Louis Proyect wrote: >Look, scientists have done quite a good job refuting the notion that >traumatic childhood events can be "repressed". If you want to familiarize >yourself with their work, the best place to look is in the books dealing >with all the preposterous charges made against parents and day care center >workers like Margaret Kelly Michaels in New Jersey, who spent years in >prison because children were coached by evil psychotherapists drunk on >Freudian dogma. This fucked-up notion of "repressed memories" is a >throwback to the Salem Witch trials, where "proof" of complicity with Satan >was established on the same footing. This repressed memory stuff is precisely anti-Freudian, since anyone who's been influence by Freud knows that memories are often deeply influenced by fantasy and contain all sorts of backward projections. A Freudian analysis of these abuse hysterias would focus on the fantasies of the adults involved, with their anxiety about infantile sexuality and projections of their own guilty desires. If you're going to attack Freud, please make an effort to understand what you're attacking. Doug
