Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 04:38:57 -0700
From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-marx.econ.utah.edu>
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Abuse of children (was: Cockburn?)



I wholeheartedly second Tim's insistence that there is something
fundamentally wrong with the treatment of children in our society.  We
can learn a lot from Alice Miller here.  Did anybody on the Left other
than Gloria Steinem pick up on her?  Are there any email newsgroups or
discussion lists discussing her?  I have been thinking a lot about
these issues, and here are some tidbits.  Perhaps a debate will come
out of this.  What I am writing now is very condensed, stylized,
oversimplified.  Spare your flames; I do not have time to respond to
them.  What I am writing here does not mean that I am trying to
explain social phenomena by individual psychology.  What I am about to
describe is in part the effects society has on the individuals, and in
part the conditions which make certain social mechanisms possible.

(1) Some people on this list expressed interest in discussing
psychoanalysis from a Marxist perspective.  A good opener would be
Alice Miller's critique of Freud: early on he noticed an appaling
extent of child abuse, but since this was (and still is) such a social
taboo, he caved in and said that it was all in his patients'
imagination, and in his drive theory he basically blames the victims
for wanting to be victimized.  Psychoanalysis is wrong because the
therapist, who does not have to courage to face his own childhood
traumas, and who wants to feel powerful in helping his patients
because he is powerless to help himself, tells the patients they have
to forgive their parents in order to become well.



(2) In capitalism almost everyone stands under a lot of pressure, and
the principle of capitalist competition is to take advantage of the
weak.  No wonder this pressure is being passed on to the weakest
members of society, the children with their unconditional love and
acceptance and dependency.  Children need love to flourish, and if
they are abused instead, they must repress this experience, in order
to survive.  This ability to repress, which is life-saving in
childhood, becomes a major obstacle to a fulfilled life when they are
adults.  Tragically, since they have learned not to notice the abuse
that was perpetrated on them, they also do not notice how they pass
this abuse on to the next generation.  Miller says that everybody who
abuses his own children was abused as a child himself or herself.

(3) According to Alice Miller, child abuse can take many forms.
Educational practices which are commonly considered good parenting are
often very traumatic and damaging to the child.  One should never
punish one's children; it is a confusing lie to say that punishment is
a sign of love.  Indeed Miller says that the majority of people living
in countries like the USA, Germany, Switzerland have had traumatic
childhoods.  Children are not the selfish asocial little beasts that
must be civilized.  The baby-boomers are the first generation which
treated their children a little more decently, and therefore this
knowledge is gradually becoming available.  More and more people
discover that the fourth commandment, that one must honor one's father
and mother, is a bunch of crap, and that on the contrary they owe it
to their children to critically examine what was done to them when
they themselves were little.  On the other hand, millions of
enlightened parents nowadays are discovering with horror how much
damage they did to their own children, all with the best intentions.
There is a huge social movement unfolding before our eyes, which I
consider to be potentially as pervasive as the women's movement or the
ecological movement, and we Marxists do not recognize it.


(4) I grew up in Germany, a country with a tradition of strict
upbringings.  Miller says that everyone in the high echelons of
Hitler's regime had a strict upbringing and idealized his parents for
it.


(5)  Mass murderers are telling the world about the horrors that were
done to them, creating numerous victims because they do not dare to
see who the real culprit was, their own parents.  Alice Miller has met
with an amazing resistance everywhere where she wanted to tell this
story, because there are so many people who do not want to be reminded
of their own childhood.  The taboo against recognizing the damage
which your parents did to you is comparable with the taboo in our
society to see the damage which the state does to the citizens, for
instance how damaging the schools are as they are set up in the
capitalist countries.

(6) A child which is abused, but which needs to think it is loved by
its parents and therefore idealizes its parents, can only find one
explanation for this abuse: that it deserves this treatment because it
itself is bad.  This is also one of the basic mechanisms of coercion
in our society: convince the victims that it is their own fault.  My
social function as University Professor is to convince my students
that they are dumb and therefore do not deserve any better jobs than
those which capitalism has in store for them.

(7) Miller says that behind every criminal lies a human tragedy.
Criminals are made by their upbringing.  Miller's vision of human
nature is really very promising: if that what she says is right,
socialism is possible.


Literature:
Alice Miller: Banished Knowledge
Breaking Down the Walls of Silence
The Untouched Key
The Drama of the Gifted Child, revised edition.

Konrad Stettbacher: Making Sense of Suffering.


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