion group revolved around the theory and practice of two psychiatrists working in different ways with violence outside of an office setting. Dr. James Gilligan worked for more than 20 years at Bridgewater State Prison for the Criminally Insane and throughout Massachusetts's adult prison system. Dr. Stuart Twemlow has developed a community violence intervention model based on leadership training developed and implemented in projects in Jamaica and the United States. The discussion group was diverse, representing analytically oriented practitioners working in Washington, D.C. schools, Bronx mental health clinics, international community development programs, military psychiatry, public practice, teaching in Japan, and in psychoanalytic private practice.
The group's common interests revolved around a desire to explore how analysts can use their understanding of human nature to discover the roots of community violence and ultimately to help supply society with useful remedies. All members shared a sense of urgency and a healthy respect for the daunting task of creating more than eloquent analytic rhetoric on a topic that is becoming, in Dr. Gilligan's words, “a national epidemic.”
Dr. Gilligan summarized his work as articulated in his recent best-selling book on violence based on his life's work as a developer of a human prison mental health system in Massachusetts. His mental health clinics within the prison system offered 24-hour, 7-day-a-week access to mental health for inmates. Violence, murders, suicides, and hostage taking in the prison system dropped from an incident a month in the first 5 years, to one incident every year in the second 5 years.