Tag Archives: psychology

Sexual abuse or “boys at play”

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By Mark Bernstein

There’s been a lot of attention in the news about sexual abuse. The most recent scandal involves some sports coaches at a large American University culminating in the firing of a legendary and iconic football coach for being complicit in the cover-up of a younger coach’s indecent activities. This most base of human indiscretions seems to be rampant in the worlds of religion and sports – men of the cloth and coaches being the major perpetrators. Much of the abuse we hear about seems to be man on boy. For many victims, the sexual abuse has had an initially occult but eventually profound effect on their lives, which is completely understandable, undoubtedly due to their betrayal by highly trusted adults which makes it difficult for them to trust again. What may be much more common is everyday sexual abuse which never makes it into the newspapers, TV shows, or law or mediation courts, or even into conversation.

Like what happened to me. I am now 61 and it would have been when I was about 10. It happened over several summers at my family’s summer cottage. There was an older boy BC, I guess 5 years my senior, whose family had the cottage next to ours. One of the families had put up a large old-fashioned white canvas box tent between the two cottages for the boys to use as a play-house or fort. BC was fun to be with and we did a lot of fun stuff like walking in the woods, going fishing, making forts, swearing, shooting arrows with bows, smoking cigarettes, drinking stolen alcohol, spying on our sisters, boy stuff. I guess I felt honoured to have an older boy spend time with me. And I was such an insecure little kid I would have done anything anyone older than me told me to do.

So I did. He did not physically force me but he must have asked and saying “no” would not have even popped into my immature little brain. So, at his instruction I used to regularly go into the tent, undress him, get on my knees and put his erect penis into my mouth and with his verbal guidance and probably some help from his right hand, (as I’m sure I was not very good at it) bring him to orgasm. During the act he always regaled me with tales of the last girl he had felt up. After 50 years I still remember the name of his favourite girl (her initials were CH). I don’t remember if I swallowed or got any on my face. I do not recall if I felt any sexual arousal. Maybe it was just another simple and not unpleasant chore like putting out the garbage or mowing the lawn.

I do not feel remotely scarred by what happened. I do not recall feeling badly, or frightened, or violated at the time it happened. It did not feel particularly unnatural. Maybe I thought it was some kind of game boys play. And when I reflect on it now (which I seldom do) I don’t have any negative feelings. My heterosexual development was within normal limits regarding my sexual appetite and performance, or any other metric I can think of. And while I completely embrace homosexuality (including being a strong supporter of gay marriage) I feel no homosexual desires and do not recall ever having had such urges. Similarly, I do not find the idea of being with a man repulsive. In fact the opportunity of giving pleasure to one’s fellow homo sapiens of any gender is a very wonderful thing to do and may trump other factors.

So I guess the questions for me are: Why did this not have a greater (or any) impact on me? Am I a latent homosexual? Was the bond of trust between me and BC just not powerful enough to produce consequences when it was broken? Or has it had an impact and I’m just not aware of it? Maybe I would have been a better husband, a better father, a better brain surgeon had these things not happened. I’ll never know and I’m not going to lose a minute’s sleep over it. And I almost never think about it. I’m not even sure why I wrote this piece except maybe to convey to others like me: “You’re not weird if childhood sexual abuse did not screw up your life”. I guess that’s why.

 

Mark Bernstein is a neurosurgeon at the Toronto Western Hospital and Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto. He and his wife Lee (a native Los Angelina) have three daughters and two pet Labradors. He has written extensively in the medical literature for over 25 years and for the last few years has been trying his hand at non-medical writing. He is the world’s second worst saxophone player.

A need to consider perspective.

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By Sig Shonholtz

perspective4

I have been trying to bridge a gap of understanding, which seems to define many relationships. For lack of a better phrase (I welcome any better phrase) I am calling it a philosophical anomaly.

I will explain it best in an experience I had with an old girlfriend. I was driving the car and she was my passenger. I was driving in a sort of jerky fashion and she said to “can you drive a little nicer”, which I did.. A week later she was driving and I had to make the same request of her, “can you drive a little nicer, please (hers was a demand, mine a request)?” But instead of changing her driving she argued that I made the request because she had said it to me the week before. I argued (pointed out) that last week I was the driver and this week I am a passenger and my perspective was completely different.

This got me wondering about how many possible perspectives a person could have during any 24 hour period. These perspectives are not points of view, because as many people as there are on earth is as many points of view there are.

After a few months of day dreaming about it I settled on 6 possibilities (permutations). Since driving was the inspiration for the theme I kept it as my model. But we could just as easily use an example of dining in a restaurant.

The First Perspective is driving a car by ourselves. It does not matter so much how we drive (unless we are being unsafe to others). We are alone with our thoughts and awarenesses. Like eating alone and sitting at a table.

The Second Perspective is driving the car with a passenger in the front seat, we need to be more aware and thoughtful of that person sitting next to us. Our driving style and our conversation impacts them. Like eating with a friend and “driving” the conversation, or just doing the talking at that moment.

The Third Perspective is from the passenger in the front seats point of view. The passenger is now sitting at the table. Each time the conversation shifts back and forth one person is either in the second or third perspective.

The Fourth Perspective is that of a passenger in the back seat. They may be participating or not but they are observers. This would, for example be someone in an audience, an observer on an event. Or perhaps a person at a dinner table not really being addressed but watching. Theirs is actually  privileged because they may notice things in the dynamics that others do not see.

The Fifth Perspective is the time we spend sleeping. Since these Six Perspectives take up 24 hours of each day time we spend sleeping must be included. We are not so aware during that time though.

The Sixth Perspective is not really a perspective it is imaginative but it might be most important one although it is very hard to achieve. I am calling it the ultimate perspective. In order to try and have the ultimate Perspective we must try and exit our humanity. We must pretend or imagine that we have not interest in human affairs. So, when I want this insight I imagine I am a science officer on an interstellar space craft. I do not really care about human affairs. I am not myself, an American Jewish man that is 55 years old and from California that likes watches. When I take this Perspective I am free to decide right and wrong good or bad and up and down. Things are much more clear from this position. In fact morality is just a changing concept.

In my case the Second and Third Perspectives are the ones between my former girlfriend and I, and myself and my former girlfriend. I am continuously to exhaustion either the passenger or the driver and cannot seem to explain that our differences are more to do with this simple idea than anything else.

I have noticed this dynamic in another area which I will try and explain. It is something like this. As a child we argue when someone older then us tells us not to do something. We will argue with them that, because they do it, we can do it. It goes something like this, we have all been in this moment. You tell a child not to eat with their mouthful, but inevitably we do the same thing so they argue and say “you do the same thing”. In my case, with my young daughter we sometimes say yah instead of yes. She does not use the word yah and is always correcting us, (this example is almost the opposite of what I am trying to say).

As adults we have the same problem but this time when we say, “you do the same thing” we mean something else. We are accusing the person of not being aware that when they are in the Second Perspective they cannot imagine themselves in the Third and vice versa. This is the problem I have, trying to convey this very simple idea of trying to see oneself as we might be seen.

I do not know if I am clear on the one above. It has been very difficult for me it articulate it. I actually was trying to find a philosophical numeric system or a way to quantify this last one. It is so common between people that it is almost a normal way we react to things.

(the-vu Editor’s note) there has been considerable study of perspective in the field of psychology, but when someone acquires a need to consider perspective due to real and personal circumstances, it brings the concept to practical life.