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The theme of this issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry opens up an important field of inquiry. There is abundant and clear evidence that violence is glorified in our culture, and around the world as well. The critically important question is: Why is violence glorified, and how can we prevent both violence and its glorification? These issues are addressed in this article in the form of the following question: How is it that so many people in our culture conclude that they do not have other, nonviolent, nonaddictive options for meeting their profound human need for the feeling of well-being? This question is addressed here through an investigation of the role of the relationship between the options available to people and the actual choices that they make. I show that endemic failure to address this options-to-choice relationship in psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, and philosophy is a factor in ongoing controversies in psychoanalytic theory and clinical theory as well as in philosophical psychology. I show further that (a) this failure has been a factor in our inability to understand and prevent violence, and (b) a phenomenological philosophical framework for psychoanalysis can point the way to greater insight into the problem of violence and its prevention.