The following article, first published in the AVP Newsletter, captured the views of WAVE member and psychiatrist Bob Johnson, as presented to the Annual Conference of the UK Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) in York, July 1996.

Bob Johnson took the United Kingdon AVP's Annual Gathering through how he brought an end to violence on 'C' Wing of Parkhurst Prison - the UK's maximum security prison - during his spell there as a psychiatrist.

His treatment is based on acceptance that "A mature adult is lovable, social and non-violent"; and "Theories that violence is inherent are wrong... violence is a curable sickness, a learned behaviour, caused by emotional maltreatment in childhood... I never met a violent criminal who had not been taught, and experienced, violence."

The statistics speak for themselves: Before Bob's arrival, in July 1991, the 16 violent prisoners on 'C' wing were "controlled" with tranquillising drugs - treating the symptoms, not causes. By the time of his departure, in 1996, he had reduced tranquilliser use from an average 220 gm to 10 gm per inmate, and violent assaults on 'C' Wing fell from 6 per annum to zero. In 1994 the prisoners reported to the visiting Inspector of Prisons that no alarm bells had rung in the unit for two years (20 alarms would have been normal). One prisoner said "This is a wing we are proud of. We enjoy being civilised human beings."

Bob is firm in the view that any adult showing terror, rage or violence is, at that moment, operating infant-logic and infant-strategies in an adult context and that, deep inside, they would rather not behave this way since, basically, such strategies do not work. I.e. do not allow the perpetrators to achieve what they want: "Where your mind won't let you do what you want, this is a Personality Disorder... the remedy is to 'grow up' - not an easy remedy to dispense, but quite essential."

Trauma in childhood - physical, emotional or sexual - can 'freeze' the individual at that age (commonly 3 to 8 years) and produce the reaction "If that is what reality is like I don't want to know any more." This is dystraining. From that moment the mind is closed. Any mention of the trauma evokes terror, further paralysing thinking, and all means (especially 'mindless' violence) will be used to prevent 'exposure'.

Bob took us through the steps to achieve his remarkable results. Extreme caution is required (this is not to be attempted by the enthusiastic layman!). These are personality building blocks, emotional foundation stones, to be changed and brought up-to-date in adulthood. Nothing good will be achieved without first creating an intensely supportive non-threatening socially encouraging context - in which the individual SAFELY re-examines the way his personality was put together, replacing it with a more realistic, up-to-date adult version:

"At first the individual vigorously does not want to know. This is how matters were left in childhood, and will remain, especially in difficult cases, unless prodigiously different and more benign social influences can be brought to bear, and believed in. The task is to persuade the individual to think the last thing he wants to think - i.e. that the trauma, and its terror, can safely be confronted and thereby perceived to be out of date, over, and never to return. Only the individual can make this transformation, and will not do so if stressed, threatened or patronised in the least degree. The objective is to identify, and establish a sound relationship with the adult aspects, so that you and the rest of the group can work together to diminish the dreaded echoes of terror that still flood through the victim's mind, warning him or her so loudly of instant destruction, which you and I now know to be long out of date."

"The beauty of this approach is that it does not depend on accepting belief in a particular set of values or religious creeds - except that humans are sociable animals. It opens for violent offenders the possibility that they too can become civilised, sociable, responsible citizens, which is what they want to do, deep down, which they certainly would have done had they had half a chance to achieve it during their childhood training."

Bob says violence is always:

1) unhealthy;
2) infantile in origin, and
3) 100% caused by fear, invariably hidden but "crushingly simple when revealed".

He showed us videos of his work with a violent prisoner "Lenny". We saw - as much by the expressions and changes in Lenny's face as by his words - how a six-foot three-and-a-half inch murderer was terrified of his 5 foot 2 inch mother. We also saw the changes as Bob brought Lenny to recognise his own violent behaviour, and fear of his mother, as irrational and self-defeating, and gave him the courage to face her (now aged 85) and renounce violence. The parent need not be alive for this catharsis to happen.

Bob's address inspired us to realise that violence is not an essential part of human behaviour, and that through intelligent application of the right solutions by committed people and groups, violence can be replaced with alternative, acceptable behaviour.

Bob is a former AVP student who took the Basic workshop in Wigan 5 years ago. He found the objectives clear but the picture of violence presented not so clear. To him, violence is now quite understandable. He recommended everyone interested in the subject to read "Violence: Our deadly epidemic and its causes" (ISBN 0399 13979 6), by James Gilligan. Unlike Gilligan, however, Bob is convinced all forms of violence can be cured, given sufficient resources.

Perhaps the first challenge facing us is to find effective and acceptable ways of spreading the good news of the experience of people such as Bob and James Gilligan to society in general. The habitual response of "punishment" of violent criminals, without taking steps to cure the behaviour, is both unnecessary and a luxury we cannot afford - especially in an era where technology allows the acting out of violent tendencies to have more massive consequences than ever before. It is both sad and salutary that Bob had to work in Parkhurst in an environment of near-hostility from the prison authorities. He was drafted there in the first place because a psychiatrist is needed to administer tranquillisers. When he challenged the categorisation of violent prisoners as "evil" (and incurable), and suggested they are "emotionally sick" (thus curable) Bob says research grants were cut off, staff transferred, prisoners with whom he was having success moved to other prisons and finally, prisoners were refused permission to join the programme. He resigned in frustration.

The task now is to break down barriers to progress, while accepting that the people erecting them are behaving with as much validity in their universe as the violent criminal is in his