Monthly Archives: June 2011

Church-based sex crimes … also in Iceland

Thanks to SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests,  for this:

“No institution can police itself, especially not an ancient, rigid, secretive, all-male monarchy like the Catholic Church, which has a horrific track record of committing and concealing heinous child sex crimes.
It is crucial that victims, witnesses and whistleblowers speak up. However, it is clear that they should come forward to secular authorities, not church authorities.
Apologies from bishops are meaningless. Actions, not words, protect children.
We call on Iceland’s bishop to immediately and publicly oust and identify all proven, admitted and credibly accused child molesting clerics. He should also post on his website the names and whereabouts of all such predators who ever lived or worked in Iceland as well.

(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, is the world’s oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims. We’ve been around for 23 years and have more than 10,000 members. Despite the word “priest” in our title, we have members who were molested by religious figures of all denominations, including nuns, rabbis, bishops, and Protestant ministers. Our website is SNAPnetwork.org)”

 Here is a link to an article in “The Reykjavik Grapevine”  

And a quote:

“Vísir now reports that Catholic Bishop of Iceland Pétur Bürcher has publicly apologised to the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests or other staff, and asks for their forgiveness. In so doing, he said, he is following the example of Pope Benedict XVI, who issued a similar statement not too long ago.”

I also linked to this on Facebook, and this is what I wrote there: “When will they realize that apologies are not enough? As a Catholic child, I learned that forgiveness via confession only “worked” if you truly realized what you had done wrong and promised never to do it again. But maybe that only applies to children, and not to clergy?”

ENLIGHTENMENT AND DISSOCIATION

 Edited on June 26th

I’ve found another blog (well, a home page) that seems to fit into and fill out my thinking and my experiences – with one exception: I’m a bit wary of words like “truth” and “enlightenment”. I prefer “information”, and the Norwegian word “bakkekontakt” … “ground contact” … as in having both feet on the ground. 

Essays for the Truth Seeker 

Here’s an article that goes well with
“Putting the light from enlightenment in its place”


called

 Dissociation Mimics Enlightenment

I’m quoting from the author’s presentation here, and want to add that I agree completely with what he writes about mild childhood trauma, and about our culture as being highly traumatized. Kudos to an ex-psychotherapist with the balls to write (and yes, I’m shouting):    “I view the norm in our culture as being highly traumatized, and I view the average, and even above-average, childhood as being extremely traumatic – and the average parent as lacking both awareness of this and deep empathy for the child.”
 
From my viewpoint as a parent and grandparent, let me add that in thinking this, I do not think that parents don’t love their children. As I see it, most parents do the best they can. (And when I said this to two young fathers whom I consider to have good parenting skills, they reacted simultaneously  with “Oh, no, we certainly don’t do the best we can!” That self-awareness might be one reason why I see them as skilful parents)
     I certainly don’t think that many parents look at a new-born baby and say to themselves: “I’m going to do all I can to stunt this child’s growth and make life difficult and miserable for this little baby.” And so many of us have had miserable lives because of harmful parenting by people who themselves have been subjected to harmful parenting.
     What can we, as parents, do? I decided that this cycle of harm stops with me. I gave the people who harmed me responsibility for what they did, and in doing so, was able to see the many mistakes I myself have made as a parent. When my children have confronted me with things I have done, and I have been able to own them, take responsibility for them, and not try to hide behind excuses and good intentions.

Sorry, I got sidetracked … here is the complete presentation of the author of the enlightenment article: 
My name is Daniel Mackler and I am filmmaker and musician in New York City. I also worked for ten years as a psychotherapist in New York, though I ended my therapy practice on March 1st, 2010. My writings focus on the causes, consequences, and radical significance of childhood trauma. I see childhood trauma as ranging from the extreme, which is common, to the mild, which is so much MORE common that few even notice it at all, much less call them by its proper name. I view the norm in our culture as being highly traumatized, and I view the average, and even above-average, childhood as being extremely traumatic – and the average parent as lacking both awareness of this and deep empathy for the child.

I see our world growing more pathological, confused, polluted, overpopulated, and disturbed by the day – and I feel that to stand by and say nothing while we destroy our planet is irresponsible and even criminal. Yet I write with great hope – both for individual healing and for the collective healing of our world. I seek to offer a new perspective – on relationships, on enlightenment, on celibacy, on the pathology of the family system, and on the future of our species.

"Putting the light from enlightenment in its place"

Sometimes I come across something someone else has written that I’ve been planning to write … and it’s always a great pleasure when it’s much better than anything I could have written. 

Because then I don’t have to. 

Here’s a blog that has shortened my “to write” list (drum roll, please):   

Daily Voice Dialogue

What do you think of these two articles? 

“Putting the light from enlightenment in its place” 

 and


“Learning from Captain Jack Sparrow”


Conference on "Fostering Real Alternatives to Psychiatry"

Many thanks for this link to “NFPH – Norsk Forening for Psykisk Helsearbeid” in Norway.
Takk til   Norsk Forening for Psykisk Helsearbeid for denne lenken. 
(Det står litt på norsk på slutten) 
INTAR – International Network Toward Alternatives and Recovery – is announcing a conference in Berlin Berlin in Sept 2011: 


  
This network is new to me, and it has already won my heart by using the term “psychiatric violence”. 

——

Norsk: INTAR “internasjonalt nettverk for alternativer og gjenfinning”* skal holde en konferanse i Berlin i september, 2011, med temaet “Leting etter en rosenhage – om å fremme reelle alternativer til psykiatri”.

Dette er mitt første møte med nettverket, og det har allerede vunnet mitt hjerte ved å bruke betegnelsen “psykiatrisk vold”.    






* En av betydningene til det engelske ordet “recovery”  er “gjenervervelse, gjenfinning”, og i denne sammenhengen syns jeg det passer mye bedre enn “helbredelse”, som er en annen betydning. Fra min synsvinkel er det snakk om å finne tilbake til den vi vi var født til å være. 
 

"Gays getting married creates a hostile environment"

According to a letter written on Monday by retired chaplains and religious agencies to the services chiefs of chaplains, gays getting married in base chapels “creates an environment that is increasingly hostile to many chaplains – and the service members they serve – whose faith groups and personal consciences recognize homosexual behavior as immoral and unsafe and do not permit same-sex unions.”

Read the whole article here:

“FOR GOD AND COUNTRY” by Officer X

Schrödinger’s Rapist


Forklaring på norsk til slutt.

The Slutwalks reminded me of an article I read a while ago in Kate Harding’s blog, Shapely Prose,
written by guest blogger Phaedra Starling ” …the pen name of a romance novelist and licensed private investigator living in small New York City apartment with two large dogs. She practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu and makes world-class apricot muffins.”

 Here’s the link to: Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced

 The article is interesting, and the comments are fascinating … especially those from men who insist on their right to approach women they don’t know, who signal that they don’t want to be approached, because ‘otherwise they won’t know how nice I am’. And comments from women who insist that Starling is exaggerating because ‘I don’t feel threatened’. (or maybe that was mostly in another forum …)

Jeg skal  be om tillatelse til å oversette “Schrödingers voldtekstmann” til norsk etter hvert. Den er en veiledning til menn, og handler om hvordan man skal og ikke skal ta kontakt med kvinner man ikke kjenner. Poenget med tittelen er at når en fremmed mann tar kontakt med oss, har vi bare atferden hans å gå etter. Og hvis han viser at han ikke respekterer våre grenser eller vårt “nei” i den situasjonen, har vi ingen grunn til å tro at han vil respektere dem i andre situasjoner.  

HOST OR GUEST?

From “A Rage for  Revenge”,  book three in David Gerrold’s series 
“The War Against the Chtorr“. 
His chapter on responsibility is from book one: “A Matter for Men”.
Heartily recommended if you like SF, Gerrold is one of my favourite authors, and I reread his books often.  

Daniel Foreman is speaking: *

“You are either a guest on this planet or a host.

     Guests expect to be taken care of. Guests make messes without wondering who’s going to clean them up. Guests don’t pay their own way. We invite guests into our homes because we enjoy their company, not because we enjoy cleaning up after them. If the cost of cleaning up after a guest becomes prohibitive, the guest becomes an enemy. Remember that.
     Hosts are the people who take care of other people. Hosts are owners. Hosts clean up messes wherever they find them. Hosts keep their homes clean so that guests will feel welcome and taken care of.
     The question is: Are you a guest or a host on the planet Earth? Are you leaving a trail of trash in your wake? Dropped cigarettes, candy wrappings, crumpled paper, orange peels, soft drink containers, and all the other garbage of your life? Do your relationships look like Dachau? Are you leaving a trail of dead bodies behind you? It’s all the same. You are expecting someone else to clean it up. Or maybe you don’t care if it ever gets cleaned up.
     A host cleans up trash wherever he  finds it – it doesn’t matter who left it there. He is a host, it’s his responsibility. He enters a room and cleans it up because he can’t stand seeing the dirt on the floor. He takes care of his relationships because he can’t stand seeing people damaged, incomplete, and in pain. A host cares about the place he lives in.
     I live on Earth. Where do you live?”

* I think. I’ll have to check with the book to be sure, but first I have to find it.  

Slutwalk …

…  in London  …  on June 11th.

Norsk versjon her: Tøsemarsj i Oslo 
I wish I could be there – it is so important to show that rape and violence isn’t the victim’s private fault and shame.

I also wish for a diagnostic system that shows that after-effects of childhood mistreatment also are not the victim’s private fault and shame. But I’m not holding my breath. 
 

Link to: “Parental Alienation Syndrome"

Thanks again to Sigrun for linking this in her blog.

 Enda en takk til Sigrun, som nylig har lagt ut mange interessante lenker i sin blogg.
 

This argument was used, without the syndrome name, in an incest trial I attended here in Norway in the late 80s … with the added “evidence” that all the feminists following the trial, of whom I was one, were rabid man-haters who had helped brainwash small children into saying that “daddy puts his weenie in my butt”.
    The accused were acquitted.
    At the time I was hoping that things would get better. I’m not sure they have – and I appreciate everything professionals do to stem the tide of ignorance about child mistreatment.

by Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D:  Another Alarming DSM-5 Proposal

In Does Committing Rape Mean You Are Mentally Ill?, Kaplan writes about the DSM:

“I served as an advisor to two committees for the current edition and was appalled by how unscientific was the process of deciding, in essence, who is normal and what are the varieties of “abnormality” or “mental disorder.” As an insider, I saw in spine-chilling detail the ways that poor science was used when it suited those in charge and the ways that good research was distorted, ignored, or even lied about when that suited them. This wouldn’t matter so much, were it not for the vast suffering that being psychiatrically labeled has occasioned for so many. (psychdiagnosis.net) And yes, getting a label gets your insurance to pay for your therapy, but we should find a way to make it possible to get therapy paid for without having to label all suffering people mentally ill. There are ways to do that, and perhaps I will write about that in the future, but that will not change any time soon.”

Here’s a link to Paula Kaplan’s blog.

Litt på norsk:

Du kan finne mer om “parental alienation syndrome” fra mange forskjellige synsvinkler ved å gugle “foreldrefremmedgjøring”. Som beskrivelsen av “en pervers trekant” i “Inspirasjonstorget”  : “PAS er beskrevet som pervers trekant og blitt likestilt med et alvorlig familiedrama innen psykologien. PAS opptrer vanligvis etter en separasjon og det er moren som er blitt gjort ansvarlig for PAS. De første empiriske studiene viser at fenomenet er rettet mot menn. Professor RA Gardners oppdagelse er blitt godtatt av barnefaglig sakkyndige og ved familiedomstoler. PAS har i flere tilfeller blitt nevnt i domsavsigelser og brukt som begrunnelse for at mor er blitt fratatt omsorgen.”

Uten at denne betegnelsen ble brukt, var tankegangen med på å oppnå frifinnelse i en incest-rettssak på 80-tallet. Som tilleggsbevis ble det framholdt at jeg og de andre feministene som fulgte saken var rabiate mannehatere som hadde vært med på å hjernevaske småbarn til å si at “pappa stikker tissen sin i rumpa mi”. 

Den gangen hadde jeg et håp om at blindsonen ville bli mindre og forsvinne til slutt.