[Updated January 16]. I want to explore further what expressions the Denial takes, not only on a personal level... What the Denial for or in individuals results in in different respects and different areas, for and with people in the society on different levels.
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In the evening: I came across a review on the book “Rag-Doll” ("Trasdocka" in Swedish) written by a woman, an Yvonne Domeij, who was sexually abused by a person supposed to help her and the family she grew up in when she was a young girl. This review was so strange, so I reacted.
And yesterday there was blogpost on a blog, about environmental pollution and the capitalism's role in this, with a quote from Karl Marx, which said something in the style (my amateur-translation from Swedish!):
“The capitalistic production can only develop the production-technique and the societal organization when it at the same time destroy all wealth’s fountain-head; the earth and the worker.”
The first commentator wrote a comment I reacted strongly against, another strong reaction. It stands something in the style:
“To ‘destroy’ the earth is unfortunately necessary for all human life. The fact is that you can’t light a fire, cook food or build a house without destroying anything. It is called creative destruction when you take something and make something else of it.”
I tried to post a very ironic reply saying something in the style that "How convenient, then we don’t have to do anything, because we can’t do anything, we can just move on as we have always done"
but I didn’t succeed to get it posted…
Before I went to work I swiftly wrote, threw these words down: "Not wanting to know any consequences..."
It felt as both these two things was an expression of Denial. The reviewer to the book couldn’t handle what she read? And thus she wrote her very strange review, and the commentator also reacted with Denial to truths HE (I interpreted it at as a he :-)) of some reason can’t handle, has to push away and push it away in the manner he did in my experience. And I think these reactions are expressions of things that are triggered in these two persons. They are examples of such reactions, reactions as we see now and then everywhere, i different circumstances and on different levels!?
Now to a description of the book and its content and a description of the review I read and reacted to: When the small Yvonne told about the abuse her family pushed her away. Four years ago she realized that the abuser even today denies the abuse and says they had a love-relation.
Yvonne Domeij says that what he calls a love relation is “...countless rapes committed against a child in his power, through his work.”
When she heard what the abuser had said they suddenly gushed forth, all the things that had been enclosed as a hard lump of shame during all years. The anger over what he had done to her. That he had taken her body. And that he still loaded the guilt on her for what had occurred. She realized (then?) that it wasn’t she, the victim who should feel shame, but he, the abuser. Therefore she has spoken out (the book came fall 2006), and gone out in public with her name and identity. She encourages people to look in the archives what is documented about her case.
From this anger and fury she started to write as she says. By the writing, articulating and naming the abuse she rehabilitated herself. Restored herself.
The book contains three parts; the girl’s story, the grown up woman’s story, and at last the abusers story. She started to write the part which was seen from the abusers perspective. Domeij says that it was fun to write this book. It felt good to write about something noone had wanted to hear. My comment: Now noone could stop her!? Now she was grown up with a grown ups power!? But with all respect to other victims of abuse, which can’t speak up as Domeij does. It took three and a half year to write the book it stands.
It seems as the former wife of this man has contributed to this book too!? They write about a man, the social-physician, highly regarded by the environment, how the environment let the whole pass, because many knew. But noone did anything.
Domeij is born 1944, so this occurred in the next decade? The one when I was born. So I have weak memories of that time. Yes, about the hypocrisy, when the wives met to drink coffee, and everything sounded so fine…
Domeij grew up in a “complicated” family. Her parents married against their families’ will/wishes, got outcast and lived without real social networks. The hypocrisy… I get so angry.
When the father got sick there were neither any social nor economic networks for the family, so the six children went from one child- and foster-home to the next. They needed help and one of the helpers abused Yvonne…
In the review, “With the polluters/defilers eyes” in one of our biggest newspapers Svenska Dagbladet, the reviewer writes that
“With all respect to Domeij and her harrowing destiny, to me it doesn’t seem as Domeij has (ever?) been a rag-doll. Maybe it was Doctor Björks merit [a physician Yvonne met as very small?], which once took the four-year old girl on his lap and taped her name on the typewriter. When the word Yvonne clearly and plainly appeared on the paper the girl got aware of herself”
the reviewer writes.
“She was Yvonne. Therefore she would – despite the environments persistent endeavours in that way – never become an object, a thing, a contraption. The word was transformed into a talisman which, herself unknowingly, protected her against everything she later tell the reader about. But it never protected her against suffering, sorrow, agony, rape, loneliness, violations, emotional abuse and six years homelessness.”
She also minimizes the problems the family had, by "protesting" and saying that there are few children which have lived such a varying or alternating life as little Yvonne, meeting strangers…
And the review goes on in this style…
See texts in Swedish about the book, I have taken facts from and used above, here, here, here and here.
photo on Yvonne Domeij.
PS. January 16: Of some reason I came to think about an earlier blogpost I had written, "Terapeut om ondska" or "Therapist on evilness", about the Danish author Kristian Ditlev Jensen which Miller mentions in the article "Deception Kills Love". Domeij says that she will never be really free from the abuse she suffered and Miller writes that:
"Despite years of therapy he [Kristian Ditlev Jensen] was unable to sleep, had difficulty in concentrating, suffered terrifying nightmares and was subject to frequent bouts of panic that he was unable to control."
And:
"As an adult, Kristian Jensen is free to see through Gustav’s manipulations. Accordingly he is hardly in danger of doing the same to others. But a child does not have this freedom. One cannot escape one’s own parents, so one cannot afford to see through them either. Blindness makes it possible to survive."
And (the processing in Jensen's therapy stopped with the acknowledgment of the sexual abuse Jensen suffered as a 9-12 year old boy, but what was underneath this, this wasn't really touched upon? Why Jensen still has/had problems despite many years of therapy? Because some perpetrators we are allowed to react at with disgust, with all rightfulness, but others are almost forbidden to question and/or react at!?):
"While the book reveals that the parents’ indifference was in fact the ground in which sexual abuse was able to take root and flourish, the author insists in his preface that today he loves his parents dearly and has forgiven them for absolutely everything.
It was this sentence that prompted me to react to this book. The point is that it illustrates the covert, but nonetheless virulently destructive power of the Fourth Commandment that has been a constant concern of mine. As a child Kristian was unable to free himself of Gustav’s pernicious influence because he believed that he could not live without him, without the intellectual joys he had introduced him to in the capital. If he were forced to return to the soul-destroying boredom of his parents’ provincial home, then he would surely die. Accordingly he submitted to his 'friend’s' brain-washing and chose to ignore the obvious abuse he was being subjected to. Today, as an adult, he can see things more realistically, he can see what harm was done to him, and for that reason he is no longer forced to love Gustav. But the ties that link him to his parents have lost none of their power. And this is what Kristian Jensen calls love.
Although Kristian’s account indicates very clearly how the first years of his life as a neglected child drilled into unquestioning obedience of his parents paved the way for the crimes perpetrated on him by this pedophile, he acquits his parents of any kind of responsibility for his dilemma. Emotionally, at least. The reader can sense the adults’ indignation at the behavior of his parents, who calmly entrusted him to the care of a criminal every week-end for a period of three years. But the child within cannot venture to express this indignation, the fear of his parents is still too overpowering. This may explain why Kristian still suffers from his symptoms. His rage at Gustav’s behavior is legitimate, the contempt for pedophiles is shared by society. But not the rage caused by his parents. This forbidden rage remains pent up in his body, it produces nightmares and other symptoms because it is not accessible to his adult consciousness. What remains is the longing for 'good' parents, and this longing sustains all the illusions he entertains about them.
Kristian Jensen is no exception. I constantly receive books by authors relating inconceivable cruelties perpetrated on them in their early years. On the very first pages of these books they assure the reader that they have forgiven their parents for everything done to them. All these cases are a sure indication of compulsive repetition, the compulsion to prolong the deception they were once subjected to. This compulsion manifests itself above all in the religious assertion that forgiveness has a salutary effect. This assertion is clearly contradicted by the facts. The compulsion to preach is never the product of a free spirit.
Am I saying that forgiveness for crimes done to a child is not only ineffective but actively harmful? Yes, that is precisely what I am saying. The body does not understand moral precepts. It fights against the denial of genuine emotions and for the admission of the truth to our conscious minds. This is something the child cannot afford to do, it has to deceive itself and turn a blind eye to the parents’ crimes in order to survive. Adults no longer need to do this, but if they do, the price they pay is high. Either they ruin their own health or they make others pay the price – their children, their patients, the people who work for them, etc.
A therapist who has forgiven his parents for the cruelty they showed him will frequently feel the urge to suggest this same course of action to his patients as a remedy for their ills. In so doing, he is exploiting their dependence and their trust. If he is no longer in touch with his own feelings, he may indeed be unaware that in this way he is doing to others what was once done to him. He is abusing others, confusing them, while rejecting any kind of responsibility for his actions because he is convinced that he is acting for their own good. Are not all religions unanimous in their conviction that forgiveness is the path to Heaven? Was not Job ultimately rewarded for the fact that he forgave God? No good can be expected of a therapist who identifies with the parents who once abused him. But adult patients have the choice. They can leave a therapist when they have seen through his deception and self-deception. They need not identify with him and repeat his acts all over again."
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