[humanser] The Trauma Myth: Understanding the True DynamicsofSexual Abuse

[Merry Schoch]

It's actually a book.  I was able to find it at the USF Library as an ebook.
 Merry
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Sharin" <coffeemommy at verizon.net>
To: "'Human Services Mailing List'" <humanser at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, June 07, 2010 10:09 AM
Subject: Re: [humanser] The Trauma Myth: Understanding the True 
DynamicsofSexual Abuse


>I really like this article and will be looking for a copy of the full text.
>
> Sharin
> -----Original Message-----
> From: humanser-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:humanser-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Mary Chappell
> Sent: Sunday, June 06, 2010 5:09 PM
> To: 'Human Services Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [humanser] The Trauma Myth: Understanding the True Dynamics
> ofSexual Abuse
>
> Maryann,
> Thank you for sharing this article. It was truly a thought  provoker.
> Regards,
> Mary Tatum Chappell
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: humanser-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:humanser-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Mary Ann Rojek
> Sent: Sunday, June 06, 2010 12:27 PM
> To: blind-counselors at topica.com; Human Services Mailing List
> Subject: [humanser] The Trauma Myth: Understanding the True Dynamics
> ofSexual Abuse
>
> The Trauma Myth: Understanding the True Dynamics of Sexual Abuse
>
> By Susan Clancy, Psychotherapy Networker Posted on June 4, 2010, Printed 
> on
> June 5, 2010
>>From the book The Trauma Myth: The Truth About the Sexual Abuse
> of
> Children and Its Aftermath by Susan A.  Clancy.  Copyright B)
> 2009 by Susan
> A.  Clancy.  Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, a member of the 
> Perseus
> Book Group.  Tell us what you think about this article by e-mail at
> letters at psychnetworker.org  This e-mail address is being protected from
> spambots.  You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or at
> wwwddpsychotherapynetworkerddorg.  Log in and you'll find the comment
> section on every page of the online Magazine section.
>  As a graduate student at Harvard in the mid-1990's, I participated in
> research studies carried out by the psychology department that began in
> October 1996 and continued until August 2005 to interview adults who had
> experience sexual abuse as children and learn what effects the abuse had 
> had
> on their lives.  Although I was sure I knew what I would discover-that the
> abuse would be remembered as a horrible experience that overwhelmed the
> people I interviewed with fear when it happened and had always been viewed
> as a traumatizing occurrence-what I heard in the hundreds of interviews I
> conducted was quite different.  In nearly all the cases, the adults I
> questioned had not experienced the abuse as traumatic when it occurred and
> only came to regard it as so years later.  And in many of the cases, they
> had never been questioned about their evolving sense of the abuse and the
> ongoing impact that it had on their lives, but only about what the 
> traumatic
> experience had been like at the time.  These findings led me to question 
> the
> progress professionals in the sexual abuse field have made when it comes 
> to
> understanding and treating child sexual abuse.
>  Certainly we have advanced to the point that the right things are being
> said (sexual abuse is common and harmful; it is never the child's fault).
>  Funding in the trauma field has been secured, research conducted, studies
> and books published, treatment centers established, and public awareness
> raised through sex-education programs and campaigns in the media.
> But is
> any of it translating into actual progress for victims? Do they feel that
> they're being helped, that they're understood and their needs are being
> served effectively?
>  The trauma model's main purpose-one of the primary reasons why mental
> health professionals welcomed it with such enthusiasm in the 1980's-was to
> provide an explanation for how and why sexual abuse wreaks such
> psychological and social havoc in victims.  Armed with a better
> understanding of the impact of abuse, mental health professionals hoped to
> be better able to help victims cope with and recover from these damaging
> crimes.
>  The problem is that today, after more than twenty-five years, predictions
> based on the trauma model have not proved accurate.
> Characteristics of the
> sexual abuse experience related to trauma (like how frightening it was,
> whether penetration or force was involved, and how many times it
> happened)
> do not do a good job of forecasting the level of long-term psychological
> harm experienced.  There appears to be no direct, linear relationship
> between the severity of the abuse and the psychosocial difficulties 
> victims
> experience in adulthood.  Worst of all, we have developed no clearly
> effective treatments for sexual abuse victims.  They continue to suffer 
> from
> psychological and social problems in the aftermath of their abuse, and
> mental health professionals still have not reached a consensus as to 
> exactly
> why or what precisely to do to help them recover.
>  This state of affairs is far from surprising.  How can trauma be the 
> cause
> of harm if most victims say that the abuse was not traumatic when it
> happened? A growing number of scholars in the sexual abuse field are 
> coming
> to agree that understanding how and why sexual abuse damages victims
> probably has little to do with the actual abuse and a lot to do with what
> happens in its aftermath.  For example, as David Finkelhor concluded in 
> his
> recent book Childhood Victimization, continuing research efforts that seek
> to track the consequences of early events through developmental, 
> cognitive,
> and behavioral pathways may prove more fruitful than continuing the
> restrictive focus on the severity and nature of event-specific trauma.  I
> believe that the victims themselves have always known this.
>  --------------
> Jen was a sixty-five-year-old, divorced, retired administrative assistant.
>  A tall, big-boned redhead with long purple fingernails, she was up front
> about lots of things.  She did not like the coffee I gave her, my office 
> was
> too cold, and she did not like the color of my hair.  We were at the part 
> of
> the interview when I asked her to rate how traumatic her abuse had been 
> when
> it occurred.  She did not like the questions I asked.
>  "Nothing personal," she said, "but these questions are kind of dumb.  If
> you are trying to do what you say you're trying to do, and figure out why
> the abuse screwed me up so badly, why are you asking so many questions 
> about
> what it was like when it happened? What you need to be focusing on was 
> what
> it was like later on."
>  I asked what she meant.  "What I mean is that what it was like when it
> happened and what it is like now are two separate things entirely."
>  At that point in my career, I did not have a lot of experience
> interviewing sexual abuse victims.  I had, however, a lot of experience
> interviewing victims of other kinds of horrible experiences (motor vehicle
> accidents, combat, natural disasters, abductions), and I had asked these
> subjects to rate how traumatic the events were at the time.  No one in 
> these
> studies had ever said this to me before.  And as far as I knew at the 
> time,
> scholars were not talking how perceptions of the traumatic nature of an
> abuse experience change over time-how an event not initially perceived as
> horrible could become so.  They certainly talked about how symptoms of
> trauma (depression, anxiety) might not manifest themselves until long 
> after
> the abuse, but they were not talking about how perceptions of the abuse
> itself can change.
>  I knew I had to consider Jen's words seriously.  From that point on, I
> asked my question in two parts: What was the experience like when it
> happened? And what is the experience like for you today, looking back on 
> it.
>  By the end of the study, the data was clear.  Although sexual abuse was
> not a particularly awful experience for many victims when it happened,
> looking back on it, from their perspective as adults, it was awful-ratings
> of shock, horror, disgust, and even fear were all high.  Obviously,
> perceptions of abuse when it occurs and when victims look back on it years
> later are entirely different.  In addition, sexual abuse is very different
> from other kinds of terrible life experiences.  For example, getting into 
> a
> car accident is traumatic both at the time it happens and later when it is
> recalled.  Sexual abuse, however, becomes traumatic later on.
> Why? What
> happens in the aftermath of sexual abuse?
>  According to victims, they did not experience the abuse as awful when it
> happened because most simply did not understand clearly the meaning or
> significance of the sexual behaviors they were engaging in.  That being
> said, at some point later on in life, they do.  Over time, the "cloak of
> innocence lifted," as one victim described it.  Victims reconceptualized 
> the
> formerly "confusing and weird experiences" and understood them for what 
> they
> were-sexual in nature and clearly wrong.  Only at this point-when the 
> sexual
> abuse is fully apprehended-does it begin to damage victims.
>  Reconceptualization
> When Anne, a twenty-eight-year-old mother of two, was eight years old, her
> mother started working outside the home.  Between 3 P.M.  when Anne got 
> home
> from school and 6 P.M.  when her mom came home from work, a neighbor and
> friend of her mother's named Frank would babysit.  Frank sexually abused
> Anne.  Sometimes, when Anne was sitting in his lap, he would "put his
> fingers inside my panties and feel me up . . .  and while this was going 
> on
> he would thrust himself up against my butt and he would be breathing 
> heavy."
>  When it was happening, Anne said she did not like what he was doing but
> was "definitely not traumatized." And she was not different from most of 
> the
> victims who spoke to me.  "I knew it was something I shouldn't talk about
> with my mother, but not really exactly totally sure why."
> After
> about eight months of intermittent abuse, Frank left town, and Anne said 
> she
> "just didn't think much about it again." But then something changed.
>  Anne reconceptualized her abuse-she figured out the meaning of these
> previously ambiguous experiences.  "I remember this like it was 
> yesterday..
> . .  I was in eighth grade and my friend Jennie was over and she had seen
> her brother and his girlfriend making out and she was reenacting them
> rolling around on the ground and moaning and it was then [that] I 
> remembered
> what happened; it reminded me of what happened. . . .
> I
> realized, totally all of a sudden, that what had happened to me was
> sexual-that I had basically been having sexual experiences with my
> babysitter when I was kid." It took Anne six years to cognitively
> reconceptualize what happened to her and understand that it was wrong.
>  Betrayal
> When they discover that they have been abused, victims most frequently
> report feelings of betrayal.  As Cheryl, a forty-three-year-old high 
> school
> teacher on maternity leave with triplets, put it, "I realized that I 
> trusted
> him, what he was doing, and I should not have.  He knew he was doing
> something wrong, and he knew I didn't know. . . .  It was all an elaborate
> game of sexual betrayal." As Neil, an AIDS activist working for a hospital
> in Boston, said, "I realized that it wasn't just what he did to me
> physically.  At that moment [of discovery] I lost my father.
> He was no
> longer someone who loved and took care of me.  I was just being used by 
> him
> for his personal gratification."
>  For the victims who spoke to me, the degree of the betrayal was a 
> function
> of two main variables.  First, it depended on how close the victim felt to
> the perpetrator, on how much he or she trusted, cared about, or loved him.
>  The second variable was the degree to which the victim believed he or she
> had been emotionally manipulated by the perpetrator or "taken in"
> by the
> situation.  In those cases in which the abuse was traumatic when it 
> happened
> (it involved force, violence, or pain), victims subsequently felt less
> betrayal.  Since in these cases the children clearly understood the
> wrongness of the situation, any sense of betrayal arose immediately.  And,
> because the children understood they were being victimized, the abuse was
> unlikely to happen again (or if it did, the child remained well aware of 
> his
> or her victimization).  Thus, victims did not have to undergo long periods
> in which they unknowingly fell prey to, as one subject told me, the
> perpetrator's "elaborate games of sexual betrayal." As Tom, a 
> neurosurgeon,
> put it, "For two years, while it was happening I felt good about him.  I
> believed him, all his lies and let him do whatever he wanted.
>  It makes me sick to think about how much I trusted him, how much, for how
> long he took advantage of that." In other words, the degree of betrayal
> victims felt in the aftermath was an inverse function of how traumatic the
> abuse was when it happened: the less traumatic it was, the more betrayal
> victims reported.
>  As a consequence, many told me, this betrayal forced them to rethink the
> past.  For many victims, a former sense of security is shattered; many
> report feeling a new sense of interpersonal insecurity and vulnerability.
>  As Maria told me, "The day I understood what happened to me, I completely
> lost my own sense of security.  The childhood I imagined I hadbthe safety
> that enveloped me-was shattered.  The people who were supposed to be 
> looking
> out for my well-being [and] taking care of me were not."
>  Betrayal affects not only victims' feelings of security and trust in
> others but also their self-worth.  They feel that since they must not have
> been loved, perhaps they were not worth loving.  As Charles, a history
> professor, explained to me, "You learn that who you are and what you might
> want or need just does not matter."
>  Considering the degree and extent of the betrayal victims felt, I 
> expected
> anger at the perpetrator to be a common reaction.  Yet only 5 percent
> spontaneously reported feeling angry at their abuser.  Why would the 
> victim
> of a crime punishable in almost any court system in the world not be angry
> at the perpetrator? According to victims, it is because they turned the
> anger inward.  Most, to a shocking extent, blamed themselves.
>  Self-Blame
> According to philosophers, psychiatrists, and intellectuals from Aristotle
> to William James, from Sigmund Freud to Donald Spence, when bad things
> happen to people-like discovering they were sexually abused by an adult 
> they
> trusted-it is human nature to want to engage in a search for meaning, to
> understand why the event occurred and what its implications for one's life
> are.
>  As victims struggle to make sense of their experiences, they engage in an
> attribution process: they scan through all the possible explanations they
> can generate to come up with the one that they believe fits best.
>  Traditionally defined, attributions are individual causal explanations 
> for
> why events occur.
>  If a victim asks, why did someone I trusted abuse me? there are, of
> course, endless possible answers.  For example, he was screwed up or 
> drunk,
> or I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The famous attributional
> theorist, Martin Seligman, would refer to this category of answers as
> "external explanations for negative events." It assigns responsibility for
> the event to someone or something else.  But almost all the victims I've
> spoken with, to some degree, endorse an "internal" explanation.
> They see
> the abuse as their fault-caused by their own characteristics or behavior.
>  I asked victims who was to blame for the abuse-them, the perpetrator, or
> both.  Almost 80 percent felt both were at fault.  While almost all could
> acknowledge that the perpetrator was responsible, they also thought they 
> had
> done something wrong too.
>  Again, I have found that the degree of guilt victims feel in the 
> aftermath
> of sexual abuse is strongly related to the degree of trauma experienced
> during the abuse when it happened.  Specifically, the less traumatic
> (forceful, frightening, threatening) the abuse was while it occurred, the
> more guilt and self-blame the victims report later on.  Those victims 
> whose
> abuse involved force or violence usually report the least guilt.
> In such
> cases, the victims know it was not their fault.  One of the victims I 
> spoke
> with summarized this quite well: "I was bleeding.  I screamed when it was
> happening.  He ran away.  I got rushed to the hospital.  It was pretty cle
> to me that he had done something wrong, that it was definitely not my
> fault." Victims who report no trauma at all during the abuse (for example,
> those who loved the perpetrator, enjoyed the attention, or occasionally
> welcomed the contact) feel extremely guilty.
>  Today, most adult victims' knowledge about sexual abuse, about what it is
> like when it happens and how children react at the time, is a function of
> what they hear, read, and see in the media-the culturally available,
> standard scripts about this crime.  Because of the trauma myth, according 
> to
> these scripts, sexual abuse usually involves fear, force, and threat.
>  The experience is portrayed as terrible for the victims.  They are
> frightened when it happens.  They try to resist the abuse.
> Whatever happens
> clearly happens against their will.  Books, films, and websites repeatedly
> assure victims that they had no control, that they were utterly helpless.
>  Words like "rape," "assault," and "violation" are commonly used to
> conceptualize the experience.
>  No professionals explicitly discuss with victims or highlight the real
> dynamics of sexual abuse-that victims rarely resist it, often care about 
> the
> perpetrators, and often receive "benefits" for participation, like praise,
> attention, and gifts.  In fact, this kind of information may actually be
> suppressed.  It appears to be an article of faith among professionals that
> you should not talk about aspects of sexual abuse that run counter to the
> trauma model at all.  A wildly popular book written for professionals by
> Judith Herman warns professionals not to talk about the issue of consent 
> as
> doing so will likely make the victims "feel revictimaized again."
>  Because of the trauma myth, I am aware of no public information campaigns
> that say, "Kids don't know enough to say no." There are no books telling
> victims, "You let it happen, and it's okay.  It's normal.  You were too 
> good
> to know bad." I know of no newspaper stories in which the victim comes 
> forth
> after years to press charges and explicitly says, "I would have done it
> earlier, but I just didn't understand I was abused until now."
> Today,
> as a function of the mental health field's relentless emphasis on trauma,
> force, and violence and the subsequent embargo on any real-world, 
> practical
> information about the reality of sexual abuse, most victims'
> experiences slip under the radar-their stories are ignored, dismissed,
> overlooked, or denied by the very people who purport to be trying to help
> them.
>  What is the consequence? For victims, it is significant.  They naturally
> compare what happened to them with the depictions of abuse in cultural
> scripts.  As James, a nurse, told me, "What happened to me was different
> from other kids.  I . . .  well . . .  it's hard to say out loud, but
> basically I let it happen." There is something wrong with me.  As Denise, 
> a
> bathing-suit model, noted, "I wasn't afraid.  Sometimes I liked it.
>  Obviously something's screwed up with me." I am alone.  Claudia 
> explained,
> "My abuse did not involve such force and violence.  I basically let it
> happen . . .  so it wasn't classical abuse."
>  Given the degree of betrayal, guilt, and isolation victims feel, it is 
> not
> surprising that they also commonly report shame.
>  Shame
> Shame is an awful emotion, one in which the self is viewed as incompetent
> and as an object of ridicule, contempt, and disgust.  Individuals feeling
> shame often view themselves as damaged and unworthy.
> Unfortunately, most
> victims use the word "shame" to describe how their abuse makes them feel 
> as
> adults.  As one victim summed it up, "I think the heart of the damage is
> shame.  It eats away at me.  It has eroded my sense of self-esteem and my
> confidence, my ability to love and feel loved.  The abuse stopped when I 
> was
> twelve; the shame remained my whole life."
>  Further support for the perspective that what damages most victims has
> little to do with any trauma they experience during the abuse and a lot to
> do with the shame, guilt, and isolation they feel later on in life comes
> from the fact that in the handful of studies that have specifically tested
> it, therapeutic techniques involving cognitive retraining-identifying
> victims' irrational beliefs (for example, that the abuse was their fault)
> and then helping them to modify these beliefs (for example, by providing
> convincing information about why it was not their fault)-have shown solid
> promise in improving the lives of victims in the aftermath of sexual 
> abuse.
>  Today, victims need to hear the truth.  This requires us all to highlight
> publicly the true dynamics of sexual abuse-to expose the painful reality
> that most victims care for and trust the perpetrator (before, and 
> sometimes
> during and after, they are abused), that they do not really understand the
> nature of what is being asked of them, that they feel they
>>every receiving love and attention, that it does not hurt and
> sometimes
> feels good, and that, for all these reasons, participation is common.
>  Once exposed to the truth about how victims feel and behave during sexual
> abuse, victims need to hear, loudly and clearly, why they were not at 
> fault.
> We cannot accomplish this with platitudes or blanket statements like "You
> were not to blame" or "It was done against your will."
> They
> consented not because they were forced to but because they did not
> understand enough not to.  And victims need to know that this is normal.
>  Although they made an error of judgment-ideally they should have said no;
> they should have resistedbwe must reassure victims that given their age 
> and
> level of cognitive and physical development, this error of judgment was
> understandable.
>  In short, in order to help victims feel less stigmatized in the aftermath
> of sexual abuse, we must all communicate that they were helpless
> victims-not, as the trauma model portrays them, literally helpless but
> metaphorically helpless, victims of their own level of development.
>  This information needs to be highlighted in the form of prevention
> campaigns, books, websites, and other culturally accessible outlets. 
> Until
> that happens, victims will continue to feel alone, guilty, and ashamed.
>  Professionals may fear that raising attention to children's participation
> in abuse will elicit in others a tendency to condemn victims, but I think 
> we
> better get past this.  Victims are already condemning themselves.  Here is
> the tragic paradox.  If the victim's cognitive interpretation of the event
> guides the process of psychological adaptation after sexual abuse, then 
> the
> trauma theory is not only wrong but actually backwards.
> The less
> traumatic sexual abuse was when it happened, the more betrayal, guilt,
> isolation, and shame victims will feel and the more psychological distress
> and dysfunction they may experience in the aftermath.  And because it is
> backwards, the trauma model is not just failing to help victims; it is
> actually causing some of the harm it was supposed explain by 
> simultaneously
> exacerbating the victim's damaging beliefs ("It was my fault," "I am 
> alone,"
> "There is something wrong with me") and suppressing the information that
> would neutralize them.
>  Susan Clancy is the author of The Trauma Myth: The Truth About the Sexual
> Abuse of Children and Its Aftermath
>  B) 2010 Psychotherapy Networker All rights reserved.
>
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