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The book "Preparing for Adolescence" which was published in the late 70s almost single-handedly wrecked my life. I remember my mother crying out "You used to be so loving and kind, what's happening to you?" some years later I realized that what I had wanted to say was "if you could get all this Dobson stuff out of the house I might have a chance of actually becoming myself instead of this freak it's trying to turn me into." ... er, or words to that effect. So yeah... that took 3 years of intense therapy to work out. :)

30+ years later and if someone wants to send me into a feral rage all that has to be done is for a Dobson book to be tossed into my line of sight. Maybe I just didn't understand what he was getting at, but there's like a 14 year block of my life when I wouldn't allow another human being to so much as touch me, I mean down to little old ladies at church trying to hug me... I'd clothesline them. Sorry grandma, you invade my personal space and you're going down. And no, there's no deep dark secret lurking in my childhood, it's just how I reacted to Dobson's psychology.

Methinks the problem was, and is, much deeper than that caused by a single book.

OLD REGGIE: Methinks the problem was, and is, much deeper than that caused by a single book.

1000 silverlings: boy, no kidding

Dr. Eckleburg: Repressed memories can be killers.

I knew when I typed out that very brief description I was opening myself up for this kind of thing. I also knew exactly who to expect. Those comments really were beneath all three of you, that is to say they should be.

In a strictly detached way I liked the "and is", that was a nice twist of the knife, well played. If the blade had actually penetrated it might have hurt. If we were trading fish stories it would have even been funny.

This goes back to my comments, which OLD REGGIE found so condescending, about treating people as persons and not objects for our personal enjoyment, it's difficult to do that when we're separated by pixels. I regularly fail at remembering that the pixels on my screen are the expressions of a human being and it's very hard to keep contempt for an idea from becoming contempt for a person.

I realize that this will tend to draw protests of innocence. In the first place openly posting personal experiences is an invitation for public comments and if this were fark.com who would be surprised at the level of discourse. But here "I'm a Christian, you're a savage beast" kind of dialog should be disturbing, it's not though... so what does that say about Christianity?

I think I have evidence that when it's tried it works. Usually we can tell who's trying and who isn't. This brings us back to the practical differences between Catholicism and whatever is commonly considered "reformed" Christianity. When a Catholic behaves like a jerk or a boor one can point to particular areas where that person has failed to live up to what the Church calls him to. When a Calvinist (for instance) acts a prat what standard is there? What place does human dignity have in a theology which announces total depravity, theoretically or practically?

And BTW, there are no repressed memories, no dark secrets, just pop "Christian" psychology applied by perfectly normal middle American parents doing the best they could trusting the theories of a respected member of their denomination. I'm not going to go into the subject any further because that would truly make this about me and not about my experiences.