Friday, October 10, 2008

The life-long lasting effects of PAS noted in 1948?

I don't think it will come as a shock to anyone to find out that I'm an avid reader.

When I'm not online with the world of knowledge on many subjects at my fingertips I am curled up reading some psychology book or another, when we're not out riding.

At the present time I'm reading a book by Dr.Theodor Relik "Listening with a third ear" I highly recommend this book to anyone that has an interest in self help psychology or understanding others. I must mention this book was originally published in 1948. That tid-bit is very important in understanding why I needed to share this with you.

So why would my readers care what I'm reading?

Well, this morning as I was reading a chapter of the book... titled "Out of the mouths of babes" for the first time in this amazing book I was appalled at what I'd read.

The author was telling the reader about what he's come to learn from and about his patients as they remember details from their childhood in psychoanalysis....


"In other cases the special meaning of a child's behavior or talk
is not so easily grasped. There are times when no learning, no
expenditure of conscious intellectual energy, and no hard thinking
can penetrate to these lost ways of a child's emotional process.
There is just no other path to this hidden area
but unconscious identification with the patient as a child.
A man remembered that as a boy he once behaved very strangely
riding on bus with his mother.
A woman who has stepped down from bus while it was in motion,
fell on the pavement without being seriously hurt.
The little boy began to cry and protested desperately
that he had not pushed the woman down.
Actually he had been standing at some distance from her
so that it would have been impossible for him to attempt anything of the sort.
There was no doubt that his memory of the incident was correct.
The analytic interpretation of this childhood memory started from the
assumption that in some way his emotions must have been appropriate.

We learned later that at this time he felt very hostile
and aggressive toward his mother, who stood beside him in the bus.
In a serious marital conflict between his parents, he had sided with his father.
It seemed likely that his hostility against his mother had led to
aggressive wishes, which reappeared when the accident on the bus
occurred. His feelings toward his mother were displaced upon a stranger.

The woman who was hurt was unconsciously thought of as a mother-substitute.
When she was hurt he must have felt guilty,
as if he were really responsible because he had entertained evil wishes against his mother.
It was as if his wishes has become reality in the accident to the other woman.
There are many instances that show grown-up people behaving similarly when a crime
that have wished for is actually commited by others. [FN1]
I am chosing a relatively simple instance from my psychoanalytic practice
in order to demonstrate that only a return to the thought-world
of the child can solve the puzzle of a memory
that has become unintelligable to the person himself."
[FN1] See this writer's book, The unknown Murderer (New York: Prentice Hall, 1945)

When I realized this author was describing a child that as an adult is still suffering the effects ofbeing aligned with his father during a divorce I became sadened and outraged at the same time.
Can anyone see the damage to this adult child of alienation...
In case you missed it ...
He is still working through his being alligned with the aggressive parent during a divorce aka Parent Alineation and it's result on the child--
Parent Alienation Syndrome being described in this book by an author who takes pride in being a student of Freud, whom this writer describes as a great man among his peers with mediocre minds.
My question is then.. why would it take a good fifty years of this egergious child abuse before someone took a stand on the lifelong effects of being a child caught between an abuser and his/her abused other parent?
Side Note- Those that openly oppose PA/PAS need only read the above once again.. to undertand the damage they are causing innocent children by not admiting that PA/PAS is very real and VERY DAMAGING to the child.

2 comments:

rtmq said...

I find the whole debate over the reality of PAS, parental alienation syndrome, to be pointless. I had to spend hours and hours and hours when I was a child listening to two different women explain what a worthless soul my father was.

tnlisa said...

Just saying hello, keep blogging sister :)