Morning thoughts...

It’s raining… And the windows were so heavy (3-glass windows??) I don’t dare to lift them and pick them into the garage to grind old paint away and paint them. Afraid to drop them and crush the glass in them! So here I am sitting. I have to wait for a man to come here and help me; one of my brothers. One is on his way to Germany and the other is working. So maybe I can write instead. And maybe go seeing something near here. Take a “fika” (coffee or tea with bread of some kind to it) there.

And a walk in the rain with cloths suitable for that! You need daylight even more a day like this!!?? I get dizzy in my head just being inside days like these!!?

Things I read trigger thoughts…

Came to think: emotional and physical needs are even more basic than the need for food?? (how was Maslow’s pyramid now? Read about this long ago). Can it be? The newborn baby needs being taken in physically? Before everything else? And later that sort of security comes first? If there is a disaster around the child, the main thing is being taken up in a grown ups arms before anything else? Even before food and warmth (heat?)?? The child can stand being without food longer than we think?? The assurance of physical security and warmth on the child’s terms and with deepest respect for its integrity is more important than anything? Physical contact, physical warmth, where your needs aren’t being used or exploited!?

Came to think about the issue integrity, respecting it. What Kirkengen writes about this. Both what concern grown ups, but not least children. And integrity in different senses; emotional, physical and sexual ad respecting it.

Read recently about a now 72-year old man claiming that sexual experiences at the age of 12 with grown up men hadn’t harmed him. He even enjoyed it if I understood the Norwegian text right. A Norwegian author Karin Fossum also thought it was ok to think it can actually be so… I got a bit surprised over this… Thinking of what Jennifer Freyd has written about Consensual Sex Decision Mechanism CSDM. And power differentials. When it comes to a boy and a grown up man – how is this relation seen to power differential and CSDM?? But people use to claim how men and boys during the antique used to have sex and claim this didn’t harm the young men…

I think a young boy has to protect himself by thinking it didn’t harm… That he even enjoyed it and maybe even wanted it??

He thought that the society is stigmatizing children who actually enjoys this and are creating a trauma that wouldn’t be there if the societies view on this was different. Not so condemning.

A friend wrote a reply to this, where she ended with something in this style (my interpretation): if these experiences were so positive and made such an ineffaceable, indelible impression on this man, then it wouldn’t be difficult at all for him (and others claiming that this was love) to understand what painful violations (of other kinds) do with the life. If they really were that good and positive this man would be empathic and sensitive for the sufferings of others, maybe be more sensitive and empathic than others!?

This now old man Tor Erling Staff means that the victims for sexual abuse shall not be marked by death, i.e., not be treated as pariah? But this man, lawyer, ought to know that it is a long time since victims of abuse were criminalized for being participants in the violation as my friend wrote!? But many still has this view on abuse victims of all kinds, and especially sexual abuse victims?? That they wanted it? That they had done something that made them deserve what they were exposed to? Is such things still involved?? And even more for people of that age or??

She thinks that Staff wishes a society without people which are victims of sexualized violence. And since the notion “victim” is complementary with “abuser/perpetrator”, a society without victims would therefore also be a society without abusers/perpetrators. How practical!

So for the victim Staff here the ones that did this to him weren’t abusers if he was no victim!! Therefore there was no harm done?? What he experienced and endured wasn’t abuse!??? So this idea is actually a protection for Staff, to avoid feeling the tremendous pain which in fact would be adequate? Jung (or was it someone else??) resonated in the same way, about a housemaid that took him to bed as four year old and taught him the “secrets of love” (Miller writes about this in one of her books)??

And this is also what S. Freud thought; that children actually want to have sex with grown ups?? And this idea actually covers abuse up!!?? With all what that has meant till now?? And if one as grown up is thinking like this, it’s because you need to rationalize such experiences and thus make them less painful?? But also that victims sacrifices things?? For instance he/she probably becomes less sensitive to the suffering not only of her/himself but also for others? And can become perpetrator too in turn, because he/she can’t feel empathy with her/his victim, if he/she hasn’t felt empathy for her/himself, or got help with feeling empathy with her/himself?

By the way doesn’t Miller write that if we allow a perversity in society the perversity can take new and other expressions??

Jennifer Freyd writes in chapter “Context and Controversy – Doubting the Harm of Sexual Abuse” page 37-39 about researchers which claim sexual abuse doesn’t harm. But she concludes in the end of this chapter at page 39 that:

“Nonetheless, the majority of survivors of sexual abuse report one or more periods of intense pain, loss of trust, loss of self-esteem, and other serious reactions, either at the time of the abuse or later /…/ The testimony is clear; childhood sexual abuse is harmful.

Minimizing the likelihood of sexual abuse or doubting its harm may result in a vicious circle: sexual abuse that is being perpetrated and denied even as it occurs. This helps to create an environment that implicitly permits the abuse of children.”

So, if it is like this that a majority reacts negatively, there are many which are extra vulnerable and sensitive, over-vulnerable and –sensitive? Most people seem to be??? (a bit ironic, or very ironic to be honest, over professionals talking about “sensitivity” in their clients which reacts with having problems, problems in the sense being oversensitive. Because they shouldn’ t react on what react on!!??).

She also writes at page 39:

“In many families in which sexual abuse has occurred there are other family problems (parental alcoholism, emotional abuse, marital discord) that are also harmful to children.”

I also came to think about recent findings about the brain and looked in Bosch book, found something else:

“Some of these clients have endured physically and sexually abusive childhoods. Others come from relatively ‘unabusive’ families and yet nevertheless have emotionally suffered enormously from the way in which their parents treated them as children.

The deep impact of so called ‘unabusive’ (no sexual or physical abuse) upbringing is a major blind spot in our society as well as a blind spot in many forms of therapy. Just because we weren’t beaten (too often), weren’t sexually abused, just because our mother was there when we came home from school and our father made a living for the family without drinking (too much), doesn’t mean that the child we were didn’t suffer intense pain. Even when our parents keep reassuring us that they really loved us and that we were such happy children, it doesn’t mean that we ever truly felt loved and really were happy children.”

Sun between the showers of rain. I have grinded almost half the porch step (fairly big as the tradition is here) with a grind-machine! I got a really peculiar feeling in my hands after having done this for an hour (the vibrations from the machine which also weighed a bit)!! But maybe I shall try to take the other half now after having written a little more and eaten lunch before the afternoon tea? Yes, I think so…

Let’s see if I come to brain-research too!!?? Or if I find something else to write about before that?

(pause in writing)

A walk in the afternoon after finishing the grinding of the porch step. It was almost tropic warmth in the wood, a lot of humidity after the raining. And I wonder if better weather is coming!?? That would be nice.

I hope this held together!! That I followed all threads I have in my head, many of which still are only feelings… This one can see in my writings sometimes I wonder…