I came across this in my readings and thought it could be of interest to this MB:-
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Lloyd deMause (1982) has studied the history of child abuse, and has concluded that only relatively recently has there been any kind of question raised about the right of parents to do whatever they pleased with their children, from enforced labor to sexual abuse and even infanticide. If child abuse has been the status quo of past eras it is not surprising that it appears in the myths and fairy tales that have been handed down, to help children come to terms with what has happened to them. Child abuse could be considered as archetypal. There is considerable evidence that there are unconscious patterns of behavior that lead to abuse. The methods used in prison camps to break down the will of prisoners, and indoctrinate in them patterns of passivity and compliance, turn out to be the same methods adopted unconsciously by abusive husbands in their intimidation of their wives, leading to their toleration of all kinds of abuse. Perhaps what is archetypal is the set of behaviors associated with the abuse of power within a diadic perpetrator-victim relationship, whether husband-wife, parent-child, or guard- prisoner. If this archetypal behavior is inherited, presumably it has or had some sort of survival value. In a previous paper I described how this kind of behavior both reflected and promoted a patriarchal culture and a patriarchal system of consciousness (Skea, 1992).
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Italics mine. I thought this pattern could go back to when we lived in very small groups, and in order to get a mating partner one would have to steal one (usually a woman) from the next tribe. She would then have to be cajoled into staying in the group and submitting to the practices etc. and hierarchies of the clan, which could mean some form of psychological threats and fears.
It then goes on, just for completion sake:-
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Not surprisingly, it is the Womens' Movement that has aroused awareness of the prevalence and purpose of the abuse of women, children and also men, in the maintenance of a hierarchical patriarchal culture based on male dominance. Drawing on the archetypal myths of the goddess, that supported pre-patriarchal cultures and system of consciousness, feminists, including many Jungians, have advocated the revitalisation of a matriarchal or feminine system of consciousness, to balance the one-sidedness of patriarchal consciousness (for example, Perera, 1981). There is a belief, possibly naive, that pre-patriarchal, or matriarchal cultures treated their plant and animal environment with respect, and likewise their fellow man, woman and child, abhoring war, slavery, and other abuses. Certainly, the systematic and consciously contrived abuse, torture and massacre of dominated peoples seems a product of the patriarchal imagination.
DeMause (1982), however, suggests that primitive cultures are not in fact empathic towards children, often showing indifference towards their suffering, or even inflicting pain under the auspices of group puberty rites, for example. He suggests that it in only recently that the detached and scientific patriarchal ego in the West has progressively evolved to the point of being able to vicariously empathise with the feelings of the other, and to take a moral stance against the abuse of women and children. In the psychoanalytic community, over the past century, this can be seen in comparing the work of, for example, Kohut or Winnicott, with that of Freud or Jung, themselves ahead of their peers. Female analysts such as Karen Horney or Melanie Klein have also influential (Sayers, 1991). Today there is more stress on therapeutic `holding', based on the mothering role, rather than on the more paternal analysing or interpreting (Seinfeld, 1993). This would confirm a move towards a more `feminine' consciousness, but without losing the positive aspects of a detached reflective `masculine' rational ego consciousness.
