Freud's views on child sex abuse

Madam, - The article by Father Jim Cogley in your edition of May 26th was so welcome and enlightening

Madam, - The article by Father Jim Cogley in your edition of May 26th was so welcome and enlightening. For so many years Freud and Darwin knew their theories had sound foundations but in the Victorian climate, where even the legs of tables were draped in velour in case they gave suggestions occasion of lust, one can understand their reticence in publishing their theories.

In 1995 a kindly and pastoral auxiliary bishop announced in Sutton, when discussing the case of Father Payne, that even Freud believed that people who claimed to have been sexually abused as children were fantasising. God bless the bishop's innocence! - Yours, etc.,

GWEN WOODS, Herbert Park, Dublin 4.