some choice quotations

https://archive.is/a4Fvu

There is a consensus that sexual experience below a certain age is inappropriate and likely to be harmful. Certainly harmful, most people would probably say. There is not universal agreement, however, of just what age is too young. Children in some cultures can technically marry even before puberty, although the marriage may not be consummated for some time. In this country the age of consent is different from state to state.

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1. Just as some people are more vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder than others who find themselves in the same traumatic situation, the effect of illicit sexual behavior—incest and/or sexual abuse—in childhood is different from one person to the next. I have seen two women (not counting the woman reported above) who reported that they had had frank sexual intercourse with their older brothers until they had reached puberty, or even after, and were not troubled in any way as a result—in their opinion, anyway. They did not feel as if they had been exploited, and they were not angry at their brothers. I have seen others in that situation who were, indeed, angry at their brothers and resentful. Sexual behavior is likely to occur, especially in childhood, when a young person is being supervised by an older male. The older male does not have to be someone who is obviously disturbed or perverted. Some situations invite sexual acting out—for young men who might otherwise never think of committing such acts.

https://archive.is/FAOqR

Parents don’t like to have sex in front of their children. I take that as a given. Maybe it was different in prehistoric times. Maybe back then when a committed couple (I assume there was no marriage ceremony in those days) wanted to have sex, they may have gone about it out in the open in front of everybody instead of way back in a dark corner of the cave; but I don’t believe it. Not if their kids were hanging around. No matter how kinky sex may have been back in those gay, uninhibited times before organized religion grew up to stop that sort of thing, sex in front of the children was still considered outré and reprehensible. I am sure of it. Freud explained why; and his thoughts are too familiar to repeat here. Suffice it to say, if a child accidentally comes upon his parents having sex in the bedroom, or elsewhere, everyone squirms around and shudders. It is the natural way of things. At least in suburbia.

https://archive.is/OvNb1

Many young people have to wrestle with issues of sexual orientation, that is, sexual attraction to those of the same or opposite sex. These are matters still charged with ethical considerations.

https://archive.is/25hSD

1. Of course, sexual touching—and worse—does occur within families. It is unusual, in my experience, for these situations to result in the dire consequences Ms. Farrow reports—rising to the level of a post-traumatic stress disorder. But it can happen.
2. Accusations of child abuse are made frequently in child custody cases. I personally know of a number of cases when these charges were false and were used as a bargaining chip in settling other issues coming up in the divorce, including financial issues.
3. In the mind of certain therapists, childhood sexual abuse is an important cause of very many psychiatric difficulties. Some of these therapists specialize in eliciting a history of such abuse even when the patient does not readily remember it. This has resulted in cases of “false memory syndrome,” in which the patient remembers incidents that never occurred and, in some cases, could not have occurred. As the result some people have been falsely imprisoned and many families have been disrupted painfully. It is important to note that these disturbed individuals are not consciously fabricating these stories. Numerous studies indicate that they believe them to be true—even when they are not true.

THIS IS A MAJOR PSYCHOLOGICAL PUBLICATION. WHO ARE THE EDITORS OF THIS?