Years ago I went through an examination of some of Chapter 9 ("Bipolar Christianity") of Lloyd deMause's work "The Origins of War in Child Abuse". In it, I examined various claims he offered, and a while after that went back and did further examination of the citations in that chapter in a separate post. Repeatedly, it was discovered that he would misquote or misrepresent his sources. Those posts were put up in order to share the results of my research so that if other people were curious about the validity of those claims of his, they could look into it and not have to redo the research I did.
Originally I planned only to handle Chapter 9. However, back then I did try to look up information on the book to see what other people thought of it, and I stumbled across this page on Reddit.
Here, someone was posting about the book and quoted some of its claims from Chapter 8 ("Infanticide, Child Rape and War in Early States"). This post did receive a reply which gave some arguments as to why Lloyd deMause is not necessarily trustworthy, but did not directly examine deMause's claims or the citations behind them. So, I thought it would be interesting to do so myself. I could not respond to the Reddit post in question because it was
locked, but I thought I could post them here on the blog for people to see. I did this at the same time I was looking up the things on Chapter 9.
That, however, was years ago. Although I did look into those specific claims of deMause at the time, I planned to eventually go back and look at more in Chapter 8 so this would be more in depth. However, it ended up getting pushed to the side and has basically stayed in the draft section since then.
I do not really have plans to return to do more research into this, though, particularly given the fact that deMause died back in 2020. But because I did spend some time looking things up, perhaps it is time to post my findings just in case it can benefit someone. Certainly, it is sometimes useful for me when I search around and manage to find people responding to obscure claims. Maybe there is someone else out there wondering about these claims from Chapter 9, and this would be of use to them.
In my prior examinations, of deMause's writing, I assigned, in the tradition of PolitiFact, ratings of True, Mostly True, Half-True, Mostly False, False, and Pants On Fire for each citation. I will continue to do this; however, I recommend the reader read the much more in-depth discussions of the citations that follow them, given that some of these were difficult to assign to the categories. But, the short version is that the same issues we have seen before come up, with sources misrepresented or exaggerated.
With that out of the way, let's take a look at deMause's claims and, more importantly, whether the sources he cites back him up on them.
Right up to the Reformation it was common that “a boy until seventeen
should sleep in the same bed as his mother,”6 so that maternal incest
was common.
6 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500-1800. London: Penguin Books, 1979, p. 106.
HALF-TRUE. Unfortunately, I did not have access to this exact edition cited by deMause. One copy which is here, was
not published in London by Penguin Books, but in New York by Harper
& Row Publishers.
Because it is on archive.org, we can perform a search to try to find the page in question. Unfortunately,
archive.org is not always perfect at reading texts, so it is possible
for a book to have a phrase that searching will not find. However,
searching for various phrases that are from the above quote, all I could
find is this on page 144:
"A powerful means of
enforcing public standards of morality on family life was through
denunciations to the archdeacons' courts, however ineffectual the latter
may have been in punishing transgressors. Neither fornication nor
adultery was easy in so public an arena as a village, although of course
there was plenty of both. Neighbours gossiped about the most intimate
details of family relationships, and were quick to complain to the
ecclesiastical courts of anything that violated local mores. Reputed
seducers of maidens were duly reported on the basis of hearsay only. They thought it wrong that a boy over seventeen should continue to sleep in the same bed as his mother.
They were very suspicious about the household of husband and wife, one
manservant and one maid, which only contained two beds, so that the
husband slept in a bed with both his wife and the maid. They even knew
about, and complained of, unusually enthusiastic or deviant sexual
behavior between man and wife. They complained when a husband turned a
blind eye to the adultery of his wife, and were quick to denounce cases
of bigamy or trigamy. They lurked about to catch the curate in bed with a
girl. While approving of a husband's power to discipline an unruly
wife, they objected to noisy and excessive brutality or use of foul
language which disturbed the peace of the village, as much as they
objected to the female propensity to scolding and slander.54"
This offers a citation, which we'll get into, but for now let's consider just this in regards to what deMause claimed. As we can see, deMause misquoted it. He puts in quotations "a boy until seventeen should sleep in the same bed as his mother" which is not what it says (he turns "over" into "until" and omits "continue to"). This misquote by itself does not substantially change the meaning, but it is yet another case of deMause putting quotation marks around something to show it is a quote, but for him to edit what is being said, even though the point of putting a quote in quotation marks is to show that you are quoting it word for word and not engaging in editing or paraphrases. Setting that aside, the larger problem here is his representation. All this says is that it was considered wrong for a boy over seventeen to continue to sleep in the same bed as his mother. deMause exaggerates this into claiming that it was common for a boy before seventeen to sleep in the same bed as his mother, which is not what this is saying at all.
Now let's move onto the citation. The citation offered by this work for the above paragraph is:
"P.Hair, Before the Bawdy Court (New York 1972), pp. 70, 95, 127, 143, 175, etc.; W.H. Hale, A Series of Precedents and Proceedings from the Act Books of Ecclesiastical Courts... ) London 1847), pp. 179-180, 190, 199, 206, 207, 209, 212, 219, 244, 247."
The first citation, Before the Bawdy Court, is found here. Unfortunately, much of this work is hard to make out, due to it being a mixture of Latin or old-looking English. Fortunately, there are glosses to the side in clear modern English that summarize things, allowing one to quickly see if it is relevant before trying to puzzle out its meaning.
While I did look at the other pages just to be sure, the search really ends with the first page cited, as we see the following on page 70:
"119 SHORTAGE OF BEDS
North Ockendon, Essex, 1583. Against Robert Billing. Charged, that he useth to lie with his mother, he beinge above the age of xvii yeares.
(Comment 8) LH 179"
We'll get to analyzing the quoted statement in a moment, but first I want to go to the other citation. That second citation (A Series of Precedents and Proceedings) is found on archive.org here. Similarly much of it is a bit harder to understand due to Latin or earlier English. However, again the applicable portion is found on the first page cited, in this case page 179:
"DXLVII.
[Eodem die.]
Contra Robertum Billing [de Northockenden].–Notatur that he used to lie with his mother, he beinge above the age of xvii yeares."
So these two are ultimately citing the same instance, in which a proceeding is noted against a man named Robert Billing for lying with his mother while above the age of 17. This one does confirm that it seems that it was seen as wrong for someone above the age of 17 to lie in the same bed as their mother. This does back up deMause's cited source's claims. However, it does nothing to aid deMause's claim, which was that it was common to to do before the age of 17.
While deMause didn't pull this completely out of nowhere, his edits to the quote and exaggeration of what was said means this can really at best be considered a Half-True.
The result of this new
family arrangement was that mothers, grandmothers and aunts became
all-powerful in the family, taking out their own enormous frustrations
and abandonments by their husbands and their huge responsibilities for
feeding and clothing their families by routinely killing their newborn,
dominating them and calling them “sinful, greedy beasts” for needing
them,7 tying them up in tight swaddling bands, battering and torturing
them, handing them over to cruel nurses and adoptive parents for daily
care, and giving them to neighboring men and teachers to rape.
7 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations. New York: Karnac, 2002, p. 285.
MOSTLY FALSE. deMause makes some some claims here, though the only thing he seems to actually be citing a source for is the "sinful, greedy beasts" quote. Therefore, only this portion shall be examined.
Before anything else, I wish to note that what is cited here--page 285 of The Emotional Life of Nations--is the start of chapter 8, and said chapter begins with the quote of "Who would not shudder if he were given the choice of eternal death or life again as a child? Who would not chose to die?" which he attributes to St. Augustine. This is the same quote as was noted at the start of in the Bipolar Christianity chapter of The Origins of War in Child Abuse (the chapter and book in the previous examination I did), and just like there, he gives no citation whatsoever.
Anyway, here is the "sinful, greedy beasts" quote found, along with its rather lengthy citation:
"Children throughout history have arguably been more vital, more gentle, more joyous, more trustful, more curious, more courageous and more innovative than adults. Yet adults throughout history have routinely called little children “beasts,” “sinful,” “greedy,” “arrogant,” “lumps of flesh,” “vile,” “polluted,” “enemies,” “vipers” and “infant fiends.”1
1. Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, 753; Augustine, Confessions, I, 7.11; Michael Goodich, “Encyclopaedic Literature: Child-Rearing in the Middle Ages.” History of Education 12(1983):7; Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990, p. 266; Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500-1800. New York: Harper & Row, 1977, p. 408; David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 19; Arthur P. Wolf, “The Women of Hai-shan: A Demographic Portrait. In Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke, Eds., Women in Chinese Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975, p. 202; George Savile Halifax, The Lady’s New-Years Gift: or, Advice to a Daughter. London, 1688, p. 80; Catherine M. Scholten, Childbearing in American, p. 60; Philip Greven, The Protestant Temperament. New York: New American Library, 1977, p. 28."
Well, that's a whole lot of citations to dump on us. Far too much for me to look at all of them. However, there is no need to look at all them anyway; deMause in Origins of War in Child Abuse only referred to "sinful," "greedy," and "beasts" and thus we need only look into those citations. It appears that the list of citations goes in the order of the words appearing.
But before we do that, I want to assess the original claim made in The Origins of War in Child Abuse compared to what is said in The Emotional Life of Nations. In The Origins of War in Child Abuse, deMause claims that women were "taking out their own enormous frustrations
and abandonments by their husbands and their huge responsibilities for
feeding and clothing their families by routinely killing their newborn,
dominating them and calling them “sinful, greedy beasts” for needing
them". Notice that he puts "sinful, greedy beasts" in one quotation rather than multiple ones and says they called the kids this for needing them. However, in The Emotional Lives of Nations, deMause puts sinful, greedy, and beasts in separate quotations, because he's quoting different people for each one. Additionally, he does not claim--nor do his examples appear to support the idea--that the children were called this for needing the women. So deMause putting the three words into one quote as if he was quoting someone who said that, rather than separate quotes to show they were separate statements said by separate people, is misleading. Thus, deMause is actually misrepresenting and misquoting his own work. With that note, let us look at the specific quotes.
First, Aeschylus, Libation Bearers, 753, for "beasts". You can find a translation of it here.
Now, 753 isn't explicitly listed, but it does show where 734 and 766
are, and you can look between them. I see no such statement. The closest
is that a character in the play says "For one must nurse the senseless
thing like a dumb beast, of course one must, by following its humor."
But this is not saying that the child is a dumb beast, merely that you
must nurse it like one. I suppose it does more directly call the child a
"senseless thing" but this is hardly an incorrect description of a baby.
Also, this is the statement of a character in a fictional play. I suppose perhaps it does use the term "beast" as was quoted, but again it was using it as a comparison, not saying they were beasts.
The next is for "sinful", where the citation is Augustine, Confessions, I, 7.11. Augustine does refer to children as sinful in the citation, but his argument is that children are sinful like adults. To children as such is not showing any specific dislike of them compared to adults. However, at least here it is attributing it to children.
Finally, it's time to look up "greedy" in Michael Goodich, “Encyclopaedic Literature: Child-Rearing in the Middle Ages.” History of Education 12(1983):7. However, page 7 offers no quotes from any works, and is rather a summary of one, where it says "Nevertheless, making use of numerous scriptural sources dealing with children, Bercheure draws a rather unattractive picture of the average child, who is greedy, ignorant, impudent, vain, insolent, shameless, boastful, and quarrelsome." The word greedy is found there, but one notices that this is not presented as a quote from Bercheure's book, but a description of how he talks about children. The work in question is "Reductorium moralis" by Pierre Bercheure (the article uses Bercheure, but his last name is in other sources rendered as Bersuire or Berchoire--or in Latin, Berchorius or Bercorius). It is possible that the word "greedy" is in fact used in it somewhere. Regrettably, this work (which the article says can be found in "Opera omnia (3 vols, Mainz, 1609), I, 66-73 on childhood") does not seem to be translated into English, nor am I entirely sure if I have access to it even in the original Latin.
So this one is a tricky one to evaluate. If the word "greedy" is clearly found in the source material Latin, then deMause's citation is not in error. If, however, it is not and this is just a summary description, then deMause is in error. But given that Goodich's article gives no indication this is a quote, I would defer to the idea deMause is misrepresenting this.
It should also be pointed out further that deMause claims adults have "routinely" called children this, but all he has done so far is point to isolated examples--examples that, in fact, are not even all accurate.
So our first citation is from a fictional play (which was not even saying the child was a beast, just that it is nursed like a beast), our second is from someone whose argument was that children are not better than adults rather than that children are extra sinful, and the third is not a quote from anyone (unless deMause thinks that the fact this summarizing used the word greedy at all counts as an instance). None of these serve his point particularly well, and even if they did, they do not show evidence this was "routine."
So what has happened here is that deMause misrepresented his own writing which itself was misrepresenting its sources.
It
is a little amusing, however, that deMause in The Emotional Life of
Nations goes on to complain that his theories (such as the idea
that billions of children have been murdered by their parents) have been
disregarded by many. Perhaps if he didn't constantly misquote or
misrepresent his sources as I have demonstrated, people would have taken him more seriously!
Most children in antiquity would therefore have watched their mothers drown, suffocate and stab their siblings to death.23
23
William V. Harris, “The Theoretical Possibility of Extensive
Infanticide in the Graeco-Roman World.” The Classical Quarterly,
32(1982): 114-116.
MOSTLY FALSE. The
source for this is a brief article discussing the exposure of children
in Roman times ("exposure" means to abandon a child, in essence "exposing" them to
the elements. While this frequently led to death, sometimes others would save the child and bring it up themselves). The article is essentially arguing this was a more common
practice in Ancient Rome than some believe. Even if the article is correct on this point, it still does not back up deMause's claims. The article refers to abandonment, but Lloyd deMause claims the article backs him up on
the claim that mothers of antiquity would frequently "drown,
suffocate and stab" their children! Even beyond that, the article's argument that it was more
frequent than often thought does not translate to deMause's idea that "most
children" would have seen their mothers do so. So deMause dramatically exaggerates what his source actually says.
Mothers
often simply gave birth to their babies in the privy, smashed their
heads in and treated the birth as an evacuation. Romans reported
watching hundreds of mothers throwing their newborn into the Tiber every
morning. So many infants were killed that even though mothers had eight
or more babies the populations of antiquity regularly decreased. It is
not surprising that the children who survived implanted terrifying
Killer Mother alters in their amygdalan fear centers and then acted them
out as adults in human sacrifice and war. Children playing in dung
heaps, rivers and cess trenches would find hundreds of dead babies, “a
prey for birds, food for wild beasts to rend” (Euripides).24
24 Lloyd deMause, Foundations of Psychohistory, p. 27.
HALF-TRUE. Here is the relevant portion of that page from Foundations of Psychohistory:
"Infanticide
during antiquity has usually been played down despite literally
hundreds of clear references by ancient writers that it was an accepted,
everyday occurrence. Children were thrown into rivers, flung into
dung-heaps and cess trenches, “potted” in jars to starve to death, and
exposed on every hill and roadside, “a prey for birds, food for wild
beasts to rend” (Euripides, Ion, 504). To begin with, any child that was
not perfect in shape and size, or cried too little or too much, or was
otherwise than is described in the gynecological writings on “How to
Recognize the Newborn That is Worth Rearing,”(111) was generally killed.
111. Soranus, Gynecology, p.79."
One notices deMause has expanded upon his claims; in The Origins of War in Child Abuse he asserts that children "would find hundreds of dead bodies" while citing Foundations of Psychohistory, but the grand claim of hundreds of bodies is not found in it. Again we see deMause misrepresenting a source he wrote!
Regardless, let us look at the citations; one is an in-line to Euripedes, the second a footnote to Soranus. Let's start with Euripedes. "Ion, 504" obviously means line 504 of Euripedes' play Ion. This does mention how a woman exposed (abandoned) her child "as a feast for birds and a bloody banquet for wild beasts" (translation from "The Complete Greek Drama" in 1938). However, it is a description of one person doing it--and in a fictional play at that--which falls well short of any evidence that this was anywhere near as common as deMause claims. To be fair, perhaps he was only using the quote poetically. But that means the only citation left is the Soranus one. While Soranus does give advice on whether you should bother rearing a child or not, it is not clear how frequently his advice was actually held.
An earlier footnote specifies the edition being referred to: "Soranus, Gynecology (Baltimore, 1956)". I obtained a copy and looked at page 79. Here it opens with a section "VI[XXVI]. How to Recognize the Newborn That Is Worth Rearing." Here he writes:
"And the infant which is suited by nature for rearing will be distinguished by the fact that its mother has spent the period of pregnancy in good health, for conditions which require medical care, especially those of the body, also harm the fetus and enfeeble the foundations of its life. Second, by the fact that it has been born at the due time, best at the end of nine months, and if it so happens, later; but also after only seven months. Furthermore by the fact that when put on the earth it immediately cries with proper vigor; for one that lives for some length of time without crying, or cries but weakly, is suspected of behaving so on account of some unfavorable condition. And by the fact that it is perfect in all its parts, members and senses; that its ducts, namely of the ears, nose, pharynx, urethra, anus are free from obstruction; that the natural functions of every <member> are neither sluggish nor weak; that the joints bend and stretch; that it has due size and shape and is properly sensitive in every respect. This we may recognize from pressing the fingers against the surface of the body, for it is natural to suffer pain from everything that pricks or squeezes. And by conditions contrary to those mentioned, the infant not worth rearing is recognized."
Soranus does not specify what is to be done with a child that is not worth rearing, but presumably abandonment is what is done. His goal appears to be an attempt to discern the likelihood of the child's survival; due to more primitive medicine, obviously deaths at a young age were far more likely, and I would assume Soranus is telling people how to tell if a child is likely to die at a very young age.
But deMause does not offer evidence this advice was frequently followed, or that it was--even if followed--particularly frequent for a child to not be counted as worth rearing. He also exaggerates Soranus's statements; Soranus's statement "that it has the due size and shape" is changed into "perfect in shape and size".
But even setting that aside, this does not back up deMause's claim. He claims, after all, that "Romans reported watching hundreds of mothers throwing their newborn into the Tiber every morning." But he doesn't actually provide a citation. Now, perhaps the #24 citation refers only to the last sentence, of how the children would find hundreds of dead bodies, plus the Euripedes quote. But if no citation was there to back up the claim about the hundreds of mothers, then that means... well, he has not backed it up! Thus he makes an extremely grand claim with no backing.
To be fair, on subsequent pages of Foundations of Psychohistory, he does go on to try to provide more evidence for his thesis of frequent killings of children, though I would be unsurprised if I were to discover he made the same kind of misrepresentations there as I have seen in this work. Regardless, our interest here is The Origins of War in Child Abuse. And in regards to that, his citation does not back him up. Even if there were a lot of infants killed, he does not offer evidence that "children playing in dung heaps, rivers and cess trenches would find hundreds of dead babies". And further, even if we were to be very charitable and suppose he's right about his other claims that follow in Foundations of Psychohistory and that we could infer that children would find hundreds of dead babies, he still offers no evidence of his very grand claim "Romans reported watching hundreds of mothers throwing their newborn into the Tiber every morning". Hundreds every single morning! Surely, if Romans were reporting this we would be able to see those reports, but he provides no citation for this very grand claim of his.
This one ultimately is difficult to assign a score to. If the only thing he was actually citing was the Euripedes quote, then I suppose it does back him up on that. However, it then means he offered nothing, at least not here, to back up the other claims he made. How one determines the accuracy depends on whether he is only citing his source for the Euripedes quote, or if he was going for some of the earlier parts also. It is not entirely clear which is the case. Though I would say that if it was not intended to provide support for the earlier claims, it means we are left without support for them, even ones that absolutely should be given some kind of evidence (such as, once again, his claim that Romans reported seeing hundreds of mothers throwing babies into the Tiber every morning). Due to this difficulty, I think I will just give it a middle of the road Half-True.
Even when people built new
buildings or bridges, little children were usually sealed in them alive
as “foundation sacrifices” to ward off the avenging maternal spirits who
resent the hubris of building the structure.36
36
H. S. Darlington, “Ceremonial Behaviorism: Sacrifices for the
Foundation of Houses.” The Psychoanalytic Review 18(1931): 309-327.
HALF-TRUE. The article here runs from pages 306 to 328 (the last page is the bibliography). It is not clear whether deMause's 309-327 means he thought there was nothing important on the first few pages and did not care about the bibliography, or if the numbers are an error on his part.
Regardless, the source here is a journal entry about sacrifices being used in the creation of buildings. Many of these are animals or items such as food or money, but it does give some examples of human sacrifices. But even in those, only a few examples of it occurring to children were mentioned, and unless I missed something in it, they were not indicated to be regular occurrences. So his claim that children were "usually" sealed within buildings is simply not supported by his citation.
As a side note, deMause in "The Emotional Lives of Nations" makes this same claim on page 299 of the work, though here he claims "The need to sacrifice children to ward off fears of success was so powerful that right through medieval times, when people built new buildings, walls, or bridges, little children were sealed in them alive as "foundation sacrifices" to ward off the angry, avenging spirits." He offers the same citation. However, as the examples given in the work seem to mostly be from outside of Europe, what that has to do with the "medieval period" is unclear. Obviously, the rest of the world existed during the medieval period, but as medieval was a Europe-centric phenomenon, it is odd to be using it for other areas--and I should note taht the timeline the article offers as to when much of this happened is rather vague.
In antiquity, since “women were an alien
and inferior species,”41 sex with wives was a rare duty engaged in
mainly to provide offspring, and men were addicted to raping young
children, both boys and girls, in order to prove their virility and
dominance.
41 Tice and Georgiou, p. 8.
MOSTLY TRUE. This rating is applied only to the portion before the footnote 41 and does not apply to what comes afterwards. It should be noted that the citation he provides is abbreviated, as it was mentioned earlier; the full version is "Pamela Paradis Tice and Doris Georgiou, “Historicocultural Arguments Supporting Adult-Child Sexual Relations.” The Journal of Psychohistory 30(2002)".
The sentence reads "The station of women in classical Athens was predicated largely on the beliefs that women were an alien and inferior species created separately from men, and that their difference from men was the antithesis of social order and cultural harmony." However, this is referring specifically to Athens, not antiquity in general as he seems to indicate it is. Still, the quote is there. I should also note it says nothing at all about what comes after the 41 in the same sentence (sex with wives being a rare duty or men being addicted to raping young children), but perhaps that is supposed to be backed up by the next footnote, which I will now take a look at... sort of.
Their rapes were almost always
agreed to by their parents, who often pimped their children and slaves
for a price, rented them out to neighbors as servants to be raped, sold
their virgin daughters for marriage for fifty pieces of silver, gave
their children to pedagogues for sexual use, made their children serve
at their banquets so they could be raped after dinner, went to war in
order to rape the children of enemies, and handed over their children to
the brothels, bath-houses and temples that could be found in any city
of antiquity.42
42 Edward Brongersma,
Loving Boys, p. 79-82; Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality:
Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. New York: Oxford,
University Press, 1999; Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women
and Rape. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975, p. 19.
UNKNOWN. Unfortunately, I cannot give an assessment to this one due to an inability to check into it. deMause tosses in three different citations. I do not have access to the first. I do have access to the second, but deMause provides no page number and it's a book that's hundreds of pages long, so I do not know where I am supposed to look in it.
The third I can look at, but the only thing it supports is the mention of how they "sold their virgin daughters for marriage for fifty pieces of silver." But that says nothing about rape at all, unless arranged marriages are considered rape--though deMause back in chapter 8 indicated he did believe arranged marriages were "arranged rapes" if the bride had not met the groom beforehand (see the first part of the examination of chapter 8 linked at the start, specifically the examination of footnote #20). But it is uncharitable to say they are "sold" for fifty pieces of silver when this seems simply to be what is known as the "bride price" which is still used in some societies today.
Because I was unable to fully look into these citations, I therefore can only render an "Unknown" rating. This is partially deMause's fault for being so vague with his citation of "Roman Homosexuality" but at the same time, he did mot clearly cite "Loving Boys", it's just that I am unable to look into it. Ordinarily I would have skipped over this given my lack of conclusions, but it was one of the quotes offered, and therefore I wanted to list it. If things change and I am able to at some point look more into it, I may
come back and adjust this, but for not this is unfortunately all I can
say.
Physicians advocated the rape of children as a way to overcome depression and as a cure for venereal disease.43
43 Lloyd deMause, “The History of Child Abuse.” The Journal of Psychohistory 25(1998): 224.
MOSTLY FALSE. Here deMause cites an article he wrote, which is a transcript of a speech he gave. The quote is in the
article... however, this article gives no footnotes. All it does is
unhelpfully say at the end in the bibliography:
"This article is based upon extensive primary source material fully
referenced in the over 600 footnotes contained in the following sources:
Lloyd deMause, "The Evolution of Childhood." in his Foundations of
Psychohistory. New York: Creative Roots, 1982.
____________ "On writing childhood history" The Journal of
Psychohistory, 16 (1988): 135-171.
____________ "The History of Child Assault." The Journal of
Psychotherapy 18(1990): 1-29.
____________ "The Universality of Incest." The Journal of Psychohistory
19 (1991):123-164."
I have no plans to try to fully read through four different sources just
to try to find his single citation. Now, I do not begrudge deMause too much for not including a bunch of in-line citations in this "History of Child Abuse" speech, because it was a speech after all. But why, in The Origins of War in Child Abuse, does he cite this speech which gives no direct citations as his source? Why not, for footnote #43, tell us the exact source this claim comes from? Instead of doing that, he cites an article of his which only vaguely gives citations. It does not make sense why he does not offer directly whatever his source was. Surely he knows it, because he was the one who came up with it.
I attempted to perform a search of his site (which has the texts of his books available) for "venereal disease" to see if I could find what he was talking about. In Foundations of Psychohistory he makes a similar page on page 58 (in chapter 1):
"When one learns that as late as 1900 there were still people who believed venereal disease could be cured “by means of sexual intercourse with children,” one begins to recognize the dimensions of the problem more fully.(268)
268. Dr. Albert Moll, The Sexual Life of Children (New York, 1913), p.219; Max Schur, Freud: Living and Dying (New York, 1972), pp.120-32; Robert Fleiss, Symbol, Dream and Psychosis (New York, 1973), pp.205-29."
It should be noted that there are some errors in these citations. One of them is only found in the online edition, where Albert Moll is incorrectly written as Albert Molt (the print book gets this one correct). But the other problems are found in both physical book and online version. The book is "The Sexual Life of the Child", not "The Sexual Life of Children", and it should be "Robert Fliess", not "Robert Fleiss". But now that we have them, let's look through them.
The Sexual Life of the Child: This writes that in some countries, there is a superstition that venereal disease may be cured by means of sexual intercourse with children. This says nothing about physicians recommending it.
Living and Dying: A skim through this demonstrates nothing whatsoever about venereal disease. A search on archive.org for "venereal" turns up nothing.
Symbol, Dream and Psychosis: See above.
So we have, in the end, a reference to how some people believed this, but not that any physicians ever recommended it, let alone that they were doing so as late as the year 1900 (granted, the 1900 claim is found not in The Origins of War in Child Abuse, but rather Foundations of Psychohistory; either way, though, it is a writing of deMause). Perhaps deMause did give a citation elsewhere, but if so I can't find it. Thus I have to judge it on this particular citation, which proves very wanting.
Most political leaders kept children to rape,
like Nero, who roamed about daily, raping boys who he found in the
streets and in brothels.44
44 Sander J. Breiner, Slaughter of the Innocents, p. 122.
HALF-TRUE. The source states, concerning Nero, "He often disguised himself and visited brothels, roamed the streets with his comrades, robbed shops, insulted women, raped boys, and murdered." So it backs him up on Nero. But how does that translate to the claim that most political leaders kept children to rape? That is not stated at all on this page. Indeed, the source says "Nero was among the more degenerate of the emperors" implying such behavior was not normal.
This therefore brings an examination of the ones noted in that post to an end. This is obviously far shorter than my previous examinations, but it is not intended to be--that took a long time, and I don't feel the need to do it all again. That said, I did end up looking up one more citation, namely the one deMause gives immediately afterwards, so I will be including that.
Some even used babies for fellatio, like Tiberius, who “taught children
of the most tender years, whom he called his little fishes, to play
between his legs while he was in his bath. Those which had not yet been
weaned…he set at fellatio.”45
45 Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Joseph Gavorse, ed. New York, Heritage Press, 1965, p. 148;
MOSTLY TRUE. Yes, that semicolon at the end of the citation was there originally in deMause's work. It is nice that in this case, however, he cites a primary source. And he gets the quote right, too. I should note that I technically did not consult the printing he cites, but rather one from 1931, but the quote matches and it is on the same page number.
That said, his source only backs up Tiberius doing it, but he says "Some even used babies for fellatio, like Tiberius". What is his proof others did so? Suetonius treats it as a major anomaly: "Still more flagrant and brazen was another sort of infamy which he practiced, one that may scarce be told, much less believed." Thus I gave it a mostly true. It is possible I am grading too harshly by giving it only a Mostly True given that the instance of Tiberius is true, but it declares "some" with Tiberius as an example. He backs up Tiberius, but not the "some" because he needs to cite more than just Tiberius. With this one, it is possible I am being too strict... but I am not sure deMause deserves leniency with what we have seen before.
And this brings us to the end. This is, obviously, much shorter than the previous examinations, with only a few looked up. Of course, that's because those were the only ones mentioned in the question we were looking at. Yet again, we see the same kinds of problems with deMause's citations, where he exaggerates or misquotes his sources. This is not always the case (a few of these were reasonably accurate), but it happens enough to put his other claims in doubt. This sample size may be small, but it is consistent with what we have seen before. However, what was rather surprising this time around is not just that deMause misrepresents his sources, but that he misrepresents his own work. That is what I find a true oddity. People may intentionally or unintentionally misrepresent others, but it is weird indeed to do so with words you yourself wrote. Regardless, the reader has seen the examinations.
Maybe deMause offers much better evidence in the works, chapters, or citations I didn't look at. But as is often the case, once someone makes enough errors, one sees little reason to try to look more into them given the likelihood that the others will suffer from the same problems. deMause's ideas appear to have found little acceptance among psychologists and historians, and quite likely for good reason.
Again, I'm not sure how useful an examination of just a few citations in one chapter is, especially given I had already looked into a lot of citations in previous posts; this new post probably does not add much to what was already done. But given at least one person was wondering about this, it is perhaps valid to post this information for the benefit of anyone else who perhaps was wondering the same things and stumbled across this blog post as a result.
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