James W. Prescott is a developmental neuropsychologist and cross-cultural psychologist. For fifteen years he conducted research on origins of violence for the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, NIH, and has given testimony on the origins of violence before the U.S. Congress; the Senate of Canada, and many other legislative and professional organizations.

If there were one thing that you could do to reduce violence, what would it be?

There are two fundamental issues. One is the issue of the bonded and unbonded child. The other is full gender equality. Until women are able to control their own body, and not just reproduction but the whole spectrum of their sexuality, it will be very difficult to achieve the first step which is the bonded child. Just look at all the violence against women, the rapes, domestic violence, battered women, it's epidemic, as is child abuse and neglect.

Most people would say that we males cause most of this violence.

So, we have to trace the roots of what produces the violent male? And also ask the question, why more and more women are being violent against their own children? What causes the anger and rage which leads to violence? What encodes the brain for anger and rage, as opposed to peace and tranquility? We have answers based on substantial scientific data. Yet the deeper question remains. What prevents us from acting on the data we have gathered over the past twenty-five years?

David Bohm and our Dialogue project looks at this question. Professor Bohm points out that we have constructed very deep and powerful defense structures which distort our perception and these barriers are built into the nervous system.

Wilhelm Reich, the German Psychoanalyst, who had major differences with Freud, saw sexuality, when abused in childhood, leading to what he called the emotional plague; and the "armor" we develop is to protect this emotional-sexual core.

For example?

With the ability to experience joy and pleasure, you have a more openness toward life and change. People who are rigid, highly armored, are limited in their capacity to feel empathy, compassion or to change. Bohm's work or any attempt to deal with adults who are already structured, already armored, requires an enormous amount of work. From a purely statistical point of view we have to question if this will bring about a significant change.

The ability to experience pleasure is blocked by this armor. Yet, pleasure is natural and necessary.

Unfortunately our society and culture are based on philosophical and religious world views and values. We have a moral philosophy which says that pleasure and the body is evil and the spirit or soul is good. There is a division between the natural state of the body and our ideas about good and evil.

We are at war with our own bodies and in many ways women, their bodies and children are the targets in this war. The very idea of Mother Earth carries the archetype of the body which implies pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure. The Body, Woman and Pleasure however, have been equated with evil and wickedness by Plato and Pythagoras, in the Old Testament and in most, if not all, theistic religious traditions. There's no major religion that affirms the full equality and dignity of woman with man. She's always subordinate.

These religious systems have been used to control the individual and therefore society. This control is achieved by limiting access to pleasure. When young children are not touched, held or surrounded with affection, the neural systems required to experience pleasure are not developed, which leads to an individual and a culture that is self-centered, violent and authoritarian.

Let's go into that.

When the experience of physical pleasure is morally sinful, this impacts on the ability of adults to rear their children in environments of pleasure and affection, as opposed to pain and suffering. Then couple this with a value system that is racist, sexist, anti-Semitism, etc. and you have a package that establishes both the "engine" and the "guidance system" for violence. The repression of pleasure sets up the reservoir of rage; and the belief system or values create the target. Both work together and it is this bi-directional system, which has to be changed.

It's easy to accept the need for being touched, which is pleasurable, when responding to young children who are pre-sexual. When sexuality clicks in, however, touch often becomes taboo.

We have to look at sexuality in quite a different context, that is, as an integral part of who we are. Children are punished for touching their genitals, which creates a neural-dissociative state in the brain. The sensory deprivation of pleasure results in the failure of certain neural pathways to develop properly. Sensory stimulation acts like a nutrient for brain growth and development. The richer the networks, the greater the interconnectivity and neural integration of the brain.

The integration of our sexuality with our total "persona" is a critical aspect of our development as human beings.

Simply stated, in order for the brain to grow and to develop, it needs to be stimulated?

A rich array of sensory stimuli, of all the senses, maximizes development of the brain. If we do not get the sensory stimulation we equate with love, bonding and intimacy during the formative periods of brain development, we're going to be impaired, if not crippled, in our ability to experience and express this "language of love" later in life.