In The Assault on Truth
http://jeffreymasson.com/books/the-assault-on-truth.html
presents his well researched conclusion that Freud backed down from presenting his findings around widespread sexual abuse in society after being basically shunned by his colleagues. Freud had encountered many women who had been sexually abused by family members and presented his findings in a specific paper. The problem with these findings is that it was not just abuse by poor people or by anomalous outsiders, but rather the abusers often were from middle class or upper class families and were various kinds of upstanding citizens in society. IOW there was a hidden pattern of abuse that was essentially a significant part of the culture, if a minority pattern.
Freud's collegues shut him out of presentations, congresses, etc. They were on teh way to damaging him utterly on a professional level.
Does this mean they all were abusers? Hardly.
Does this mean they knew the abuse was real and were conspiring to keep this out of public knowledge? mostly no.
Just like everyone else, they were threatened by the ideas. They were not ready to face them. A small % were likely abusers, but mainly, society was not, as a whole, ready to deal with this information.
And so we had to wait, as a society, a good number of decades before these patterns could come to light and victims could be received and believed.
Freud backed down, reformulated his findings to be the fantasies of the victims and was welcomed back into the various professional circles.
Society is constantly protecting itself from information that the majority does not want to know. Of course powerful individuals can steer this in many ways, but an enormous factor is the unfelt fear and lack of cognitive foundation of society as a whole that makes it easier to keep various CTs out of public awareness.
People do not want to know. Neither the 'man' on the street, nor the experts, who themselves have the same kinds of fears and cognitive biases of the people they sagely advise on matters of probability.
http://jeffreymasson.com/books/the-assault-on-truth.html
presents his well researched conclusion that Freud backed down from presenting his findings around widespread sexual abuse in society after being basically shunned by his colleagues. Freud had encountered many women who had been sexually abused by family members and presented his findings in a specific paper. The problem with these findings is that it was not just abuse by poor people or by anomalous outsiders, but rather the abusers often were from middle class or upper class families and were various kinds of upstanding citizens in society. IOW there was a hidden pattern of abuse that was essentially a significant part of the culture, if a minority pattern.
Freud's collegues shut him out of presentations, congresses, etc. They were on teh way to damaging him utterly on a professional level.
Does this mean they all were abusers? Hardly.
Does this mean they knew the abuse was real and were conspiring to keep this out of public knowledge? mostly no.
Just like everyone else, they were threatened by the ideas. They were not ready to face them. A small % were likely abusers, but mainly, society was not, as a whole, ready to deal with this information.
And so we had to wait, as a society, a good number of decades before these patterns could come to light and victims could be received and believed.
Freud backed down, reformulated his findings to be the fantasies of the victims and was welcomed back into the various professional circles.
Society is constantly protecting itself from information that the majority does not want to know. Of course powerful individuals can steer this in many ways, but an enormous factor is the unfelt fear and lack of cognitive foundation of society as a whole that makes it easier to keep various CTs out of public awareness.
People do not want to know. Neither the 'man' on the street, nor the experts, who themselves have the same kinds of fears and cognitive biases of the people they sagely advise on matters of probability.
