| 1. The child is always innocent.
2. Each child needs among other things:
care, protection, security, warmth, skin contact, touching,
caressing, and tenderness.
3. These needs are seldom sufficiently
fulfilled, and in fact they are often exploited by adults for
their own ends (trauma of child abuse).
4. Child abuse has lifelong effects.
5. Society takes the side of the adult and
blames the child for what has been done to him or her.
6. The victimization of the child has
historically been denied and is still being widely denied,
even today.
7. This denial has made it possible for
society to ignore the devastating effects of the victimization of
the child for such a long time.
8. The child, when betrayed by society, has
no choice but to repress the trauma and to idealize the abuser.
9. Repression leads to neuroses, psychoses,
psychosomatic disorders, and delinquency.
10. In neuroses, the child's needs are
repressed and/or denied; instead, feelings of guilt are
experienced.
11. In psychoses, the mistreatment is
transformed into a disguised illusory version (madness).
12. In psychosomatic disorders, the pain of
mistreatment is felt, but the actual origins are concealed.
13. In delinquency, the confusion,
seduction, and mistreatment of childhood are acted out again and
again.
14. The therapeutic process can be
successful if it is based on uncovering the truth about the
patient's childhood instead of denying that reality.
15. The psychoanalytic theory of
"infantile sexuality" actually protects the parent and
reinforces society's blindness.
16. Fantasies always serve to conceal or
minimize unbearable childhood reality for the sake of the child's
survival; therefore, the so-called "invented trauma" is
a less harmful version of the real, repressed one.
17. The fantasies expressed in literature,
art, fairy tales, and dreams often unconsciously convey early
childhood experiences in a symbolic way.
18. This symbolic testimony is tolerated in
our culture, thanks to society's chronic ignorance of the truth
concerning childhood; if the import of these fantasies were
understood, they would be rejected.
19. A past crime cannot be undone by our
understanding of the perpetrator's blindness and unfulfilled
needs.
20. New crimes, however, can be prevented,
if the victims begin to see and be aware of what has been done to
them.
21. Therefore, the reports of victims will
be able to bring about more awareness, consciousness, and sense of
responsibility in society at large.
|
