Well - please see my entry further down. Infants who are not loved - who do not get physical affection - actually die. That's pretty extreme physical damage, I would say! I am talking about children whose physical needs are met - who are clean and fed - but who do not get any physical contact or affection. They die! Not all of them, of course; little children are amazingly resilient, but some babies do die just from lack of human affection. This has been clearly proven, I believe, especially since the cage bed scandals in eastern Europe. In any case, the study I cited earlier - Harlow and his monkeys - is famous, and I have a link that discusses it in an earlier post.
I'm sorry if I seemed curt or rude when saying Harry couldn't know his parents loved him. I meant he couldn't know anything intellectually. He was only 15 months old and probably couldn't talk much, if at all; he couldn't possibly have any conscious memories of being loved. It's a good point, of course, that Harry was never told his parents had abandoned him. That might have given him an idea that they loved him, but it wouldn't have been much to shore up his ego against the constant emotional abuse the Durselye inflicted on him. But he was loved - he had the experience, so he 'knew' it in an emotional sense. Poor Tom had none of the above.
I don't think we're really in disagreement on this point, are we? That was the whole point of this essay - both that Tom Riddle represents a particular type of evil and that it was not his fault that he developed in this way.
On other things, we'll just have to agree to differ.
no subject
I'm sorry if I seemed curt or rude when saying Harry couldn't know his parents loved him. I meant he couldn't know anything intellectually. He was only 15 months old and probably couldn't talk much, if at all; he couldn't possibly have any conscious memories of being loved. It's a good point, of course, that Harry was never told his parents had abandoned him. That might have given him an idea that they loved him, but it wouldn't have been much to shore up his ego against the constant emotional abuse the Durselye inflicted on him. But he was loved - he had the experience, so he 'knew' it in an emotional sense. Poor Tom had none of the above.
I don't think we're really in disagreement on this point, are we? That was the whole point of this essay - both that Tom Riddle represents a particular type of evil and that it was not his fault that he developed in this way.
On other things, we'll just have to agree to differ.