juliemotz.zooloo.com

When I think of all the missed opportunities of the current administration I find myself wishing  that Obama had spent as much time studying Franklin Delano Roosevelt as he has studying Lincoln. Roosevelt saw three great possibilities in the Great Depression - personal political power for himself (for he dearly loved politics and plotted for 20 years to reach its aopgee as president of the United States), transformation of the country's economic structue and social inclusion for the excluded. And he seized them all, riding the wave of hostility towards Hoover and his "do nothing" government.

HIs speeches were brilliant and, like Lincoln, he never talked down to his audience. But unlike  the "Great Emancipator" he communicated more as friend than father to the public and the public responded with the feeling of a political burden  willingly shared. What Obama has failed to do - and what Roosevelt succeeded at so well - is to make us feel we are partners in his decisions and have a stake in the success of his policies.

I have belived for over two decades that the next great liberal government will be swept in on a wave of environmentalism - not economic, political or social reform although the environmental movement could easily become a vehicle for attaining those. Obama is faced with a great environmental crisis and more are sure to follow.There is also a related energy crisis. Perhaps things just aren't bad enough to light the necessary fire under him but Roosevelt would have found a way to sqaurely lay the blame for both at the Republicans' door and call the people to rally round him to effect dramatic changes in both areas.

I recently interviewed Jay Groves, a biiologist at UC Berkeley who has made the startling discovery that metastasis is initiated by an internal mechanical and not an external  chemical signal. Specifically the cytoskelton of the cancer cell gives a "tug" of contraction to which a key receptor on the cell's surface responds by starting a process of detachment from surrounding cells preperatory to travelling to a new site in the body thus spreading the disease.

It has long been my contention that all disease is regressive - that is to say it takes us back to an earlier time in our history. Because cancer cells are relatively undifferentiated and grow like Topsy it has always seemes to me that cancer represents a part of the bosy going back to its fetal or embryonic state. Thinking about metastasis I've just realized that there is a natural time for cells to migrate - and that is in the womb. So we might think of cancer as a very delayed expression of a very early need to grow and change.

We've all heard, seen or read the stories of child soldiers in Africa. Both African governments and U.N. peacekeepers are reviled for not putting a stop to this practice of forcing children into roles of sustained violence. But we know from every child abuser who has ever been closely questioned on the subject that those who hurt or use children were themselves hurt or used as children. Where is the inquiry into the child-rearing norms that create people who need to acquire power through brutality to the weak and the helpless - who need to turn children into unfeeling monsters?

It strikes me that what the Oedopus myth is really about (Freud VERY MUCH to the contrary) is the horror of a once-abused child waking up to the fact that as an adult he has had consensual sex with his parent. The Greeks like Sigmund put all the responsibility on the child - who must put out his eyes, really in order not to see the deeper truth. The deeper truth is that he was unwanted and abandoned, sexually abused and then continued, trance-like, to be the sexual partner of his abuser whom he was desperate to be connected to.

Two things have been left out of the deservedly heated discussions about sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests. The first is why the accusations are so old - going back to events that took place in or before 1986. To anyone who has worked with abuse survivors the answer is clear - it takes decades for people to remember the worst of their abuse and/or to feel safe about revealing it.

The second which is more critical is the question of which children were abused and why. A normal, healthy child raised in a sexually healthy family (i.e., one in which the parents have a loving and passionate sexual relationship and are not projecting their bad sexual feelings about themselves onto their children) would either avoid a sexual abuser altogether, run screaming out of the room if approached sexually by and adult or, at the very least, tell their parents about it.

The many, many patients I have seen who were abused by non-relations eventually discovered that family members had abused them first. This is what caused them to go into shock and remain passive when another adult or older child approached them in a sexual way. The feeling they gave out about themselves because of the familial abuse is often what drew non-familial abusers to them.

While I commend the work being done to expose molestors who are in positions of moral authority vis-a-vis children and the institutions that hide them in one sense all the uproar serves to divert attention from the even more destructive people in a child's life - the parents who set them up for abuse by others. The focus needs to shift to the thousands of familiies involved. And laws need to be changed so that any abuser who wishes to stop and reports what he or she has been doing doesn't automatically face a jail sentence. What could be more counter-productive if we want to encourage people - and their spouses and friends - to come forth and report their actions as abusers?

The general wisdom is that treatment of pedophiles has not been successful and therefore cannot be. I would maintain that the treatment isn't being done by truly skilled, compassionate people who know how to use the body to discover the roots of sexual compulsion and heal it.

It has become clear to me that anorexia and bulimia are common symptoms of oral rape, that hennorhoids, prostate cancer and colon cancer are common symptoms of anal rape and that hip replacements are often used to replace a joint that could not move to protect the genitals against molestation.

It has also become clear that victims of childhood sexual abuse frequently remain so imprisoned by their unconsciousness that they continue a sexual relatonship with the abuser well into adulthood - along with almost instantaneous amnesia of these events. This is one of the things that makes their depression so deep - the hidden knowledge that as adults with the physical power to resist they continued in a trance-like state to participate in their own destruction. I believe that this is what John Frankenheimer's classic film "The Manchurian Candidate" was all about and why it was so terrifying and so popular.

Am I the only one to speculate that the rabid anti-abortionists are people whose parents wanted to abort them - and many cases tried to without success?

Am I the only one who wants to know how many of them hit their children - and think this is just fine?

Of course life and consciousness begin at conception - but what of it? Historically women in our species abandoned at birth any child they felt they couldn't care for or wouldn't thrive. Since infanticide is now illegal abortion seems like reasonable option. (I say this with the knowledge that my own mother tried to abort me twice. Either through lack of will or lack of skill she failed but personally given the extreme suffering of my now 67 years I don't think it would have been a great tragedy if she had succeeded.) Of course a better solution is to have no unwanted pregnancies either within or without a marriage. But this would require a level of consciousness of their own wounding on the part of would be parents that we are very far from achieving.

What most people who adopt children fail to realizs is how traumatizing it is for a baby to be carried inside a woman who is planning to reject it at birth - and how traumatic these births themselves are. The work of regressing adopted children back to their prenatal lives and birth experiences is virtually never done and the anxiety of these experiences remains with them for their entire lives.

The other thing adoptive parents usually fail to deal with is their own inability to bear children - whose cause often ies in repressed memories of sexual abuse.

Finally adoptive parents often unconsciously adopt children who have issues that parallel their own - especially around a history of family violence.

Anyone adopting a child should do serious deep emotional work on their own childhood before embarking on this path and de prepared to provide support and help fpr the adopted children to do the same. The fantasy that you can just give a child love and that everything will be all right is just that - a fantasy. This is especially true when this "love" is actually laced with unconscious unmet needs and expectations.

I was listening to Julian Bond, former head of SNCC, being interviewed about the civil rights movement and to listeners talking about how profoundly it had influenced their lives. It made me think as I often do of the last group of people who are still denied their rights - whom our democracy has yet to enfranchise with liberty and equality. Of course i am talking about children.

A thorny problem this because if we criminalize the mistreatment of children what are we to do with them if their parents go to jail? Still I think a national movement to make hitting a child (of ANY age ANYWHERE on the body for ANY reason) illegal, is long overdue. After all, you can't strike an adult with impunity - why should you be allowed to strike a child? What a novel idea - not only are women not the property of men and Blacks not the property of Whites but children do not belong to their parents to treat as they will.

I welcome any and all suggestions about how to implement this - and especially about how to get children involved without endangering them (i.e.,leaving them open to retirbution at the hands of vengeful or indignant parents). One thing I thought about is setting up a website or a phone hotline where any child can anonymously report abuse -  both of themselves and others - of any kind. Perhaps the offending adults could then be called or emailed in some way that would feel healing and helpful to them.

Clearly this is a huge undertaking since children have neither political, social nor economic power. Another thing I thought of is setting up supprt groups for parents who hit their children or feel the impulse to do so. I'm clear that making adults feel "bad" for hurting children just won't do. Somehow they have to be brought to see themselves in the child they are so desperate to punish and control. And children must be shown ways to access their anger about mistreatment and channel it effectively.

Think about some treasured possession of yours - something it would break your heart or make you very angry to lose, have stolen, see damaged or destroyed. Now imagine that one of those things has happened to it. Notice how you feel, especially in your body. Now imagine that you ARE that treasured item - before the transgression has occurred. Imagine how it feels to be that object (or that bank account) and to belong to you. Then come back and experience its loss again.

This exercise is inspired by the following incident. Lat week I came back from a screening in San Francisco to discover that although I had locked my care I had left the back windows open. I looked inside and saw with a sigh of relief that it seemed that nothing had been taken. A couple of days later I began looking for a favorite and irreplaceable briefcase of mine (purple pebble vinyl trimmed with tan leather and lined with silk - bought years ago in New York). It had in it a book I was reading with four pages of notes I'd taken for an author interview I'm scheduled to do on my Hot Tech - Cool Science radio show later this month. I had a very clear image of seeing lying on a beige-colored surface (the color of all the carpeting in my home and the seats of my car). I searched high and low in house and car for three days with no luck.

Then two nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that the briefcase must have been neatly lifted off my back seat  by someone imagining that there was something much more valuable in it. (It's the kind of case that could be mistaken for a large purse.) I felt a stab of pain in my heart - but at first pretended to myself that it was no big deal. I had other brief cases and, as it happened, another copy of the book. Redoing the notes would be annoying but not impossible. Then I felt again and realized that I was likely to be up the rest of the night.

Breathing into the pain in my chest my first memory was of my brother stealing toys from me by simply taking them from my playpen and putting them out of my reach. Then as I experienced a contraction along the left side of my body I felt once more the threat of a knitting needle coming towards me in the womb - a move that if completed could take my life. I felt the rage about both these incidents ripple through my muscles and pound in my blood, bringing some relief.  But when I  thought about the missing briefcase something still felt as if it were tugging at my well being.

Then I came up with the idea of doing what I do when I work through a dream - becoming each significant person and object in the scene. I BECAME the briefcase! I immediately felt how beautiful and vauable I was and that by belonging to Julie I was showing people how valuable SHE was. Anyone seeing me with her would know that she was a person who was loved and should therefore be respected, admired, treasured and never damaged, hurt or killed.

Years ago I had the idea that people piled up wealth to show that they are beloved  by the universe. (This I believe puts the enormous challenge of putting an end to greed in its proper perspecvtive.) But what came to me through this exercise is that on a much more primitive level it's about showing the world that our parents love us and therfore we must be valued and not harmed.

In any case - try it for yourself and see that you think.

The underlying causes of the Arab-Israeli conflict are not the differences between their cultures but the similarities. They are like two children both fighting for the same tit.

When the agricultural resources of the MIddle East literally dried up (forests cut down, grasslands over-grazed leading to desertification) the people of the region became nomads and settled into a  male, Comprehender culture. (For what I mean by "Comprehender" please consult my website, http://fourenergies.com.) The primary difference is that the Jews took their nomadism to Europe while the followers of Islam stayed more-or-less local.

When Jews came together to form the state of Israel they shed their nomadic ways and adopted the style of a Performer culture. (Once again, please go to http://fourenergies.com for an explanation of this.) This is one of the things that endeared them to the United States, a Perceiver culture, and made us feel that our survival was dependent upon theirs and vice versa.

But although Israeli Jews act like Performers - forever on the alert and ready to fight - their Comprehemder roots still haunt them. Only when they wipe out the other Comprehender competitors for scarce maternal resources will they be able to relax and feel "safe."

I would like to emphasize that this is not a moral issue but an emotional one. Or perhaps it's simply that all so-called "moral" issues boil down to what feels right to the body,

I've talked before about how our history of having too many children too close together has created the belief that life is a zero-sum game and the feeling that there can't possibly be enough for all. The intractability of the Arab-Israeli conflict reflects this and how bitter people feel about it. So the "sibiling" who wants what we have and has what we want remains the perpetual enemy. Just as in families where parents manipulate their offspring so that they never unite to free themselves from parental distortion we will never be able to see the advantages of pursuing a common good.

The political history of this country has been one of taking the privileges of the few and extending them into the rights of the many - and eventually the rights of all. This started with governance itself - first granted to all white men of property, then all white men, then all men, then all adults. (Children will be the very last group to be enfranchised - but I'll save that discussion for another post.) The same has been true of education, of speech (finally extended virtually "to all" through the technology of the internet combined with the politics of democracy), of property ownership (where cosumerism drives technology to help accomplish this end) and of physical mobility.

Now it appears that healthcare is in for the big stretch - and this bears examining. Note that it is not HEALTH to which we are asserting that everyone has an equal right. That goal is advanced primarily through public health, sanitation, safety and food supply legislation. What we are realy championing in the push for healthcare reform is that everyone has the right to be cared for equally when they are sick - not healed, necessarily but cared for. (This is an important distiction because statistics have shown that with diseases like lung cancer intensive - and very expensive - care does not decrease mortality.) Or, as I have written previously, healthcare reform is not about making us healthier - it's about making it cheaper for us to be sick.

All disease is regressive. it reduces us to a more helpless, childlike and often even infantile state. What we are trying to establish ever-so-obliquely through "healthcare reform" is that every child has the right to be lovingly, attentively and competently parented. As children we were often embarrassed, humiliated, shamed or made to feel guilty for our need for this kind of care. By getting sick we can feel "justified" in demanding it. And our rage that the government (the uber-parent in a democracy) is not making this possible is a deflection of our rage at our parents for not providing it.

The irony of this is that if we were to turn our attention as a society to figuring out how we could provide better parenting - and support that goal politically, socially and economically - we WOULD be more healthy. But to do this parents individually and collectively would have to look into the pain of their own history of children and transform that suffering into wisdom.