Last November, while commenting on the scandal surrounding the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, I discussed the motivations of various sexual-abuse ‘survivors’ groups. I said, in part:

Why is it so much worse to be diddled than to be struck? They’re both violations of the person, but while one bruise fades in short order, another bruises the soul and one can never, ever actually recover from it: only Survive and Go On Living, One Day At A Time bla bla bla. Happily, this Survival assures the long-term survival of the Recovery industry — members of which tend to be the people quoted in all those newspaper articles about how terrible the effects of x are, and how lots of therapy is needed.

I don’t deny that sexual abuse does harm to the victims; but it doesn’t do that much harm, nor is it all that common.

To which some illiterate jackass replied, in the comments:

this is the sickest thing ive ever read,the person who wrote this is obviosly the biggest ass in america, IF one thinks that a PRIEST sexually abusing a CHILD isnt “that bad” than they deserve to rott in hell. your a sick fuck

My refusal to buy into the orthodoxy that sexual abuse (or, indeed any kind of abuse, or any trauma at all) is somehow incredibly emotionally scarring makes me “sick”, and I deserve to “rott in hell”.

So I am particularly interested in a book review that appeared in The New Republic recently. Sally Satel reviews Richard J. McNally’s Remembering Trauma. I haven’t yet read the book, but Satel’s quotes and comments make it sound quite interesting, particularly as it touches on the subject of the way it has become totally unaccaptable to even question others’ claims of victimhood, even in the abstract:

[… We] must remember that just as campaigns against domestic violence, child abuse, and even the Vietnam war have advanced our understanding of victims, those same movements have at other times exploited and even manufactured victims for political ends.

This essentially political tension casts a large shadow over the field of traumatology. And when scientific data are perceived as clashing with efforts on behalf of victims, there have been ugly scenes. The cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus has been vilified for publishing groundbreaking data on the malleability of memory. As a sought-after expert witness in repressed memory cases, she has been accused of sympathizing with child molesters. A few years ago the literary scholar Elaine Showalter received death threats for her book Hystories, a study of modern epidemics of hysteria such as multiple personality disorder. In July 1999, Congress unanimously passed House Resolution 107, which “condemns and denounces” three psychologists, Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch, and Robert Bauserman, for a “severely flawed” study, and the Senate then approved it unanimously. The psychologists’ offense was publishing an empirical paper in the prestigious journal Psychological Bulletin concluding that child sex abuse does not inevitably lead to lasting psychological harm. McNally presents new evidence showing that the psychologists’ conclusion?which was by no means an irresponsible reading of the data they examined?might not hold up, but he is fierce about protecting their scientific freedom.

Now McNally, too, risks excommunication from the Church of Traumatology, for the charge of blaming the victim. For he presents evidence showing that emotional breakdown after a tragedy is the exception, not the rule. It occurs because some individuals are simply more susceptible than others to developing psychiatric disorders following a crisis. This will not please the psychobabblers and the melodramatists and the daytime-television bookers; but McNally is unfazed. “Ultimately the best form of advocacy,” he writes, “is pursuing the truth about trauma wherever it may lead.”