February 2002

Let us assume for a moment that Lloyd deMause' "The Psychogenic Theory of History" correctly describes the human condition. His main points are as follows:

1) Human beings have no endogenous aggressiveness.
2) Maternal abuse is the cause of the sudden appearance, out of the blue (ex nihilo), of hatred, aggressiveness, violence and bellicosity in the child, and therefore in the adult.
3) Love is the only endogenous drive of the human being. Therefore, there cannot be any emotional ambivalence, unless the child is abused by his mother, giving way to the sudden appearance of hatred.
4) The Oedipus complex is an invention, whose only purpose is covering up maternal abuse.
5) Fathers are not important, because they are not the early take - cares of the child. If they are actively involved in the care of the child, they may be considered, at most, a clone of the mother.

From the first axiom, I learn also that there is no natural envy, jealousy, competitiveness, and eagerness to prevail, because it is difficult to imagine those sentiments without the aggressive connotation associated to them. Therefore, those too, are a consequence of maternal abuse.

From the second axiom, I learn that in a place where there are no abusing mothers, there will be also no need for moral and ethic standards, no need for laws nor tribunals, because no one will have any drive to damage his fellow man in any way.

From the third axiom, I learn that with the concept of "Love", Lloyd deMause does not intend the same as Freud, who defined "Love" as Eros, or the complex of energies at the service of the instinct of life because in the latter, too, there is an aggressive component. Otherwise, the human being would never be able to survive. So, it seems that Lloyd deMause' "Love" is a concept sterilized from every erotic component. It is quite a foggy and metaphysical concept, whose substance is very far from clear.
As for the denial of endogenous aggressiveness, he confuses us stating in his book: "as Melanie Klein discovered clinically, breaking out of the birth canal involves simultaneously breaking into the mother's body...." (Foundations of Psychohistory, Creative Roots, New York 1982, p.98), and he goes on, in the following page, describing how this natal fantasy is the source of babies' slaughters enacted in wars. I agree. Lloyd deMause confirms to us, in this way, that new - born babies are very aggressive and that there is not only anal sadism and oral sadism, discovered by Freud, but also natal sadism which, according to his own conclusions, is the more violent and aggressive of all.
Where is the genesis of this fantasy if not in the baby himself? Has it been implanted, a posteriori, by a mean analyst?
What Klein intended, of course, is that the baby is ambivalent towards his mother' womb, and that he harbors concomitant loving - lusting and aggressive drives towards the same object, namely, that he feels, at the same time, the drive of exiting the placenta and the drive of breaking back into it. This is the meaning of ambivalence: two conflicting drives at the same time.
The drive to be born (exiting the placenta) is part of Eros, while the drive of re-entering the womb is the expression of the opposite drive, which Freud called Todestrieb (the death-urge), and the Greeks called Thanatos. That is exactly what Melanie Klein intended, when she said that Love (Eros) and Todestrieb (Thanatos - death), and therefore aggressiveness, are concomitant in the newborn baby.
But since Lloyd deMause denies even the existence of affective ambivalence and of the Todestrieb, he had to dis-plant this aggressive component from the baby and to implant it into the placenta itself, which becomes, in this way, the sole responsible for wars and slaughters. If this is not a projection, I don't know what it is. As children say: "It is not me that have beaten John, it is my hand".
What Freud intended, and Melanie Klein has confirmed, is that the Todestrieb (the death-urge) is the tendency to return to a previous stage of evolution which, to the new born baby, is the stage previous to his own birth. As every regressive drive, its main components are indeed sadism and aggressiveness.

From the fourth axiom, ( Robert Sharf was quite clear on this issue in one of his posts), I learn that all Freud's work, through 60 years of analysis of patients and self analysis, was only a conspiracy, in order to save maternal honor from the disgrace of the exposure of the real nature of mothers, as the sole responsible for the mental diseases and sufferance of Freud's patients.
It is not clear why Freud should have embarked in such a project, in the first place. This axiom, unambiguously postulated by Robert Sharf, is the most puzzling of all, because deMause in his book says: "While the homosexual runs to men as a retreat from women, as a defense against the Oedipal conflict, the ambisexual has never really reached the Oedipal level, and uses boys and women almost without distinction" (Foundations of Psychohistory, p.54) This time I am really confused. If there is a retreat from the Oedipal level, so the latter was not a Freud's invention. Moreover the mechanism of "retreat", which should be correctly called "regression", is not totally unknown to them. But, as we have seen in another occasion, they use what they have learned from Freud only when it fits the theory.
If they know that a "retreat" from an erotic level of evolution (the Oedipal level) leads to a lower level of the same ladder of erotic evolution, why is it good only for pre Oedipal homosexuality, and not for all the rest (anal sadism and oral sadism) ? If the child is not "erotic", how is it that he becomes an homosexual, "retreating" from the Oedipal level ? What is the Oedipal level at all, sterilized from eroticism towards the mother and from aggressiveness towards the father?
Moreover, this sentence does not mean anything. In the same way I can say that the homosexual too, has never reached the Oedipal level, and has remained in pre Oedipal homosexuality.
Why the homosexual "retreated" while the ambisexual "has never reached"?. Both are at a lower level, since every pre - Oedipal child is ambisexual. The difference between the homosexual and the ambisexual is that the first, due to an injury at the Oedipal level, excluded women from the repertoire of his sexual menu, as correctly stated in the quotation, while the second, because of a different sort of accident, occurred to him at the Oedipal level too, has refrained from a clear choice and "retreated" too, remaining "floating" before the Oedipal threshold. In both cases it is a condition of regression, or "retreat". It seems that the homosexual regressed in a more pronounced way than the ambisexual, because he excluded the heterosexual choice. The ambisexual, not only did reach the Oedipal level, but his "retreat" has apparently been less severe.
Exactly the opposite of Lloyd's conclusion.
Stating that one has "retreated", while the second "has never reached", is using in a confused way tools which are not properly understood, because every human creature reaches the Oedipal level: it is part of the evolution of the specie. This is only one instance of how truths are pasted together with non truths, in order to induce the reader into believing that the conclusions are sound, and the theory is based on scientific evidence.

From the fifth axiom, I learn that since fathers have no real role in the development of the child (with no Oedipus complex and no process of identification they are only clones of mothers), their only endeavor should be baby sitting. And they are very lucky, because other mammals, as seals, rams, and apes, do not have even this fortune.

Now, on the footsteps of Bob, who occasionally engages in Platonic syllogisms in order to make a point, I shall engage in an exercise too. Plato, in his "Republic", describes to us how exactly it will look a society, built according to his own theory as for how the perfect society should be. Let's take a look at deMause' Republic, if  his theory could only be fully accepted and implemented:
As everything else, Placentas will be perfect. No more poisonous and suffocating, but only nurturous and supporting. Mothers, during pregnancy, will engage in relaxing exercises around the clock, oxygen inhalations and positive thoughts. We can assume that the baby, who has no more ambivalence towards his host, and feels perfectly at his ease there because of good maternal behavior, will not have any incentive to exit at all. He is not poisoned, he is not suffocating, and therefore, after nine months of pregnancy, he will just stay there. He will be spared the birth' trauma, cold and heat, infections and colitis, eczema and appendicitis, earthquakes and famines, floods and epidemics: all the "abuse" that life inflicts upon us, independently of the parents we had the disgrace of being entrusted to.
End of the story.
However, for the sake of the argument, let us assume that some of those fetuses, on the grounds of some particularly violent peristaltic movement of the mother, are expelled by force from the womb. Since they have no aggressive drives of any sort, they will LOVE their birth' trauma, the sudden cold, the aching contractions of their lungs, the blinding light, their new found helpless dependence on external factors. They will immediately engage in Platonic logic: "since my mother was so a perfect placenta and a good mother, I have no reason for harboring any aggressiveness and hatred for her. She did what she could, and she is not to blame for this unexpected "abuse"."
So, in deMause' Republic, we shall have not only perfect non - aggressive babies, but also perfect philosophers at the same time because he succeeded in outlawing the stress inherent to birth. At the chemical level the birth - event is probably a repetition, at a higher level, of the stress experienced by the first cell which, because of a traumatic event that we still do not understand, transformed from inorganic into organic. Even if we are delivered in the best laboratory condition possible, there is no way that this event can be prevented from being stressful. May be that it is even a necessary precondition to a healthy subsequent development, because it will become the model for every separation, necessary to the implementation of life itself.
Now the next stage:
Since erotic drives at this stage are out of the question, the baby's mouth will be used only as the extremity of a feeding tube. His drive for the breasts is lustless, eroticless, and he sees in them only a gigantic cake filled with food. Perfect: as an adult, after having  learned to eat with a fork, he will never feel any erotic drive towards female breasts. Even better: he will never kiss a female, because, if his mouth is not an erogenous zone, why kissing in the first place? If "erotic" means only genital, the child will become "erotic" not before puberty age, the erotic excitement at the Oedipal stage having being denied, at the service of the denial of the conflict concomitant to it.

Now, after the first two years of life, spent in this perfect limbo, having  experienced no aggressiveness of any sort, nor any erotic feeling, the child will be exposed to a thrilling experience:

"...when my son was two years old, those hundred of hours I spent with him pretending we were babies in mommy's belly, crawling around in the dark under the bedclothes and pretending to fall off the bed crying "Help  ! Save me!"..."  (Foundations of Psychohistory, pp.99-100).

Therefore, even those normal babies, who had so far managed to successfully repress the birth's trauma, will be induced by an obvious over stimulation (hundred of hours) into a condition of regression into mental fetal contents. Inducing into a regression by over stimulation, is as abusing as preventing the normal development through deprivation.
I don't see the difference between this sort of abuse and repetitive enemas,  forced on children. An enema, over stimulating the anal erotic zone, induces a regression into anal contents. This is the reason why children, who have overcome that stage, so strongly oppose enemas. They just don't want to be induced into a regression. If forced, they will eventually experience pleasure from the disgraceful experience. From this erotic pleasure, forced on him again and, in this way fixated, comes the repetitive pattern of the abused - abusing cycle.
Only an anal sadist parent, who has regressed to that stage of development, will impose on his child enemas, in the trial to pull back his son to the level where he himself is. This is the all substance of education: to help a child to climb to higher stages of psychosexual organization. A father will encourage his son to identify with him and reach his own level. If he is a mature adult, he will encourage his son to reach maturity, and if he is at a lower stage of development, he will try to pull his son back. A parent who will force his child into the kind of game described by Lloyd, witnesses of being in a condition of regression in the same place, into which he was forcing his son, too. No matter how he is rationalizing his behavior.
The statement that "...the endless game seemed to give him a strong sense of the pleasure of mastery", is an obvious rationalization, as for whose the pleasure was.
Every forced regression, eventually will find its solution in triggering again the original pleasure who had been overcome. The outcome is a fixation. Psychiatrists who have tried to cure war traumata, by forcing the patient into restaging the original trauma, have only succeeded in rendering permanent a condition which might have been only temporary. Not to mention a normal child, who has no pathologic symptoms.
This is an instance of how partial and fragmented understanding is worse than no knowledge at all, because, in this way, the former becomes a substitute for normal common sense, which is much better.
At this point, I want to underline that I would never enter personal details were it not for the fact of the matter that he published them himself, as an instance of how parents should bring up their children. If Lloyd deMause publicly makes of himself a model, he cannot demand that this model should not be questioned.

Now, the next stage.
Since in deMause's Republic there are no erotic drives towards the mother and no Oedipal level (I am still confused on what has been the final decision on this issue), there is also no conflict with the father, and no need of identifying with him. If the child is not craving for the mother, why to identify with the father who owns her? (does he?).
Why the father as a model? Why models at all? Fathers will continue to be relegated to the fringes of the main camp, singing and dancing, awaiting to be called to their task of baby sitting. No conflict, no identity, no mature Ego, no unneeded ethic values, no inhibition.  In short: no society.
But also no Reality Principle, which is dependent on the inhibition of drives, due to the presence of the father. If the child has no antisocial drives, why inhibition in the first place? Why education, if the child knows only Love and empathy ? No need for art, poetry, music, because these are sublimate ways of channeling otherwise antisocial and erotic aggressive drives.
Some computer lessons are more than enough.

This is the perfect society. Mothers and children dancing in the fields, occasionally picking up flowers, with no drives, conflicts and inhibitions: the Realm of the Pleasure Principle with unlimited instant gratification of every need. It is not very different from the Islamic fantasy of the Paradise of the Martyrs, after all.
Actually, it is much worse because, in the Islamic one, the fantasy of the seventy two dancing Virgins is achieved through a reconciliation and a Communion with the missing Father while, in the Psychogenic Theory' Paradise, it is achieved through the outright denial of his very existence.

The point is that this is not a fantasy. It is an hallucination.
And such becomes a fantasy, where there is a total withdrawal from the Reality Principle.
In a fantasy, the person is aware that this is a fantasy.
In a dream, the dreamer awakens, and becomes aware that that was only a dream.
Only in an hallucination there is no differentiation between Pleasure and  Reality, and the one who is hallucinating "knows" that what he is hallucinating is true. And in order to prove to others that his hallucination is reality, he begins collecting "scientific" evidence. For the sake of this task, he will collect even real facts, that have, nevertheless, no connection with the alleged outcome.
We have clearly seen it in the Islamic terror affair.
We have before us two facts
1) Arab mothers abuse their children
2) Arab men commit suicidal terror
However, as I have proved in my previous paper "Hatred for Women",  there is no correlation between the two. The source of Arab suicidal terror is completely different from the alleged cause of maternal abuse. It is the paranoia, produced by the lost object homosexuality towards the missing and missed Father.
But he "knows" that mothers are guilty. And, if I say that the cause of Arab terror are not the mothers, he responds with an article in which he proves that Arab mothers are bad ones. I had never said that Arab mothers are good ones. I said that there is no correlation between the two facts: mothers and suicidal terror.
In the same way we have other facts which are concomitant but do not depend one on the other. For instance we know that 1) Arabs eat kabab and shishlik 2) Arabs commit suicidal terror. However I don't think that anyone will suggest that Arabs commit suicidal terror because they eat kabab and shishlik.
But this point will never be grasped by a person who is hallucinating a "scientific fact".
In his book,  "Foundations of  Psychohistory", there are many  truths, like the truth that children are commonly abused, pasted together with  half - truths and non - truths, but the overall theory is an hallucination, because there is no correlation between the causes and the effects that he exposited. The correlation between the two is the hallucinatory moment.
As for the substance of the hallucination: At this point, it seems very clear: a perfect world with no fathers, in which children and mothers live in symbiosis, in the Nirvana of unlimited Love.
However, the theory, which denies the Oedipus complex and its erotic - aggressive genesis, has produced its mirror imago: the hallucination of the expulsion of the father and the incest, sterilized from every erotic aggressive connotation, and through the enactment of a regression. The same outcome, but castrated from the revealing components, and at a lower erotic stage.
This is also the condensation, which is the byproduct of every regression: the primary cause of the Psychogenic Theory is a regression from the Oedipal level, and the very denial of its existence, and the outcome is a settlement at a lower level, in this case in the placenta itself (or herself?).
If there is a regression from the Oedipal - genital level, the actual fantasy will no more be an Oedipal one but a fetal one. As I sustained in my paper "Hatred for Women and Islamic Terror", when a patient is on a psychoanalyst' s couch, for many years the fantasies that will emerge will relate to his actual condition, and never to the primary cause which led to it. The full consciousness of the patient's actual condition is only the first stage in the psychoanalytical treatment. The real work begins only with the motivation of the patient to climb back from the actual condition of regression. Only at the end, he will discover the primary cause, which led to the regression.
Not only we have seen how, through the mechanism of regression, Allah became a mommy (how he became also an aunt, it is still a mystery), but if we go to "Foundations of Psychohistory" we can see how, in the same way, deMause manipulated the interpretation of symbols.
If, as the say goes, "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder", the interpretation of symbols is, too.
In his book he describes many cartoons where the correlation with the womb and the placenta is manifest. Being manifest, they are no symbols anymore and can be accepted as such. However, when he brings symbols like trees, military standards, and even the Cross itself, and he states that these represent the placenta, I was as puzzled as when he said that Allah is a mommy.
To me, those are phallic symbols, AS the twin towers, erected in defiance into the sky, ( cf. the biblical story of the Babylonian Tower which enraged the Lord), because a tree, a standard, a Cross and the skyscrapers, are obvious symbols of the erected penis. Why the Lord was so enraged at the sight of the Babylonian tower if not because it represented an erected penis. As such, it was interpreted as a sign of defiance towards the Lord. Freud explained that the phallic symbols on flags and standards are symbols of the genital. There are primitive tribes which, before engaging battle with the enemy, they expose their erected penis towards him in despise and defiance. Once, at a soccer game, I saw one of the players doing the same.
Only in a condition of regression, a penis will become a placenta, because the level of interpretation of a symbol is parallel to the psychical level of evolution of the beholder.

The stated above leads us again to the question of methodology: Revelation, vis a vis scientific work based on empirical experience. Freud found, in sixty years of psychoanalytic work with his patients, that erected objects, like umbrellas, towers, knives, trees and so on, represent the erected penis.
It makes a lot of sense to me, but I would not rely on my "hunch", had it not been for his empirical work, because my "hunch" could well be the result of a projection. If Lloyd deMause wants to sustain that a cross, a tree and a standard are placentas, with no empirical experience whatsoever, he must also explain how he reached this conclusion. That he "feels" that way, it is not good enough to us. But he did not have to: he had the Revelation, like St. Paul on the road to Damascus. And we shall return to the astonishing similarity between St. Paul's and Lloyd's apostolic work, because both are the product of the same hallucination.
We have seen that the only way he had of "knowing" that the afore described symbols are placentas, and not an obvious phallic symbol, is that he "perceives" them as such. He could have said that those are obvious phallic symbols, that, in the process of psychic regression of the above described cultures, transfigured into placentas. And we have seen that, due to the mechanism of condensation enacted in a process of regression, it is indeed possible.
But he did not.
The reason is that he does not really know what a regression is.
From all his work, it is clear that he thinks, or he "knows", that a fetus which is "abused" in the placenta, mentally remains a fetus, and will re-enact placental contents for ever, that a child who is abused at the pot will repeat what he has suffered on the pot, a spanked child will spank back his mother, and so on.
A very linear, simple, and incorrect way of thinking.
What is driving those children, now adults, to repeat their early trauma, it is not clear at all.
It seems that his basic assumption is that those children remain "frozen" into their early trauma, and are boxed into repeating them. Something between Nietzsche's "Eternal Recurrence" and Freud's "Coercion to Repeat". The first is a bright intuition, with no physiological theoretic frame, and the second can be comprehensive only in the general context of Freud's libido theory, which Lloyd did not adopt. What Freud and Abraham discovered, and that somehow is not understood or it is just disregarded, is that the fixation of erotic energies to a stage of psychosexual evolution (anal, oral, and now also placental) is the result of a regression to that stage from a higher level (meaning Oedipal), and does not occur on the way up. This is the basic misunderstanding which is at the base of the Psychogenic Theory. It should have been obvious, because if an anal sadist were such because he had been abused at the anal stage, or a borderline enacts again the fetal trauma because he had been abused in the placenta, no one would have an erection. The fact of the matter that sadists have erections means that somehow they had also previously reached the Oedipal - genital stage, but having regressed from that level, now they are erotically aroused only through sadist fantasies: controlling and violence (anal), destruction of the object (oral sadistic) and killing babies in wars (placental - see above what Melanie Klein has said of the endogenous aggressiveness of babies and of the death-urge, and how she has been misquoted ).
Therefore, according to the Psychogenic Theory, abused children do not regress from a datum psychosexual level into a previous one, as Freud has proved through empirical work, but they remain, every time, at the same stage where the abuse occurs. No evolution, no articulate development, no subsequence of psychic events. Since he thinks that children have no erotic nor aggressive drives, there is also no unfolding of those into an articulate development. Children become, in this way, only passive receptors of parents abusive ways, which befall on a vessel empty of their own drives (tabula rasa).
In order to make his theory stand, he had to deny all the main points which has been discovered in one hundred years of psychoanalytical research: the death-urge, the sadistic component of the oral and anal stage, and even the sadistic element of the fetal condition, even if he himself describes it so well in his own work. According to his own work, the fetus is very sadistic and aggressive, but to deMause it is not he, it is the placenta. It has never occurred to him that the poisonous placenta and the devouring goddess are a projection of the baby, and not an objective fact of life. But, as we have seen, the incapacity of distinguishing between fantasy and reality is the all substance of hallucinations.
Now we can understand also the peculiarity of his methodology: he makes a statement out of the blue, and then, on one hand he enlists facts which may well be true, but do not correlate nor prove the statement, and on the other hand he excommunicates every theory, person or finding that invalid his assumptions. If Freudian death - urge contradicts his axiom that the baby cannot be aggressive, he excommunicates it and he misquotes Melanie Klein. If he did not outlaw her, too, it is because he needed her for his theory of the splitting and projection. But he misunderstood this issue too. Melanie Klein found that a baby, at the oral stage, splits and projects (the good breast bad breast affair), and therefore we can correctly assume that the genesis of this mechanism is, indeed, at the stage in which the baby needs a breast, well before the Oedipal level. Therefore, if an adult is a paranoid who splits and projects, deMause concludes that he had been abused by his mother when he was a baby. After all, only a mother can breast feed. But this is not the way it happens. Only a regression from an higher level, because of a serious injury at that level, will bring the child to fixate his energies into the oral stage. It does not mean that the injury, which caused the regression, is because of the mother. It only means that he regressed to the stage of maternal breast feeding. But since he has a theory, he must also misunderstand and misquote the sources. First the dogma, and only afterwards all the rest. In this instance too, we are dealing with Religion and Revelation, and not with scientific work.
The same as for much of his quoting. At page 249 of Foundations of Psychohistory, deMause says:
"The degree of Freud's own problems with the portrayal of the mother as the initial source of  anxiety ....can be seen in his refusing to read more than the opening section of Rank's 1923 book, instead giving it to his patients to read and asking them to tell him their opinion of it".
First of all, during psychoanalytical treatment patients don't read books, because it will only strengthen their Ego defenses. But that is a minor point. All the statement induces us to think that Freud rejected the theory of the birth's trauma altogether, without even testing it. It is not true. As Jones reports, Freud read Rank's book. He discussed it with him. He accepted the theory that the birth trauma is the first model for later anxieties. He only expressed serious reservations that the natal event, important as it might be, is the cause of neurosis. And I agree with him. It is not. But here too, he misquoted, and gave an uncalled for impression that Freud had resistance in recognizing the birth's trauma and had "problems with the portrayal of the mother as the initial source of anxiety". Freud correctly understood that the re-enactment of the birth trauma is triggered by a regression and it is not the primary cause. Something that deMause does not accept. He is entitled to have his own opinion and to differ from Freud, but he is not entitled to distort the facts for the sake of his theory. Freud explained many symbols in dreams as being mnemonic traces of birth and fetal life. Now I shall quote directly from Jones:

The situation was greatly complicated by the appearance about the same time, December 1923, of a far more disturbing book by Rank entitled The Trauma of Birth. Neither Freud nor Ferenczi had read this beforehand, though they knew Rank was writing it, and it came as a great surprise to the rest of us. Freud had long thought that the painful experience of being born, when suffocation inevitably brings the infant into mortal peril, was a prototype of all later attacks of fear (Angst). Rank, now, applying the word "trauma" to this event, maintained that the rest of life consisted of complicated endeavors to surmount or undo it; incidentally, it was the failure of this endeavor that was responsible for neurosis. The book badly and obscurely composed, was written in a hyperbolical vein more suitable for the announcement of a new religious gospel [exactly like Lloyd's book]...Clinically it followed that all metal conflicts concerned the relation of the child to its mother, and that what might appear to be conflicts with the father, including the Oedipus Complex, were but a mask for the essential ones concerning birth. (Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, abridged, Basic Books, New York 1961 p.418)

The ideas of Rank had germinated slowly. It stayed in my mind that in March 1919, when I met him with his pregnant wife in Switzerland, he had astonished me by remarking in a dismal tone that men were of no importance in life; the essence of life was the relation of between mother and child (Ibidem).

Freud's varying response to Rank throw an interesting light on his personality. His initial response to The Trauma of Birth was to mistrust it. Very soon, however, this gave way to the pleasure he felt that Rank had made a discovery of fundamental importance, and his interest turned to the problem of how it was to be woven into the previous fabric of psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, as time went on...he became more and more doubtful about the value of Rank's work. This oscillation, with at times his contradictory comments on the theory, naturally made it hard for others to know what was really his opinion (Ibidem. p.419)

Now for the second, and incomparably more interesting book, The Birth Trauma by Rank. I do not hesitate to say that I regard this work as highly significant, that it has given me much to think about, and that I have not yet come to a definitive judgment about it.  We have long been familiar with womb fantasies and recognized their importance...(pp. 421 -2)

Back to baby innocence.
In reality the child is a very active creature, overwhelmed by erotic and aggressive drives, at every stage of his development, and he interprets parents' abuse as a negative feedback to his needs. Since he has no other way for knowing what is good and what is bad, except than his parents' feedback, he feels that the erotic drive, which encountered such a fierce opposition, it is bad and must be contracted and repressed.
When the Oedipal child experiences the first erections, these are erotic energies, which flows from other parts of the body, where they had been until then, into the genitals.
I understand that Lloyd deMause does not believe in children  erections, so, according to him, when the "first" occurs, at last, at least at puberty age, this is again out of the blue (ex  nihilo) and  for divine intervention (deus  ex machina).
I'll bring only one instance as evidence how "abuse", real or perceived, induces into evolutionary regression. I assisted how a six year child, who was a very clean and normal child, when his parents divorced, he began again peeing in bed, after many years since he had been, in due time, weaned from this evolutionary stage. Another, an eight year child, unjustly accused of a misdeed, defecated in his pants. I am sure that many parents can confirm that this is a very common pattern of  behavior in children. Others, in periods  of sadness, return  again to the habit of sucking  their finger. And even normal adults, when abandoned and alone, return to masturbation. If in jail, sometimes to homosexuality. Those are all pre Oedipal erotic stages of evolution.
We all know the jokes on the lonely shepherd who has sexual intercourse with his sheep. Erotic love for animals and pets is indeed an evolutionary stage which precedes Oedipal infatuation.

Now some comments on the word "abuse",  which is the most abused thing in all the Psychogenic Theory.
According to Lloyd, there is only one kind of abuse: intentional parental abuse (especially maternal). If so, the right way for preventing it, it is by preaching.
Doing so, he restored Sin into the world.
Freud liberated us from  the sense of guilt, because he explained to us that our erotic and aggressive drives are natural, nothing to be ashamed of, and that they can be colonized by a mature ego, and sublimated into constructive endeavors. He also explained to us how the unconscious works, and that an abusive parent has been also an abused child (even if not every abused child becomes an abusive parent), therefore he can be considered indeed responsible, but not guilty in the common normative aspect. For sure you cannot transform an anal sadist or a borderline into a loving parent by preaching. Sometimes, long and energy consuming analysis can, but most of the times it cannot either.
So, the  "intention" is an unconscious one. It is part of the psychosomatic tissue of the person, who cannot act otherwise, no matter how much he is preached into. A woman, who is incapable of loving, because that is the way she is, she will also be an unloving mother. Her being a mother is not differentiated from her being a person. As Abraham said, "it is worthwhile to invest great energies in psychoanalysis because the benefit will be felt also by the next generations and not only by the patient himself", and psychoanalysis is the opposite of preaching, which is presumptuous, self righteous and futile.
Moreover, psychoanalysis shows that there is an organic continuity between the child and the adult, and not a polarization into two opposite instances, as Lloyd deMause has transformed them. In his world there are two opposing forces: Good  and Evil,  Child  and Parents, the Kingdom of Light and  the Kingdom of Darkness. And he did it by denying the existence of endogenous aggressiveness and of erotic drives from the very beginning of human life.
He did the same as St.Paul, with an inversion.
S. Paul, too, introduced the Sin into the world. He called it the Original Sin, implying that we are all guilty by our own conception. The Sin is an erotic one, and, as Theodor Reik explains in "Myth and Guilt", it is also an aggressive one, i.e. :The Murder of  the Father, induced by incestuous drives.
Therefore, Lloyd  resolved the problem: he denied the endogenous aggressiveness and erotic drives in children (BTW, Jung tried to do the same), and so made them sinless. However, the Sin obviously remained, because he displaced it into parents: two polarized moral instances, the sinless children and the sinful adults.
The same religion, with an inversion.
S. Paul preached to the adults: "repent, and you will be accepted into eternal life. By accepting the right message you will be saved from the very original sin of your conception: eroticism and aggressiveness". Interestingly enough, the repentance is acted out accepting the immaculate conception of the Child = his sinlessness.
Lloyd preaches: "Repent, and you will be saved from your sinful adulthood, and you will become all innocent children". Here too, the repentance is acted out by accepting the alleged lack of erotic and aggressive drives in the child. As he once said: "Psychohistorians require that there is no death drive [endogenous aggressiveness] in children". He did not say, then: "The  Psychogenic Theory  requires...". He said: "Psychohistorians require...", meaning that his theory IS Psychohistory. That there were psychohistorians before his theory, and  still there are, who do not worship his theory, it is not even considered.
The True Religion is one, and, having had the Revelation, all the other psychohistorians are only heretic sects, who have lost their  way. The two religions have the same aim, to distillate life from the Original Sin through repentance, induced by preaching.
Now  we can  understand also why the denial of the Murder of the Father and of the Oedipal level  is so important: because their  recognition  will  unconsciously bring back the Original Sin, from the adult to the child again. And now we can also begin seeing the primary cause, which is behind the regression inherent in the Psychogenic Theory: The sense of  guilt. In order  to prevent the sense of guilt, the Oedipal level is outright denied.
As we have previously seen, the right way of passing  through the Oedipal bottleneck is by identification with the father. Since the Psychogenic Theory is a regression from that level, straight into the placenta, fathers become un-needed and superfluous. The primary cause is the incapability to pass through the Oedipal  bottleneck, and I have hinted in "Hatred for Women" why, at this time, it is quite a common pattern in today America.
We can also see how the condensation of the regression is working. Since the Oedipal level is denied, mothers are no more desired women, but, on the way downward, become monstrous placentas. In the Psychogenic Theory we have no lusted  women. We have only responsible breasts and guilty placentas. The  primary cause was the incapability of identifying with the father, and therefore of lusting the mother as a woman, but the final outcome is the hallucination of children and mothers in the symbiosis of eternal Love, this time attached at the breast, or even in the placenta itself/herself. As Bob said: "The  Oedipus complex is only a way for covering up maternal abuse".
Now we can decode the precise meaning of this sentence: "we cover up the Oedipus complex, in order to remain alone with maternal "abuse"". The word "abuse" comes here also as synonym of "relationship". Since we are told again and again, in every context, how much everything is a consequence of maternal abuse, it is difficult not to receive the impression that "abuse" stands also for "bond". And indeed, while the  word "Love", after having being denuded  from every erotic content, became a sterile stereotype, pallid, foggy and unclear, and, meaning everything, means nothing, the words "maternal abuse",  in Lloyd-Bob  phraseology, acquire a very vivid and alive connotation. Thanks to the detailed descriptions of mothers cannibalizing their children, mutilating  them, abandoning, spanking, and so on, the  word "maternal abuse" became so juicy and colorful, to be easily used as a substitute for "maternal bond". "Love" is always mentioned, but never defined. We don't know what Lloyd means by "Love": it is a password, exactly as in the Gospels. He has never explained to us what is "Love".
However, as for "abuse", what a richness of detailed descriptions !
And it is not casual. There is a reason.
In a process of regression the attitude towards the desired object cannot be positive. It must be negative, and perceived as "abusing". A human being, induced into regression, will always feel abused. And indeed it is so, because the purpose of life is climbing  higher, and not sliding lower. A regression will always produce a sensation of anger and frustration. I brought as an example a child who is forced to receive enemas, or an unjustly accused child, who defecates in his pants. In a condition of regression there are no good breasts or good placentas, but only bad and monstrous ones.

Furthermore,  in the  Psychogenic Theory, as there is no place for fathers, there is no place for women, too. It is the mature adult, who has no place in the theory. I find only mothers, not as women, but as general "caretakers", and  much more concrete breasts and placentas, which, as such, they cannot be conceived as positive but only as abusing, since every regression is an abuse by itself. In a process of regression there cannot be good mothers, good breasts and good placentas, because the regression itself is bad to the one experiencing it. Besides, the needs themselves are always greater than the capability of the outer world to satisfy them, due to the fantastic component of them. A breast will never be able to bring a baby to complete erotic satisfaction as, at the Oedipal level, a mother will never be able, nor she is supposed to, to bring erotic satisfaction to her child. The level of desire will always remain higher than the achieved satisfaction, and so it should be. A certain level of frustration in achieving satisfaction is healthy to the child because it initiates him to the Reality Principle, while unrestrained instinct gratification is damaging, because it motivates him into remaining stuck into the Pleasure Principle. We can also see the high component of fantasy in the theory itself. It is the searching for good mothers, that obviously cannot be found. Only little children think according to these parameters: good mommies or bad mommies..

Back to the intentionality of the abuse.
If a person is intentionally abusing another, he is a monster, and should be immediately arrested.
I assume that most of the parents abusing their children are not doing it consciously, but, even in this case, if the substance of the abuse is criminal, they should be arrested. In any case the abuse must be at least prevented, and if the damage to the child is more serious than the actual separation from the abusing parent (a very serious abuse by itself), there is no alternative.
So far, I believe that we all agree. However, let's analyze a little more in depth what an abuse actually is. To Lloyd, it is intentional damage inflicted to the child.
I believe that we all agree that that is, for sure, abuse.
However, that is not the issue. Evolutionary regression is only very rarely caused by intentional abuse.
Let's agree that an abuse is everything that induces a human being into an evolutionary regression, by deprivation of what he needs, or by over - stimulation of what he does not need. Having already deducted intentional abuse, we remain with a lot of abuse that is unconscious, casual, and mostly not considered abuse at all, but still having the same effects. A borderline mother will not be able to love her child as she is unable to love everybody else too. Is she an abusing mother? Of course she is, but she cannot be anyone else but herself. Punishing her will not solve the problem.
If we take the actual situation in America, where most of the marriages end out in divorce and in the destruction of the family, what kind of abuse can be considered worse? However, is anybody suggesting the prohibition of divorce? On this issue I tend to sympathize with the Catholic Church, but I am aware that it is not a viable solution.
What will prefer a child, being occasionally spanked, or seeing the marriage of his parents falling apart, and being separated from one of them, usually from the father, in the moment when he needs him most? I have no doubt as for what he would respond.
In movies, we see how divorcing parents repeat again and again to their confused children: "I love you", "We love you", "We still remain your parents", "I feel, he feels, she feels...". A lot of feelings and Love (another super-abused word), that are only a masquerade, in order to cover up the lack of real substance. Children are not reassured by repetitions, and they will feel cheated and deceived, no matter how high grades their parents give to themselves as good and non - abusive parents. Little children blame themselves and their own erotic drives for the dissolution of their family and therefore they will be induced into a psychosexual regression.
And what about seeing his father's authority debased by his mother's "women rights" ? Why "Love",  "women rights" and "abuse" are the most outspoken words in America, where it not for the fact that they don't mean anything ? How men and women, who divorce and remarry two or three times in their life, can be good parents? They can, at best, be good interchangeable spare parts. All are so concerned about the child not being abused, that society itself is inflicting on him the worst abuses of all, and through parents that are very aware of his rights, but not of his needs. Nobody asks him anyway, because we have a lot of theories, and now even the Psychogenic one.
I had a feeling, for the first time, that something in America is getting wrong, some years ago, when the film "Kremer versus Kremer" received the Oscar prize, instead of "Being There".
The first was a sweet and sour mediocre film, with a lot of crocodile tears, to the point that the spectators ended up feeling wet, while the second was a marvelous, delicate film, deliciously humorous and spirited. The prize went to the rhetoric of "women rights", which are so compelling that Meryl Streep (in the movie) had to divorce and ruin her family and her child, in the name of the new Moloch. And everybody cried, moved to the bones by this compelling and irresistible conflict, which had to be acted out, as if it were a new kind of religious sacrificial rite. As the Athenians cried and identified with the Hero, assisting to Aeschylus' "Seven Against Thebe" and Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex", now Americans cry and identify with the Heroine, who is compelled to ask for a divorce, even if her husband, according to the script, was quite a nice guy. She could not wait for another five or seven years, until her son grows up from the critical stages of his development. She had to do it now. Like in Greek tragedy, destiny cannot be postponed.

These are the symptoms of an entire society which has regressed from the culture of the family into the cult of personal rights. Since a woman has no more a role as such, she must concentrate on her rights, otherwise she will end up lost in a void of lack of identity.
Therefore it is a psychohistorical moment. The problem is the regression from the Oedipal level and its mental contents. Lloyd deMause is the envoy of the people, who has been delegated to formulate the theory for the erasing of the imago of the Father from American landscape.
He has described so well the substance of the Phallic Leader, who is the one interpreting the collective needs of the group and acting them out, in  the Name of the People.
However, a Phallic leader is not only a politician. It is also one who builds a theory for the needs of the masses. In that too, he is following the footsteps of St. Paul.
The two religions appeal to the senses, and not to intellect: who will dare to dispute a theory which apparently is so in favor of the child ?!  We all are in favor of our children, but now we are demanded to prove it, accepting the Theory. So the unconscious but obvious equation becomes: the one who is against the theory is against children. It is populist, because it gives to the people what the people want: no more menacing fathers, but only sensuous mothers, even if only in their monstrous placental transfiguration. As we have seen the transfiguration itself is not the primary content, but only a necessity of the regression. Legends, tales, and movies tell of sensuous women who transfigure into monsters. Even the Medusa was a very attractive woman, and a horrific monster at the same time. Meaning, she was a sensuous beautiful woman who, according to the myth, had been lusted by the god Poseidon himself, but in the process of regression to placental contents experimented by the Hero (Perseus), transformed into a monster.

While fantasizing  an Almighty Father is a projection into the heaven of the almighty patriarchal father who was on earth, and therefore is a projection with no material truth in it, but with a nucleus of historical truth, fantasizing the Kingdom of the Child has an hallucinatory element, because it has no material nor historical truth in it. The kingdom belongs to the father and not to the child. The child will become a king, only identifying with the father and becoming himself one. A child who is dreaming of becoming an adult and a king is fantasizing, and all children indulge in this fantasy, but an adult who fantasizes a child as king is hallucinating, because he is regressing, not only from the Oedipal - genital level, but also from the Reality Principle.
However, there is a basic difference between Christianity and the Psychogenic Theory.
Christianity has been redeemed from becoming a hallucination by its strong roots in antiquity and in the Classic world. Pre - Classic and Classic Greece, and its culture, permeated by the strong reminiscences of the Primal Murder, as expressed in Aeschylus' tragedy, and even more clearly by Sophocles, and since then in every tragedy, like in Shakespeare's work, which deals mainly with the Oedipal complex and the murder of the father - figure, are the anchor which prevented Western culture from degenerating into the hallucination of the Kingdom of the Child. The Christ ascended to Heaven in order to dethrone the Father, but the conflict is resolved in a compromise, and He sits at the right of the Father (Dextera Patris). This compromise is pivotal to mental health. A compromise that Islam could not work out, because we are dealing there not with a present Father, as in Christianity and Judaism, but with an absent one, Deus Absconditus (The Hidden God), as He was defined in the early Middle Ages when, also in the West, the abandoning mode produced missed fathers, and, as a consequence, so many hallucinations.
It took another two thousand years, for the West, to generate a theory which totally brushes aside the image of the Father, and, with him, the last traces of sanity.
As we see, my exposition is the exact anti-thesis of the Psychogenic Theory. The latter sustains that all what is old and antique is bad, and only what is modern is good, and I am sustaining, by the way of paradox, that all what is new is bad, and that the only traces of sanity and wisdom are to be searched in the past. Of course this is a paradox, drawn to its extremity (ad absurdum), but the point is there. Not all what is new is bad, but it is bad in the measure that sets us apart from the original truth. If, in modern America, truth is repressed more in depth than in Aeschylus' Greece, to me the latter was much better.
It seems that human evolution comes in waves and counter waves, and certainly not in the linear, simplistic way described by Lloyd deMause.
If we take the chart, (p.107 and again at p.136 in "Foundations of Psychohistory") of the six psychogenic modes, it corresponds to the Stock Market graph of the last complete Stock Market cycle of sixty years (according to the Kondiatrieff Wave) from 1870 to 1929. Then came a crash. A depression, which lasted until 1940, and then the second upsurge from 1940 until 2000 (sixty years), with the first wave down of what will apparently be a very long downturn, happening in the last year. Nobody can know for sure what will happen, but if we take graphs as models for historical happenings we can assume a similar outcome. This second stock market graph too, as the first one, is parallel to the one exposited in the book. The last top of the upsurge, like the previous one, was parallel to a wave of general euphoria, and the feeling that there is only one way, and that it is upwards for ever, like the graph presented in "Foundations of Psychohistory".  This chart too, is part of the hallucination that we are at the top of history, while, in reality, we are only at the top of a cycle, and may be it is already concluded, may be it has another sixty years of upsurge before it, maybe another 120 years, but sooner or later will inevitably come to an end, like every Nemesis of past civilizations.
Judging from the graph, presented to us by the Psychogenic Theory, the Helping Mode is a prelude to the total collapse of any child rearing mode. Historians, who are at home with the Nemesis of civilizations, know that no upsurge lasts for ever. This last upsurge in material prosperity and technologic progress has also been parallel to a wave in the opposite direction: a wave of repression of the original truth. Truth means genital, and genital means Oedipal, since the two stages are concomitant.
Not only the Bible tells us that knowledge is genital, and knowing means relating at the genital level (Gen. 4:1, 4:16; 17:5-8), but also in Western languages this archaic reminiscence is very present. A concept is a way of understanding, and conception means also the becoming of a woman pregnant, that can be done only relating to her at the genital level. Knowing, conceiving, conception and therefore Truth are parallel to the genital- Oedipal level.
The ancients knew that Truth is associated to the first genital excitement, and that the latter brings to conception = understanding = pregnancy. The ancients did not speak by abstractions, and the first languages were very concrete and down to earth.
If the last fifty years has being invested by modern psychology in denying the existence of the Oedipal level and its erotic - aggressive connotation, it means that they have been invested in the repression of Truth, knowledge and understanding: the original intention is covering, with the veil of amnesia, the Murder of the Father and the sense of guilt inherent to it.

In the West, the process of regression from the Oedipal level began in classic Greece, after that the authority of the father had been debased. Plato took on himself the creation of the theoretical frame for the repression of the Murder of the Father. He hated Aeschylus and his tragedy, he prohibited the teaching of ancient myths, like the one of Cronos castrating his Father, and, in his Republic, he would ban art altogether. He knew that Truth always finds the way of reasserting itself through art. In the West, art has always been the best antidote against philosophy. Christianity inflicted the decisive blow.
After counter waves, like during the Renaissance, in which the ancient wisdom had been researched, and in some fields temporarily recovered, or during Elizabethan England, through Shakespeare's work, and in 19th century Germany, thanks to men the likes of Nietzsche and Freud, here we are, in post WW II America, with a strong wave in the direction of repression of the original truth, regression, and denial of everything that smells of authentic.
No wonder that now, in the second half of the 20th century, and here in America and its unisex society, the final assault on the image of the Father is been prepared. As a preparatory carpet bombing, all what Freud and his peers have achieved is simply not understood, or misunderstood, misquoted, distorted and repressed: this is the reaction to the approaching to the genital-Oedipal level. Plato came after Aeschylus and Sophocles, Christianity came after the contact with the Jews and their Father religion, the Inquisition came after the Renaissance, Puritanism came after Shakespeare, and the Psychogenic Theory came after Freud's Libido Theory.
Apparently, the Psychogenic Theory is assaulting mothers, but this is possible only because the father has already been assassinated. And this time not in carne (in the flesh), but the IDEA of the father, the Oedipus complex and the process of identification.
Like in the movie "American Beauty".

The Psychogenic Theory assumes the axiom that technological progress is parallel to the enhancement in child rearing mode. As for the rest of the axioms, this one too, is very far from having been proved. It seems so, only to whom is still boxed in the Hegelian Christocentric aufhebung. How odd and convenient: to St. Paul, Christianity was to be the last and most advanced stage of history. To Mohammed, HE was the last Prophet, and Islam the last stage. To Hegel, Protestant Lutheranism. And to Lloyd, the helping mode, in which, what a fortune, we are now, or almost. We are very fortunate indeed, witnessing the last and only true Revelation.
In order to enhance the unconscious perception that this is the glad tiding indeed, Lloyd deMause also discovered that six were and are the modes of child rearing. Not five, not eight and not seven (this last is the Sabbath - the day of rest). Six modes, as six were the days of Creation. Six is the magic formula, from the Beginning into completion of the all.
Moreover, as in original Creation, Man appears at the last stage. If we take the table at p. 139 we see that in the first four days of creation there is only the woman, as the symbol of all the primeval forces of nature, and only at the fifth day (slightly anticipated vis a vis the biblical version) also a timid father is allowed to make his pallid appearance.
Doesn't it remind something already well known?
I suggest that we listen to a man who dared to question the illusion of a world which proceeds in a linear upwards way:

Mankind surely does not represent an evolution toward a better or stronger or higher level as progress is now understood. This "progress" is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea. The European of today, in his essential worth, falls far below the European of the Renaissance; the process of evolution does not necessarily mean elevation, enhancement, strengthening  (Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, par. 4)

During history, every trial to regain the Oedipal level and the original truth, has triggered a wave of repression: after Aeschylus' tragedy came Platonism. After the contact with the Jews and their religion of the Father, came Christianity. After Shakespeare and his work, which deals mostly with the Oedipal Complex, came Puritanism. After Nietzsche and Freud, came Nazism.
Nazism is the religion of the Son much more than Christianity. As Lloyd correctly stated, Hitler was a Son-figure, (a phallic leader) and not a father imago.
Christianity reached a compromise between the Son and the Father. The Nazis wanted, instead, to enact the sole religion of the Son, liberated from any inhibition, inherent to the presence of the Father.
The new Son was the Fuhrer, with no presence of a Father inhibiting his steps (the nazis swore on the body of Hitler).
Nazism's aim was to regress again from the level of society to the Primeval Horde, this time liberated from the inhibiting instance. Every ideology, which wants to destroy morality and ethical values, must, first of all, eradicate the paternal presence.
This was the condition for being able to indulge in the orgy of destruction that they were preparing.
This is the real reason why, to the Nazis, the eradication of Judaism was so important, the religion of the Father, the Ego and the Reality Principle, which is the psychic instance inhibiting the Id and the Pleasure Principle.
Today, the Pleasure Principle, unlimited gratification of instincts, and no father figure is on the agenda again. This time, at least, the dispatching is not consummated in a violent way, but it risks of being more final.

Lloyd's description of German childhood is very important to the understanding of why they did it in that way, but it does not fully explain why they did it to the Jews, in the first place. The explanation that they did it to them because they represented a more advanced psycho - class, and therefore they had been targeted as the perfect alters, is only the first part of the explanation. The key is that, in Nazis' eyes, they represented the inhibiting part. In this sense they were considered alters.
Saying that they murdered the Jews because they represented sexual freedom and liberty, it is not correct. To the Nazis, they represented the opposite psychic instance: the Name of the Father and the inhibiting instance.
The Jews, representing (in the eyes of the Nazis) the inhibiting Father, the Ego and the Reality Principle, had to be murdered, as the Primal Horde murdered the inhibiting Father, in order to relieve the compressed Id from the repression.
Therefore, the Holocaust is a repetition of the Primal Murder.
This is the real reason why the Nazis indulged in orgies, while the Talibans did not.
The Nazis were eager to liberate the Id from the repression of the Super-Ego.
The Talibans are eager to compress the Id more and more, because, missing the absent father, they have imposed on themselves an hallucinated Super-Ego, which, more severe than that, it could not possible be.
Now, we can understand better why Nazis misogyny did not translate into Puritanical horror for sexuality, while Talibans' did, as I exposited in "Hatred for Women and Islamic Terror".
Talibans' misogyny is horror for their own sexuality, that has been interpreted as the primal cause of their abandonment, while Nazis' misogyny, which could well having been caused by maternal rejection too, translated into sado-masochistic fantasies, and not into veils and Burkas.
We have here two instances of how different situations at the Oedipal level produced a different outcome:
1) In Arabs, the abandonment of the father produced a hallucinating demanding Super Ego, a horror for their own sexuality, and hatred for women, with no correlation with what those women did or did not.
2) In Nazis, abusing fathers, but still present ones, produced hatred for the inhibiting imago, projected into the Jews as the religion of the Father, with no correlation to what they did or did not, and rejecting mothers, at the Oedipal level, caused a regression into anal sadism with sado-masochistic fantasies, as stated by Bob in our correspondence : A very distorted sexuality, but still a very active one.
The Nazis did not deny their sexuality, as the Talibans are doing.
In destroying the Jews, they used the tools of their actual level of psychosexual evolution, namely, anal sadism.
In both instances we see that the cause for hatred is not what the victims are or did, but what they represent in the eyes of the perpetrator.
Now, we can better understand why, indiscriminately shouting "maternal abuse", is only an expedient for covering up basic lack of understanding, it is an amateurish way of doing psychohistory, and it is an abuse perpetrated on other people'intellect.
As Nietzsche said: "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" (Human Too Human, 483).

Links:
Hatred for Women and Islamic Terror
Why Islamic Terror Now
Without Borders: the Borderline Case of the European Union
Medusa, the Female Genital and the Nazis
 
 

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