Resisting the Power of Mea Culpa: A Story of Twentieth-Century Ireland

This is both a memoir of childhood trauma and a searing work of social criticism. Through his own experience of clerical abuse and his struggle with the system that allowed it to happen, the author documents an important period of social change in Ireland. The aim of the study is to situate tough personal experiences in lifeworld contexts for the purpose of changing powerful beliefs and practices.

The author contends that psychological disciplines seldom interface with regional histories in a convincing way. The book is critical of dominant ideologies which reinforce acquiescence and exaggerate the power to act in the face of multilevel disempowerment. The author also maintains that old ways of knowing are still replicated in the structure of dominant psychological frameworks. A constancy principle of micro-regulation engenders mindful quietude and/or robust notions of psychological invulnerability. This truncated worldview comes at too high a cost.

The book will be of interest to historians, social commentators, psychologists and critical theorists, as well as those in the field of trauma, addiction and psychiatry.