Follow this through.

As I may have stated before, my father died when I was 13 years of age. That produced a significant amount of trauma in our family’s life.

I was not immune to that trauma.

If that was the only trauma that I had suffered, I might’ve had a chance at a normal life.

I might have been able to get married and have kids.

The Lord took me in a different direction.

My mother remarried when I was 15 years of age, and that remarriage doubled the amount of trauma to my developing psychosexual identity.

Suddenly I inherited a stepfather and two step brothers, and we lived under the same roof.

It’s a strange thing to combine two families together.

It’s a tremendous adjustment, more so if you are in early to mid adolescence.

I know the transition was difficult on my older stepbrother Stevie, who turned to drugs.

It was tough for me even though I stayed away from drugs.

Combining two families is stressful. It’s nothing like you see on television.

Television portrays the combination of two families as a joyful, non-stressful event that the children are willing and gleeful to engage in.

Perhaps this is true for many families, but I suspect that for the majority of families the children are not desirous of their parent’s remarriage.

This is a true story.

Our combined families minus the parents were sitting around in our recreation room watching an episode of My Three Sons.

In this particular episode Steve Douglas, played by Fred McMurray, along with his soon to be bride named Barbara approach the children from both families in their living room and announce that they are getting married.

The children upon hearing the news immediately rise up in vigorous happiness and congratulate their parents.

When our real combined families saw this scene, there was a moment of silence before we all burst out in laughter.

It was obvious that none of the children from our combined family wanted our parents to get married.

There’s a reason for this.

In the developing child there are two forces, one from the father, and one from the mother, that are attempting to integrate with each other into a unique personality that is you.

The child desperately wants to integrate these forces into a nice tight integrated dovetailed joint.

Divorce and death weaken this joint. What you get is a weak unstable joint and, consequently, a weak unstable personality – one that is more fractured.

The older you are in adolescence, the stronger this joint is should the parents divorce, or should one parent die.

The earlier you are in adolescence, the weaker this joint becomes.

This is why trauma in the family affects younger adolescents more than it does older adolescents.

When this trauma hits, the child will do anything to preserve and strengthen this joint.

They definitely do not want their parents to remarry. That is a television fantasy.

In my case, this double hit from both my father’s death and my mother’s remarriage cause me to become more angry and introverted.

I lost all the socialization that normally takes place during high school years.

I participated in almost no activities. Sure, there were a few, but only a few.

There was an entire world of student parties and socialization that I was oblivious to.

It’s difficult to remember back on fifty years with extreme clarity, but I remember going through a decision process in my mind with regard to survival and direction in my life.

Somewhere in my subconscious I made a childlike decision, because I was a child, that close relationships could result in extreme pain should one of those relations die.

It would therefore cause me less pain emotionally if I was not closely attached to other people.

This is logical, but it is not normal logic. It’s aberrant because most people don’t think this way.

Nevertheless I was a child.

It therefore became logical to my childlike mind that if I never had any girlfriends, or by extension a wife, I could not have children. If I did not have a wife or children, they could not die on me. Therefore I would experience less pain.

Thus my child-like mind embraced this logic, and there grew within me a force that would automatically prevent me from interacting normally with the opposite sex even though I had a biological desire to do so.

I remember experiencing this force in high school. There was this girl that I liked and wanted to ask out, but I could feel this force within me preventing me from doing so.

This force has persisted throughout my life.

It feels at times as if I am missing a set of instructions, or if there is a blockage on a set of instructions within me.

It causes me to act awkwardly when I try to engage the opposite sex in a sexual way.

It is not a force that I can defeat.

It has become part of my integrated, aberrant personality.

This force is so strong that when I have tried to have sex with the opposite sex, my body shuts down.

It’s a protective mechanism gone awry.

I was able to obtain an erection by myself, but not with the opposite sex.

My body shuts down. There is nothing that I can do to control this.

This was frustrating to me when I was young, but now that I am older and understand what’s going on, I am not frustrated at all.

The mind of a child when undergoing stress in adolescence, when psychosexual identity is being forged, makes conclusions about life.

Those conclusions define who you are throughout your life. You cannot alter them.

I suspect that homosexuality, pedophilia, asexuality has its roots in the forging of psychosexual identity during adolescence.

People want to know why they are the way they are. I can only give you insight into the way that I am.

Jeffrey Dahmer wanted to know why he was the way he was.

Let’s put aside the notion that a hernia surgery caused by Jeffrey Dahmer to be the way he was. There is no evidence, nor will there ever be any evidence that a hernia surgery leads to this type of activity.

What we do know is that Jeffrey Dahmer‘s parents argued and fought constantly.

I suspect that the extreme trauma that he was undergoing during his early childhood and adolescence disrupted his integrating personality.

In an attempt to survive and stay alive, he made internal conclusions which became part of his personality. He reached out into his own experiences and used those experiences to form a psychosexual identity, unique to him, which permitted him to survive.

Of course these internal conclusions were flawed and aberrant. Of course these conclusions made and make no sense. He made these conclusions when he was a child.

Internally to him they made sense. To us they are flawed and aberrant.

He understood that his logic was aberrant to the rest of us, but to himself, the logic was valid.

In terms of his own body and psyche, his actions seemed right and valid. He understood that his actions were wrong in terms of the rest of society, but to his own self his actions were right, not wrong.

Similarly, in my case, my logic seems right to me in terms of my own survival. I understand that my logic is flawed in the broader context, but in terms of myself it is correct.

I bring this up to point out the flawed legal concept of knowing right from wrong.

Yes, Jeffrey Dahmer knew that you believed his actions were wrong, but in terms of himself, he believed his actions were right.

Much time is consumed in the legal system as to whether an individual who commits a crime knows right from wrong.

It’s a waste of time.

A person who commits a crime obviously feels within his own context that what he’s doing is right.

The only thing that counts in the legal system is what the majority of the people think.

In that sense, anybody who commits a crime, obviously has some psychological trait that is aberrant from the norm.

Why is this important?

It’s important because we then begin to realize that all crime and aberrancy has a psychological basis.

This realization then compels us to prevent this aberrancy to the highest degree possible.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

This realization also compels us to understand that much of aberrancy is not fixable.

You can’t fix me into being a normal functioning heterosexual unless you’re willing to send me to North Korea and have Kim Jong-un take me down to a baby and rebuild my personality, something you’re not willing to do.

You can’t fix a homosexual. They are who they are.

You can’t fix a pedophile. They are who they are.

You can’t fix Jeffrey Dahmer. He was who he was.

There is no rehabilitation possible. There is no conversion therapy that is going to work.

What you see is what you get.

What you can do, is prevent sexual aberrancy. What you can do is prevent aberrance of all types.

You can create a society where families are not stressed out economically. You can ensure an economy that works to provide more people more money.

You can create a more stable family structure. You can eliminate pornography as a force that affects children adversely.

You can delete society of mindless algorithms and standardized tests which place too much pressure upon adults and children.

You can treat stop treating people as numbers.

You can stop human resource departments from treating people as widgets.

Of course, you can’t prevent a parent who dies of a heart attack, but you can create a healthier society.

You can put high taxes on deep fried foods, and foods that contain high fructose corn syrup.

You can give monetary inducements to the Medicaid and Medicare populations for keeping their weight within certain limits.

You can put intelligent controls on all addictive drugs that would find the healthiest balance between the lowest addiction rates and the least amount of organized crime.

You can deemphasize gambling in the United States.

If we are going to have a service economy forever, we can mandate that workers in the service economy must make a living wage.

We can do a lot of things.

All of these public measures can impact the family and the developing child.

None of these measures can impact me and my particular psychosexual identity because I am old and because I am who I am.

But we may be able to prevent so many people from moving down aberrant pathways.

I will leave you with this analogy.

A developing psychosexual identity is akin to an offshore oil platform being built upon the sea.

As long as the sea is calm, the platform is fine. Everything is as it should be.

But what happens when an earthquake or rogue wave hits the platform.

The platform becomes destabilized.

The structures begin to waver up and down, and move from side to side.

The men on the platform become frightened and furiously move to stabilize the platform. They take whatever materials they have on hand and Gerry rig a solution.

The solution isn’t perfect; indeed, the solution is twisted and perhaps a little ugly.

But it works. It holds the platform together and enables the men to survive.

Well, this is what happens with a developing psychosexual identity that has been traumatized.

The only difference is that there’s no one to come around and rescue an individual.

The men on the platform can call for help, get on a boat and escape. Later the oil platform can be towed into port and rebuilt.

A human being can not.

What you see is what you get.

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

Copyright 2022 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved