Posted by special_k on April 7, 2006, at 19:38:03
In reply to historic CSA *trigger* » special_k, posted by pseudoname on April 7, 2006, at 14:11:01
> Yeah! And Shakespeare used it in ‘Pericles’, where the king and his marriage-age daughter are having sexual relations. (“Bad child! Worse father!”) Eventually the gods send fire from heaven to burn up both of them for what they were doing, and the outraged populace storms the palace.hmm. there is some religious figure... mebee has the status of a god... his bride was 11 or 12 i think. but that wasn't considered abuse. i guess it was the done thing back whenever. but interesting that in shakespeare it was frowned upon... mind you the former wasn't incest (thats why i guess i got to thinking about incest in particular - and kids in particular too). they used to think that incest was a universally frowned upon thing. but then they found a small tribe that didn't have a problem with it. but apparantly the tribe was so small that if they had have had a problem with it the tribe would have died out long ago (they were isolated too). i wonder how many tribes died out BECAUSE of norms around incest though...
> Your point about changing definitions is important.(Hacking's point...)
> I think the plethora of reports in sources like Catullus (I was a Latin major for a while…) of catamites –boys routinely sodomized by older men– is significant. The dominant literate culture didn't call it abuse, for the most part, but it was certainly reported. And there are catamite accusations in medieval times, too, when it was regarded as sinful: more an offense against God than against the child.
ah. ancient greeks used to sleep with the young men too. i don't know how young 'young' was. but then i think the average lifespan back in ancient greece was around 45 or something like that. maybe even less. and i guess the marrying age (for girls) would be around sexual maturity (i'm thinking 13 or so 'cause it used to take a bit longer for girls than it does now). so i don't know how old the boys were. but that wasn't considered abusive back then...
> So we really do have historic accounts of CSA, once we make cultural adjustments to recognize it.meebe. if the same act happened in our culture we would classify it as abusive. and the person would feel traumatised from being abused no doubt. back then... well hacking talks a bit about how it might be being culturally insensitive to consider those acts abusive in retrospect. when they happened they were embraced as part of a culture. if it is accepted by culture / society (as it was) then maybe the people don't feel traumatised the way they tend to now. talking about consent i guess. not against someones will (which has gotta be traumatic). i dunno...
> Nevertheless, you point out that incestuous CSA was apparently not reported, at least with young children.
i actually have no idea. i asked it as a question. i have no idea. but i wondered if the biggest thing behind the reports of abuse is that those acts are considered abusive and traumatic in our culture. i don't know.
> Perhaps even if an ancient woman recovered memories of her incestuous CSA, it wouldn't get reported any better than if it had been discovered while it was going on.
yeah.
> It seems to be the case that incestuous CSA is the most common recovered-memory accusation.yep.
> Perhaps the ancient silence about early-childhood incest would rule out the most common modern type of recovered memory from being historically reported, even if it occurred.
yep. and there is also hackings point that it might not have been experienced as traumatic (or if it was then people might just rubbish it)
> I think that is a point worth making, but reports of other instances of recovered memory could still be expected.
mebee... or mebee not...
> That's an interesting idea! I like it. But people back then assumed that gods (and God) gave them authentic visions, so it seems less likely to me that they would dismiss much as “fantasy”. It was a credulous era.but the visions are about future events or past events of monumental significance... not about visions of what happened to them as a child... (interesting to note that the visionaries... might have history of trauma / epilepsy...)
> > maybe they just didn't want to talk about it (i mean why go through the pain unless there is a theory that going through the pain helps the pain long term?)
> That, too, is an interesting point. I wonder if there was any assumption of “talking through it” in the Victorian literature where recovered memory does occur?that is part of the 'recovered memory' idea!!!! recovered memories... are part of the carthartic method. to remember previously forgotten (repressed? / forgotten? /) traumatic experiences and to reexperience the emotions and hey presto you are cured! the idea is you need to recover memories of trauma... and you need to talk through / experience again those memories / feelings associated with the trauma... and then you are cured.
that seems to be the very notion these people are investigating... whether people 'remember' trauma because they are told by enthusiastic therapists that OF COURSE there is something traumatic and OF COURSE these ideas / dreams / represent veridical experiences in their past (and hence are recovered memroies) and moreover that you HAVE to do this in order to get better.
and hey presto people start 'recovering memroies' left right and centre. i have no problem with the idea that repressed memroies are more prevalant after having been encouraged along by overenthusiastic therapists / clients.
i just think that it would be very strange indeed if there hadn't been the odd case occuring prior...
> > i would say absence of therapists and absence of belief in the utility of remembering could come into play quite significantly.
> I think the McLean guys would agree. They would just suggest that the “belief in the utility of remembering” may *cause* the memories, not simply make them seem more important.yeah. i tell the story a little like this...
a therapist suggests a client will never be free of her pains unless she reveals her secrets (yup freud used to put it fairly much like this)
and so the client wants to get better of course... doesn't want to be resistent... so they get to trying to remember... and because they are thinking on it a great deal...
they start getting mental pictures / dreams about it etc.
and then (because of the theory) therapist and client both come to believe the mental pictures / dreams are MEMORIES that are VERIDICAL (ie faithful to events) and hey presto the repressed memory is born!and then the interesting thing is that freud realised after a while that what people were 'remembering' couldn't possibly be true... so he decided people were imagining things after all.
but he failed to distinguish between people who fairly much never forgot (just didn't want to talk about it for a while then volounteered the info off their own bat)
and the people who he had 'coaxed along'. and thus he failed to distinguish and reach the more moderate conclusion that SOME reports are fairly much accurate (as accurate as any memory can be) and that OTHER reports are not (and he failed to see how his LEADING THE CLIENT ALONG contributed to that).but now things are so much more complicated because repressed memories have become part of pop culture. you can get pop culture books that ask if you have the following non descript symptoms... and they tell you that on the basis of those non descript symptoms you are probably the victim of sexual abuse but you have repressed all knowledge of it. very irresponsible. but people get to thinking on it and hey presto a 'repressed memory' is born. so people do it to themselves these days too, they don't need a therapist to do it... and nowdays the process tends to be more subtle (especially amongst health professionals as opposed to well intentioned peoples with minimal training).
but it is a tricky one... a healthy amount of scepticism is probably wise.
but i think these maclean people are trying to dig for the deeper (stronger) point they seem to be trying to get the conclusion that NO REPRESSED MEMORIES ARE VERIDICAL and that the whole shebang is a therapist invention.
so my thing is...
if someone denys abuse ('cause they are too ashamed to admit to it lets say)
if they persistently deny it for a few years
(which seems to count as forgetting in the way they define forgetting)
then they admit to it...
that might just count as a 'repressed memory'
i don't know that we can distinguish...
and i would say that this type of memory... is likely to be veridical as any memory can be.
> > how do they measure 'inability to access the memory'?
> > that is a very real problem...> It doesn't seem like a problem for this contest. It really sounds like any self-report by someone who claims to have recovered a traumatic memory they previously didn't know about would suffice.
do you have to say 'i forgot then i remembered'
or can it go like this:
have you been abused 'no'
have you been abused 'no'
have you been abused 'yes'
why doesn't that count (read their def. again. or maybe i'm missing something)and so now my point is that who goes around asking 'have you been abused' all the time untill the event of therapists? i mean... must be rare for the question to even come up... an dnot until therapists did people persist with the question (to get a different answer next time around)
> They accept, for example, the ones in Victorian literature.
but that is so theory laden... the point is what form did the phenomenon take (if there is a comperable phenomenon BEFORE the theory)
and my point is that...
its form would of course be different.
i dunno. maybe i agree with these maclean people...
i guess my main concern is that...
IMO we need a middle way between post traumatic models of disorders (where trauma is a cause by definition and hey presto repressed memories are present) and the false memory foundation where they claim that ALL recovered memories are false.
if 'no no no yes' in response to the question counts as a recovered memory (by the false memory foundation) then i don't buy that... i don't.
politics...
sigh.
> Always nice to chat with you, _k.thanks.
yo utoo :-)
poster:special_k
thread:629255
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060406/msgs/630319.html