At a Certain Time, Lots of People were Reading Thomas Anthony Harris

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Doctor Gavin Ashenden is Mainly Right · Taylor Marshall and a Franciscan are Discussing the Pseudo-Term Narcissist · New blog on the kid: At a Certain Time, Lots of People were Reading Thomas Anthony Harris

I know it thanks to Dr. Gavin Ashenden, who mentioned his magnum opus I'm OK – You're OK.

Even clergy read him. Back when he was fashionable, no doubt more often Anglican and Lutheran Borad Church clergy than Catholic clergy, and where Catholic clergy followed suit (US, France, Netherlands) is arguably the main areas where clergy committing abuse of children and abuse of teens, heterosexual and homosexual abuse, mainly occurred. Sweden and Poland would have been less infected by that.

Now clergy are regretting having read it. Dr. Gavin Ashenden, a Catholic layman who was once an Anglican "bishop," is one who has reacted against this cult of Harris' first work (he published with his wife a sequel in 1985, which is called Staying OK, which was less read).

My fear is that such people will now exchange the cult of one psychiatrist, Th. A. Harris, for the cult of some other one, like perhaps Jordan Peterson.

There was a time, back in Chesterton's day, when Catholic clergy did moral theology independently of either Harris or Peterson. Probably, at least that is my impression, landing somewhere between the two.

Back then, also, they were probably less likely to de facto cooperate with de facto Commie type psychiatrists, like those of Sweden, against the liberty of a "patient" who is "attended to by Them" (reference to Experiment House*) because he is simply the kind of person with the kind of positions that Commies have a habit of detesting and silencing, among other things by psychiatry.

A clergy which continues this kind of cooperation, and which therefore scurries back and forth between poles like Harris and Peterson is basically making itself a harlot to these non-Catholic and anti-Catholic ideologies.**

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
XXI Lord's Day after Pentecost
22.X.2023

PS — it would obviously be utterly evil to try to tell someone "you were raised under Harris, you need to be raised again under Peterson" ... people who have already been raised should not be reeducated by force or pressure./HGL

* Bonus points if you can spot novel and author!
** Feel free to spot a reference to Apoc. 18.