Prologue to Violence: Child Abuse, Dissociation, and Crime

"Prologue to Violence" reveals what happens to those who survive horrific childhoods, only to commit terrifying crimes of their own. Interning on a hospital prison ward, Abby Stein listened to offenders blandly recite nightmarish tales of their own childhood abuse and casually describe their similarly egregious perpetrations, if indeed they remembered these volatile interactions at all. Although "transgenerational transmission of violence" was used as a shorthand explanation for crime amongst her colleagues, the forensic literature offered no compelling theory about exactly how violence in an early interpersonal situation transmogrified later engagements so stunningly, or that accounted for perpetrators' apparent lack of consciousness and agency for annihilative encounters. Building on the theoretical foundations laid by Harry Stack Sullivan, Stein argues that many of the cruelties her subjects have suffered remain unsymbolized, and thus are unavailable for reflection, or conversion to more benign forms. Her insights provide a framework for understanding not only assault, rape, child molestation, and homicide but the dissociated, aggressive performances that mark our everyday lives.