THE EXTIRPATION OF IRRATIONAL GUILT

In this essay I shall be disclosing how I have been crushed by guilt feelings since I was a small boy and explore both the hurtful aspects and paradoxes that flow from my inextirpable irrational guilt In making these disclosures my goal is to get FEEDBACK from all on the autistic spectrum who have been crushed by guilt and also find ways of dispelling that guilt and a much more realistic way of dealing with the moral tightropes of our society

My first recollections of guilt arose around 1948 or 1949 for dismantling a clockwork toy engine and for strife with my brother 4 years younger Then followed guilt about sexual and excretory matters and the use of “bad language “ In memories of life in Lancing /Sussex from 1947 to 1952 these memories are like a badly faded photograph .In 1953 I was sent to a grammar school reached by a 20 minute train journey in trains with separate compartments then ubiquitous Three boys named Angood Malfroot and Robinson plied me with smutty talk ,amongst other things and at their instigation I took part in pranks with sexual overtones that caused no tangible harm even to a schoolgirl we met in a train compartment where one of the trio dared me to ask her if I could shag her I knew that a shag was a bird that lived on the sea and shaggy meant untidy It was as absurd as asking to be guillemotted .

For that I was “suspended “ but never went back Instead I was plunged into such desperate mental pain that I wanted to end my life .After 60 years the scar abides .I felt worse than either mad or bad , and this experience gave rise to a conviction that people were human land mines ,women in particular Another sexually related experience even now too painful to write about concatenated to impart a fear that I would go mad and indecently assault women or girls which has been reactivated whenever I saw reports of sexual offences .At one time I even had delusions that I had committed these offences .This has totally poisoned my capacity to form heterosexual relationships ,

I was sent to a Remedial School where the headmaster administered psychoanalysis In the course of these sessions he required me to write down absolutely everything I could remember and I duly did I told him all about the schoolboy pranks ,and sibling strife and about sexual matters He convinced me that I was neither mad,nor bad but I had special gifts and staff members egged me on when I took to demanding pursuits Whilst I became a school livewire and at last discovered my dignity and self respect, it was wrested from me by my parents during school holidays The psychoanalysis was to bring about lifelong family strife .

My father took no interest in my schoolwork I TAUGHT MYSELF GERMAN in 1958 He was dependent on me during a trip to the Continent when I alone had command of French and German He could not accept that So on leaving school I was frogmarched into the Civil Service to add up salaries 8 months later I was sacked for being too slow All the good work of the remedial school was unravelled in a week when I had to sign on at a labour exchange and I was crushed by the stigma of unemployment This concatenated with the scars of the school expulsion to exacerbate my guilt complex At a time when I needed friendship I feared it so much that I fled from it I withdrew into myself during all the spells of unemployment

Whilst working in London I studied A level subjects and passed ,to earn a place at Glasgow University My guilt complex diminished until I graduated and underwent a fruitless search for jobs or post graduate courses It flared up and again I felt crushed family strife resumed ,and I felt my dignity drain from me as soon as I alighted at my father s home town I then accepted an offer to study computer science at Stafford Polytechnic but within a week I was in acute difficulties Then it was my brother Jonathan who was on my back accusing me of not trying hard enough I dropped out with great family acrimonies and so my Guilt complex resumed stronger than ever As after graduation I travelled far and wide to interviews .I discovered that 2 short spells in mental hospitals were to debar me from employment as surely as prison sentences

When I was maimed in 1981 I was able to shed my stigma of graduate dole scrounger but in 1984 family strife resumed when my father gratuitously humiliated me in front of a huge crowd –and I recall other such humiliations in sharp detail , Having climbed almost every Welsh mountain with artificial leg I moved to Cumbernauld Soon afterwards I was subjected to unremitting abuse from neighbours and acquired a CRIMINAL RECORD for a sarcastic remark about Catholicism which could have been a catch-line from Sir Walter Scott s contemporary Prosper Merimee who had written a novel about a religious war which I had studied .

At times my Guilt Complex flares up when I realise that my last prolonged spell of work was in 1971 yet I had made repeated attempts to get jobs only to elicit empty promises or hurtful rebuffs and even reprimands for my lateral thinking such as my proposed Photosouvenirs Livelihood Project.I feel irrational guilt overwhelm me whenever I make the slightest gaffe or I am careless like mislaying my doorkeys I IMAGINE THAT I have offended people merely by raising my voice and for my Aspergerising – talking about subjects that are TABOO FOR CHRISTIANS like even meteorology !

There may still be the Lo Fi camera Club run by WOMEN in central Edinburgh Acting in good faith I provided them with the texts of 2 pamphlets about photography and other assets that would have drawn new members I was thrown out for having Aspergers knowing too much about photography and allegedly preventing them from selling their abysmal photographs at an arts fair I was overwhelmed with guilt for what I had done until Andy Born reassured me that camera clubs are monopolized by cliques whose ossified practices drive away newcomers When a neighbour cut down a boundary hedge and set fire to the branches IN MY GARDEN I was very hurt yet by some strange process I felt as if I had OFFENDED HIM I could not bring myself to say to his face that he had trampled upon me by using my garden as a dump .

Edward de Bono has advanced an explanation for the formation of habits in his THE MECHANISM OF MIND He likens the developing brain to a sandpile being eroded by random action of rain and wind ,or a mountain being sculpted by the action of ice ,rain and other agencies upon layers of rock which have varying hardness From that I speak of “FAULT LINES IN THE BRAIN “ and how an otherwise normal person can undergo permanent personality damage by such matters as the reaction of his Christian parents when he uses smutty language or even the sensory overload of 400 children singing hymns at school assembly It is exceedingly commonplace for acute aversions to develop in normal people because of early experiences So giving rise to apparently irrational behaviours and indeed inextirpable fears of the opposite sex

I have maintained that in any authoritarian home a child will tend towards developing extremes –becoming an obnoxious clone of its parents or an incorrigible rebel This is borne out by the criminal records of the offspring of Victoria Gillick and Mary Whitehouse Meanwhile other evidence builds up to show that this personality deformation is very marked in children of services families If the child fails to conform to the tacit expectations to join the Forces or marry a Serviceman he or she is put under increasing pressure I have met very severely scathed adult children of services families

The paradox arises from single parent families where the sons have NO fathers to emulate or introject Without such adequate role models they have NO moral compasses they are readily corrupted by their peers and never develop consciences

I seem to have introjected my father s conscience because even 12 years after his death I am so overwhelmed with guilt for being normal and I cannot bring myself to be realistic about my trivial peccadilloes Only when typically of a SUNDAY and at CHRISTMAS it is as if my father s ghost is shouting in my ear and I plummet into a state where I am shouting derogatory words at myself as I am totally trapped in guilt

I anxiously await the views of fellow Aspies

David Seagrave Dunfermline Library 22-12-12