False Ideologies

Frans Gieles, Ipce Newsletter E 26, November 2008

1. Alan Greenspan

Alan Greenspan was eighteen years the chair of the Fed, the central banks in the USA. He was a true believer of the neo-conservative dogmas, especially that of the salutary principles of the free market and other neo-capitalistic views, based on the famous scientist Adam Smith.

Then, there was the credit crisis and he was interrogated by a commission of the US Congress.

"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in firms."

 - "In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it was not working?"
Alan: "Absolutely, precisely."

What seemed to be science, was unmasked as an ideology. And Alan changed his ideas and practice.

2. An Ipce member

"One friend told me that he had been a (big) child porn collector until one day he came to realize that that was contrary to what he felt and believed in. He threw it all away, and came to a completely different, in some sense purer, way of experiencing his own girl-love. Someone else told me that he was 'only months away from being a child molester' when he realized things went wrong. And changed himself.
[...]
One of the best ways of saving children from being abused by pedophiles would be to help those pedophiles to make that choice, take that step. And who could do so better than those who have already taken that step? The pedophiles who have found that there are more ways than just the sexual ones to enjoy children - ways that are not just harmless, but even beneficial."
[From Ipce's Statement "The Turning Point"]

The ideology was: 'My feelings are essentially of a sexual nature'. Real introspection learned that is was love, not sex. The man changed his ideology and his behavior. 

3. Bruce Rind

"Over the last quarter century the incest model, with its image of helpless victims exploited and traumatized by powerful perpetrators, has come to dominate perceptions of virtually all forms of adult-minor sex. Thus, even willing sexual relations between gay or bisexual adolescent boys and adult men, which differ from father-daughter incest in many important ways, are generally seen by the lay public and professionals as traumatizing and psychologically injurious. This study assessed this common perception by examining a nonclinical, mostly college sample of gay and bisexual men. 
[...]
Findings were inconsistent with the incest model. The incest model has come to act as a procrustean bed, narrowly dictating how adult-minor sexual relations quite different from incest are perceived."