An educational psychologist and head of research at CERIS (Centre Européen de Recherches Internationales et Stratégiques – in the department of study and research in social inclusion at the Université de Mons in Belgium), Bruno Humbeeck is a preeminent specialist in the management of harassment at school and in the workplace, and in implementing preventative measures. For close to ten years he has been the host of a television program, “Une education presque parfait” [An Almost Perfect Education] (Télésambre).

In our societies today, how did harassment become a subject of major concern for the future of living together? Why does it so easily become enrooted in our democratic systems? And what are the constant parameters that we find in all harassment situations?

These questions are essential both for drawing lessons from the Weinstein affair and for putting into place guidelines to prevent harassment in schools or businesses, guidelines that show true effectiveness. Answers to the questions are fundamental both for the one who is seeking to escape a controlling interpersonal relationship, and for those who are responsible for managing a group of children, adolescents, or adults, who are forced for a time to live together in the same space, either real or virtual.

Clearly written, this work sees harassment as an illness of our democracies against which it is imperative that we protect ourselves. Indeed, by contaminating relationships of domination within a couple, at school, at work, in the digital space or even on the street, harassment generates unbearable suffering the effects of which these days prove to be particularly destructive.