Abuse of children in institutional care in 20th-century Ireland: an analysis using fromm's psychology

Abstract

The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse found that members of Catholic congregations in Ireland abused children in institutions which they ran on behalf of the State for much of the 20th century. Drawing from Erich Fromm's moral psychology, it is argued that members took out the suppression of their individual freedom in hostility towards the children and themselves through forms of submissive and authoritarian behaviour. This is seen as one probable explanation which affected some members. The reason members suppressed their freedom was to find psychological security through embracing a Catholic theology which emphasised self-abnegation. Poor economic and social conditions are also seen as factors which contributed to members not developing a healthy relation to their own freedom. The article concludes that those who work in caring professions need to have security in their own freedom.

Keywords:

• Ireland
• Catholic
• abuse
• children
• suppression
• freedom

Notes

1 There is a striking concordance between Fromm's view of the pressure we experience to suppress our freedom and Sartre's concept of ‘bad faith’. For Sartre, the weight of responsibility for our freedom causes us anguish from which we flee by falsely locating our identity in something arbitrary to which we give meaning and value, such as our job role. (See Sartre, 2000, pp. 59–60, 556, 625–628).

2 Nietzsche was the first to identify the tendency for people who feel powerless to seek power through subjugating themselves to Christian morality. They then try to impose the morality on others while at the same time feeling resentment against the world that caused them to subjugate their freedom. See On the Genealogy of Morality (Nietzsche, 1994).

3 See also McGarry (2002, 2009) for the connection between the abuse and historical economic and social factors which contributed to many young Irish males entering the priesthood or joining religious orders and for the repressive effect of the Church's teaching on sexuality.