A Childhood Sexual Trauma

In 2005 - after 21 years of making a formalized, scientific, system dynamics-based, phenomenological analysis of my religious experience - it seemed fairly clear to me that my 1962 experience of purgation and mystical union occurred during the abreaction or release of the effects of a childhood sexual trauma. This conclusion is based on the following three sets of interlocking data:
  1. Certain key memories from childhood.
  2. The studies and insights of Charcot, Breuer, Janet, and Freud on hysteria. {See (Freud 1966)}
  3. The results that are emerging from the many years I have spent scientifically analyzing my experience of purgation and mystical union.
My childhood sexual trauma occurred around 1941 or 1942 when I was about 9 or 10 years old. The assailant was about 14 or 15 years old and was unknown to me. I saw him running toward me in the distance as I was taking a short cut across the snow-filled school grounds in late afternoon. The snow was about a foot deep - maybe more - and I could not outrun him. When he caught up with me, I immediately blacked out and am unable to remember the nature of the assault. I don't remember having any post-assault pain in the private areas of my body or anywhere else. Also, I don't remember any semen on my clothes or body. I know I would have remembered if these indications had occurred.

Here are two memories of happenings in my childhood and early manhood that I believe are related to the trauma:

  1. An experience of hysteria: When I was 11 years old and making the stressful transition in the Fall of 1943 from grade school to the 7th grade in junior high school, my legs became paralyzed for a few hours. Earlier, on my way to school that day, I stopped by at a friend's house and then we walked to school together. He told me his older brother had rheumatic fever. I thought about this during the morning until I began to think I was 'catching' rheumatic fever. Eventually, in early afternoon my legs became paralyzed. My father came from work to pick me up at the school nurse's office about 3 or 4pm. When we got home and I was lying on my bed, my father talked to me and eventually convinced me my legs could not have become paralyzed by rheumatic fever. Then, he told me in a loving way and with manliness and conviction that I could get up and walk. I did so and ran out to play with much joy.
  2. I was a fairly good tennis player in high school and college. Some top players in the city where I lived had remarked from time to time that I had one of the best backhands around. My second serve was arching, spinning, curving, wildly bouncing, and hard to handle (I am exaggerating a bit here). However, when I would get toward the end of any close tournament singles match, I always lost - much to my frustration and disappointment. This was particularly true in my college years. The most contemptuous words in all of athletics are directed at such a person: 'He choked!' Freud's words are 'strangulated emotions.'
    (Item 2 has to be examined carefully for bias. I may be making a last ditch effort in my old age to free myself from the label given to me in my youth.)

Arlen Wolpert
MS (Mechanical Engineering)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
http://theworld.com/~awolpert/gtr538.html
(Draft of October 27,2007)

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