Please join UCLA’s Friends of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital Board of Advisors for an Open Mind with James Kimmel, Jr, JD, author of The Science of Revenge - Understanding the World’s Deadliest Addiction and How to Overcome it. Mr. Kimmel will be joined in the discussion by Aliza Luft, PhD, Assistant Professor of Sociology at UCLA.

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In The Science of Revenge, Yale violence researcher and psychiatry lecturer James Kimmel, Jr., JD, uncovers the truth behind why we want to hurt the people who hurt us, what happens when it gets out of hand, and how to stop it. Weaving neuroscience, psychology, sociology, law, and human history with captivating storytelling, Kimmel reveals the neurological mechanisms and prevalence of revenge addiction. He shines an unsparing light on humanity’s pathological obsession with revenge throughout history; his own struggle with revenge addiction that almost led him to commit a mass shooting; America’s growing addiction to revenge as a special brand of justice; and the startlingly similar addictive behaviors and motivations of childhood bullies, abusive partners, aggrieved employees, sparring politicians, street gang members, violent extremists, mass killers, and tyrannical dictators. Mr. Kimmel also reveals the amazing, healing changes that take place inside your brain and body when you practice forgiveness. Emphasizing the necessity of proven public health approaches and personal solutions for every level of revenge addiction, he offers urgent, actionable information and novel methods for preventing and treating violence.

 

BIO:

James Kimmel, Jr., JD, is a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, a lawyer, and the founder and co-director of the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control Studies. A breakthrough scholar and expert on revenge, he first identified compulsive revenge seeking as an addiction and developed the behavioral addiction model of revenge as a public health approach for preventing and treating violence. He is the creator of The Nonjustice System, the Miracle Court app, and SavingCain.org, a site for those recovering from grievances and revenge desires and for preventing mass violence. He maintains an active legal practice and speaking calendar and is the author of two other books on revenge: Suing for Peace: A Guide for Resolving Life’s Conflicts and The Trial of Fallen Angels, a novel.

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Aliza Luft, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UCLA.  Her research examines the fluctuating relationships between social identity, ideology, and interpersonal, socio-political action in contexts marked by war and violence. More simply, she studies how people classify themselves and others, how these classification practices matter and change in times of war, and how they shape individuals’ behaviors and decision-making about violence. In using qualitative, historical, and experimental methods to craft falsifiable theories about violence, my research spans culture, politics, morality, identities, and conflict.

 

Dr. Luft's book, Sacred Treason: Race, Religion, and The Holocaust in France, is currently under contract with Harvard University Press. Another book, the second Handbook of The Sociology of Morality, co-authored with Shai Dromi and Steve Hitlin, was recently published by Springer. Dr. Luft's research has appeared in Political Power & Social Theory; Qualitative Sociology; Sociological Theory; Socius; European Journal of Sociology, and several other journals and edited volumes. I have also published numerous op-Eds and interviews in The Washington Post; New Yorker; LA Times; NY Times, and elsewhere. Prior to her time at UCLA, she worked in various capacities for USAID, United Nations CTED, Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies, and Facing History & Ourselves.