My purpose in calling attention to the article by Brett Kahr in the Journal of
Psychohistory was to emphasize the enormity of the problem of child abuse
throughout history and right up to the present time. I am not a Freud
worshiper, although, like Adolph Grunbaum and Eric Gillett, I do admire Freud's
genius while acceptig him as a fallible human being.  I apologize to Eric
Gillett for the rather blatant manner in which I presented my message, for I
can now see how it could be seen as a posting designed to present Freud as a
man above reproach.  I don't want to worship Freud (nor any other mere mortal),
and I have always been dismayed by Freud worshiping in psychoanalysis. I
wholeheartedly agree with Eric Gillett that Freud Worship has played the
central role in creating much delay in the scientific development of
psychoanalysis (and psychology!).

My point (and I suupose it is Professor Kahr's point) is that Sigmund Freud is
poor choice indeed as a historical figure to hold responsible for failing to
enlighten the world on how to ameliorate the immense problem of child abuse.
Nor should one who did so much that was helpful be held accountable in the way
Freud has been held accountable for interfering with progress on this
issue--i.e., as if his reproachable failings were moral failures rather than
human limitations as a fallible scientist and thinker. Freud was helpful and
unhelpful. He was inconsistent, doubtful of his own ideas, and not completely
helpful, to put it mildly, in clairfying the matter of psychic reality verus
actual reality. I look forward to Dr. Gillett's postings showing how Freud was
not above reproach in this matter and how Freud's failings led to harmful
consequences. And I fully expect to be impressed by the scholarship and
helpfulnuss of Dr. Gillett's  thinking and expect to continue to learn more
from his keen and accurate understanding of these issues-an understanding, by
the way, that far surpasses my own.

Meanwhile, I remain convinced that the problem of child abuse, in Freud's day
and in the present, is so vast and so powerfully disavowed that, until I learn
more from Dr. Gillett (who, indeed, may be the person to convince me
otherwise), Freud deserves, in my thinking, much credit for his perspicacity in
identifying early childhood mistreatment as significant for adult
psychopathology. And Freud ought not be seen as one who at some point chose to
turn a blind eye to child abuse. It does seem to me and to Professor Kahr that
Freud has been more like a catalyst, however clumsy and inconsistent, in the
long, slow, faltering march of history as humankind tries to remove its
blinders to the enormity of child abuse. The path of history in removing
barriers to understanding the full extent of cruelty toward children has been
agonizingly slow, faltering,
fitful, and incomplete--which parallels the slow, faltering, fitful incomplete
behavior of every major personality in history who tried to advance our
understanding of children and the cruelty children endure. This includes the
slow, faltering, fitful, incomlete behavior of Freud AND Masson--both fallible
players in the forward march toward enlightenment about child abuse.

List members are invited to read the essay by Lloyd DeMause on the history of
childhood, which is essentially a history of horrendous child abuse, by using
the link on my web page at the following address:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/3162. Jim Duffy
....


"I try to learn from others' mistakes because I won't have time enough in my
life to make them all myself." Jim Duffy

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