Courses for
- Students
- Teachers
- Congressional staff
- Media
- Community Groups
Easy commute between NYC, DC, Philadelphia, NJ regions
My goal is to make psychological dimensions of political phenomena easily
understandable. Going outside-the-box, we can open up new ways of thinking
about conflict. We can use problem solving approaches, raise the level of
discourse, and promote more thoughtful, psychologically informed strategies
that will reduce violence and end cycles of retaliation.
A major threat to our security is psychological ignorance. Understandable
emotional reactions to violence, which can be considered right, justified,
and necessary, tend to make things worse. If retaliation and intelligence
measures worked, Israel would have wiped out terrorism a long time ago. It
is painfully obvious that justifiable acts of retaliation and punishment
escalate the cycle of violence, harm innocent people and deepening the cy
cle.. Such actions lead to unintended consequences due to psychological
ignorance, which can be prevented.
People have the false assumption that there are only two alternatives -
either attack or do nothing. The idea of doing nothing is intolerable,
especially because of failed enactments in the past where we did not
intervene soon enough and said, Never again!! There is a third way, a new
paradigm of complex strategies using combinations of bloodless forms of
force, which I have coined as Metaforce, which are psychologically sound.
They address powerful emotional forces as well as the root causes of conflict
and violence, working in stages to reduce tension and fear. This approach is
based on social science and research on strategies that have been successful
in the past, and have greater long term success in ending cycles of violence.
