A Critque of Susan Griffin's

After my initial reading of "Our Secret", I honestly would not have been able to answer your question of "Well, what was it about?". However, I did read the story a second time, and while reading it I began forming my own judgment of what this disorderly history is actually about. I believe underneath all of the stories concerning the Holocaust, Heinrich Himmler, and various others, "Our Secret" is about the abuse of authority and power. Susan Griffin goes into extensive detail on many situations of people abusing their power, without really stating that they are. Griffin even touches on the result of this abuse on the person whom is being abused.

The term "abuse" can be defined in many ways; it is a very broad term which heavily depends on what the individual feels is acceptable or unacceptable in society. To "abuse" is to hurt or injure someone or something by maltreatment, or to misuse the power accompanying an office or position; but abuse does not always involve mistreatment of others. Drug dependence, alcoholism, and self-hatred are all examples of self-abuse. In Griffin's essay, there are many examples of abuse, but many of these examples are only considered abusive to our modern country's standards. What constitutes as ethical or unethical behavior tends to differ across cultures and time periods. Even in our own culture, we may sometimes have a hard time determining if an action is abusive, or simply a person being "mean" or "unfair". With abuse having synonyms like violence, neglect, name-calling, and exploitation, it's easy to see that there is a very fine line between abuse and what some would consider strict, controlling behavior. On the more severe side, there are also times when physical abuse becomes torture, which is the infliction of bodily pain or mental suffering used either as punishment, to compel a person to confess to a crime or provide information, or to intimidate, discriminate against, or repress a person or group of people for political purposes. When most people think of the Holocaust and the severe conditions that people were living in, a pretty picture does not come to mind. Furthermore, the inflictions cast upon people living in concentration camps are often times considered torture, not abuse. But isn't torture really just a severe form of abuse? Since abuse comes in so many shapes and sizes, I will for the rest of my essay thoroughly chose examples from "Our Secret" that best fit the above definitions of "abuse", and then go on to explain the significance of these examples to Susan Griffin's essay.

The first thing I would like to address is the many instances of child abuse seen in "Our Secret". The first example brought to our attention by Griffin is the relationship between young Heinrich Himmler and his father. When Heinrich Himmler is first introduced into the essay, Griffin immediately mentions a position that Himmler has just gained, and also a position which he is already holding. Griffin mentions the year is 1943, and that "Heinrich Himmler, Resichsfuhrer SS, has gained control of the production of rockets for the Third Reich". In the paragraphs following this introduction, Griffin does not talk any more about the adult Himmler, or the jobs he must perform; she instead starts moving backwards into Heinrich's past. The most interesting part of how Susan Griffin tells the story of Heinrich Himmler is that she tells it in a reverse chronological order, which in my opinion helps the reader to better understand the importance of past events by seeing them in terms of their effect on the future. In other words, seeing past events after already knowing the outcome will make the cause and effect relationship between the two a lot more clear. Griffin goes from 1943, to 1925, to 1922, and then finally to 1910, when Himmler was about 10 years old.

During Himmler's childhood years, there is a significant amount of stern parenting present; but the question is, would one define his father's parenting methods as abuse? A parent has the control to influence his/her child's behavior, and can help shape the adult that the child will grow up to be. If person in power can be defined as somebody with control and influence over other people and their actions, then the term parent fits perfectly under this description of a person in power. However, parents often times abuse this power over their children in one of two ways: they either do not discipline their children at all, or they physically and verbally abuse their children as a form of discipline. In the case of Heinrich Himmler, his father Gebhard was extremely strict. Although there was no written documentation stating that Gebhard physically abused his son Heinrich, there is enough evidence to assume that his strict ways of raising his son often led to some form of physical abuse. We also know that when Heinrich was only ten years old, his father told him that his childhood was now over, and by today's standards, that is a pretty unusual and cruel thing to say to a child at only 10 years of age. Gebhard controls everything Heinrich does, including how he writes in his diary, and he would stand over Heinrich to make sure he was writing everything correctly. Heinrich's father used intimidation and fear to raise his son, but Gebhard's parenting was not at all uncommon for the times. After discussing the beginnings of Heinrich Himmler's diary at age 10, Susan Griffin then begins to talk about the teachings of German child-rearing expert of the time, Dr. Schreber, who today would not be considered a child expert at all, but a child abuser. He taught parents to "Establish dominance. Permit no disobedience. Suppress everything in the child." These teachings may not seem abusive at first, and many of you may ask "Well what is wrong with teaching children obedience?", but by teaching parents to suppress everything in these children, Dr. Schreber and the other child psychologists of the time were unknowingly creating adults "dulled to rage". Children would be forced to wear braces on their spines, and belts tied from their waists to the hair at the back of the neck, just to correct posture. There would often times be a metal plate at the edge of school desks to keep children from curling over their work, and when the children came home from school and it was time for bed, parents were told to tie their children to their beds to prevent poor sleeping posture or masturbation. These practices and rituals left no room for creativity; in fact, creative thinking was not permitted in children. As these children grew into adults, many of their innermost feelings and emotions from childhood experience were inaccessible to them because they had been dulled away by the child obedience