How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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The Role of Sexual Trauma Ralph M. represents an inferiority complex derived from an unfortunate childhood experience which numerous boys encounter without its resulting in any untoward effects. Ralph was a student in a choir school at which he was a boarder. A proctor, under guise of chastisement for some minor infraction of the rules, assaulted him sexually. Ralph, without knowing the implications of the homosexual attack of this older man, screamed and extricated himself from the situation. The proctor, fearing exposure of his act, persecuted the twelve- year-old boy unmercifully, threatening him with the direst punishment. Ralph dreamed constantly of terrific beatings and persecutions. A fortunate illness occasioned his removal from the choir school. But the seed of guilt and inferiority had already been implanted. He found it difficult to make contacts with other boys in the new school in which he was placed. His parents were missionaries in a foreign country, and his guardian believed that Ralph's timidity and seclusion were the signs of stupidity. Five years after the attack he failed completely in his final examinations, and he was referred for psychiatric care by the intelligent head master who recognized the psychological basis of Ralph’s difficulties. It required great patience and constant reiterations of friendship to penetrate the defences which Ralph had erected to keep the world from discovering his “ rottenness ”. Even greater eloquence was required to persuade him that the harm that had been done him existed only in his interpretation of his guilt. Untoward and unfortunate sexual experiences are common in the lives of children. A greater damage is often caused by parents’ solicitude than by the actual sexual experience. The Freudian school of psychoanalysis has greatly exaggerated the importance of so-called “ sexual trauma ” in childhood. In some cases the sexual trauma is retroactively utilized as a rationalized cause of neurosis. No sexual trauma can in itself cause an inferiority