I think it is useful to monitor the activities of the Human Rights Council in the same way that it is useful to monitor earthquakes: without the illusion that measurement is prevention. I also think “resignation” is a sensible option. Using the same analogy. Resignation doesn’t mean I am complacent: this resolution does real damage, but the jabberwocky in it is standard UN-speak.
The groundwork for this kind of religious protectionism stretches back at least to the founding of the Ant-Defamation League in 1913, but with the important distinction that the ADL was dealing with the denial of civil rights and employment rights to citizens who happened to be Jews. This is neither about the denial of rights nor the freedom of religion: it is specifically suggesting, in a way that has become too familiar in Islamic discourse, that the critics of Islamic extremism are the source of Islamic extremism.
My sisters and I came out of St Josephs Tivoli Dunlaoghaire in 1950 to live in Ballyfermot. Goldenbridge was the only and nearest school and we all went there. I remember it with loathing. Sr Ann Philomena in particular. We were Evelyne,Clair.Ita,Dympna LAWLESS -We all remember the screaming from the orphanage side of the high wall separating us. We remember the penny dinners and the pennies-for-theblack babies. I never knew what went on there and it is giving me the horrors. Evelyne Born 1937
Evelyne, Clair, Ita and Dympna Lawless. Goldenbridge National School.
St Joseph’s, Tivoli Road, Dun Laoghaire, primary school to this very day is still in existence. What a picturesque part of Co Dublin to have resided! Your family must have missed the sea and the boats going off to England when they moved to Ballyfermot. Yeah, people from the latter area also had to frequent Inchicore library due to not having one in their area. Life, there, way back then, was akin to living out to the sticks.
There was a sister Anne in Goldenbridge National School where you went. She was a very tall sister of Mercy. I would have seen her only from a distance in the chapel. Segregation of children from the industrial school from both children and nuns alike of the national school was all too apparent. Never the twain did meet! The religious in the convent were under orders to baulk at them because of their susceptible status.
The high wall, you mention Eve, was in point of fact there from the time when the industrial school was a prison refuge for women – which was sometime in the 19th century. Children in Goldenbridge hated being cooped up in the enclosed yard behind the high wall. As Christine Buckley stated, “a bleak dark yard where the sun never shone.” Whatever little spare time young children got from all their skivvies chores they spent in this locked-up yard. Mind you, we took advantage of these massive walls, by learning to play four balls at a time on them, and we became experts. We would have done well in the circus circuit!
The child detainees never enjoyed freedom of the neatly laid out paddock fields adjoining the national school, they even envied Neddy who had that privilege – or the garden full of exquisite flowers and orchard and other fruits where the Sisters of Mercy meandered about in twos saying their prayers.
The ‘kind’ sisters’ who served dinners to the poor people daily (at the gates near the cloister) also had no contact with children from the industrial school. Nonetheless, children noticed that the food was far better than the meagerly food they ate every day. Sadly, too, the poor drunken men who sat in the cloister moreover or not exposed themselves to the little girls as they filed past them in the cloister enroute to the chapel. Yet the authorities placed children in the care of the religious supposedly for their own protection. Adults, from all occupations – who abused children in those days, got off lightly. Other religious even saw priests who meddled with children as a lesser threat than if they entered into relationships with women. However, in saying this head honcho did report sexual abuse of children in Goldenbridge.
It is ironic that the religious were making school collections (from children in outside schools such as yourself and your siblings) for African babies, while at the same time they were more or less starving children who were placed in their care by the courts.
Life in Goldenbridge industrial school was one long outlandish experience for most of us who had the misfortune to be by Irish society incarcerated there, in the past. Ironically, Goldenbridge detainees, invariably so, were not orphans, despite being labelled so by all and sundry.
A Muslim resident of Russia’s St. Petersburg has hired killers to rid him of a daughter who disrespected Islamic laws by wearing short skirts.
The police detained Gafar Kerimov, 46, after he reported that his daughter went missing, but blurted out that the girl was dead already, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported Monday.
The family, ethnic Azerbaijanis, used to have frequent arguments about how the daughter should dress and behave.
Rashida Kirimova, 21, studied medicine at a St. Petersburg school and waved away her father’s criticism when he said her clothes weren’t modest enough and were unfit for a Muslim girl.
During winter, Rashida wore high-necked sweaters and long trousers, causing no problems in the neighborhood, but when spring came, she put on a skirt that left her knees exposed.
The father’s Muslim friends again started reproaching him for being negligent and allowing his daughter to walk around dressed like a fallen woman. They said the insult could only be washed away by blood, and introduced Gafar to a killer, who agreed to help him for around $3000.
The killer, Kadyr Suleymanov, seized the girl on April 8th as she was hurrying to classes. He and two accomplices drove her out of the city to a suburban dump, shot her dead and covered her body with garbage.
The body was found by the police after the father confessed he had ordered the killing. Two of three criminals have been detained.
In a private e-mail to a student last week, Abdul-Basser [Harvard Islamic chaplain] wrote that there was “great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment [for apostates]) and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand.”
WASHINGTON — A growing number of U.S. intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials have concluded that there’s little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists, posing a greater threat to the U.S. than Afghanistan’s terrorist haven did before 9/11.
“It’s a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution,” said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
Pakistan’s fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan; and for the security of India, the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia, the U.S. and its allies.
“Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al Qaida sitting in two-thirds of the country which the government does not control,” said David Kilcullen, a retired Australian army officer, a former State Department adviser and a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration.
“Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan, a backward, isolated, landlocked place that outsiders get interested in about once a century,” agreed the U.S. intelligence official. “It’s a developed state . . . (with) a major Indian Ocean port and ties to the outside world, especially the (Persian) Gulf, that Afghanistan and the Taliban never had.”
“The implications of this are disastrous for the U.S.,” he added. “The supply lines (from Karachi to U.S. bases) in Kandahar and Kabul from the south and east will be cut, or at least they’ll be less secure, and probably sooner rather than later, and that will jeopardize the mission in Afghanistan, especially now that it’s getting bigger.”
The experts McClatchy interviewed said their views aren’t a worst case scenario but a realistic expectation based on the militants’ gains and the failure of Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership to respond.
“The place is beyond redemption,” said a Pentagon adviser who asked not to be further identified so he could speak freely. “I don’t see any plausible scenario under which the present government or its most likely successor will mobilize the economic, political and security resources to push back this rising tide of violence.
“I think Pakistan is moving toward a situation where the extremists control virtually all of the countryside and the government controls only the urban centers,” he continued. “If you look out 10 years, I think the government will be overrun by Islamic militants.”…
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somali members of parliament voted unanimously on Saturday to implement sharia law across the country ..the approval by parliament had been expected since March 10, when the cabinet appointed by new President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed also voted to establish sharia, or Islamic, law.
“30% of military women are raped while serving, 71% are sexually assaulted, and 90% are sexually harassed.”
Yet another piece of anti-male lying propaganda from feminists. Of course, it will take some time to prove it wrong, and in the meantime the harm will be done. See Hoff Sommers and Farrell. You (and the BBC) should know better than to retail this garbage.
The researchers interviewed a nationwide sample of 556 female veterans who served in the Vietnam, post-Vietnam and Persian Gulf War eras. The women were selected from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs comprehensive women’s health care registries. Participants completed an extensive structured interview to determine the characteristics of rape victims and perpetrators, as well as environmental factors associated with rape occurring during military service.
The researchers found that 79 percent of participants reported experiences of sexual harassment during their military service; 30 percent of the women reported an attempted or completed rape.
another study : 2008-Pentagon has released new reports in which one-third of military women say they’ve been sexually harassed, and around 1400 “assaulted and raped”
that’s different than the 2003-study which 90% harassed, 30% “attempted rape or rape”
The European culture channel ARTE made a documentary about the UN, Human Rights and “defamation of religion”, interviews with Stéphane Hessel, Kofi Annan, Joschka Fischer, Roy Brown and Irène Khan. You can watch it online this week in French or German. Hopefully there will be an English version soon.
JERUSALEM – The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed “Mexican” influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday.
There is “no evidence” for Sigmund Freud’s “theory of repression” – that the “burying” of traumatic memories by the unconscious mind causes psychiatric disorders – even though it has been a cornerstone of his psychoanalytic theory for a century, according to Prof. Yacov Rofé, head of Bar-Ilan University’s interdisciplinary department of social sciences.
Rofé conducted the “first” comprehensive study of 100 years of scientific literature related to this phenomenon and published his findings last month in Review of General Psychology. In a 23-page article that includes many hundreds of references, he wrote that there is “no empirical evidence to support repression’s existence” – thereby invalidating what Freud himself described as the “foundation stone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests.” Thus, Rofé declared, it is time to “bury” Freudian repression, both as a cause and a factor in the treatment of psychiatric disorders.
By revealing the fundamental lack of scientific evidence for Freud’s core tenet of repression, the study undermines long-held assumptions about the overall legitimacy of Freudian psychoanalytic theory. But by rejecting the Freudian worldview as a template for the understanding and treatment of psychopathology, Rofé’s work opens up another, important question: How are we to understand mental illness?
“One would think that after such an extended discussion of the theory of repression by the psychoanalytic community, as well as clinicians and experts from other disciplines, there would be some solid evidence to support Freud’s theory of repression,” wrote Rofé. “Instead, I found none whatsoever.”
Ever since Freud articulated his views, rival theories of psychopathology – based on behavioral, cognitive and biological models – “have challenged psychoanalysis in their characterization of clinical observations,” he said. “But these schools of thought also suffer from fundamental empirical difficulties. We may need a new theory of psychopathology – perhaps a new concept of repression – that can provide insight into the underlying causes of psychiatric disorders.”
The topic is not just a matter of historical debate, the BIU researcher continued, as repression is currently a hot issue in modern psychological research. Thus his published conclusions have important implications for the US legal system, which is currently debating whether alleged criminals can be convicted based on recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.
“There have been cases of people who have been accused in courts of law on the basis of repressed memory. There is a serious controversy today whether such evidence can be used for conviction, as many believe that recovered memories are valid. However, there is some evidence indicating that psychodynamic therapists may encourage the production of false memories. This is strengthened by many experimental studies demonstrating the production of false memories,” he said.
In classical psychoanalysis, repression is a uniformly negative phenomenon. Cited as the direct cause of mental illness, it is seen to affect the individual’s psychological and physiological functioning for the worse, by preventing both the accurate perception of reality necessary for adequate coping and the discharge of harmful tension. But according to the psychological literature, repression – and the adoption of a “distorted” view of reality – can be a key factor in the maintenance of mental health.
“I examined the evidence to see whether Freud is right when he says distortion of reality is undesirable, and I found that the opposite is the case,” Rofé insisted. “While repression of emotions may have deleterious effects on one’s physical health, repression – as defined by Freud – was originally developed to account for the development of mental disorders and not of physical illnesses. Not only has the literature shown no causal link between repression and psychological illness; it has shown that repression – the ‘distortion’ of reality in which we put aside traumatic memories in order to focus on the positive – usually has a positive effect on psychological functioning.”
Rofé also questioned another major concept of the Freudian worldview – the existence of an autonomous and powerful unconscious, which Freud believed to be responsible for activating the repressive process.
“Freud posits an unconscious mind that, in the case of trauma, literally takes over psychological functioning, preserving the anxiety-provoking contents of traumatic memories and controlling the pathogenic manifestation of repression in the form of psychiatric disorders,” Rofé explained. “But investigators have not yet presented clear empirical evidence in support of a dynamic and sophisticated unconscious of this kind. This is not to say that simple, unconscious processes do not occur, but the lack of evidence for an autonomous, overruling unconscious entity tends to undermine the existence of the repression it is said to control.”
Just as Freudian psychoanalysis gives repression a key role in the creation of mental illness, it defines the “lifting of repression” – the retrieval of long-buried memories – as the key to mental health. Here again, Rofé insists on the basis of his research that this is not backed up by empirical evidence.
“Based on the evidence gathered from clinical studies performed over the last 100 years, there is no evidence that psychoanalysis is more effective than other methods for the treatment of trauma,” he insisted, adding that, to whatever extent psychoanalysis was beneficial to patients, there was no causal link proven between the treatment’s benefits and the retrieval of repressed memories.
Paul Krugman’s rantings on Bush’s administration : “But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for”
“everything” ?.. the first duty of any administration, of any state on Earth, is to do everything to protect its nation against its enemies.
While Bush made mistakes, nobody (save the delusional as Krugman) would charge Bush with deliberate, intentional, treason of US after 9/11.
Krugman is mirroring Arabs’ (the Muslim world in general) who claim that the Iraq-war was solely for the benefit and security of Israel but paid with American soldiers lives. That would be treason indeed.
Dear Max,
Excellent review of Tarek Fatah’s book. It’s the first that touches on Abu Nawas and Mirza Ghalib.
BTW, Chasing a Mirage was shortlisted yesterday for the $35,000 Canadian Donner Book Prize
I think it is useful to monitor the activities of the Human Rights Council in the same way that it is useful to monitor earthquakes: without the illusion that measurement is prevention. I also think “resignation” is a sensible option. Using the same analogy. Resignation doesn’t mean I am complacent: this resolution does real damage, but the jabberwocky in it is standard UN-speak.
The groundwork for this kind of religious protectionism stretches back at least to the founding of the Ant-Defamation League in 1913, but with the important distinction that the ADL was dealing with the denial of civil rights and employment rights to citizens who happened to be Jews. This is neither about the denial of rights nor the freedom of religion: it is specifically suggesting, in a way that has become too familiar in Islamic discourse, that the critics of Islamic extremism are the source of Islamic extremism.
My sisters and I came out of St Josephs Tivoli Dunlaoghaire in 1950 to live in Ballyfermot. Goldenbridge was the only and nearest school and we all went there. I remember it with loathing. Sr Ann Philomena in particular. We were Evelyne,Clair.Ita,Dympna LAWLESS -We all remember the screaming from the orphanage side of the high wall separating us. We remember the penny dinners and the pennies-for-theblack babies. I never knew what went on there and it is giving me the horrors. Evelyne Born 1937
Evelyne, Clair, Ita and Dympna Lawless. Goldenbridge National School.
St Joseph’s, Tivoli Road, Dun Laoghaire, primary school to this very day is still in existence. What a picturesque part of Co Dublin to have resided! Your family must have missed the sea and the boats going off to England when they moved to Ballyfermot. Yeah, people from the latter area also had to frequent Inchicore library due to not having one in their area. Life, there, way back then, was akin to living out to the sticks.
There was a sister Anne in Goldenbridge National School where you went. She was a very tall sister of Mercy. I would have seen her only from a distance in the chapel. Segregation of children from the industrial school from both children and nuns alike of the national school was all too apparent. Never the twain did meet! The religious in the convent were under orders to baulk at them because of their susceptible status.
The high wall, you mention Eve, was in point of fact there from the time when the industrial school was a prison refuge for women – which was sometime in the 19th century. Children in Goldenbridge hated being cooped up in the enclosed yard behind the high wall. As Christine Buckley stated, “a bleak dark yard where the sun never shone.” Whatever little spare time young children got from all their skivvies chores they spent in this locked-up yard. Mind you, we took advantage of these massive walls, by learning to play four balls at a time on them, and we became experts. We would have done well in the circus circuit!
The child detainees never enjoyed freedom of the neatly laid out paddock fields adjoining the national school, they even envied Neddy who had that privilege – or the garden full of exquisite flowers and orchard and other fruits where the Sisters of Mercy meandered about in twos saying their prayers.
The ‘kind’ sisters’ who served dinners to the poor people daily (at the gates near the cloister) also had no contact with children from the industrial school. Nonetheless, children noticed that the food was far better than the meagerly food they ate every day. Sadly, too, the poor drunken men who sat in the cloister moreover or not exposed themselves to the little girls as they filed past them in the cloister enroute to the chapel. Yet the authorities placed children in the care of the religious supposedly for their own protection. Adults, from all occupations – who abused children in those days, got off lightly. Other religious even saw priests who meddled with children as a lesser threat than if they entered into relationships with women. However, in saying this head honcho did report sexual abuse of children in Goldenbridge.
It is ironic that the religious were making school collections (from children in outside schools such as yourself and your siblings) for African babies, while at the same time they were more or less starving children who were placed in their care by the courts.
Life in Goldenbridge industrial school was one long outlandish experience for most of us who had the misfortune to be by Irish society incarcerated there, in the past. Ironically, Goldenbridge detainees, invariably so, were not orphans, despite being labelled so by all and sundry.
$3000
how much does it cost to kill your daughter
MosNews, 13 April
A Muslim resident of Russia’s St. Petersburg has hired killers to rid him of a daughter who disrespected Islamic laws by wearing short skirts.
The police detained Gafar Kerimov, 46, after he reported that his daughter went missing, but blurted out that the girl was dead already, Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported Monday.
The family, ethnic Azerbaijanis, used to have frequent arguments about how the daughter should dress and behave.
Rashida Kirimova, 21, studied medicine at a St. Petersburg school and waved away her father’s criticism when he said her clothes weren’t modest enough and were unfit for a Muslim girl.
During winter, Rashida wore high-necked sweaters and long trousers, causing no problems in the neighborhood, but when spring came, she put on a skirt that left her knees exposed.
The father’s Muslim friends again started reproaching him for being negligent and allowing his daughter to walk around dressed like a fallen woman. They said the insult could only be washed away by blood, and introduced Gafar to a killer, who agreed to help him for around $3000.
The killer, Kadyr Suleymanov, seized the girl on April 8th as she was hurrying to classes. He and two accomplices drove her out of the city to a suburban dump, shot her dead and covered her body with garbage.
The body was found by the police after the father confessed he had ordered the killing. Two of three criminals have been detained.
http://www.mosnews.com/society/2009/04/13/shortskirtt/
Harvard intellectuals
In a private e-mail to a student last week, Abdul-Basser [Harvard Islamic chaplain] wrote that there was “great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment [for apostates]) and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand.”
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/856/Sharia-Creep-in-Harvard-Yard.aspx
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=527653
step by step, oh baby
WASHINGTON — A growing number of U.S. intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials have concluded that there’s little hope of preventing nuclear-armed Pakistan from disintegrating into fiefdoms controlled by Islamist warlords and terrorists, posing a greater threat to the U.S. than Afghanistan’s terrorist haven did before 9/11.
“It’s a disaster in the making on the scale of the Iranian revolution,” said a U.S. intelligence official with long experience in Pakistan who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
Pakistan’s fragmentation into warlord-run fiefdoms that host al Qaida and other terrorist groups would have grave implications for the security of its nuclear arsenal; for the U.S.-led effort to pacify Afghanistan; and for the security of India, the nearby oil-rich Persian Gulf and Central Asia, the U.S. and its allies.
“Pakistan has 173 million people and 100 nuclear weapons, an army which is bigger than the American army, and the headquarters of al Qaida sitting in two-thirds of the country which the government does not control,” said David Kilcullen, a retired Australian army officer, a former State Department adviser and a counterinsurgency consultant to the Obama administration.
“Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan, a backward, isolated, landlocked place that outsiders get interested in about once a century,” agreed the U.S. intelligence official. “It’s a developed state . . . (with) a major Indian Ocean port and ties to the outside world, especially the (Persian) Gulf, that Afghanistan and the Taliban never had.”
“The implications of this are disastrous for the U.S.,” he added. “The supply lines (from Karachi to U.S. bases) in Kandahar and Kabul from the south and east will be cut, or at least they’ll be less secure, and probably sooner rather than later, and that will jeopardize the mission in Afghanistan, especially now that it’s getting bigger.”
The experts McClatchy interviewed said their views aren’t a worst case scenario but a realistic expectation based on the militants’ gains and the failure of Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership to respond.
“The place is beyond redemption,” said a Pentagon adviser who asked not to be further identified so he could speak freely. “I don’t see any plausible scenario under which the present government or its most likely successor will mobilize the economic, political and security resources to push back this rising tide of violence.
“I think Pakistan is moving toward a situation where the extremists control virtually all of the countryside and the government controls only the urban centers,” he continued. “If you look out 10 years, I think the government will be overrun by Islamic militants.”…
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/254/story/66368.html
it’s just growin
MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somali members of parliament voted unanimously on Saturday to implement sharia law across the country ..the approval by parliament had been expected since March 10, when the cabinet appointed by new President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed also voted to establish sharia, or Islamic, law.
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE53H0CE20090418
“30% of military women are raped while serving, 71% are sexually assaulted, and 90% are sexually harassed.”
Yet another piece of anti-male lying propaganda from feminists. Of course, it will take some time to prove it wrong, and in the meantime the harm will be done. See Hoff Sommers and Farrell. You (and the BBC) should know better than to retail this garbage.
30% rape OR attempted rape
http://famedetroit.org/79-harrassed-30-report-rape-or-attempted-rape/
The researchers interviewed a nationwide sample of 556 female veterans who served in the Vietnam, post-Vietnam and Persian Gulf War eras. The women were selected from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs comprehensive women’s health care registries. Participants completed an extensive structured interview to determine the characteristics of rape victims and perpetrators, as well as environmental factors associated with rape occurring during military service.
The researchers found that 79 percent of participants reported experiences of sexual harassment during their military service; 30 percent of the women reported an attempted or completed rape.
another study : 2008-Pentagon has released new reports in which one-third of military women say they’ve been sexually harassed, and around 1400 “assaulted and raped”
that’s different than the 2003-study which 90% harassed, 30% “attempted rape or rape”
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/421/index.html
The European culture channel ARTE made a documentary about the UN, Human Rights and “defamation of religion”, interviews with Stéphane Hessel, Kofi Annan, Joschka Fischer, Roy Brown and Irène Khan. You can watch it online this week in French or German. Hopefully there will be an English version soon.
French language:
http://plus7.arte.tv/fr/detailPage/1697660,CmC=2583762.html
German language:
http://plus7.arte.tv/de/detailPage/1697660,CmC=2583760.html
JERUSALEM – The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed “Mexican” influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday.
…
but eating mexicans is kosher ?
Repression is the cornerstone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests–Freud, 1914.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1207650002634&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
‘Freud’s theory of repression should be dropped’
Apr. 13, 2008
Judy Siegel-Itzkovich , THE JERUSALEM POST
There is “no evidence” for Sigmund Freud’s “theory of repression” – that the “burying” of traumatic memories by the unconscious mind causes psychiatric disorders – even though it has been a cornerstone of his psychoanalytic theory for a century, according to Prof. Yacov Rofé, head of Bar-Ilan University’s interdisciplinary department of social sciences.
Rofé conducted the “first” comprehensive study of 100 years of scientific literature related to this phenomenon and published his findings last month in Review of General Psychology. In a 23-page article that includes many hundreds of references, he wrote that there is “no empirical evidence to support repression’s existence” – thereby invalidating what Freud himself described as the “foundation stone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests.” Thus, Rofé declared, it is time to “bury” Freudian repression, both as a cause and a factor in the treatment of psychiatric disorders.
By revealing the fundamental lack of scientific evidence for Freud’s core tenet of repression, the study undermines long-held assumptions about the overall legitimacy of Freudian psychoanalytic theory. But by rejecting the Freudian worldview as a template for the understanding and treatment of psychopathology, Rofé’s work opens up another, important question: How are we to understand mental illness?
“One would think that after such an extended discussion of the theory of repression by the psychoanalytic community, as well as clinicians and experts from other disciplines, there would be some solid evidence to support Freud’s theory of repression,” wrote Rofé. “Instead, I found none whatsoever.”
Ever since Freud articulated his views, rival theories of psychopathology – based on behavioral, cognitive and biological models – “have challenged psychoanalysis in their characterization of clinical observations,” he said. “But these schools of thought also suffer from fundamental empirical difficulties. We may need a new theory of psychopathology – perhaps a new concept of repression – that can provide insight into the underlying causes of psychiatric disorders.”
The topic is not just a matter of historical debate, the BIU researcher continued, as repression is currently a hot issue in modern psychological research. Thus his published conclusions have important implications for the US legal system, which is currently debating whether alleged criminals can be convicted based on recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.
“There have been cases of people who have been accused in courts of law on the basis of repressed memory. There is a serious controversy today whether such evidence can be used for conviction, as many believe that recovered memories are valid. However, there is some evidence indicating that psychodynamic therapists may encourage the production of false memories. This is strengthened by many experimental studies demonstrating the production of false memories,” he said.
In classical psychoanalysis, repression is a uniformly negative phenomenon. Cited as the direct cause of mental illness, it is seen to affect the individual’s psychological and physiological functioning for the worse, by preventing both the accurate perception of reality necessary for adequate coping and the discharge of harmful tension. But according to the psychological literature, repression – and the adoption of a “distorted” view of reality – can be a key factor in the maintenance of mental health.
“I examined the evidence to see whether Freud is right when he says distortion of reality is undesirable, and I found that the opposite is the case,” Rofé insisted. “While repression of emotions may have deleterious effects on one’s physical health, repression – as defined by Freud – was originally developed to account for the development of mental disorders and not of physical illnesses. Not only has the literature shown no causal link between repression and psychological illness; it has shown that repression – the ‘distortion’ of reality in which we put aside traumatic memories in order to focus on the positive – usually has a positive effect on psychological functioning.”
Rofé also questioned another major concept of the Freudian worldview – the existence of an autonomous and powerful unconscious, which Freud believed to be responsible for activating the repressive process.
“Freud posits an unconscious mind that, in the case of trauma, literally takes over psychological functioning, preserving the anxiety-provoking contents of traumatic memories and controlling the pathogenic manifestation of repression in the form of psychiatric disorders,” Rofé explained. “But investigators have not yet presented clear empirical evidence in support of a dynamic and sophisticated unconscious of this kind. This is not to say that simple, unconscious processes do not occur, but the lack of evidence for an autonomous, overruling unconscious entity tends to undermine the existence of the repression it is said to control.”
Just as Freudian psychoanalysis gives repression a key role in the creation of mental illness, it defines the “lifting of repression” – the retrieval of long-buried memories – as the key to mental health. Here again, Rofé insists on the basis of his research that this is not backed up by empirical evidence.
“Based on the evidence gathered from clinical studies performed over the last 100 years, there is no evidence that psychoanalysis is more effective than other methods for the treatment of trauma,” he insisted, adding that, to whatever extent psychoanalysis was beneficial to patients, there was no causal link proven between the treatment’s benefits and the retrieval of repressed memories.
Paul Krugman’s rantings on Bush’s administration : “But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for”
“everything” ?.. the first duty of any administration, of any state on Earth, is to do everything to protect its nation against its enemies.
While Bush made mistakes, nobody (save the delusional as Krugman) would charge Bush with deliberate, intentional, treason of US after 9/11.
Krugman is mirroring Arabs’ (the Muslim world in general) who claim that the Iraq-war was solely for the benefit and security of Israel but paid with American soldiers lives. That would be treason indeed.