Correspondence
Correspondence Murdoch on mothers Summit, N.J. To the Editors: I read Anna Maria Murdoch's reflections on motherhood and mythology [Aug. 31 ]at 3 A.M. one night recently while attending the...
...It turns out that feelings, emotions and even a sense of self, are no longer seen as separate from perception and cognitive processing of information...
...Most unfairly, perhaps, Dr...
...Luke's Journal of Theology 9 November 1979:639...
...Interested readers will have to read the book, my review and this exchange in order to decide upon the disputed questions...
...lt touched and moved me...
...Tillie Olsen's silences, quiet, frustration...
...Words, words, words, as Hamletsaid...
...Callahan concludes that aspects of my holistic cultural diagnosis of the etiology of mental illness in western Ireland are "muddled and f'dled with internat contradictions...
...Index of American Periodical Verse...
...I, 1924...
...Correspondence (Continued from page 612) on "old psychoanalytic sources" and never seem to "have heard of the likes of Kagen and Piaget who cast a different light on early child development...
...If Dr...
...Social workers...
...I had picked up Commonweal because I couldn't sleep and needed to calm myself by reading in the wee hours...
...48106...
...NANCY SCHEPER-HUGHF.~ Dr...
...28]--that there is no weapon which is effective against the bigot...
...Would that words were magical and powerful and could invade and undo the sorrowful laments of the Irish country people--saints, scholars and schizophrenics among them...
...If I dared to quote a Villager's comment to me as we "waited on a slow moving confessional line" (as a rather shocked Ms...
...In recording such inconsistencies among rural villages I attempted to portray the complexity of the social and psychological setting in western Ireland...
...This, from a "devout" feminist...
...I sent advance copies of the page proofs to a number of key persons in the Republic, including a village "key informant...
...Finally, as to the well-raised issues concerning confidentiality, informed consent, village reaction, and the ethics of social science "invasion" in a small, fiercely private community like "Ballybran," I can only reply that I was open and direct in presenting myself as an anthropologist, writer and researcher...
...lll~trations: Cover, Iris Murdoch drawing adapted from photo by Sophie Bassouls...
...by taking our own chiidren to the places where others worship and by inviting others to come with us--and not just on Brotherhood Week...
...As to whether the people of Ball3~bran are going to feel "betrayed" by what ~[ wrote, I cannot deny that this is a possibility...
...For all its lack of analysis and insight, Meconis's book brings the ripples of real llvesof real Americans, some of the best, to the shores of our consciences, and for that we should be grateful...
...I used no hidden or "unobtrusive measures" other than those which my own body provided: eyes, ears, touch...
...SONDRA GORDON LANGFORD Review reviewed Ranchos de Taos, N.M...
...300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor...
...I Commonweal: 612these lives is to deal as best we can with the realities of war and injustice, not to dismiss,discredit, and denounce those naive enough to name the evils...
...Procedamus in pacem...
...Serials Data Program No...
...none in evidence...
...The powerless and penniless ~thropologist only watches and listens and records...
...I took copious notes quite openly, and struck from the record of a conversation whatever villagers requested me to delete...
...But don't expect the bigot to listen...
...To the Editors: Growing up as a Jew in an entirely .Christian neighborhood during the '40s and early '50s taught me more about bigotry than I wanted to know, particularly--and I should like to pass this on to John Garvey ["The Ugly Little Secret," Sept...
...After the English, says Callahan, comes the invading social scientist...
...Teachers...
...Callahan protests that I show "little familiarity with the recent work in [cognitive aspects of] child development," and that I rely (Continued on page 639) I II Commonweal is indexed in Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature...
...She touched so many loose and disparate ends...
...Unfortunately, in western Ireland I was to observe a socio-cultural system that (for the most part) constrained the expression of love and tenderness and the flowering of human potential...
...Callahan questions my discussion of corporal punishment because "the reported complaints about the physical punishment of children come from the villagers themselves...
...they were among the main perpetrators of corporal punishment, according to students...
...SIDNEY CALLAHAN Thmtl~ Sewanee, Tenn...
...None suggested any changes...
...Book Review Digest and Book Review Index...
...It cuts quickly and clearly to the heart of the problem and is especially apt in relating the biblical understanding of power to the nuclear arms race...
...Sheper-Hughes is presently a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory of Human Development, Graduate Schoo~ of Education, Harvard University...
...cover and p. 619, .~la~ed from New York Times photo...
...Scheper-Hughes can ignore at will what has been called psychology's cognitive revolution...
...Callahan asks why I never raise the question as t8 whether "some repressions are worth the price...
...Encore...
...I thought her article was dead right...
...Symbolic thinking has everything to do with emotional health and anyone who has done their homework in psychology and child development knows it...
...I had left our two small children (ages 4 and 11 months) with my husband to attend this convention, and was about to present a paper on, of all things, the dismal subject of abortion...
...Indeed, if this were so it might stem the tide of female emigrations...
...We can respond, indeed we must, but it is to the others, to our neighbors whose minds are not made up...
...I was careful to present only case history materials of mental patients who did not originate from the parish in which I was based...
...one night recently while attending the national meeting of the American Political Science Association...
...Let us recall tha t , as historians, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of judging another period by the standards of our own...
...We can set up cross/cultural study groups and use Buber and Heschel, 9 Teresa and More, not to proselytize, but to enjoy together: The Rabbis say, "When two study at one table, the Schechina sits between...
...Microfilm from Vol...
...Yet, we heed the obligation to do better...
...I'm glad Commonweal published it as it is such a fine expression of feminine sensibilities...
...While I do make the point that rural Irish socialization is less stressful for girls than boys, I would not go so far as Ms...
...Unfortunately, what is psychologically destructive to one sex, cannot help but ~egatively affect the other...
...And don't ever, ever apologize for the sins of the fathers...
...Why would I'want to bow to the very au courant Kagan and Piaget who have so very little to say about my primary concern-the emotional health and well-being of children...
...From whom else should the reports have come, if not from the mouths of childrenand their own parents...
...Reading her article was, for me, a centering experience...
...Callahan would protest) it was only to record the old woman's confusion and ambivalence toward the sacrament, not to reveal any personal informarion on the state of her soul...
...JOHN M. GESSgJJEditor, St...
...Catholic Periodical Index...
...Second-class postage paid at New York, N. Y, Copyright (,~ 1979 Commonweal Publishing Co...
...But aren't such contradictions the very soul of "ambivalence"--or did I select the wrong word...
...The author replies Limitations of space keep me from arguing the points in my review all over again, although there is a lot more evidence for my judgments than I could cram into the original short review...
...Nay--after the English comes the invasions of the condescending Yankee tourist...
...Agnes's...
...he/she looks inside a twisted heart and f'mds there the "Armies of the Pope if Kennedy is elected," or "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," because it is in that twisted heart that such ideas are born...
...But one point simply can't be passed over, and that is the claim that Dr...
...ISSN 0010-3330...
...Callahan finds my qualitatively based analysis of Irish parenting "unconvincing," I would refer her to the most recent issue of the Journal of Comparative Family Studies (summer-1979) for a quantitative attitudinal study of nearly 500 Irish mothers by Anne McKenna (University College, Dublin) which similarly portrays the Iri, sh mother as "overly-controlling" and "hostile" toward her children...
...Ignorance and repression were as rampant at Spring Garden School as at St...
...I cannot reply except to suggest that the reviewer spend some time in a mental hospital, or in a pub for that matter, talking with a self-hating alcoholic or a morbidly depressed 48-year-old bachelor son...
...An unemployed, alcoholic, or depressed or emotionally disturbed father or husband or brother is certainly no boon to the "matrifocal" household...
...From outside agents of social control, perhaps...
...Callahan in representing the rural village as a kind of feminist haven...
...To reason with the bigot, to beat oneself with the sins of one's ancestors and try to point out their good actions is like trying to use geometry to prove that God exists...
...Quite skillfully she wove together myth and imagery to comment on a whole variety of issues related to motherhood--distractions, joy, ambivalence, "How will I ever find time to think and write...
...In this, as in all things, the answer is education with patience and love...
...At the same time I would like to reply to a few of her not-so-well-taken Points...
...A truly responsive human community is one that is sensitive to the needs of young as well as old, male as well as female...
...and the Common Market with its Voluntary Retirement Scheme, paving the way for "agribusiness" and the rape Of the small farmer and shepherd and fisherman...
...Are aftthropologists alone in noting that contradictions and inconsistencies between the "ideal" (traditions, folklore) and the "real" (observed behavior) are, generally speaking, the norm in most societies...
...To the Editors: Thanks for running Fleming Rutledge's "The Pope and the Nations" in your September 14 issue...
...Emotions may be pass6 in sophisticated and cognitively oriented psychological circles, but for those who still share Silvan Tomkin's conviction that "affects are the primary motives of man," then serious attention must be given to the ways in which young and old feel about themselves, their past histories, the quality of their personal relationships and their institutions...
...I find it difficult to believe that she considers the alarming rates of mental hospitalization, alcoholism and permanent celibacy in rural Ireland today as a small price to pay in the name of preserving the Jansenist "ideals" of "self-discipline," sexual repression, and the value of a "happy death...
...To the Editors: I wish, however belatedly, to thank Sidney Callahan for her careful reading and May 25th review of my book, Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland (University of California Press...
...So I was, in a sense, ripe for the Murdoch piece...
...Her only example is that although I discuss Irish "'ambivalence" toward children (evidenced in patterns of ridicule and corporal punishment and in low maternal warmth and hostility), I also cite instances of "extraordinary nurturance on the part of both men and women in tradition and folklore...
...We can do it in small ways, by loosening us/them bonds in our classroom...
...Some, I trust, will take courage in seeing that their own personal troubles are but manifestations of larger social and cultural ills that can be reversed and changed...
...MARY C. SEEGERS Patience with prejudice Chatham, Md...
...Many will no doubt see themselves in those pages--and that will be a painful experience for some, and cause anger in still others...
...to current issues available through University Microfilm...
...few and far between...
...The bigot doesn't read history or care about Crusades and Inquisitions...
Vol. 106 • November 1979 • No. 20
