Howard Jacobson is a famed British author .... quoting from an article in the Telegraph 20/1/24:
'Complaints about realism often dog him.
He had to fight to keep a character in his last novel, Live a Little: a 90-year-old man who has never had a relationship, being crippled by shame at having been caught trying on his mother’s underwear as a boy. Jacobson’s publisher found this implausible. “Then I asked a group of Jenny’s psychologist colleagues if this was likely, and they all said ‘Of course, it’d ruin your life, no question’.”
..... from a self-selecting audience it will be difficult to get a generally valid answer ....'Is this what always / often / sometimes / rarely happens ...
I ask the question. I know being caught had some effect but for me now at 70, the memory fades and I can barely answer.
Comments
Ruin your life?
That, I am afraid, tells you more about b###dy white male middle class psychologists than it does about the rest of the population.
It sure as heck didn't ruin my life, but it empowered me to tell people who needed to know what was going on in my five year old head.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Lucy xx
"Lately it occurs to me..
what a long strange trip its been."