“The renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright has received much historical attention, but author Nancy Horan turns her gaze on Mamah Borthwick, Wright’s lover -- their long-term affair scandalized the public -- who deserves attention in her own right for her work as a feminist. Loving Frank tells the story of Cheney’s affair with Wright and her struggles to mesh her own independence and intelligence with the traditional roles of wife and mother. (the text is taken from here).”
[Updated in the evening with a PPS]. I don't really know what to give this posting as heading (actually many times I don't really know what to use as titles)...
I have been reading the book ”Loving Frank” byNancy Horan (in Swedish) for a while, now reaching the end of it, about the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his love affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney which occurred in the beginning of the former decade (I am reading many books in parallel, phew!).
They were both married when they got in love. This love caused a scandal and a lot of emotions in the society around them and was written about in the newspapers even.
Here is a review in New York Times "Notes on a Scandal" (also see here). There it stands for instance:
“Public outrage followed Frank and Mamah across the Atlantic in 1909, endangering the young architect’s career and destroying his companion’s good name. Wright’s legacy has been retroactively protected and buttressed by his work, but Mamah Borthwick Cheney’s reputation didn’t survive their romance — and neither did she. Horan follows the couple as their relationship travels from its anxious, ecstatic beginnings, past doubts and compromises, through renewed hope, and on to its tragic close./…/
Mamah Borthwick Cheney wasn’t just any woman, but Horan makes her into an enigmatic [mysterious, puzzling or "gåtfull" in Swedish] Everywoman — a symbol of both the freedoms women yearn to have and of the consequences that may await when they try to take them.”
In the end Horan writes about Wright that (in my amateur translation from the Swedish text):
“This was Frank in a nutshell, conductor out into the fingertips.”
Frank had thought about every single detail about the impression his "creations" would give (even when it came to Mamah's dresses, at least atone occasion)… He had his sides. As Mamah had.
This made me think.
“And this is more okay when it comes to and is about a man still!? Or one has to oversee with it at least!? They lived in a system that allowed some people (men for instance) to play their childhoods out, both in the family (the smallest system) and in the society. Even on the highest level. And in this way these persons (preferably men) didn’t have to do anything about their problems, issues.”
We grant them irresponsibility. They don't have to grow up!? They can still go on being like grown up boys!? My mom used to say that she had one big child and six small children. The child reacted with astonishment, because he didn't give him any opportunity to grow up either. Or was this HER responsibility? I don't know, maybe she also had interests in keeping him like a small child, not to loose him (with a tired smile)??? Because she in turn didn't really believe in her value and real, true rights?
Men don’t have to take responsibility too many times still, didn’t have to do anything an are still more accepted just as they are - in a/many way/s. They could continue to play things out. Women fell back on a false hope to change their men (making them stay in the relation. Hoping an trying and struggling year after year after year, as did Mamah, when she bu time discovered Frank's different sides, for instance a "spoiled child side", his mother's favorite, before Frank's two sisters. Whom accepted their roles)?
Women haven’t had those opportunities. Where have they played their things out? Yes, on their children (if they had any)!? And if they didn’t have any? How do we stop this vicious circle? That only one part/side take responsibility?
And this is still true to a high degree: men are ruling the world (false power - anger? Anger expressed in many different ways give them a sense of power? A need for power that actually have with their childhoods to do?). And can still play all their unprocessed things out, and thus take no responsibility for them. Aren’t really forced to do anything about them. They aren’t compelled doing anything because of how the society still functions!
Here in Sweden more women seek help with therapists, psychologists… And also get abused sometimes by their so called helpers… On top.
And as the society now and still functions the ones loosing most are still women and children and poor people. Who still have least power and status.
But men also looses on this in the end. All men do? But in slightly different ways? They may have more status only by the fact hat they are men (and usually physically stronger) and/or actual power, money etc., but problems with near relations, with closeness.
Filling their needs with substitutes, like power, money, drugs of different kinds (as do women), independency (I don’t need, giving them a sense of power, actually not a true power!? Also going back to their childhoods?).
So women have the strongest immediate interests in changing the state of affairs – still, 100 years later!??? They loose most on the current situation still!?
But men ought to be interested too, for their and the ones sake they maybe love?? And for the world's sake and how things develop in it?
Yes, mothers (AND fathers) can treat their sons badly in many ways... Hating them, not seeing their (justified) needs, using them for filling their own needs (for abreactions for instance)... And give their sons problems later in life. Sometimes tremendous problems. As much as daughters are given problems from their parents... But in slightly different ways?
PS. My postings have looked strange for a while. I get a message about a faulty HTML-code or something. I know nothing about HTML and haven't done anything... But never mind...
PPS. After fixing up here I took some fika out on the balcony and read the last pages in the book mentioned in this posting, and couldn’t help getting tears in my eyes, actually running down my cheeks, when I read it.
I won’t have time reading this book the coming weeks or months I think, so I read words here and there.
The last paragraph made me spontaneously think:
“The whole nation regressed! As its leader(s).”
And that’s what has happened through history here and there, even if we perhaps haven’t thought in those terms.
When we are placed or put before repetition(s) of an experience that formed us we have a possibility solving the old story in a new way. Go back to the future (in the best cases) and turn the long-term denial upside-down.
Faludi talks about a national identity not built on some sort of virile illusion, but on the talents we all, women and men, have to the same degree.
According to wikipedia:
“In her 1999 book ‘Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man’ Faludi analyzes the state of the American man. Faludi argues that while many of those in power are men, most individual men have little power. American men have been brought up to be strong, support their families and work hard.
But many men who followed this now find themselves underpaid or unemployed, disillusioned and abandoned by their wives. Changes in American society have affected both men and women, Faludi concludes, and it is wrong to blame individual men for class differences, or for plain differences in individual luck and ability, that they did not cause and from which men and women suffer alike.”
From an article that has been laying here for quite a while I thought was so good…
With the heading “Political Agenda corrupts the picture.” An article about school politics in Sweden and our (lousy in my strong opinion and feeling) school minister.
The author of the article writes that 30-40 years ago we had a discussion where one draw attention to the encyclopedic knowledge as one called it, namely the knowledge where you just reeled off facts without understanding connections, relations and processes in the ground (yes, deep or surface knowledge or what it’s called in English?).
One discussed grades (betyg) and saw the risks with rewarding the easily measurable knowledge.
Laboriously (with difficulty) one has walked in another direction in the school here in favour of a deeper understanding of the knowledge matters/subjects.
The students were taught to reflect, to think themselves. Yes, even to question things, state of affairs etc.
Now we are obviously turning back to the superficiality’s paradigm again!
Our school minister’s so called reforms indicates a somewhat childish way of behaving to knowledge and pedagogy. Carrots and whips (carrot and stick discipline) shall become honored again and maybe Björklund also has confused the need of a teacher’s authority with authoritarian teachers.
In the Academic world different researchers of course can have different views on science and knowledge, but they aren’t allowed to misrepresent their sources or slip when they quote.
When Björklund has talked about the alleged bad results in Swedish schools a specific, but not expressed view on knowledge is talking.
Parts of the liberal press agree with Björklund and thinks he identifies the real problems (!!!). But is it possible to identify problems when you distort the facts as the sources in fact point out?
Is it the same sort of moral the Alliance (the current ruling coalition here, and hopefully not lasting) uses, and the press gladly presents as the truth, when it paints Swedish citizens black who are said to cheat Social Insurances in Sweden or say that they are working instead of being home with children that are sick? The alarm report which sketched out a picture of millions of cheating Swedes showed to be erroneous, but this they speak very quietly about!!!
If you can assert that the common welfare system is used by greedy citizens, then it’s easier to wind up.
If you can prove that a school where teachers and students try to live together in a friendly atmosphere gives bad results, that the lack of grades from the first beginning lower the students motivation, yes, then you can shout for earlier grades (betyg), harder grips, authoritarian methods.
A certain political agenda is operating here, a hidden agenda.
4,000 Swedish school kids answered an inquiry about security and wellbeing where the Swedish school reached top results. What sort of view on man does Björklund have when he chooses to overlook exactly those students’ – these young people whom in fact are experts on their own situation? Aren’t they? Does he show respect? And why not?
Of course there are things to criticize in our school, but the political platform has to be given an account of.
For example if one likes a school with military drilling more than one who negotiate (Björklund is a former officer). Quite ironically, yes.
Yes, it’s strange: children need regulations and restrictions. Because of their inherited traits and drives??
But adult people don’t need any regulations or restrictions? Or some DO need, but others don’t!?? It depends. On what actually (quite ironically)? On what power you have? How much money you have? And who has the power and money in this world?
If we were capable of showing children true, genuine respect, then…?
Now we have to use other means!? Threats, manipulation, regulations, limit setting etc.
There are boundaries and boundaries.
We treat our children differently, because they have different needs we say!? Girls (already the very small, yes, the small baby) have certain needs, boys (small boys, already the small baby-boy) others we claim (what are those claims actually about?). (And) what do we actually know about those needs or what are those ideas actually mirroring? Are those ideas a protection against a too painful truth? And an excuse for how we behave, how we actually feel, that we don't feel the same for the different individuals? The solution to that is to admit that we feel differently, it's just like that it is!!?
A female cousin actually admitted recently that girls and boys are valued differently! Boys are a little more worth... She doesn't have any brothers, as I have, only a (2 year older) sister. Admitted that her mother values boys and girls differently. She had namely just met my two brothers and was so charmed by them! It felt to me that she would never say anything like this about the female part of the "family"!!! How cute, charmy, nice etc. a female part was... But do I as grown up need such a confirmation? And if I do, why?
But both boys and girls are probably badly treated, anyway... In different and the same ways... But this causes problems later, bigger or smaller (was this also a/the reason for treating the small child badly, so she/he didn't think...??? Thinking she/he was something worth, worth being loved, worth treated good, respected,valued).
The dad not seeing his daughter, treating her as she didn’t exist and wasn't worth a nickel, as she was stupid, very little knowing. Treating her with contempt. Contempt for weakness, for insecurity… Treating her like she was shit.
The mother beating her small (and later also not so small) son… Beating HIS self-confidence out of him in a certain way.
What can we do about this later, when those two are grown up? Who has to think of who? Who has to do something about this? Who has the responsibility for making something, changing things? Only the woman? Or only the man? Or should the work come from them both actually? Don’t both of them have responsibility for trying to change the state of affairs?
Struggling on my own with everything, all different things... With differing results... Really.
More voices in Sweden about the current states of affairs in the world:
One writer, Maria-Pia Boëthius, writes: An economical tribunal ought to become established. Not for imposing a penalty, but for making clear for the people around the world what has happened and who carry the guilt actually.
Such a tribunal should be sent directly over the web and in the public service channels all over the world. What we than got to know wouldn’t be dependent on the Medias’ reports andfiltering of news because the Medias – the big – are also guilty to what has happened!
No of these bubbles would have been possible without the Medias’ eager cooperation and collaboration. But when the responsibility is to become claimed the medias always try to run away, only for to become the money-world’s obedient weapon in the next bubble.
The truth is that the media earn great money on that these bubbles are built, with the help of advertisement, PR and trademark building. The media and its owners have all interests in puffing the consumption up, because they seldom live on our direct buying but on the advertisements and the trademarkings’s (the making of trade marks) distorted message.
See about the British journalist Jonathan Cook here and here.
And read about ”The Intellectual Cleansing” part one and two here (Part one with the title “Keeping the Media Safe For Big Business”). Quotation from that site on what Media Lens is:
“Media Lens is our response to the unwillingness, or inability, of the mainstream media to tell the truth about the real causes and extent of many of the problems facing us, such as human rights abuses, poverty, pollution and climate change.”
The world needs an unbiased tribunal where even the Medias’ have to answer for their actions she thinks.
Another writer writes about our short sight needs and a sick system, something our politicians haven’t wanted to accept, and they haven't wanted to accept that they are responsible for a lot of what’s happening either. If we don’t see, hear… we have no responsibility? Yes, that about being in denial...
This writer writes about more and more advanced financial instruments in the financial world and thinks a financial system ought to see so the resources there are in the world are where they are needed. That all people ought to get their basic needs met. All financial institutions ought to account for what they do in this respect.
The earth has limited resources. All financial institutions ought to account for how they reduce the consumption of resources and leave space for other species to live.
All systems need time for reflection (thoughtfulness), even the financial systems. But the ones working in this system wants oscillations (?) because they earn money on differences. And are driven by mania??
But the instruments shouldn’t be there for the instruments' sake! Creativity ought to become encouraged too. Regular controls of the financial instruments so they don’t loose their transparency are needed.
A great part of this crisis is due to the fact that the politicians, put there to regulate these markets, in fact don’t understand those instruments.
We need to find a system where all people can live. We should need to steer the society in a transparent, fair and ecological direction.
A third writer (Martin Halldén in the Swedish magazine ETC) writes that it’s a sick man’s ideal behind the crisis! And I think that's really true! A CEO (VD in Swedish) for an investment company said a couple of years ago something in the style that:
“Buying house shares is like buying women. You don’t want to buy a cheap whore if you can buy an expensive whore.”
But this statement isn’t strange the writer thinks. Because in the financial world a sick man’s ideal rules he means. And has even contributed to the global financial crisis. Young men with Gordon Gekko and Patrick Bateman as models are competing about taking extreme risks and the climate in those circles favours lack of consideration - and has quite musty values.
Stockbrokers are mostly men working on workplaces dominated by men, and the financial market has become a reserve for young, aggressive men (yes, what are they playing out and what do their actions cause and have they caused?).
It is this sick macho culture that has created the decisions we now see the results of – when the stock markets now are falling all over the world.
On a bike ride I came to think once again about what the American neurologist Jonathan Pincus writes about societal approval. And that's exactly what we see, societal approval and scapegoating. Here the politicians and media use scapegoats (unemployed, people on sick pay etc., claiming they are misusing the system) to put the blame on to steer the society in a direction they wouldn't have been able to steer it in otherwise (or not so quickly, without this it would have taken even more time than it has actually taken), and they have become accepted targets for people's needs to act all sorts of things out (probably childhood experiences in the bottom)!!! I react a lot towards this.
Suddenly the word capitalism was on all our lips. Economy reporters started to pose questions about the capitalism. It’s no longer seen as only an economical system, but also as an ideology.
It was long since. The entire posting written with my amateur English...
The market mantra about the necessary deregulations maybe can be changed against a more moderate, sensible talk about a common responsibility and the policy’s power nationally and internationally at last?
Here is another one reacting at our finance minister (from the moderate party), mentioning his attack against greedy people on Wall Street. A minister advising the need for regulations, not least international regulations. But it would be "becoming" if he made a public confession the writer thinks. The moderate party is namely the party that has recommended market liberalization the strongest and put every trial to creating a balance between politics and market to scorn.
However, the writer appreciates his criticism of the neoliberalism’s ravaging.
Even the social democracy needs self-examination. Hopefully the leader of that party Mona Sahlin and their spokesman for economical things Thomas Östros will be the prime mover of endurable alternatives to the quarter-of-a-year-capitalism.
Avariciousness has always been the capitalism’s intrinsic motor. Already Martin Luther realized this when the city of Wittenberg was stricken by failure of the crop or bad harvest 1537. The prices on grains shoot up. And the grain dealers started to store grain waiting for the prices to grow even more!! In this way the capitalists could gain even more money. Consequently this became a catastrophe for the wage-workers of Wittenberg. They were forced to borrow money to be able to buy their bread (as we say). The banks raised their rates. The poor was starving.
Luther wrote a grinding (??) to the priests to preach against the usury. This was an unprecedented attack on that time’s bank and trade capitalism.
“An usurer is murdering actively. Because it isn’t only that he lets helping the hungry alone. He even pulls (jerks?) the crumbs from the mouth of the starving. /…/ The usurer doesn’t care if the whole world dies if he only gets his money.”
Luther wrote.
The usurer was considered abusing his fellow human beings situation of troubles and (justified) needs. Power abuse. Luther started out from solidarity with the ones that were poor and had least power.
“Who are stricken in first hand when you are practicing usury? Isn’t it the poor whom in the whole is stricken first and foremost?”
Luther continued with his criticism.
Through the economism culture we have all become speculators on the stock exchanges/market (for instance we place our pensions in stocks or shares nowadays!!!). We are raised thinking on biggest possible profit for our own sake. We need to re-establish the sense for a “we”, where we in fact are dependent on each other and therefore need to look so all have it good. From mutuality the solidarity grows.
Oh NO, we are not dependent on anyone!! Observe the irony. Because maybe we are both dependent and independent? We need other people at the same time as we can manage a lot of things on our own (if we aren't totally handicapped). A child who has been truly respected develop a sound (sounder than many of us) relation to dependency/independency? Isn't afraid of being dependent in certain situations, and is independent in other. A sound balance beween dependency and independency?
The capitalism is threatening the right and righteousness.
I can’t help thinking: We teach our children to think of other people and share and at the same time they are learned a contradicting message: to think of themselves. Miller writes about contradictions and confusions… And once again the Dutch therapist Ingeborg Bosch writes about the effects of children being taught to share at a too early age (something she thinks almost all of us are).
I think Martin Luther was beaten as a child by the way... What did that mean to him and to many other people?
Yes, stress can cause different sorts of rheumatism, not only rheumatoid, but also for instance polymyalgia rheumatica, which a person near to me maybe has. A person probably suffering from longterm stress, and with a history of child abuse of different kinds. Abuse that is denied, or in parts recognized but considered having no real significance for this person's life, from that person herself, and probably many around her.
Thought of blogging about something I thought was interesting, from a Swedish site called Suntliv.nu. I want to start with relating to the content in the article:
Low control at work increases the risk for rheumatoid arthritis. A new Swedish study shows that the one who doesn’t decide over her/his work situation runs the risk of getting rheumatoid arthritis. It’s an endemic disease with over 50,000 people stricken by it in Sweden (with a population of 9 million people). Women are more often stricken than men.
“We have found clear connections between the disease and works where you can’t control your situation,”
the Swedish professor Lars Alfredsson says.
Other factors for getting ill are smoking and low education.
The researchers have also found some unexpected connections, namely between stress at work and rheumatoid arthritis.
The ones with low space for (own) decisions have a 60 % higher risk of being stricken.
The researchers also classified people in different professions after how low respective high control they have and compared people in professions with low control with people with high control concerning the risk of getting ill.
In that investigation they showed that it is 30 % higher risk for people in professions with low control to get ill.
Stress causes inflammation they mean and think it’s possible that stress makes inflammation come up.
Studies abroad has shown that the ones stricken with rheumatoid arthritis often have had a period of stress or experienced something revolutionary before the debut of the disease.
The researchers have also asked the participants about different sorts of stress and are now analyzing the connections between stress, results which are going to become presented later.
The study is also about interplay between inheritance and milieu.
I also came to think of two men I know of who got rheumatism as adults, one after a divorce in middle age and the other when he had passed 75 I think. The latter also got heart problems at the same time. I wonder over the latter and the relation he lives in and possible stress in that relation, a relation that easily could make you feel a little out of control?
The latter man was spanked as a child I think. Something he doesn’t seem to really question or view as wrong, or really rebel against. Something that was natural then and "what all parents did” because they "didn’t know better"?
I think I have read somewhere about connections between spanking and rheumatism too.
Thinking loudly, and trying to put something in words I am not really capable of putting in words yet. Being in a relation or maybe situation feeling a low control could also be a feeling that is fooling a person... Because he or she can actually have the power to leave it in may cases. But is feeling stuck and power and helpless, maybe even feels paralyzed (as the child ones was). Early feelings that are triggered in the present and feels so real so the person doesn’t see any alternatives, truly doesn’t see them. But those feelings stemming from early events in this persons life aren’t just to control. As we think we can. And are nothing to moralize over...
In this blog I want to explore the effects of childhood experiences on individual lives, the health (not only the emotional/psychological, but also, and not least, the bodily/somatic), the society, why people seek themselves to power positions, the effect of childhood on politics.
With the ideas that imbue Alice Miller's work and writing.
And sometimes just share things I have read and come across and I agree with and couldn't have said better myself.
I work full time with young people since many years, as teacher in music (piano pedagogue), and am interested in these things, both privately/personally and professionally.
But my time is limited to write and blog, even if it probably doesn't look so.
I will devote myself to loud thinking a lot here I think. And this blog is also a way for me to collect texts, facts, links, sites I want to save for further use maybe.
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Crisis
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I suppose some people might wonder why I'm not completely hysterical. Why
would I be hysterical? The building where I've lived for 22 years is
scheduled fo...
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Pharmaceutical marketing expert witness [image: screen2largeMM]
Dr. Peter Rost is a former Pfizer Marketing Vice President providing
services as a marketi...
Påskuppropet mot sjukförsäkringar
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Idag var det manifestation. Mycket bra. Jag var där. Mycket bra.
Men någonting gnagde mig på vägen hem. För stämningen var mer uppgiven än
arg, och det ä...
Arbeidet med ny side er i gang!
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Nå har arbeidet med domeneregistrering og nytt design startet og jeg gleder
meg til jeg kan vise dere resultatet! Det skal bli bra å få Psykiskbloggen
over...
Click on the picture to go to Astrid Lindgren site.
Books I am referring to on this blog:
Bosch, Ingeborg: "Rediscovering the True Self"
Freyd, Jennifer J.: "Betrayal Trauma - The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse" ISBN 0-647-06806-8
Jenson, Jean: "Reclaiming Your Life" ISBN 91-46-17409-5
Kirkengen, Anna Luise: "Hvordan krenkede barn blir syke voksne" ISBN 82-15-00713-9 ("How Abused Children Become Unhealthy Adults")
Kirkengen, Anna Luise: "Inscribed bodies - Health Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse" ISBN 0-7923-7019-8
Lewis Herman, Judith: "Trauma and Recovery - From Domestic Violence to Political Terror" ISBN 086358430-6 (svensk översättning finns: ”Trauma och tillfrisknande” ISBN10: 9197263133, ISBN13: 9789197263139, Förlag: Göteborgs Psykoterapi Institut)
Miller, Alice: "Den dolda nyckeln" ISBN 91-46-15747-6 (The Untouched Key)
Miller, Alice: "Det självutplånande barnet och sökandet efter en äkta identitet" ISBN 91-7643-559-8 (The Drama of the Gifted Child)
Miller, Alice: "Du skall icke märka - variationer över paradistemat" ISBN 91-46-14374-2 (Thou Shalt Not Be Aware)
Miller, Alice: "Riv tigandets mur - sanning byggd på fakta" ISBN 91-46-16022-1 (Breaking Down the Wall of Silence)
Miller, Alice: "The Body Never Lies - The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting" ISBN 0-393-06065-9
Miller, Alice: "The Truth Will Set You Free - Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self" ISBN 0-465-04585-5
Miller, Alice: "Vägar i livet - sju berättelser" ISBN 91-46-17414-1 (Paths of Life - Seven Scenarios)
Pincus, Jonathan H.: "Base Instincts - What Makes Killers Kill?" ISBN 0-393-32323-4
Children baking...
Look, the joy in the children?? Enjoying what they are doing? (illustration from one of the books by Astrid Lindgren, click on the picture to go to her site).
"...of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.” "Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event. It is designed to reduce a child's self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy—unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and protection." (Andrew Vachss)
"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom." -- "Common Sense", Thomas Paine, January 10, 1776
"Modern education is competitive, nationalistic and separative. It has trained the child to regard material values as of major importance, to believe that his nation is also of major importance and superior to other nations and peoples. The general level of world information is high but usually biased, influenced by national prejudices, serving to make us citizens of our nation but not of the world." (Albert Einstein)
"Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow men in the last fifty years... Given these and other conditions of contemporary civilization, how can one claim that the ‘normal’ man is sane?" (R.D. Laing, 1967)
"Organizations take on characteristics of the people running them./.../ There's always pressure within groups to conform, anyway. The top monkey exerts the most pressure." (Steve Thomas)
"Yet many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself." (Erich Fromm in The Sane Society, 1955)
When a big kid hits a little kid, we call it bullying. When an adult hits another adult, we call it assault. When the adults in a family hit each other we call it battering or domestic violence. When an adult hits a child we call it discipline..
“Blindness and lack of connectedness whether truly needed or not, are ultimately tragic solutions to life. These adaptations keep us from knowing ourselves and others fully. We end up fragmented both internally and externally – impoverished spiritually and socially /…/ it seriously constrains our human potential /…/ Survivors of childhood sexual abuse and betrayal blindness have learned to cope by being disconnected internally so as to manage a minimal kind of external connection. But with adult freedom and responsibility come the potential to break silence, to use voice and language to promote internal integration, deeper external connection, and a social transformation, Through communication – integration within ourselves and connection between individuals – we can become whole; embodied, aware, vital, powerful”(Jennifer Freyd in the chapter “Removing Blinders, Becoming Connected” in her book “Betrayal Trauma…”).
“If you are very strong you have to be very kind” (Pippi Longstocking)
“In psychiatry, too, what a person says and writes can’t be divorced from who he is and how he lives.” (Thomas Szasz).
“The method of Marshall Rosenberg is very nice and may be helpful to people who have not be[been??] severely mistreated in childhood. The latter ones however must find their pent up, LEGITIMATE rage and free themselves from the lies of our moral system. As long as they don't do this, their body will continue to scream for the truth with the help of symptoms" (Alice Miller)
“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind - this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for" (Henry van Dyke)
“‘I have never met a man,’ said Grandma Georgina, ‘who talks so much absolute nonsense!’ ‘A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men,’ Mr Wonka said.” (Roald Dahl)
Look at his facial expression! Angrily carving… The stubborn, disobedient child... Or? How does he feel there in his joiner's workshop? (click on the picture to go to Astrid Lindgren site).
About the ACE-study:
"It's not just water under the bridge."
ACEs are surprisingly common among people of all social strata, and have far-reaching consequences. For many people, it's not possible to "just get over it".
What's an ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience i.e. "skadlig barndomserfarenhet")? Adverse Childhood Experience is growing up experiencing any of the following conditions in the household prior to age 18:
1. Recurrent physical abuse
2. Recurrent emotional abuse
3. Contact sexual abuse
4. An alcohol and/or drug abuser in the household
5. An incarcerated household member
6. Someone who is chronically depressed, mentally ill, institutionalized, or suicidal
I don't like being photographed, and don't have many photos of myself but here are some, though fairly old! Click on the picture to see two more pictures.
I was born in Umeå in Västerbotten, Sweden, and moved during childhood stepwise to Skåne in the south, and at last back to just below the middle of Sweden where I still live.
I am educated both as piano-pedagogue and church-musician and have a full time employment as piano-pedagogue. Church-music is side work.
I am interested in a lot of things and will blog about things I read, psychology, society, history, nature, my work too hopefully, and my everyday life… And both in Swedish and English.
This is a blog, with my (sometimes very) personal - and loud reflections on what I read, see, hear, react on, feel for - and not feel for and want to explore. I don't work in this field at all, but I have my reflections and thoughts nevertheless and have read fairly a lot I think, and here I reflect upon all this. I am searching myself forward. I link sites for information, if one want to know more about what I am talking/writing about and what is mentioned in the texts I am citing and referring to. And I link sites not least for my own sake. So it isn’t sure I agree with all that is linked on this blog, that's not why I link sites. I can agree with parts of what is linked, bigger or smaller, from almost everything to almost nothing.
I hope those who perhaps find my blog are reading everything here critically - including what stands in what I link.
And when it comes to therapy and all (self)help-concepts I think one shall be very careful. Maybe as a friend said it:
“Meaningful critical thinking.
Psychotherapists have been claiming that they have invented better treatment methods since Sigmund Freud in 1897. The amount of psychological distress in the world hasn’t become less. There’s money to be made from attracting more clients, whether the therapy works or not.
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