Many intimate relationships do not survive the process of working through
issues to do with incest. However, some relationships do well despite these upheavals.
Therefore the focus of the current study was on how lasting marriages manage to
construct emotional safety in order to maintain emotional intimacy.
The relationship issues of marriages where one partner is a survivor of incest
have not been widely researched. Yet it is in the survivor's relationship where many
issues arising from the incest may be played out.
Literature in the survivor area focuses on the need for safety and support.
Therefore, models of couple counselling may need to include these issues in their
notions of healing within the process of counselling.
This study was conducted using qualitative research methods. Focus groups
were a primary source of data. The study examined the construction of safety in longterm
intact marriages of incest survivors. This examination looked at the three-stage
model of counselling for trauma proposed by Judith Herman, and the relationship
between these three stages of healing and the construction of safety.
The research participants included female incest survivors and husbands of
survivors of incest. Participants were asked to individually make written constructions
of safety related to each of the three stages of healing. A group construction process
followed these individual constructions and differences within the written materials
were also highlighted.
Segregated groups met three times, each time concentrating on a particular stage
of healing. A single validating group of the combined women and men's groups met
later to do an overall construction of the notion of safety.
Results indicate that emotional safety is indeed an important issue for both
partners in relationships where the wife is a survivor of incest. There are differences
between survivors and partners about the significance of the three stages. A model of
the retrospective construction of safety has been developed. This model includes the
important elements of the experience of emotional safety that arose. These elements
were knowledge, negotiated control, negotiated trust, communication, how anger is
managed and directed, and managing the difficult times and issues such as the times of
the disclosure of incest.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/219555 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Graham, Lydia, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Lydia Graham |
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