When I worked with Looked After Children there was a saying - apparently an old saw in this field: "All abusers have been abused, but not all who have been abused go on to become abusers."
Once you are tuned in to looking for it you'll find it's more common than you really wanted to know. It's even in what used to be a standard schoolroom read: "Quiet incest flourished where the roads were bad..." Laurie Lee, "Cider with Rosie" (1959).
What I didn't know until today is that Sigmund Freud addressed this issue in a lecture to colleagues in 1896 (1) and instead of acclaim "the donkeys gave it an icy reception." It was news they didn't want to hear.
Like metal-detector-wielding treasure hunters, those who look for truth sometimes have to wash off a lot of muck before they can examine their finds. In this case, I've learned a bit of the history of abuse denial by reading a Frenchman who seems to have it in for Jews - but unlike naive SJWs I don't expect to get all my information from completely untainted sources: Laurent Guyénot's "current research focuses on the religious and civilizational backgrounds of Zionist geostrategy" (2). Still, a fact is a fact and it appears from his article today in The Unz Review (3) that Freud's own father sexually abused his children, as Freud told a colleague:
"On February 11, 1897 (4), after mentioning that forced oral sex on children can result in neurotic symptoms, he adds: “Unfortunately, my own father was one of these perverts and is responsible for the hysteria of my brother (all of whose symptoms are identifications) and those of several younger sisters. The frequency of this circumstance often makes me wonder.” "
But, says Guyénot, Freud then backtracked and transformed the issue into one of childhood fantasy instead: hence the Oedipus Complex.
In 1932 one of Freud's followers, Sandor Ferenczi also postulated the reality of child sexual exploitation but when he presented his paper (5) to the 12th International Psycho-Analytic Congress in Wiesbaden he got the same cold treatment as his master: "Ferenczi was ostracized by Freud and his sectarian disciples, and his paper was never translated in English for the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, as was customary. He died a few years later, a broken man."
Now our French intellectual spins all this into a rococo condemnation of Jews and Jewishness and works it into a pseudo-psychological explanation of Israel's relations with its Middle Eastern neghbours and the USA.
But Laurie Lee's neighbours weren't Jewish, so far as I know; nor are all child abusers men, as we see in the UK's 2009 Plymouth child abuse case (6) [I wonder what had happened in the perpetrators' own childhoods?]
It's a horribly vexed issue, and of its nature hard to prove - especially if accusations are directed against the rich and powerful, as we have seen.
And abuse doesn't have to be physical to be harmful and long-lasting. Merely withholding affection from a child and constantly criticising it builds up a debt that the child will eventually seek to have repaid, if not by the parent (and how?) then by 'revenge' on innocent third parties (including their partners and offspring) and/or by self-hatred and various forms of self-harm.
Yet the worst, most systematic abuse case I encountered didn't drive the victim screaming mad. She was able to give evidence against her father that got him jailed; to normalise relations with her mother, who accepted her own complicity; and when asked to do her bit for a Christmas concert at the children's home, stood up and recited the Nicene Creed.
I felt like cheering.
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(1) "The Aetiology Of Hysteria" https://www.freud2lacan.com/docs/The_Aetiology_of_Hysteria.pdf
(2) https://www.greanvillepost.com/2019/06/05/9-11-was-an-israeli-job/
(3) http://www.unz.com/article/freud-sexual-abuse-and-cover-up/
(4) Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, also quoted by PBS here: https://www.pbs.org/youngdrfreud/pages/analysis_doubts.htm
(5) "Confusion of the Tongues Between the Adults and the Child" http://icpla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Ferenczi-S-Confusion-of-Tongues-Intl-J-Psychoa.-vol.30-p.225-1949.pdf
(6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Plymouth_child_abuse_case
8 comments:
And on the other hand, we have the Mcmartin preschool case of the 1980's, and all of the other 'Recovered memory' stuff, which turned out to be untrue. In the former, the people were ruined, and at least one spent years in prison. Even worse, like the Pizzagate business, the religious conspiracy nuts still insist that the allegations were true, after being proven impossible.
Yes, it's ticklish. But as I said, sexual abuse is only one kind and maybe kess common.
@Paddington: btw I understand most sexual abuse is familial or in local rings, but exploitation of vulnerable children by people with power does happen - Private Eye magazine was making references to Belfast's Kincora Boys' Home for years. There are other cases of high-profile individuals where the system held off accusers until the alleged perpetrators were safely beyond the reach of law.
Correction: McMartin turned out to be very much true, it was the FMSF which turned out to be false. There, fixed it. Also the Franklin case was true.
@James: evidence/links, please!
@James - The McMartin case was the result of a mentally ill woman convincing prosecutors and a very suspect psychologist. No physical evidence was ever found, and the complaints themselves were often quite bizarre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial
@Sackerson - the Catholic church is certainly one example of long-standing and widespread abuse. Jimmy Saville and Jerry Sandusky at Penn State come to mind as well. The problem to me is that adding huge conspiracies actually makes it harder to fix things, just as the 'Me too' movement has made things much worse.
But I wasn't conspiracising. I'm aware of the dangers and the accused should have a fair - and early - trial.
Not criticizing, just observing.
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