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.

Conspiracy, sexual emancipation and a little about medication…

Lars Ohly.

Romano Prodi.

George W. Bush.

[Updated June 9 in the end!] Two news-items side by side in the local newspaper today made me think. The leader for the left party in Sweden Lars Ohly said during the congress now that he sees conspiracy behind demands on aircraft security (terrorism in Europe). I searched on the net for this and got some hits there, so people have noticed it.

He said during the congress that once when he was out flying his shaving cream was confiscated. He says that he of course congratulates the European Union for the enormous success in the fight against terrorism which this confiscation marks.

In a speech he said that:

“These rules are an expression for a panic that is created and fills a political purpose. The rulers (the ones in power) want us to believe that the law and order and democracy only can become defended through becoming restricted.”

After the speech he confessed that he believes in a conspiracy.

“Yes, I seriously mean that one does this to create a ground for other changes."

What he means is the increased security leading to a climate where people experience that security is so threatened, that it is justifiable with restrictions in the democratic freedoms and rights (privileges or civil rights).

They asked Ohly whom he thought was lying behind this conspiracy, and he said that George W. Bush after September 11 sent a letter to the European commission’s Romano Prodi with a list on 47 points which USA wanted Europe to introduce.

The other news-item was that many teenage girls have sex against their will. In research the psychologist Gisela Priebe has established that one of seven girls in the upper teens have had sexual intercourse against their own will. Among the boys in the same age one of seventeen have had difficulties saying no.

The press living up to the ideal of sexual emancipation has made it difficult saying no.

This conclusion is made by the psychologist Gisela Priebe who has made research on adolescents being exposed to sexual abuse. This winter her dissertation comes at the University of Lund.

More than 4,000 (4,139) young people in gymnasium-age have answered questions. As many as 65 percent of the girls say that they have been exposed to some form of unwanted sexual action which can be everything from tampering or pawing (tafsande) to sexual intercourse.

Priebe means that the research so far has focused on incest and paedophilia, but abuse between young people in the same age is in fact more common. The girls had been in age 14 in average when they were abused in some form the first time. Eleven percent of the girls had such experiences at 10 or even younger at the first occasion.

Priebe says that it isn’t always a question of physical violence, sexual abuse isn’t always connected to physical violence or force. It’s common with persuasion or that someone uses his/her position. And she thinks there is a widespread picture among young people that one shall be emancipated and sexually accessible. This can make it difficult for many young people feeling they have the right to say no.

Yes, I think Ohly can be right about conspiracies from people in power, giving the power right to control us. And I wondered to what degree this is conscious. From a person like George W. Bush for instance. I reread some pages from “Base Instincts - What Makes Killers Kill?” by the American neurologist Jonathan H. Pincus. He writes about the possible roots for terrorism and about societal approval and also that (page 191):

“The unrestrained approval of violence in certain political parties and gangs may make such groups attractive to the abused. Although we have very little information about the family dynamics of the members of terrorist organizations, I believe that the history of physical and sexual abuse, and even mental illness [also due to abuse] paranoia, and brain damage is prevalent among them.”

I also skimmed the chapter on prevention and treatment and my impression is that medication isn’t always a secure method… But I have to read this chapter better to say he means this. But our current government want to medicate people with means of coercion (medicate all “dissidents” I wonder quite ironically. Another thing this government does which isn’t properly supported by science?). Addition in the evening: see the last posting today "Can a pill make a murderer safe?"

See Pincus on Hitler and Hatred, the essay "George W. Bush's projection and dislocation of self", and here and here are the links to all earlier postings with the label “J. Pincus” and to postings with the label the “ruling classes’ paranoia” here and here.

And that about sexual abuse: why haven’t young people learned to say “no”? I also wonder (ironically) if they have learned to trust their senses and feelings, and been allowed to respect them, by their parents already.

See the article “Childhood Sexual Abuse – Women’s Mental and Social Health Before and After Group Therapy.”

A common denominator to the topics in this posting is "integrity violations" and their effects?? Which all this above is about?

PS. In his youth Lars Ohly belonged to the Liberal Party!!! (I don't vote on them though, and will probably never do).

Addition June 9: Watch this video-clip about chasing terrorists in Indiana, USA, "War on Terre Haute." :-) And read about Terre Haute here. I didn't know it was a city! :-)

Acting out…

from rehearsal yesterday with two of my students. Is it the anger's angel on the altar-piece, commanding: fall down?

I am thinking further on what I see around me in society, not least among politicians, and the politicians in our current government in particular. Wonder what is driving them? How they can resonate as they do. And of course: why do they need power? Why have they chosen political work? What are their actual intentions and motives, both the conscious and unconscious? Yes, what are their drives?

And I for instance found something Miller has written at page 168-169 in the Swedish edition of ”Paths of Life” about acting out ones hatred on scapegoats. She writes that it’s impossible for a child to consciously experience the abuse (physical, sexual and emotional) without aware witnesses. The knowledge about what it has been exposed to (or the meaning of it: this was no love, but hate and rejection) has to become suppressed. But what happened doesn’t disappear even if it is dispatched to the unconscious. The unconscious memories drive the human being once and again to reproduce the suppressed scenes to liberate her/himself from the agony the early abuse has left in the body.

But not even this gives him/her liberation. Once and again he becomes perpetrator and finds new victims. So long as he projects the hatred and fear on scapegoats one can’t master these feelings. Not until one realizes the true cause(s) and understands the natural reaction on injuries the blind, on innocent projected hatred can get dissolved. Its function, to hide the truth, is no longer necessary. And she also writes on another place that you can’t dissolve things symbolically either. If one could, all we with artistic and creative works would be liberated from neurosis (my free interpretation of Miller), but we are certainly not. But it’s possible our work helps many of us to survive.

Miller writes that perpetrators of sexual abuse are no longer at risk re-enacting their traumas (committing sexual abuse) in a destructive way if they get help and opportunity in therapy to process what they have been through. Where do they get this help I wonder? Does that sort of help exist? Or it is still very rare? Because people still try to invent a lot of other explanations, than abuse from parents and other caretakers and to what degree they actually occur and what is actually harmful? One ascribes or attributes the causes and roots to for instance sexual abuse other things than early childhood abuse in many, many cases still? There is still a lot of denial about those things, both in people in general as in professionals. People deny that these things are ALWAYS, with no exception, a question of mistreatment, from the mildest forms to the most severe? There are small islands of awareness and knowledge only in the world.

Miller also writes that so long as the anger against a parent remains unconscious and denied, it cannot get dissolved. It can only be pushed over onto scapegoats, on the own children (if one has any) or supposed enemies. Masked as ideology (as for instance in politics and political parties) the anger transformed to hate can become especially dangerous.

What I originally was searching for this time was ideas about he child’s evilness because earlier today I skimmed “Paths of Life” in the middle of doing other things and read those words somewhere and put them on my mind.

Yes, she writes about this at page 186 in the Swedish edition, something in the style: punishment is built on the assumption that the child is acting with an evil intention (I can see the horrified adult watching the child! But what is he/she actually seeing?? An evil child? A monster? But what is this “evil” or “monster” about?)

She writes on the next page (187) that the latter adult will miss a compass of experiences (achieved through consciously experiencing things and not having to suppress things) which would help her/him to orientate in the life and the being. Therefore he will bow for authorities and play master over the weaker; all in accordance with what he/she has experienced as a child with his/her educators. I came to think of an older acquaintance in my parents age, blindly admiring all people with a position, never questioning them or capable of seeing them as human beings as all other human beings. I wonder what ort of father (and mother) she and her six siblings had. She is the child in the midst? With three before her and three after her? I still get very surprised when I am confronted with this in her, can’t understand how one can be SO uncritical and seeing up to THAT degree, and that this person does.

The cold glance of the bureaucrat…

Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (21 April 1864 – 14 June 1920) was a German political economist and sociologist who was considered one of the founders of the modern study of sociology and public administration.

[Updated May 25 in the end]. The Swedish leader-writer Göran Greider wrote a leader today with the title ”Byråkratens kyliga blick” or “The cold glance of the bureaucrat.”

During the week it seems as there has been a row of programmes on radio about disabled people and their lives and life-experiences. Radio commentators have followed disabled people in the society, young disabled women have told about sexual abuse and mobbing and subtle actions of violence from the environment.

To Greider this comes as no surprise. During the former decade he worked with different disability organizations. Then, fifteen years ago, the old charity thoughts started to come back: instead of social rights – once again it was more and more about relying on idealistic forces and relatives. The last forty years many disability organizations have managed to cast off a lot of the yoke of charity. Now those achievements were about to get lost. And the problem went deeper than that: even the public welfare was – and is – in depth coined by inherited charity-thoughts he thinks, i.e., the view that the one receiving support shall feel grateful and preferably not be noisy when the gifts are falling over them. The core of the philanthropic thought was there and it is a very hard thought: those who need help have to do their full share and show their gratitude, if not they aren’t worth of help. Now the view on poor, unemployed and all sorts of exposed people is hardening. “The National Board of Health and Welfare” and “Social Insurance in Sweden” walk hand in hand with neoconservative social-politicians and those actors are more and more building an elite that is floating above the problems and seem to know best what sort of needs people have.

Greider thinks one can’t regulate what sort of help a disabled person needs on a bureaucratic level. The most banal things in everyday life can appear different dependent on if ones arms, eyes or ears doesn’t function.

He thinks that “Social Insurances in Sweden” doesn’t have to interpret the law as they are doing now – but the authorities choose to do that. Why? He wonders. However, he hardly thinks it’s out of evilness. It’s rather so that the obvious glance from above is what makes it difficult to see people as individuals. He thinks the directors of “Social Insurances in Sweden” have shown that they have become a part of the power-establishment who don’t understand the problems lower in the society then where they themselves are. They have lost contact with the grassroots. A sort of authoritarianism and totalitarianism? Beating their breasts?

The bureaucrat’s cold glance is directed towards the society. And Greider thinks we have to dare to meet it and not give way for it.

There was a letter to the editor in a local newspaper today where it stood:

“Sounds nasty.

The right alliance’s Reinfeldt [our current prime-minister] has difficulties winning peoples’ hearts.

Maybe the Swedish people need to do as Maud Olofsson [leader of one of the parties, centerpartiet, in the alliance leading Sweden now] said. Separate heart from brain. Ugh, that sounds nasty.”

Both the heart and brain is saying that what they are doing now is wrong – and VERY WRONG??

The Swedish physician Christina Doctare said in her book "Brain-stress" that the future's leaders need both IQ and EQ and jolly good broadband between those two, and spiritual dimension on top I think she added.

All sort of helpers (employees everywhere, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychologists, physicians, teachers too etc. etc. etc.) are walking in the leading-strings of the power? Run the power's errands!! See former posting on "John Read and Models of Madness..."

PS. Doctare actually writes (I looked in the book) something in the style:

“The future’s leadership, on all societal levels, will be about people with well integrated brain halves and jolly good broad-bands between them. Persons having IQ, EQ and a spiritual dimension. It says itself that a certain amount of maturity is required and a great amount of integrity and civil courage./…/

Leadership is about seeing both power and authorities as tools in obtaining goals formulated together, not as goals in themselves or as tools for ones own self-glorifying and nourishment for a stuck-up ego."

And also read the reader’s letter on Miller’s web “Interview with child advocate Andrew Vachss.”

See former posting with those videos. And former postings on backward psycho classes.

PPS. Miller summarizes it quite well when she says, apropos Oprah Winfrey in the talk with Andrew Vachss, where Vachss “confronts Oprah with her belief that anger resulting from an abusive childhood is a bad thing that one needs to overcome, and that the way to ‘healing’ is through forgiveness. And he thoroughly questions it" (as it stood in the reader’s letter). As we are learned so often in therapy; to feel but not to feel:

“Feeling and understanding the causes of our old pain does not mean that the pain and the anger will stay with us forever. Quite the opposite is true. The felt anger and pain disappear with time and enable us to love our children [therapists are afraid we shall get stuck in he old pain and anger. But if clients do - why? See below*]. It is the UNFELT, avoided and denied pain, stored up in our bodies, that drive us to repeat what have been done to [and which gives us all sorts of troubles, and it is help with feeling this pain we need?].

---

”Att känna och förstå orsakerna till vår gamla smärta betyder inte att smärtan och vreden kommer att stanna hos oss för evigt. Snarare tvärtom. Den kända vreden [den vrede vi medvetet upplevt] försvinner med tiden och gör oss förmögna att älska våra barn [och oss själva och andra vuxna. Men många terapeuter är rädda att vi ska fastna i detta!? Något som är absolut förbjudet? Och jag har ju mina tankar om varför en klient 'fastnar'...*]. Det är den INTE KÄNDA smärtan, den smärta vi undvikit och förnekat, som lagrats i våra kroppar, som driver oss att upprepa det som gjordes mot oss [och som ger oss allehanda problem].”

Addition May 25: Struck me on my bike to the grocery store before lunch: And the more power we have the more important feeling and understanding the causes of our pain are. The more important it is that we don’t have unfelt, avoided and denied pain stored up in our bodies, driving us to repeat what was done to us.

I am thinking of the power parents, leaders (the greater and higher up the more), therapists and all sort of helpers have. In these circumstances awareness about ones own self is more important than ever for all around and under. The more serious the effects of the past from the childhood of the one in power can become; what he has experienced and endured and not been able to process – something we have certainly seen through history and still continue seeing.

And there can be pains we don’t even are in contact with? Pain we have never consciously felt. Pain that is so denied.

*“If one uncritically cling to old methods' alleged infallibility and blames the client for failures, you inevitably land in the same fairways (waters) as the sect-guru, who also promises entire liberation. Such promises only produce self-destructive dependence which stands in the way for the individual’s liberation.” (Alice Miller in “Paths of Life” in my amateur translation from the Swedish edition of this book)."