Fredric Wertham - Seduction of the Innocent
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- Book:Seduction of the Innocent
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- Publisher:Rinehart & Company
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- Year:1954
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Seduction of the Innocent: summary, description and annotation
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This
is the most shocking book of recent years. And it should be the most influential.
Seduction
of the Innocent is the complete, detailed report of the findings of famed psychiatrist,
Fredric Wertham, on the pernicious influence of comic books on the youth of today. No parent can
afford to ignore it.
You
think your child is immune? Dont forget 90,000,000 comic books are read each month. You think
they are mostly about floppy-eared bunnies, attractive little mice and chipmunks? Go take a look.
On
the basis of wide experience and many years research, Dr. Wertham flatly states that comic books:
- Are an invitation to illiteracy
- Create an atmosphere of cruelty and deceit
- Stimulate unwholesome fantasies
- Suggest criminal or sexually abnormal ideas
- Create a readiness for temptation
- Suggest forms a delinquent impulse may take and supply details of technique
These
are only some of the points raised and documented.
Dr. Wertham
also discusses many other deeply disturbing questions. He has found that comic books harm the
development of reading from the lowest level of the most elementary hygiene to the highest level
of the appreciation of good literature.
He
has found an appalling lack of scientific method on the part of professionals who have for years
paid no attention to comic books, although they are practically the only reading for many children.
He believes that comic-book reading helps children to get rid not of their
aggressions, as many experts state, but of their inhibitions.
It
is important to remember that all Dr. Werthams findings are based on a study of comic books,
not newspaper comic strips which are required to observe the same standards of good taste as the newspapers
in which they are published.
The
most subtle and pervading effect of crime comics on children, Dr. Wertham writes, can be summarized
in a single phrase: moral disarmament. It consists chiefly in a blunting of the finer feelings of
conscience, of mercy, of sympathy for other peoples suffering and of respect for women as women and not
merely as sex objects to be bandied about or as luxury prizes to be fought over. They affect childrens
taste for the finer influences of education, for art, for literature, and for the decent and constructive
relationships between human beings and especially between the sexes.
Dr. Werthams
suggested remedy, a public-health approach to legislation on the subject, must be seriously considered
by all who claim to take the slightest interest in the mental health of our children.
Fredric Wertham: author's other books
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Fredric Wertham, M.D., worked with Professor Adolf Meyer at Johns Hopkins for seven years, teaching and doing research. He was the first American psychiatrist to be awarded a research fellowship by the National Research Council. In 1932, he organized and directed the first psychiatric clinic in a major court where all convicted felons got a psychiatric examination, the results reported to the judges. Since then, his main psychiatric interest, aside from his private patients, has been the practice and organization of psychotherapy in mental hygiene clinics.
Dr. Wertham has been director of some of the largest clinics in the country: the mental hygiene clinic of Bellevue Hospital, New York, and also Queens Hospital Center. He has organized two free clinicsthe Quaker Emergency Service Readjustment Center (devoted entirely to the psychotherapy of sexual difficulties) and the Lafargue Clinic, located in the heart of a slum area in Harlem, the first psychiatric clinic to he opened in that district.
He is the author of many articles and books, among them The Brain as an Organ, and the best-selling Dark Legend and The Show of Violence.
I am greatly indebted to the many adults and children who have actively helped me in this study. They have sent me comic books, drawn my attention to television programs, corroborated, amplified or criticized my writings and referred cases for treatment in my clinics. My thanks are due especially to the psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, social workers, psychologists, teachers and clerical helpers who make up the indefatigable and unselfish staff of the Lafargue Clinic, especially Dr. Hilde L. Mosse. I am also grateful to the staff of the Mental Hygiene Clinic of the Queens General Hospital and the staff of the Quaker Emergency Service Readjustment Center, all of whom have been helpful and whose work aided in making this study possible.
I would like also to express my thanks to the hundreds of people who have written me letters from all over the world, only a few of which I have been able to answer and for most of whom this is my first grateful acknowledgment.
Fredric Wertham, M.D.
44 Gramercy Park
New York, N. Y.
ONLY THE COMIC-BOOK CHARACTERS IN THIS BOOK ARE FICTITIOUS. ALL THE OTHERS ARE REAL.
These are the names given as publishers on the comic books quoted or referred to in the text:
- Ace Books, Inc.
- Allen Hardy Associates, Inc.
- Approved Comics, Inc.
- Archie Comic Publications, Inc.
- Atlas News Co., Inc.
- Avon Periodicals, Inc.
- Best Syndicated Features, Inc.
- Better Publications, Inc.
- Capitol Stories, Inc.
- Charlton Comics, Inc.
- Chipiden Publishing Corp.
- Classic Syndicate, Inc.
- Close-up, Inc.
- Columbia Comic Corporation
- Comic Combine Corp.
- Comic Favorites, Inc.
- Comic Magazine Corp.
- Comic Magazines
- Cornell Publishing Corp.
- Crime Bureau Stories, Inc.
- Cross-Industries Corp.
- Cross Publications, Inc.
- Current Detective Stories, Inc.
- Danner, Fred W.
- Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
- D-S Publishing Co., Inc.
- Educational Comics, Inc.
- Will Eisner Productions
- Essankay Publications Co.
- Export Newspaper Service, Inc.
- Fables Publishing Co.
- Famous Funnies, Inc.
- Fawcett Publications, Inc.
- Feature Publications, Inc.
- Four Star Publications, Inc.
- Fox Feature Syndicate, Inc.
- Gem Publications
- Gilberton Co., Inc.
- Gilmor Magazines, Inc.
- Glen-Kel Publishing Co., Inc.
- Harvey Enterprises, Inc.
- Harvey Features Syndicate
- Harvey Publications, Inc.
- Headline Publications, Inc.
- Hercules Publishing Corp.
- Hero Books, Inc.
- Hillman Periodicals, Inc.
- Home Comics, Inc.
- Humor Publications, Inc.
- I. C. Publishing Co., Inc.
- Interstate Publishing Corp.
- Jay-Jay Corp.
- Jubilee Publications, Inc.
- Junior Books, Inc.
- K. K. Publications, Inc.
- Law and Order Magazines, Inc.
- Leading Comic Corporation
- L. L. Publishing Co., Inc.
- Lev Gleason Publications, Inc.
- Love Romances Publishing Co., Inc.
- Magazine Enterprises, Inc.
- Magazine Village, Inc.
- Marjean Magazine Corp.
- Marvel Comic Group
- Michel Publications, Inc.
- Non-Pareil Publishing Corp.
- National Comics Publications, Inc.
- Orbit Publications, Inc.
- Parents Institute, Inc.
- Parkway Publishing Co.
- Patches Publications, Inc.
- Periodical House, Inc.
- The Premium Group of Comics
- Prime Publications, Inc.
- Real Adventures Publishing Co.
- Realistic Comics, Inc.
- St. John Publishing Co.
- Seaboard Publishers, Inc.
- Sports Action, Inc.
- Standard Magazines, Inc.
- Star Publications, Inc.
- Story Comics, Inc.
- Street and Smith Publications, Inc.
- Superior Comics, Ltd.
- Superior Publishers, Ltd.
- Suzie Comics
- Timely Comics, Inc.
- Tiny Tot Comics, Inc.
- Toby Press
- Toytown Publications, Inc.
- Trojan Magazines, Inc.
- Twentieth Century Comic Corp.
- U.S.A. Comic Magazine Corp.
- Visual Editions, Inc.
- Western Fiction Publishing Co., Inc.
- Witches Tales, Inc.
- A. A. Wyn, Inc.
- Youthful Magazines, Inc.
- Ziff-Davis Publishing Co.
Such Trivia As Comic Books
Introducing the Subject
And I verily do suppose that in the braines and hertes of children, whiche be membres spiritual!, whiles they be tender, and the little slippes of reason begynne in them to bud, ther may happe by evil custome some pestiferous dewe of vice to perse the sayde membres, and infecte and corrupt the softe and tender buddes.
Sir Thomas Elyot
(1531)
Gardening consists largely in protecting plants from blight and weeds, and the same is true of attending to the growth of children. If a plant fails to grow properly because attacked by a pest, only a poor gardener would look for the cause in that plant alone. The good gardener will think immediately in terms of general precaution and spray the whole field. But with children we act like the bad gardener. We often fail to carry out elementary preventive measures, and we look for the causes in the individual child. A whole high-sounding terminology has been put to use for that purpose, bristling with deep emotional disorders, profound psychogenic features and hidden motives baffling in their complexity. And children are arbitrarily classifiedusually after the eventas abnormal, unstable or predisposed, words that often fit their environment better than they fit the children. The question is, Can we help the plant without attending to the garden?
A number of years ago an attorney from a large industrial city came to consult me about an unusual problem. A group of prominent businessmen had become interested in a reformatory for boys. This attorney knew of my work in mental hygiene clinics and wanted me to look over this reformatory and advise whether, and how, a mental hygiene department could be set up there. Very good work is done there, he told me. It is a model place and the boys are very contented and happy. I would like you to visit the institution and tell us whether you think we need a mental hygiene clinic there.
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