The Science of Revenge: The World's Deadliest Addiction

The Dr. Phil Podcast

Dr. Phil McGraw

Mental Health, Self-improvement, Society & Culture, Education, Health & Fitness

4.4 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Revenge isn’t just an emotional impulse—it’s an addiction. Dr. Phil and James Kimmel, Jr., JD, break down its impact on the brain and how forgiveness rewires our chemistry for healing.

Revenge feels like justice, but what if it’s more like an addiction? Dr. Phil and James dive into the neuroscience behind revenge—how it hijacks our brain's pain and reward systems just like substance dependency. They explore how society reinforces these cycles, why letting go isn’t weakness, and how forgiveness actually rewires the mind. Plus, Kimmel’s “Non-Justice System” offers a fresh way to process grudges without fueling destruction.

In Kimmel’s latest groundbreaking book, The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World's Deadliest Addiction and How to Overcome It, unveils the unseen neurobiological forces behind our compulsive desires for retribution—an addiction that silently fuels violence and aggression in all its forms.

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 https://nonjustice.org/ , the Miracle Court app https://www.miraclecourt.com/and https://SavingCain.org for recovering from grievances and revenge desires and 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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Transcript

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0:00.0	We're talking about the world's deadliest addiction and how to overcome it.
0:05.2	Inflicting pain on the person who wrongs us is extremely pleasurable,
0:11.2	addictively sometimes pleasurable.
0:13.6	The bottom line is that our brain on revenge looks like our brain on drugs.
0:29.3	Welcome back to the Dr. Phil podcast.
0:35.9	Click to follow and subscribe to get this daily on all your podcast players and on YouTube.
0:39.3	So please do that so you don't miss anything because you never know what I got coming next. Today, I'm going to enjoy and I think you are as well.
0:45.5	And you're going to learn something that you don't know. I promise. This is a day where I can
0:51.5	kind of turn my brain off because I'm talking to a good, trusted friend and
0:55.9	colleague that really knows what he's doing. The world often misunderstands revenge. Now,
1:02.8	stop and think about revenge in your life. Now, there's, and don't tell me you're not a revenge
1:07.9	person. Everybody feels that pull sometime.
1:13.0	And sometimes we dismiss it as merely just an emotional reaction or a personal flaw.
1:20.7	But today, Dr. James Kimmel Jr. reveals revenge, runs much deeper. And James is not just an accomplished author. He is a
1:32.3	pioneering legal scholar, and he is also an expert in human behavior who has devoted his
1:38.3	career to understanding really the dark corners of our minds. And this cuts across society. I'm not trying to
1:46.5	get you to feel bad about yourself and saying this. It's part of human nature. His latest groundbreaking
1:52.0	book, The Science of Revenge, which you're looking at on screen right now, understanding the world's
1:57.6	deadliest addiction and how to overcome it. Now, that may seem like a bold statement,
2:02.8	but let me say it again. We're talking about the world's deadliest addiction and how to overcome it.
2:10.6	And it unveils the unseen neurobiological forces behind our compulsive desires for retribution.
2:19.3	Now, this is an addiction that silently fuels violence and aggression in all its forms.
	...

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