ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on how personal suffering may come to be expressed in violent ways. It begins by exploring attachment relations as part of a wider social nexus of family and community attachments, and by understanding the importance of group connections and values in shaping our understanding of our "selves". The chapter then considers how failed attachments may come to be experienced and expressed through domestic violence, violence that is enabled by gender inequalities. It turns more generally to reflect on the "cultures" of violence in which we live. Societies that culturally condone and legitimate violence, through, say, ideas about "acceptable" uses of punishment, create the conditions of their own destruction. Attachment Theory argues that human beings are programmed to seek out the company of significant others, especially in times of danger. Translated into attachment terms, the care-giver–infant relationship is important not only in terms of how we relate to others.
