Misstro och tillit och att tiga av skam...

Några morgontankar som jag slängde ner i skrift innan jobbet: Misstron mot politiker borde bekymra politiker! Bekymra dem ganska mycket. Jag började fundera om vårt demokratiska system är på väg att kollapsa? Tilltron till det allt mindre, i alla fall bland vissa kategorier? Misstron allt större.

Och detta gynnar högerextrema och allt mer auktoritära krafter, samt s.k. ”starka ledare”? Personer som inte har fått den position de fått i kraft av verklig förmåga.

Dessutom så får vänsterpolitiker ganska liten plats i media, vilket innebär att människor inte får några alternativ. Dessa politiker har svårt att nå ut, just på grund av media och deras ovilja att skriva om dessa?

Hur många människor som drabbats av de försämrade trygghetssystemen tiger och har tigit av skam över sin situation istället för att kraftfullt ifrågasätta hur de har det och om det är rätt att de har det som de har det? Kanske av skam hållit tyst om en situation som lett till den sits i vilken de befinner sig, men som de med rätta kanske kunde ha ifrågasatt?

Och detta med misstro och tillit, överdrivet beroende eller inga beroendebehov alls, dvs. när vi uppträder som om vi inte kan göra något av egen kraft utan andras hjälp eller omvänt strävar efter att uppträda som om vi aldrig behöver hjälp. Det senare kan jag se i frågor om antingen kollektiv ELLER individualism.

Men i ett sunt samhälle, en sund värld, en sund grupp, en sund familj så samexisterar båda. Dvs. i ett samhälle, i världen, i gruppen, familjen, kollektivet så kan man ha eller inte ha den djupaste respekt för individen och dess integritet och gränser i en gemenskap.Och om detta är möjligt beror på dess medlemmar och dess ledare.

Och detta kan saknas både i det totalt kollektivistiska som i det totalt individualistiska samhället!

Vilket innebär att även i ett totalt individualistiskt samhälle så kan man sakna respekt för den enskilda individen. Ett totalt individualistiskt samhälle innebär inte alls automatiskt att man verkligen respekterar den enskilda individen. Man kan se ner på denne/denna med förakt för svaghet.

Och tillit och misstro kan gå i båda riktningar; inte bara från individen mot samhälle, utan också i andra riktningen; från samhället mot dess individer. Det är likadant med solidaritet och lojalitet också?

I ett sunt samhälle så samexisterar grupp och individer. Individerna där inser att vi som människor både är beroende av andra människor, men också att vi i andra avseenden är oberoende.

Och det där med misstro och tillit läste jag ju faktiskt om för länge sedan under mina studier slår mig nu. Jo, det var visst Erik Homburger Erikson som lanserade detta begrepp apropå barn och deras utveckling?

Men jag tror att vårt förhållande till misstro och tillit har en verklig bakgrund - om vi verkligen kunde lita på tidiga viktiga vuxna. Jag håller inte riktigt med Erikson eller Piaget eller Freud idag. Jag tror att det som de tillskrev som varande medfödda drifter handlar om verkliga händelser som formade oss.

Men jag tror vi kan göra något åt detta, fast det bästa vore att vi inte hade blivit tvungna att göra det. Och jag tror att de som förnekar dessa tidiga saker skadar mest för andra människor. Se också återigen psykohistorikern Bob Scharf i hans essä "Leaders" (eller "Ledare"). Se tidigare inlägg om backward psychoclasses (efterblivna psykoklasser) och empathy deficits (empatiunderskott).

Hur hanterar en vuxen människa dessa saker? För med rätta kan även en vuxen känna misstro och brist på tillit, eller tilltro och tillit? Men hur hanterar vi dessa saker? Genom handlingsförlamning och hjälplöshet eller genom att aktivt försöka ändra sakernas tillstånd. Men det senare kan vi göra på ett konstruktivt eller ickekonstruktivt sätt. Dvs. inse när vi faktiskt kan och borde göra något och när vi inte kan göra något och kanske bör söka oss någon annanstans om det är möjligt.

Jo, vad vi ser, kanske inte minst i makten (på flera nivåer) är effekterna av mycket tidiga upplevelser, som förnekats.

Och, nej, det finns inte bara ett enda rätt sätt att föra politik.

Läs Paul Krugman i "Moral decay? Or deregulation?" eller "Moraliskt förfall? Eller avreglering?" Han spårar problemen i USA nu tillbaka till 1980.

Men, hmmm, skriver Krugman, beror det som hände då på tillbakagång vad gäller Kalvinistisk dygd, hände inte något annat runt 1980?

”Kan inte riktigt minnas… någon vars namn börjar på bokstaven ’R’?

Jo, Reagan gjorde det.

Vändningen mot budgetunderskott var ett direkt resultat av den nya Irving-Kristol inspirerade” politiska strategin med skattesänkningar, där man inte oroade sig för 'accounting deficiencies of government.'

Under tiden så kan den plötsliga ökningen av hushållsskulder i hög grad tillskrivas finansiell avreglering.

Så vad hände? Förlorade vi vår ekonomiska moral? Nej, vi var offer för politik.”

Och detta håller nu på att ske här!?? Nu upprepas samma dumma saker här av vår högerregering?

Jeffrey Masson and Thomas Szasz...

photo on Jeffrey Masson.

About Jeffrey Masson, from his site:

“Masson, an American psychologist and author…

A one-time member of the Freudian 'inner circle', Masson reveals the internal workings of this prestigious and profitable profession through an astonishingly candid account of his own life as both therapist and patient and offers a scathing critique on the cult of psychoanalysis.

'A powerful work, especially important for its warning about the power that psychoanalysts can wield over patients.'

…long-term effects of trauma and abuse.

In this ground-breaking and highly controversial book, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson attacks the very foundations of modern psychotherapy from Freud to Jung, from Fritz Perls to Carl Rodgers. With passion and clarity, Against Therapy addresses the profession's core weaknesses, contending that, since therapy's aim is to change people, and this is achieved according to therapist's own notions and prejudices, the psychological process is necessarily corrupt.

…Masson's commitment to human dignity suffuses every part of his thesis.

In 1981, J.M. Masson was fired from his position as Projects Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, shortly after suggesting in a talk in New Haven that a key theory Freud had developed in 1895 and later repudiated - the so-called seduction theory - may have been valid after all. This talk scandalized the Freudian orthodoxy, as reported in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times.

Here for the first time are the letters from Freud, long kept from public view, which stirred this controversy. On the basis of these letters and other new information Masson discovered at the Archives and elsewhere in Europe, he has written a devastating and highly controversial expose of the origins of psychoanalysis. In 1895, Sigmund Freud formulated what was perhaps his most profound theory; that emotional disturbances in adults stem from actual early traumatic experiences, the knowledge of which has been repressed. But Freud eventually renounced this theory in favor of a new view, that his women patients had 'fantasized' their early memories of rape and seduction - a view on which the whole budding science of psychoanalysis would be based.

Masson makes available previously unpublished letters from his closest friend, Wilhelm Fliess, which reveal that Freud had grave doubts about abandoning the 'seduction theory.' Masson discovered that not only had Freud read the contemporary literature documenting the high incidence of sexual abuse of children, he had in all likelihood witnessed autopsies of children who had been raped and murdered. That he abandoned his seduction theory, Masson argues, was a failure of courage rather than a clinical or theoretical insight.

As a result, most psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have in effect been reluctant to trust the memories of their patients, women in particular, about the traumas they experienced in childhood. Like Freud, they see such traumas as fantasy rather than reality. This cover-up of the truth, Masson asserts, has poisoned the entire profession.

'A solid expose that reads like a psychological detective thriller... This brilliant, meticulously researched book probes what many see as the failure of psychoanalysis to confront the real world.'

Here translated for the first time are a series of shocking texts from the 19th century German psychiatric literature which, while almost completely unknown to modern readers, have had a devastating influence on attitudes toward women and children in the 20th century. The articles on the sexual 'lies' and sexual 'fantasies' of children were seminal, brutal and still resonate in today's literature, having taken a terrible toll on the intellectual ideas of modern psychiatry.”

And about Thomas Szasz and antipsychiatry.

The Szasz blog.

A Thomas Rosko writes:

“I suggest that psychiatrists play another guardian role. They play this role without being explicitly or consciously aware of it and certainly without admitting it. Psychiatrists serve as Guardians of the Establishment./.../

This is about psychiatry, and control, and how psychiatry is concerned with RELIEF. It is about psychiatrists' strong and ever-increasing role as Guardians of The Establishment. Psychiatrists are eager to play this role, eager to protect The Establishment from the unwashed persons whose thoughts, feelings and/or behaviors are bothersome. They are eager because playing this role, serving as a buffer between rich and not so rich, gives them money and power and status.
By 'psychiatry' I mean not just the medical specialty but all those areas commonly referred to as 'mental health.' By 'psychiatrist' I mean not just those physician specialists, but all who are commonly known as 'mental health professionals.' These would include psychologists, psychiatric social workers, addiction counselors, marital therapists, family therapists, psychoanalysts, recreational therapists, art therapists and others. The 'grief counselors' who descend onto schools after a student goes on a murderous rampage are part of what I call 'psychiatry.' So are the persons who answer the phones on suicide help lines. It's a huge and growing business.

Psychiatry today derives much of its money and power from its legally sanctioned ability to provide relief. I am reminded of the commercial which asks 'How do you spell relief?' and then answers the question by spelling the name of a popular brand of antacid. In increasing areas of our lives, relief is actually spelled 'p-s-y-c-h-i-a-t-r-y.'

Psychiatrists provide relief for people in two ways. They relieve people of their freedom, and they relieve people from responsibility. As we shall see, both these roles serve The Establishment very well.

The former practice, relieving people of their freedom, is understandable. After all, psychiatry was born out of the asylum. For a long time, ALL psychiatry was involuntary, that is, practiced against peoples' will. The latter practice, relieving people from facing responsibility for the consequences of their actions, is less understandable. Psychiatry is supposed to make people more independent, better able to stand on their own two feet, better able to deal with living in this world. In fact it often does just the opposite, infantilizing people, making them less independent, more dependent, dependent on the therapist, dependent on the medication, dependent on someone or something other than themselves.”

Another interesting blog by a Jeffrey Schaler.

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…

A non-photographing family and the Jante-law...

We were no photographing family… There exist photos the first maybe 8 years of my life, to when the fifth child was born… After that it decreased slowly. My brother got a film camera and films were taken for some years from when I was in the beginning of my teens and a couple of years forward, but to film and photograph was so expensive, so when it had lasted for too long dad started to react:

“But now… Stop! Now it’s enough!”

So slowly all lost the interest to photograph and film?

And this has been an ongoing pattern!! I don’t think any of the later built families has been enthusiastically photographing? Not even the ones that have families and children!

So there are things connected to this with photographs, photographing, being photographed and filmed? And how one was mirrored too I guess in whole… (I hate being filmed and photographed and recorded. I haven't seen the DVD we did yet, and probably won't either in the nearest future, I haven't even seen the cover of it really... And not even listened to the result, I was forced to listen a little during the recording, one of the filmers thought I should because he thought it sounded so good. I didn't really think so...).

My eagerness to communicate though goes over all borders?? Over language borders too! My choice of work, my will to communicate with pictures too (even the not so perfect ones; giving impressions, ideas and feelings of what I am talking about. An overwhelming gladness in communicating and sharing, though not appreciated by all I have come to realize).

“How pretentious to write in English!!! ('and with that English too!!!' which maybe isn't outspoken? But never mind)”

Came to think about the Jante-law, which they wrote about on the psycho history list this spring… I smiled when I read it, because I don’t think they really captured this law!! But I don’t think only we Scandinavians suffer from it!

Actually it came a book 1988 in Norwegian (1990 in Swedish) with the title “The Man from Jante” (“Mannen från Jante”) about the Danish-Norwegian author Aksel (Axel) Sandemose (born 1898 I think, in Denmark, died in Norway?).

It stands in the Swedish National Encyclopaedia that the Jante-law consists of ten “commandments” characterized by the small town mentality and jealousy (connected to the small town Nyköbing in Denmark where Sandemose was born). It was Sandemose who gave final shape to this law in a novel he wrote 1933 “En flykting krosser sitt spor” (“A refugee crosses his trace” or something like that).

It stands on page 38 in the book about Sandemose that it was the forms terror or radically “formalism”, which was the paste that held Jante together. The message in the Jante-law is that man shall be adapted to the collective only. It is a law with which human beings shackle (klavbinder) and are holding each others down. When the oppression (fötrycket) has worked for enough long time the oppressed take over the oppression without help of any tyrant and the Jante-law is their most important and powerful weapon.

Jante is holding Jante down through terror which means threatening the individual with exclusion from a community and fellowship which thought doesn’t exist – an empty community, a “forms” and “rituals” community. All are alone but thinks all others are holding together in a community.

Every digression (avvikelse) and each transgression (överträdelse) is ardently (nitiskt) connected to the slightly floating and infamously (infamt) insinuatingly question:

”Maybe you think we don’t know anything about you?”

Yes,

“Who do you think you are?”

That’s the essence of this law…

Sandemose really lived a hard life, married a much younger woman at last and died in his 60s... Suffered from depressions and was influenced by Freud, and had read him I think, as many intellectuals had done and did then and as many intellectuals did many decades later on...

Now a tour out on bike… It’s a wonderful weather I think. Then home changing cloths and going for lunch with all on my workplace out on the countryside…

The theme Jante-law occurred on the psycho history list in the post "Dutch children happiest in Europe" and the following comments. But I wonder if it was the ideas I reacted upon on how it is in our countries??? No matter, now I am going to take a bike-tour!! :-)

At 15.45: A typical May-pole for this county, actually made at midsummer and standing the whole year to next midsummer, which is special for this county. With the typically crossed arrows which this county has in it's arms (what we call "vapen").

Now soon a mini-concert with seven pupils - and ice cream eating... Which is appropriate today!! It's summer warmth. Nice! But I wonder if I have got a a summer cold too? Not wearing enough cloths?

A picture I suddenly got: A sarcastic, ironic, contemptuous gaze from a father at the eager, lively child (a daughter), a gaze not even with a moderating smile. Just a "dismissing" gaze...
With no love at all. Over such a stupidity, but for the first for the childishness (talk about having high thoughts of children?)! A gaze whose message very clearly was (though not said in spoken words):

"How childish!!"

with a deep, deep contempt. But this was a child! Aren't children supposed to be children??
A contempt for the child. Deep.

"Behaving like that!! Talking in that way!!"

Even this not said in words, but impossible to understand in another way. And a deep, deep shame over such a child. A child that wasn't allowed to be proud and glad in its interests, curiousnesses, gladnesses and whole appearance (artistically gifted? In not only one area?)... Still harbored in a grown up woman...

-//-

Now I think I am going to write Runa's story... Which the next blog post will be about I think...

-//-

A break in writing sitting at the balcony in the warm summer evening sun!! Wonderful! Out on the bike tour before lunch the sweet smell of forest and pine needles... On the lunch I saw meadow flowers already and sensed a fairly strong smell in strokes of lilies of the valley!

Came to think out there on the balcony: there exist verbal abuse and emotional incest - too...

Also came to think of a near relative whose mother pulled her and her siblings hair... I came to know this mother (pulling the hair), and can imagine what she actually did and how...

This violation related with a calm voice as if it was nothing...

And this woman also got beaten up furiously by a father with a belt when she (being four years old) and a younger comrade (also girl) had crushed the lights of a car-wreck... Also related with a calm voice... This happened round 1930 I think... I wonder what happened more, seen to what I know further... And myself have seen with my own eyes though I was a child and from what I know. Maybe seen with a very clear eyed child's eyes? What consequences did this give? Even in further generations? Results even from those things I only slightly imagine and which are non-spoken (and seen as unimportant, not meaning anything at all and even forgotten)... Was future generations spared? Or what have they suffered and sacrificed? I just wonder. How harmless was this all - actually??

I wonder quite silently what those things, which then maybe was seen as totally harmless and with no lasting, or long lasting, consequences, in fact has led to? Not only then for one single child, but later for many more, and in fact not so few... Yes, I really wonder...

June 5: Incapable of protecting, not only herself, but first and foremost her children properly... And a boy that got abused can become an abuser... As the girl can become... Too. Even subtly abusing...