<P> Innocence could also be viewed as a Westernized view of childhood, and the "loss" of innocence is simply a social construction, or viewed as dominant ideology . Thinkers such as Jean - Jaques Rousseau used the romanticism discourse as a way to separate children from adults . Ideas surrounding childhood and childhood innocence stems from this discourse.It was during the 19th century when childhood became synonymous with "innocence", however not all children were considered to be innocent during that time, as it was highly dependent on the colour of one's skin . The term innocence being connected to "white childhood" was a way to racialize childhood and exclude the non-whites not only from "innocence" but from childhood as well . </P> <P> The psychoanalytic tradition is broadly divided between those (like Fairbairn and Winnicott) who saw the child as initially innocent, but liable to lose its innocence under the impact of stress or psychological trauma; and those (like Freud and Klein) who see the child as developing innocence - maturing into it - as a result of surmounting the Oedipus complex and / or the depressive position . </P> <P> More eclectically, Eric Berne saw the Child ego state, and its vocabulary, as reflecting three different possibilities: the cliches of conformity; the obscenities of revolt; and "the sweet phrases of charming innocence". In a rather different formulation, Christopher Bollas used the term' Violent Innocence' to describe a fixed and obdurate refusal to acknowledge the existence of an alternative viewpoint - something akin to what he calls "the fascist construction, the outcome is to empty the mind of all opposition". </P> <Ul> <Li> In The Golden Notebook, a woman looks back in laughing envy at the innocence that had previously allowed her to submerge herself in the position of the' woman - in - love' . </Li> <Li> Ivy Compton - Burnett had one character conclude dourly of another two that "you are both of you innocent though it is an innocence rooted in your wishes for your own lives". </Li> </Ul>

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