ABSTRACT
Some of the most harmful consequences of violence arise when a cycle of violence
becomes established. In order to break cycles of violence, we need to analyze the
causes of such cycles. Yet violence evokes such strong emotions that it clouds our
thinking and inhibits analytic thought. Indeed there is something “calculating”
about the very exercise in which we are engaged in this chapter. Like the
anatomists who first dissected the human body, we need to find a way to touch
the untouchable, to think clearly about the unthinkable, to inhibit our own revul-
sion from so dangerous a task.
