The root of all evil…

I got tipped about this video by a very close and dear friend:-):

About the video:

”Jill Mytton left a religious cult as a young adult [together with her parents, when she was 16 years old], and now helps counsel people who are struggling with life after leaving cult environments.”

On Richard Dawkins see here.

Addition in the evening: Also see Mic Hunter on what sexual abuse is and how to define it and a review of his book “Abused Boys: The Neglected Victims of Sexual Abuse”.

Addition February 8: Mytton says that she doesn't blame her parents for what she experienced, because they were harmed in turn. But I think such a view can be (is) problematic if you really want a client (or you yourself) to recover. Miller for instance has written a lot about this, see on her site about forgiveness...

How many children haven't "understood" their parents through?? And what has this led to? Has this protected and prevented the latter grown up from doing the same thing, or similar things again? The conduct of forgiveness easily leads to denial about what's actually violating a child... But it is applauded in the society.

Also see what violations actually are.

Pia Mellody (and probably some other therapists/experts) writes/talks about these things too, see about defenses (but many so called experts are probably denying the problems with understanding our parents and early caregivers). Also see here on defenses.

Parent’s rights contra children’s…

[Udated June 5 and 6 in the end] In a review over the new book ”Skapelsekonspirationen – Fundamentalisternas angrepp på utvecklingsläran” or ”The Conspiracy of Creation – the Fundamentalists’ attack on the Doctrine of Evolution” by Per Kornhall (picture on him above) it stood that the author points out a somersault in the legislation in Sweden, namely; in it it stands about parent’s rights to educate their children in whatever spirit they feel is right, but this isn’t put up against children’s rights to learn to think freely and make their own opinions. The author means that the children (in religious schools, especially very fundamentalist ones) get democracy deficits or losses; they don’t get equivalent education and not the same possibilities as other children.

He thinks the society should see more to the children’s rights and he want to defend the secular society. The British writer George Jacob Holyoake (1817-1906) coined the term "secularism."

Kornhall himself about his book:

”A book about the Christian fundamentalists attack on the theory of evolution and the open secular society.”

Thought this was interesting, and wanted to safe these text and thoughts here.

When I searched on the author and his book I found that he belonged to the religious sect Livets ord for 17 years. Left it 2000. Here his own words about why he thinks this church is a sect (in Swedish). Livets ord started their first primary and secondary (?) school 1985 and five years later a gymnasium. So earlier pupils and students are now grown up... The Livet ord home site. Here about it in wikipedia (in English). Livets ord is the Swedish based church of Word of life.

Here another interview with him in which it stands that Kornhall called himself creationist earlier. Here his blog (both these sites are in Swedish).

My grandmother grew up in a laestadian family with 16 children born on 21 years near the Arctic Circle. She freed herself fairly a lot, or they weren't extremely strict raised, but I think she was marked by her upbringing and what she experienced during it, probably things of many different kinds. She was extremely self-occupied and now as grown up I have wondered over her behavior and what it actually was a sign of: a constant anxiety making her restless. All of a sudden she went from the dinner-table to her bed, when all others sat there eating, which s one of many things.

She forwarded this. But I think people see me as very calm and down to earth (hmmm, see that test about being practician!).

She was 60 years when I was born, her first grandchild. It's a pity I can't interview her any more. I was 31 when she died and hadn't read Miller at that time. I would have wanted to ask her a lot of things. And I wonder if she had answered my questions, if they had been honest and straight forward? I am sure she experienced both physical and emotional abuse, and I wonder about sexual. The physical and emotional abuse they probably didn't see as abuse, but for the children's own good. They were forced to ask forgiveness, even if there was nothing to ask forgiveness about. One thing of many probably...

I have a former friend who joined Livets ord too... I think she had difficulties with herself and was a seeking soul... That's so sad.

George Jacob Holyoake

Addition June 5: I got a tip about the film ”The Clash Between Faith and Reason.” And yesterday evening I watched the documentary "Friends of God" by Alexandra Pelosi. Read here and here about it.

Addition June 6: Was tipped about this film Jesus camp too today.

Addition June 7: But I came across a blog where the blog-owner wrote about evolution in a way that made me feel very uncomfortable, so I don't mean to advocate evolutionism either I want to underline.

Systematic work on the childhood history…

from a museum one year ago.

Miller writes at page 50 in her book “The Truth Will Set You Free – Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self” in the chapter ”Evading Childhood Reality in Psychotherapy”:

“…anxieties cannot be dissipated if clients sense their therapists’ fear of their own childhoods. They will identify with that instead of seeking as adults to fathom their childhoods. They will merely end up reliving the panic of their traumatic early years without understanding it fully. Only systematic work on the history of their childhoods can give clients a frame of reference that will enable them constantly to improve their understanding of the crippling fears beginning to surface and to recognize their origins.”

---

"…ångestar kan inte skingras om klienter känner sina terapeuters rädslor för sina egna barndomar. De kommer att identifiera sig med detta istället för att som vuxna försöka begripa och omfamna sina barndomar. De kommer blott och bart att sluta med att återuppleva paniken i sina traumatiska tidiga år utan att förstå detta till fullo. Bara systematiskt arbete på deras barndomshistoria kan ge klienter den referensram som kommer att göra det möjligt för dem att förbättra sin förståelse av de förlamande och [faktiskt] förkrympande rädslorna som börjar komma upp till ytan och att känna igen deras ursprung.”

Yes, systematic work would be needed.

Anxieties can be unconscious? And often are? We should need to get help recognizing them instead of playing them out in different manners. Playing them out without being really aware of it?

If one doesn’t get this help what do one do in the meantime?

Miller also writes at page 49-50:

“But the more strongly the parents’ urge to exercise power manifests itself as a way of covering over their own helplessness, the more enigmatic [difficult to explain] the language of the child’s symptoms becomes. Ultimately, there is no hope of any genuine communication. Only when the parents give up their bid for power can the child’s distress find a voice. We will not get very far if we try to escape the truth we are carrying within us. The denied truth will be with us wherever we flee. It will cause us pain, prompt us to do things we will regret, increase our confusion, and weaken our self-confidence. But if we face up to it, we have a chance of finally recognizing what happened, what didn’t happen, and what has forced us to end up living our lives in opposition to our most profound needs.”

---

“Men ju starkare föräldrarnas drift att utöva makt manifesterar (uppenbarar) sig som en väg att täcka över deras egen hjälplöshet, ju mer enigmatiskt (gåtfullt, svårförklarligt) blir språket i barnets symtom. Till slut finns det inte något hopp om en äkta, genuin kommunikation. Bara när föräldrarna ger upp sitt anspråk på makt kan barnets trångmål finna en röst. Vi kommer inte att komma särskilt långt om vi försöker fly från sanningen vi bär omkring inom oss. Den förnekade sanningen kommer att följa oss varhelst vi flyr. Den kommer att orsaka oss smärta, den kommer att driva oss att göra saker som vi kommer att ångra, öka vår förvirring och försvaga vårt självförtroende. Men om vi försöker möta denna har vi en chans att slutligen känna igen vad som skedde, vad som inte skedde och vad som tvingade oss att sluta i att leva våra liv i motsats, motsättning med våra djupaste behov.”

She continues with recounting the story of Birgitte and Henry both therapists in training, see this blogposting, where I have translated the English text to Swedish.

Therapists and many (maybe most) so called helpers walk in the leading-strings of the power, and pass what's opportune at present or for the time being forward in their work with people.

Once again see the blogpostings on "See no Evil..." here and here, and also the blogposting on "Seeing, hearing or speaking no evil..."

But the trick is not seeking help in a sect or cult or with a guru. But seek help with persons whom can handle those things without using, misusing or exploiting ones plight. Miller has written quite a lot about this.

We can in the meantime try to write about these things and maybe narrate our histories in contexts and circumstances that feels safe? The more we do the better?

And it's true as Marie-Louise Wallin wrote in her article about Dr Phil "Boycott Dr Phil...", that

"...human beings can only grow in interplay with others."

A truth with modification as we say? Because it can be the opposite too, even in therapies, where you are supposed (rightfully!) to get help. But in general we think much better when we talk about things in dialogs. In a giving and taking. Something that isn't so easy always, no...

On my own I wouldn't have achieved what I have achieved here in my blogs for instance?? That's absolutely for sure? And I hope what I have done has inspired and will inspire other people doing the same or similar things...

Silently thinking... And I am so grateful to many people in this world who have spoken up and continue to speak up! I use my writing as a way of processing things I read, meet, react on... And I use my blogs as a sort of library for myself, in collecting things somewhere I want to return to.

Cults, sects, gurus…

picture taken from here.

Miller writes in “Paths of Life” in the last chapter ”Reflections” about leaders and gurus, that we see many problems in a new light when (and if) we take the childhood dimension into account in our trials to explain them. Today we live in a time (era) when dictatorships seem to be replaced with democracies.

But at the same time we see how totalitarian systems grow up in different sects, which people voluntarily enter. People who have grown up in freedom and with respect and whose individuality (distinctive character) in childhood has been tolerated and not been constricted with the help of education, would hardly voluntarily let themselves be drawn into or at least not stay, if they by coincidence or through skillful manipulations would land there.

And if you are drawn into sects or cults it’s not because you are weak or have some sort of weakness you are born with (I think).

I was tipped about “Alcoholics Anonymous as a Cult” and “Boot Camps: Children’s Gulags or Child Abuse for Fun and Profit.”

And this really made me think further…

Oh, the nature is exploding?? It has been sun and a blue sky many days in a row!

Addition: what makes people drawn to bad circumstances, that are harmful for them? Can we avoid it? Prevent it? How?

Oh, how I long for summer...

Processing abuse experiences from so called help-groups and forums...

Came to think about the ourchildhood forum once again… Thinking loudly.

I think it’s important to process ones experiences from a sect or cult… (but it shall not be a prescription either, doing that?) To talk about it till you have talked about it enough…

And you can’t put everything back to childhood or to your family of origin (and maybe not even to a present dysfunctional family-building)! Some things you have to deal with here and now and don't put it back to anything but what you have just experienced. Under this you will possibly or very likely have to deal with earlier experiences, but not until you have dealt enough with the present, and actual abuse (which shouldn't be talked away)? And once again, if you get stuck - why is that? There is nothing wrong with the helper or the method you use?

Therapy abuse as sect and cult experiences you have to process I think. And probably talk about till you are free from these things? If you can’t let these things go it’s because you haven’t (got help) to process them I think. But I know people are encouraged to leave a subject (both by "helpers" and "friends") because now “it’s time doing that”. Because "that person has to think of something else, and don’t get stuck"!? (But why are people stuck?? And don’t get forward?).

And Miller writes that the utmost, the extreme form of silence is suicide. And suicides have occurred… Which is horrible. Because people didn’t really want to listen, whether this was conscious or unconscious in the “listener” and noone else wanted to listen (not even or not least those who were subscribers too at the same time and thus witnesses, but maybe not consciously knowing, and belonged to something looking like a sort of sect and cult?)? Helpers who thought they knew best what the one in despair needed???

Censoring (by rejecting postings) with no explanations except a message “Post was received” – what can that cause and what is that (quite authoritarian isn't it)? Don't the responsible have time writing an explanation, and thus not leaving the subscriber in wonders and fantasies and maybe even confusion? And what does it cause and has it caused?

Others on the list: have noone wondered where that and that person disappeared? And why?

And once again, this behaviour isn't it the same as many of our parents probably used, and as Miller has written about herself? That the parent didn't explain her/is behaviour and punishment. And the message turned out to be "If you don't understand why you are punished, rejected then you have really proved your badness! Seek, search for, do you utmost..."

How would people in real life react to a similar treatment? With anger? Some just walking away? And who are capable of just walking away, of leaving? Who are capable of processing this experience the best? Isn't it the less hurt??

If anything: in those circumstances it is even more important talking openly, and really communicating things. As honestly as possible, if you really want to do good (and how is t actually with that quite frankly)!?? Open, genuine talk. To avoid damage and abuse. And if there is nothing to hide I don’t understand what the problem is.

And people much be allowed to question and maybe even criticize, even strongly, forcefully criticize!? And be met in this, not being just "dismissed"!

Brainwashing can be very subtle? And very obvious too without people noticing it?

Miller writes in her book “Paths of Life” at page 157 in the Swedish edition (my amateur translation):

“Among the founders of the sects there are many paranoiac and megalomaniac [lidande av storhetsvansinne] psychotics who in the crowd of followers are seeking protection against their own agony in that they offer themselves as helpers and healers. /…/ they want to escape from their childish impotence/powerlessness and fight impotence/powerlessness on the symbolic level. At the same time they offer themselves as saviours, since they at last through their followers eulogizes feel powerful instead of powerless. But as soon as they fear being seen through/found out they force their disciples to silence.”

Miller (or her “team”) haven't met people (whose ability to question has got awoken, maybe through the exchanges with the others on the list and through processing and thinking on what is happening and wondering about it), she and/or her team has met people trying to point out “problems” with the ourchildhood forum not so good or professionally I think, from the experiences I have and what I have heard. Instead of listening and meeting the one writing people have been met with silence and if they have persevered even been threatened with retributions… Especially women have been I have a feeling, men have been (a little) better treated. Of some reason... I may be wrong.

And Miller has underscored (is this only my interpretation?) the importance that a therapist has adequate training and that he/she has revoked suppressions as much as possible to avoid projecting things on clients, and for being capable of handling transferences without hurting the client (help-seeker) even more...

Soul murdering...

pictures from walks and bike-tours April 2007, soon we are there.

When I was sitting translating "The Political Consequences of Child Abuse" I found the link to this article by Morton Schatzman (my italics in the text below):

"Another Soul Murderer

In response to The Wound and the Bow (March 1, 1990)

To the Editors:

Charles Rycroft, reviewing Leonard Shengold's Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation [NYR, March 1], notes that Shengold's text omits mention of my book about Daniel Paul Schreber. Shengold's book is at least the fourth work of his with Soul Murder in the title. The bibliography in his book refers to the second and third works, which were articles in psychoanalytic journals. However, it omits Shengold's first use of the title. That was an article entitled 'Soul Murder: A Review' (International Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, August 1974). The review surveyed the history of the concept 'soul murder,' but mainly criticized a book by me. The title of my book? Soul Murder!

Schreber (1842–1911) was an eminent German judge, who went mad at forty-two, and spent many years in mental asylums. He was a classic case of paranoia and schizophrenia and probably has been the most quoted patient in psychiatric history. Schreber called his condition 'soul murder.' The term, he explained, referred to the idea 'widespread in the folklore and poetry of all peoples that it is somehow possible to take possession of another person's soul….'

Freud never met Schreber, but in 1911 wrote an analysis of him based on Schreber's book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Freud concluded that Schreber's paranoia had been a defense against homosexual love for his father, and that Schreber's experiences of persecution by God were originally his own loving feelings for his father, now replaced by hatred and projected onto God.

In my Soul Murder I presented a hypothesis about Daniel Paul's madness based upon the available evidence of his father's methods of bringing up children.

Psychoanalytic authors largely ignored my views, at least in published writings. A theme of the Dutch sociologist Han Israëls (Schreber: Father and Son, International Universities Press, reviewed by Phyllis Grosskurth in NYR, January 18, 1990) was that, in so doing, the psychoanalytic community was condoning an infringement of the rules of scholarship. Yet Shengold, who twice cited Israël's book in his own book, albeit only briefly, has infringed the rules of scholarship in just the same way. Despite using my title, Shengold's Soul Murder ignored my Soul Murder (except in the bibliography)—though it discussed at length the case of Schreber!

How, then, to explain the psychoanalysts' behavior? According to Rycroft, the reason, in Shengold's case, 'must' be that I am 'an outsider, not a psychoanalyst, and, therefore, not a member of that elect [utvald, utkorad] group, the American (or should it be the New York?) psychoanalytic establishment, which probably makes up a large part of Shengold's audience.' Yet Shengold mentions Israëls. Israëls is neither American nor a psychoanalyst, nor even a psychiatrist, whereas [då däremot!!] I am an American psychiatrist, educated and trained in New York City.

A more important reason, I think, for the exclusion of my views is that they are heretical [arv, ärvd eller arvegods in Swedish?]. They are at direct variance with Freud. The word 'heretical' is deliberate. I believe that from the start psychoanalysis has coped with dissent [avvikelser] from Freud's views in ways that have more in common with a religious movement than with a scientific or academic enterprise. Psychoanalysts have not considered what sort of evidence would be helpful in judging the likelihood that my views might be true—or false.

Rycroft has not 'excommunicated' [bannlyst] me, and confronts my views, but his thinking about them is muddled [röriga]. According to Israëls, writes Rycroft, Schreber's father 'was not as famous and influential as both Schatzman and Freud had assumed, was not such a paragon [förebild] as Freud had assumed or as vicious {ond, dålig, brsitfällig] as Schatzman had painted him, and neither Freud's nor Schatzman's aetiological theories stand up to critical scrutiny [kritisk noggrannhet].' That is all Rycroft says about the possible validity [giltighet] of the two theories. How famous and influential the father was is surely irrelevant to the question of whether he drove his son crazy. Israëls did not prove that the father was not as 'vicious' as I had painted him, but even if Israëls had, that would also be irrelevant.

This is not to say that I am convinced that my theory is true. A prevalent view is that whatever schizophrenia is, it is probably a brain disorder. However, we still have little understanding of what schizophrenia is, or why anyone becomes schizophrenic. I expect that the answers will come from people who value a search for truth more than loyalty to doctrine.

Morton Schatzman
London, England"

How well said!!

Now soon a soup for lunch I am having on the stove... Something warm in the gray weather. Taco-tasting!! With bread and butter to (and cheese). Fruit after? Candles lighted?? Yes, I think so. So much soup that I am going to put (many!!!) portions in the freezer to have during the week, when I don't have so much time for making food!!