Category Archives: Psychology & Pop-Psychology

‘Sex, God & Greed’

Christianity, Criminal Injustice, Journalism, Media, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Courts

In 2003, Daniel Lyons, in Forbes, hashed out all there is to say about the sexual-abuse shakedown to which the Catholic Church has been subjected. It’s worth revisiting this exceptional exposé, now that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, lamentably, has decided to capitulate, rather than fight a racket facilitated by courts that are conduits to theft. Writes Lyons:

“….The focal point of this tort battle is the Catholic Church. The Church’s legal problems are worse even than most people realize: $1 billion in damages already paid out for the victims of pedophile priests, indications that the total will approach $5 billion before the crisis is over… The lawyers are lobbying states to lift the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases, letting them dredge up complaints that date back decades. Last year California, responding to the outcry over the rash of priest cases, suspended its statute of limitations on child sex abuse crimes for one year, opening the way for a deluge of new claims. A dozen other states are being pushed to loosen their laws.”

“’There is an absolute explosion of sexual abuse litigation, and there will continue to be. This is going to be a huge business,’ MacLeish, age 50, says. A Boston-based partner of the Miami law firm of GREENBERG TRAURIG (2002 billings: $465 million)…”

Lyons and Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal are the only writers I know of to have pointed out how many of these class-action claims are, if not bogus, backed by the discredited excavation of false memories. (See my “Repressed Memory Ruse”):

The repressed memory hoax “…. relies on a controversial theory that has split the world of psychology into bitterly opposing camps for more than a decade: the notion that people can wipe out memories of severe trauma, then recover these repressed memories years later…
Richard McNally, a Harvard psychology professor…. thinks recovered memories of trauma are questionable. He has conducted numerous studies on memory, particularly with sexual abuse victims. He says people don’t forget a trauma like anal rape. They might forget something like being fondled as a child, but that’s because the fondling was not traumatic, he argues. ‘It might be disgusting, upsetting—but not terrifying, not traumatic.’”

“McNally’s take on this subject has set off a hometown feud with Daniel Brown, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School who is a leading proponent of recovered memory. The two archrivals have never met, engaging instead in a ‘battle of the books.’
In 1998, when Brown won an award for his 786-page tome, Memory, Trauma Treatment & the Law, McNally wrote a scathing review that criticized Brown’s methodology. In March of this year McNally published his own book, Remembering Trauma, in which he bashes repressed-memory theory and criticizes Brown’s work yet again.

Are Hippie Parents Sending Kids Into The Maw of Death?

America, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Family, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The West, The Zeitgeist

Another young girl died overseas on a school trip. I saw the item on CNN, but cannot find the link (help please). The parents allege foul play.
American and European parents are blasé about their kids, be it in the way they discipline or supervise them. They are also stupendously naïve, sending their precious progeny, during their most stupid years—the teens—to dangerous spots around the world. Bermuda, for instance, which “US and British crime advisories have warned of as having a medium-high crime rate.”

Consider the case of Rebecca Middleton. This Canadian 16-year-old was packed off to Bermuda by starry-eyed parents with her friend Jasmine Meens, ready for a “trip of a lifetime.” A left-liberal mindset has these folks believing the world is one big happy place, and that walking the streets of Mogadishu and those of Montreal (lovely city) are one and the same thing.
In any event, Middleton “accepted rides on motorcycles, operated by Mr. Smith and Mr. Mundy.” (Here’s Justis Smith.) the Bermuda Online described what these predators did to the girl as “the most animal sexually-depraved, most violent and inhuman murder of any woman or man anywhere in the world.” (Wild and Wooly English, that’s for sure.) Intriguingly, the appeals in the case—no one was convicted—were argued in the Bermudan courts by Cherie Booth Blair.
The hippie spirit was also alive and well in Natalie Holloway’s family. (Never mind the male predators waiting to prey on trusting North American girls, I would not have entrusted my child to any adult chaperon chosen by a North America schools.)

In Defense of Hierarchy & the Catholic Church

Christianity, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Religion, Sex

In the Comments Section on “the Pope’s Noble-Savage Catechism,” Ms. Grant condemns the Catholic Church for lifting the pope above the flock. I’m not religious, and am certainly no authority on Catholicism, but, in my limited understanding, this is something of a misrepresentation. From the fact that the Church has a hierarchical structure it doesn’t follow that the Church believes the Pope is better than the flock in the eyes of the Almighty. Catholicism simply puts in place a much-needed hierarchy.

In my thinking, the breakdown of boundaries in society is one of the main sources of all the rot we see around us. The Church in its wisdom appeared to recognize that not all people are equal, and that populism is evil.

The rubble seeking to overturn the structure is mainly of the left, in my understanding. My impression is that the movement to change the structure of the Church gained momentum during the child sex abuse witch hunt, where very many innocent priests were targeted. It goes hand-in-hand with females demanding to be priests. This victim movement has done a great deal more than try and bankrupt the Church.

In Defense of Hierarchy & the Catholic Church

Christianity, Conservatism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Religion, Sex

In the Comments Section on “the Pope’s Noble-Savage Catechism,” Ms. Grant condemns the Catholic Church for lifting the pope above the flock. I’m not religious, and am certainly no authority on Catholicism, but, in my limited understanding, this is something of a misrepresentation. From the fact that the Church has a hierarchical structure it doesn’t follow that the Church believes the Pope is better than the flock in the eyes of the Almighty. Catholicism simply puts in place a much-needed hierarchy.

In my thinking, the breakdown of boundaries in society is one of the main sources of all the rot we see around us. The Church in its wisdom appeared to recognize that not all people are equal, and that populism is evil.

The rubble seeking to overturn the structure is mainly of the left, in my understanding. My impression is that the movement to change the structure of the Church gained momentum during the child sex abuse witch hunt, where very many innocent priests were targeted. It goes hand-in-hand with females demanding to be priests. This victim movement has done a great deal more than try and bankrupt the Church.