A Child is Being Beaten
A Child is Being Beaten
Freud almost 100 years ago (1919) wrote the paper, “A Child is Being Beaten" to bring to light issues regarding the deep-seated nature of hidden emotions, fantasies, denial, and the dark side of unspoken cruelty in the form of masochism and sadism. While Freud’s paper is steeped in the psychoanalytic concepts of its day, it boldly touches on the child in the family as an innocent victim, along with issues of subjugation, humiliation, shame, envy, jealousy, rivalry, and trauma persisting into an adult and social life.
Today, child abuse, emotional maltreatment, as well as sexual maltreatment of children are subjects spoken of in clear-cut modern terms. Yet, these forms of child cruelty still occur and cut across all social strata in all parts of the world.
As a practicing child psychiatrist in the Northeast for over 40 years, I can attest to the need for continued awareness of these problems present at every level of society, no matter how affluent, and the real need for not only reminders of the problem, but also clear-cut strategies to use for prevention, remediation, and renewed education. This article provides strategies and tools that counter the inevitable facts of the human condition-negative emotions, and how their natural companions---the positive emotions correlated with nurturance and warmth, may modulate them.
This is not an abstract or merely theoretical matter. On May 29th, the local Connecticut news reported five murders occurring in the last week in a major urban Connecticut city. Those who died were children of parents, came from families, and may have had children and spouses themselves. Put simply, they were exposed to parenting in one way or another. The point is that a focus on parenting is always relevant.
See also [ Beaten like a red headed stepchild ]
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