I blame Freud

I think Freud was right when he published his thought that a lot of the neurotic cases he had seen had been caused by childhood sexual abuse. However, this idea was badly received so he changed it: he said that the children wanted their parents sexually. Electra complexes, Oedipus complexes; in a nutshell, that the children were subject to sexual desires, even babies. People got him all wrong. He was talking about the unconscious.

If you fast forward to the seventies and watch Woody Allen's "Manhattan" it it clear that a grown adult (40 ish?) is in a sexual relationship with a teenager and is treating it almost as a teacher/ pupil relationship - it has always made me uncomfortable, especially the way he messes her around and tries his best to get her back at the end. Selfish or what? The guys in "Annie Hall" too, make salacious comments about young teenage girls: it shows the way it was back then. Preying on the young was becoming mainstream. Normalised. O.K. Talking about Freud all the time (the way people did) seemed to be a way of justifying - intellectualising -  something that was actually a creepy desire for forbidden (innocent, vulnerable) fruit.

I remember dancing with an 20-something adult man when I was 13 and he asked me if I was a "woman", and I said I was, although I thought it a very personal question. He asked me how I managed! He meant: How do you manage for sex? I had just had my first kiss and I was very happy. And drunk. My parents (and their friends) let us drink Martini and Lemonade, which was an early version of an alcopop. Also, Dubonnet and lemonade. All quite enough to make us tiddly. I said "oh, I manage fine", trying to keep the party happy, as girls do, and thinking about the boy who had kissed me. Lord knows what he thought I meant.

I was thinking about this because I read all the details about the Max Clifford case. Our local celebrity got eight years (will serve 4) in prison for sexual abuse. Sure he deserved it. But in 1977 it was all over the place; people talked about sex with teenage girls all the time. I am so glad the tide turned: sadly the corrosion has gone deep and the law is touching only the surface.

Better to bang up the abusers who are currently abusing rather than historical cases. I read in the paper some years ago that there are so many perverts abusing their children that the judges get bored of hearing the cases. Boredom! Boredom is not the right response.

NOTE: crossword clue in Guardian no: 26,249: In terms of habits, not getting any less anti-Freudian?

Quite a hard one and I gave up and looked up the answer: heeheegroan: shrink resistant.