1. Circumcision, The Hidden Trauma :
How an American Cultural Practice
Affects Infants and Ultimately Us All
by Ronald Goldman
Time To End A Useless Practice
Circumcision: The Hidden Trauma is the first intensive exploration of the
unrecognized psychological and social effects of this American cultural
practice. The book has been endorsed by dozens of professionals in the
fields of psychology, psychiatry, child development, pediatrics, obstetrics,
childbirth education, sociology, and anthropology. Plain facts and recent
research results revealed in the book conflict with popular beliefs and
raise serious questions. Goldmans application of psychological and social
research coherently explains both the tenacity of circumcision and the
contradictory information and beliefs about it. He discusses the potential
adverse effects of circumcision not only on infants, men, and sexuality, but
also on mother-child relationships, male-female relationships, and societal
traits and problems. The social analysis is provocative, but it is the
exploration of the deeply personal effects of circumcision on individuals
that is most compelling. We learn how some men discover their feelings
about circumcision, why men do not generally talk about them, and why
this is changing. The book illustrates how specific male behaviors can be
connected to circumcision, even though a man may be unaware of the
connection. The text is supported with clinical reports, interviews, surveys,
illustrations, and thorough documentation. Circumcision: The Hidden
Trauma identifies an overlooked source of early pain and simultaneously
points us in the direction of both healing and preventing this pain. It is of
particular interest to parents and childrens advocates; men who seek to
explore their sexuality and deepen self-awareness; women who want to
understand men better; childbirth educators and allied workers; and
mental health, medical, and academic professionals. The book has wide
appeal because it is not just about circumcision and the critical importance
of proper infant care. More generally, it is about trusting our instincts,
questioning some of our cultural values and assumptions, and reflecting
on who we are and who we can be as individuals and as a society.
Features:
* ISBN13: 9780964489530
* Condition: NEW
* Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

2. Personal Review: Circumcision, The Hidden Trauma : How an
American Cultural Practice Affects Infants and Ultimately Us All
by Ronald Goldman
"Just as expected, seventy-two percent of the male students are
circumcised. At Clem's party I had been reminded of the promiscuous
way in which American doctors circumcise males in childhood, a practice I
highly disapprove of...it constitutes, in [an] advertiser's phrase, 'a rape of
the penis'. Until the forties, only the upper or educated classes were
circumcised in America. The REAL people were spared this humiliation.
But during the affluent postwar years the operation became standard
procedure, making money for doctors as well as allowing the American
mother to mutilate her son in order that he might never forget her early
power over him..."Gore Vidal
MYRA BRECKINRIDGE If there was ever an
issue that metaphorically encapsulates the Achilles heel of Western
society, it turns out that this may be it, above all others. The title of this
incredible, clearly thought out, brilliantly edited and masterfully written book
may lead you to believe that it is all about a seemingly benign issue. Make
no mistake: what this book is actually about are 1) the actual definition of
the surgical practice and 2) the social, economic, sociological,
psychological and anthropological forces that go into us seeing it as other
than what it is. Dr. Goldman effectively teaches in this book, from the
anthropological perspectives of such luminaries as Ashley Montagu and
Margaret Mead, that circumcision is a practice that is older than all
recorded history and religions. (The practice was actually regimented and
ritualized by the Egyptian priests and pharohs, millenia before the advent
of Judaism.) Yet the practice, in and out of a religious context, continues.
Dr. Goldman shows us from the purely medical/health/surgical perspective
(with an avalanche of evidence and corroborative opinions in the medical
profession) that circumcision is a practice that has little to n o medical
health value, and was once actually called a cure for masturbation and
cancer by last century's medical community. Yet the implausible and
unscientific theories justifying its existence keep coming up, and the
practice continues. Dr. Goldman shows us, amazingly, from an
internationally sociological and cultural perspective, that the United States
is the only industrialized nation in the modern world that has the
overwhelming majority of its infant boys be subjected to the practice. Yet
the practic e continues. Dr. Goldman shows us, from an ethics in medicine
perspective, that circumcision is a practice that, by virtue of the harm done
to infant children physically and psychologically--with little to no up side
beyond the money going to obstetricians and pediatricians for the
procedure--completely rips to shreds any conception of the Hippocratic
oath and turns the entire life of any doctor who performs them routinely
into a profoundly dangerous lie. Yet, the practice continues. It is an old
anthropologist's dictum that the most important thing to know about a
culture is what it takes for granted. Dr. Ronald Goldman, with
CIRCUMCISION, THE HIDDEN TRAUMA gives us not only the hidden,

3. true anatomy of the surgical process, along with the actual complete and
(heretofore to my knowledge in everyday America) unknown anatomy of
the human male, but also the secret architecture of the social forces and
weaknesses that make up the ritualised American denial of the inherently
violent nature of its existence. Dr. Goldman shows in this both innovatively
and exhaustively researched book that the entire surgical procedure of
circumcision depends on the total invalidation of the soul of the infant male
child and their personhood for its existence in medicine. Only paleolithic
theories of the child feeling no pain and suffering no lasting or remembered
traumatic side effects from the procedure--W HICH ROUTINELY
INVOLVES THE USE OF NO ANESTHESIA--justify its medical practice;
and fly in the face of all kinds of logic while doing so. I along with most of
the country have never seen actual pictures of or witnessed a
circumcision; part of the reason I saw no problem with it when I picked this
book up. The *pictures* in this book alone of children in the process of
being circumcised, however, will change your way of looking at the
practice forever--as it has changed me and mine forever. Picture an adult
male going through the process of circumcision, complete with his hands,
arms and legs forceably bound in industrial strength velcro to keep him
from being able to interrupt a surgical process performed on his perfectly
healthy sex organ against his will--again, *without anesthesia*--and the
first thought that will probably come to your mind is one of two things: the
electric chair, or Nazi Germany. Which by definition takes away the
mystery of how BOTH in the 20th century could have come into existence.
I discovered Dr. Goldman's work in the bibliography of one of the seminal
books by the psychologist champion of the human child Alice Miller (author
of, among other classics in the field, FOR YOUR OW N GOOD, BANISHED
KNOW LEDGE and PRISONERS OF CHILDHOOD--THE DRAMA OF THE
GIFTED CHILD). Between this, Alice Miller's work, and William Dufty's
SUGAR BLUES, I feel as if I have the answer to why our culture can move
so far forward and fall so far backward on the evolutionary ladder at the
same time. The door separating Western culture from the embrace of
higher consciousness, as told to us by poets, mystics,yogis, leaders of
ancient religions, transpersonal psychologists and theoretical
physicist/philosophers, is our view of the spiritual and physical
completeness of the human child--and the actions we take upholding that
view. That door is locked with a dead bolt called CIRCUMCISION. And
even unlocking the door, as Europe has already shown us, does not by
definition mean opening it. But without unlocking it opening it isn't posible.
Read this if you have to in small doses, but read it; it will change the way
you view our world.
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