Lee Daniel Crocker wrote,
>Other studies are being done as well to test, for example, the
>suggestion that some adult males' irrational fear of medical
>facilities and treatments may stem from subconscious memories of
>painful circumcision. There are also studies showing psychological
>harm not from circumcision per se, but from the loss of sexual
>pleasure caused by it.
A message from another list follows.
--J. R.
A part of my work as a psychotherapist involves helping people move into old painful memories. Using techniques like breathwork or emdr people are moved into the old pain and thereby have the opportunity to re-experience the painful memories and events and be relieved of the old trauma. (Many men prefer this sort of therapy over traditional talk therapy because they don't have to "sit and talk about it" to get to the raw emotion. Actually, painful events that occur prior to the acquisition of language can't be retreived through "words" in therapy...you can talk till you are blue in the face and you will never get there....)
When I started doing this type of work a number of years ago I noticed that the painful memories were often clustered...as someone re-experienced one old trauma they would often spontaneously experience others that were related in some way. I began to see that one of the experiences that was not uncommon for men to "re-experience" within a cluster of old trauma was the pain and trauma related to being circumsized. When I first noticed this I was amazed and shocked...I hadn't thought of the experience of circumcision as being anything but a routine medical procedure. The men who re-lived things were usually just as startled. They were usually expecting other issues to surface and were surprised to see circumcision as one of them. We were both shocked at the intensity of the related pain. I started looking into the medical aspects and was completely blown away to find that doctors didn't use any anesthetic...the assumption being that babies don't feel pain. Now there is a mind blower!
I checked with other therapists doing this sort of work and folks who had written about this and found that it was not an uncommon experience.
I am convinced that the practice of circumcision can create trauma in boys. I can't imagine anyone allowing little girls to be cut in their genital area shortly after birth. You would see an avalanche of protest! These boys get through the gauntlet of the birth canal only to find one of their very first experiences with other humans is being cut in one of their most sensitive parts. Not a good start. To me routine circumcision seems senseless. If someone has religious reasons that's their call....but routine procedures...hell no. Why create more pain??
As usual the nurses are on the forefront of change...here is an excerpt from a document where nurses were "conscientious-objectors" refusing to participate in circumcisions.
"Our medical position was that neonatal circumcision was unjustifiable. Our ethical position was that it violated a newborn's right to a whole, intact body. As patient advocates and nurse-educators working in maternal-child health, we believed that we had a professional duty to dispel myths and offer parents factual information about circumcision, and that we had a duty not to participate in a procedure that surgically altered the normal genitalia of unconsenting minors."
Thank you nurses for taking a stand for boys!
You can read the entire document here:
http://www.cirp.org/nrc/R.N._Conscientious_Objecto.html
more info here:
http://www.cirp.org
Tom Golden
www.webhealing.com
Hope you find that interesting.
Cheers,
--J. R. Molloy
http://www.shasta.com/jr