Thursday 1 June 2006

Defining deviancy up.

"...Rather than believing, as we did for a hundred years under the influence of Freud, that adult neurosis results from the inevitable psychological traumas of sexual maturation, compounded by the largely innocent errors of parents, and crystallized in the (literally) fantastic memories of the patient, today there is a new dispensation.

Nowadays neurosis is the outcome not of innocent errors but of criminal acts occurring in the very bosom of the ordinary-looking family.

Seek and ye shall find: The sins of the father are visible in the miserable lives of the sons and daughters. Child abuse is the crime waiting only to be discovered, with, of course, the proper therapeutic guidance and bedtime reading.

It is the dirty little secret behind the white picket fence. And beside this offense, such once-regarded deviancies of family life as illegitimacy appear trivial and benign..."

From Defining Deviancy Up by Charles Krauthammer

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