Thanks Rick for the summary and clarification of the original Rind et al. article. It confirms what I
more or less suspected.
What's also troubling, (and the other reason I posted it), in addition to the point you made about second parties misinterpreting or abusing the data for their own purposes, are the people who read these stories and see these APA "citations," which may serve to only further the misconceptions and/or dislike some have for psychology and psychologists in general.
Mike
At 10:54 AM 3/1/02 -0600, you wrote:
If you are referring to the Rind, Tromovich, and Bauserman article which appeared in Psychological Bulletin, yes, I have.---
The conclusions that the authors draw from the data and the implications that other sources (MassMedia, it appears in this case, and Dr. Laura and the North American Man-Boy Love Association in 1999) appear to be vastly different. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of a number of studies examining the effects (long-term and short-term) of sexual abuse on psychological functioning. The big conclusion that they draw is that sexual abuse is not as harmful as we try to make it out to be. Sexual abuse is postulated as a root cause for a number of psychological disorders, everything from depression to eating disorders to schizophrenia to dissociative identity disorder. The data would suggest, however, that most people recover appropriate psychological functioning, long-term, following sexual abuse. To me, that bolsters the idea that humans are resilient and that they can recover from any number of traumas, from psychological trauma to natural disaster.
They do, early on, speak to the need for new nomenclature to remove the stigma from the victim. This, I believe, is a push to stop blaming the victim for the sexual abuse as we know that it is the adult in the relationship who a) has higher levels of cognitive functioning (or at least should have higher levels) and b) initiates the encounters. (I read this as somewhat PC, BTW.)
As far as NAMBLA's position, I think they took the conclusion of the authors and distorted it to their position. The conclusion the authors draw is that sometimes early sexual experiences (here, I read in high school rather than in college) for boys can be good becasue it can lead to an increase in confidence and other positive personality characteristics. However, I do not recall the authors specifying that early sexual relationships between men and boys as qualifying.
In all honesty, my reaction after reading the entire article was, "Well, duh! That makes sense." I was, however, and still am, outraged at people blowing the findings out of proportion apparently without reading the article itself.
--Rick Grieve
Rick Grieve, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
Austin Peay State University
I am here to chew bubblegum and take names.---
- -----Original Message-----
- From: Mike Lee [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
- Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 11:46 PM
- To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences
- Subject: This is scarier than Ted Nugent!
- Anyone read this article?
- MassNews was one of the first newspapers in the country to report in 1999 that the American Psychological Association had published a study indicating that pedophilia can have a positive influence on a child.
- This article was made even more salient after having delivered a lecture today in "abnormal" psychology.
- http://www.rense.com/general20/divers.htm
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