Re: Hillman and Passy

[Guest guest]

" We've lost the place of Hell in our culture. . . . We are

desperate to rediscover it, and I'm convinced that in modern culture

the rediscovery of Hell emerges as: Childhood! Our childhood. . . .

This is why we're all priests, we're no longer psychologists. We're

delivering them from the maw of Hell. "

Dr. Stan Passy

" " So we have a new Hell in modern times called childhood and a

priest cult, a craft designed to save you from that Hell, all with

the aim of recoverying one's lost innocence. "

Dr. Hillman

Passy and Hillman are the authors of We've Had a Hundred Years

of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse, 1992.

> >

> > Ken suggests certain forms of child abuse might

> > produce 'totalitarianism'

> >

> > There are some problems with this hypothesis.

> >

> > 1) Specialists seldom use the 'totalitarian' concept

anymore.

> > Communist and fascist systems are now seen as very diverse from

one

> > another - in their origins, in their economies, in their

political

> > organization, in their social and class support bases, in their

> > ideological superstructures. If distinctive 'child rearing

> > practices' could cause distinctive political systems, then,

communist

> > and fascist systems would have to be produced by quite DIFFERENT

> > child-rearing regimens.

> >

> > 2) The idea that childrearing produces polity seems to fly in

the

> > face of common knowledge, eg,

> >

> > - prior to 1945, the Japanese polity was an aggressive

> > military dictatorship, which some consider to have been a variety

of

> > fascism. But after 1945, the Japanese quickly adjusted to

democratic

> > reform, rejecting the militarism of their recent past. But there

is

> > no evidence that this turn to democracy was preceeded by some

sort

> > of 'revolution in child care'.

> >

> > - during much of the Weimar period, Germany was a lax and

> > loose democratic Republic, and Berlin was one of the most

tolerant

> > and cosmopolitan cities in the world. With Hitler, Germany

changed

> > into the most frightful fascist state. But, again, after 1945,

> > Germany moved quickly back to democracy. Germany remains today a

> > fully democratic state. How can 'child rearing' account for this

> > liberal/fascist/liberal sequence? It is unlikely German child-

> > rearing varied much over the first half of the century.

> >

> > - recently, we witnessed the collapse of communist

regimes in

> > the former U.S.S.R., and in eastern Europe. Do we have any

evidence

> > at all that child-rearing patterns underwent a fundamental change

> > some years earlier, so as to account for this historic shift?

> >

> >

> > In hierarchical systems, higher order controls frequently

> > govern lower-level performance. If we decide to jog, we soon

find

> > ourselves sweating. But if we start to sweat, we do not suddenly

> > feel an urge to jog. Cognitive decisions are hierarchically

higher,

> > and control and regulate lower-level performance, but the pattern

of

> > causality cannot be reversed.

> >

> > Family life is equally unlikely to CAUSE political events

or

> > formations. Politics is a higher-level control, and needs to be

> > explained at its own level. The determinants of politics must be

> > explained sui generis, and not by reductionism. .

> >

> > " Totalitarian " systems are not caused by child-rearing

practices.

> > Wars are not caused by an 'aggression gene'. And economic

> > underdevelopment in Africa is not the result of a hot climate.

All

> > of these things have SYSTEMIC causes, that is, causes that lie

within

> > the history of the economic, social and political organization

> > itself.