Roland98

So you don't believe in "that which does not kill you makes you stronger?" Isn't it possible to have incredibly positive things come from an unfortunate situation, which, in hindsight, can make the experience less of one of victimization?

yguy

Here, boys and girls, is the root of enlightened reason: the willingness to admit the degree to which we may be unreasonable.

However, they were used by "researchers" with an obvious agenda in a study that Seligman was certainly aware of. Had he objected, it behooved him to make it known in no uncertain terms. Presumably, such a rebuff would have made it to teh net, yet googling on "martin seligman" + "rind et al" yields nothing beyond Seligman's belief that effects of CSA are oberblown.

But the fact that I don't write everyone off should tell you that my criteria for writing people off may not be as shallow as you think.

It does, but not nearly enough, IMO.

Doesn't matter. Make it any organization you want. The same principle applies. I'm exaggerating to illustrate the point, not to appeal to emotion.

I'm not convinced of that. Not that any of them get together and brainstorm about how best to promote pedophilia or the like - I suspect it's more of an unconscious conspiracy, if you will.

They can't be of any benefit whatever if they don't know what good is. Seligman doesn't. Evidently he had forgotten it by the time he hooked up by age 9, when most kids would have known enough to run like hell from the ghoul he had a "positive experience" with.

Oh, you're mean all right.

I haven't held anything back, so if you can stand me to this point, we'll get along just fine, I'm sure.

The more I read about Seligman, the more convinced I am that my first impression was correct.

yguy

When did I say he had an agenda? What I said is that he's an idiot; or, in Leninspeak, a useful idiot.

This certainly is your imagination working overtime, since I never referred to any agenda on the part of Seligman, much less the APA.

You know what? I don't give a flying puck what his "contributions" to the field have been. He's an intellectual Renfield to the Dracula of pedophilia.

yguy

That's a crock. I had never seen the quote until some idiot here posted a link to the Rind study in support of the idea that CSA doesn't harm children. If anyone took Seligman's comments out of context, it was Rind et al. Seligman has had several years to set the record straight. If he did, it somehow failed to show up on the net.

yguy

The problem is that according to Seligman, it was not an unfortunate situation:

"But, for him, it was not abuse. This was the first adult who took him seriously, who was willing to discuss the issues of the world with him (gotten from the newspapers he was selling)."

To hear him tell it, it was no more traumatic than his first taste of ice cream. It's not that Seligman had evil done to him and overcame the effects of it - he saw the evil as good.

HelenM

But in fact we have not heard Seligman tell it.

The only quote you've given is someone else's synopsis of Seligman's opinion.

I put Seligman's book, that this synopsis evidently came from, on hold at the library. At some point I'll be able to read what Seligman actually wrote, but I don't have the book yet.

Helen

HelenM

You have no way of knowing whether anyone has ever asked Seligman about that paper and how he responded.

The APA evidently don't consider what that paper says grounds for disqualifying Seligman as president - it clearly isn't very important to them. So why would it be important to Seligman? Maybe he has a lot more pressing things to do than to follow up on all the references to him and his books on the Internet. Anyone well-known is bound to be quoted and referred to. So what if they don't track down all those references? I doubt they even have time.

Helen

HelenM

Exactly. All you care about is one tiny synopsis of something Seligman said, in one paper.

Well, I'm glad that the APA is more balanced than that and does care about Seligman's contributions to the field of psychology.

So you say, but I bet you can't prove that even one pedophile has justified his behavior with "a paper said that Seligman said his childhood experience was somewhat positive".

That Seligman has been responsible for a proliferation of pedophiles is entirely speculation on your part.

I doubt that many pedophiles have the first clue who Seligman is or that he is (was? I don't know whether he still is) the President of the APA.

Helen

HelenM

1) If the first person who took Seligman seriously was a pedophile, what does that imply about Seligman's childhood? I'd say it implies that every adult in his life was abusing him, in effect, to some extent.

2) According to the quote, Seligman in no way said the abuse was a positive experience. He said that having an adult take him seriously was a positive experience. Do you really think that given a choice of a) non-pedophile who took him seriously b) pedophile who took him seriously, he'd have chosen the latter? But he didn't have that choice, did he? - according to the quote, anyway.

Helen

Daleth

That is so delightfully ironic coming from you.

Let's take a look at how reasonable you are:
You found a quote in a report discussing CSA.
The quote is a third-party interpretation of what Seligman thinks.
You take two sentences from that third-party interpretation away from its context.
You use that fragment of the 3rd-party interpretation to invalidate everything Seligman has to say.
You extrapolate the invalidation of Seligman to cover the entire organization he once headed.

You have taken an out-of-context two-sentence fragment of a third-party interpretation of one thing one man once said and used it to invalidate decades of research by thousands of people.

How very reasonable of you.

No, it's just an ad hom. That's all it is. Like everything else I've seen you put forth on any topic here, it's your gut feeling, not the product of reason. (It's so girly to put emotion over reason!) Do you have anything further to add about children in daycare or babysitting? Any facts rather than feelings? This is a thread about children in daycare, after all. I'm done talking about Seligman.

And I am NOT mean! Say that again and I'll track you down and beat the snot out of you!