Understanding Violence: Perspectives of Victims and Perpetrators

How best do we understand how to manage powerful emotions such as rage, fear and shame? With very rare access, Forensic Psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead gives her third Reith Lecture inside HMP Grendon, where she talks to prisoners and staff, and asks the question: “Does trauma cause violence?”

Does being a victim of violence in some circumstances make you more likely to become a perpetrator of violence? Was WH Auden right when he wrote in 1939 ‘Those to whom evil is done do evil in return’?

The Reith Lectures are presented and chaired by Anita Anand.

Producer: Jim Frank

Editor: Clare Fordham