This project will bring together an international team of leading researchers to develop the application of Gilligan’s shame/violence framework across a range of disciplines with a view to addressing pressing challenges facing liberal democracies, such as radicalisation and extremism, multiculturalism and urban tensions. The project focuses on Greece as a case study of a society with a long history of political violence and aggression, manifested across a range of contexts (familial, educational, institutional, urban, political). The aims of the project are to (a) set up a collaborative network of experts on shame/violence, (b) to build interdisciplinary capacity and a common vocabulary that will address these challenges in an applied way, (c) to design innovative research and pilot intervention methodologies, and (d) to start work on collaborative papers and a grant application that will consolidate the network’s activity beyond the lifetime of the residential.

Based on decades of work with patients and offenders, psychiatrist James Gilligan’s shame/violence theory has proven to be one of the most powerful models for understanding the root causes of violence, opening the way for rehabilitation. Working with some of Britain’s most violent offenders, Jonathan Asser developed SVI (Shame/Violence Intervention) based on Gilligan’s model. However, apart from my recently published preliminary application of shame/violence to the case of Greece, the model has not been applied beyond the confines of clinical practice. This project will enable a unique intervention-oriented dialogue amongst psychiatry, psychoanalysis, political science, sociology and urban studies. Using Berlin as an inspiring model of a city that has successfully addressed historic challenges of violence, shame, guilt and community division and reconciliation, the team will engage in an intense programme of seminars, workshops, research and writing with a view to designing specific interdisciplinary interventions aimed at addressing radicalisation and aggression in educational, community, urban and political settings.