Dear List Members:
I would like to call attention to an article in the Journal of Psychohistory
(1991, 19, pp. 191-214) written by Brett Kahr, Director of the British
Institute for Psychohistory in London. On pages 204 and 205 Professor Kahr sets
the record straight.
1) Freud did not at some point decide to ignore the actual abuse of children
(contrary to the Masson thesis).
2) Throughout his life, Freud was a champion of the rights of children and was,
for example, the first medical prfessional to recognize how even insignificant
events of childhood can have serious and lasting effects.
3) He considered,too, for example, the speech of children important to
understanding their psyches.
4) Freud regularly regarded seductions as causal in his early research into the
neuroses, as in his 1986 writings on the etiology of hysteria (Standard
Edition, 3, pp.,191-221).
5) Freud did not abandon the seduction theroy at any time--instead he
elaborated it, argues Professor Kahr, inasmuch as BOTH environmental events of
actual seduction and fantasies and fears were believed by Freud to be
etiologically significant.
6) Later works by Freud reveal his continued concern about real events of
sexual molestation. In 1917, for example (SE, 16, p.370),Freud is thus quoted
by Professor Kahr: "You must not suppose, however, that sexual abuse of a child
by its nearest male relatives belongs entirely to the realm of phantasy."
7) After Freud's work, assaults on children would no longer remain unnoticed
and in fact would be regarded as significant in possible explanations of adult
psychopathology.
....
The history of humankind's child-abuse customs and crimes is a subject matter
so huge but so powerfully disavowed that, when seen in  hitorical perspective,
it seems to me that Freud was admirably perspicacious to have been able to
identify this issue as significant. List members interested in learning about
the enormity of the history and extent of child abuse may wish to read Lloyd
DeMause's grim essay on this topic, as essay which one can access from a link
on my web page at the following Internest site:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/3162.
Jim Duffy, PhD

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