Survivors of child sexual abuse are often plagued by a miriad of residual effects which have the potential to limit their functioning and interfere with their interpersonal relationships. Twenty-three successful survivors were interviewed to determine what problems they attributed to the abuse and the process they had gone through to reach some degree of wholeness. Eight therapists of survivors were interviewed to determine how they treat past victims of sexual abuse. The content of these interviews was used to generate a book directed to the layperson who might be a survivor of sexual abuse, friend/family member of such a survivor or a therapist interested in treating these individuals. Major themes addressed are: a definition of sexual abuse, a discussion of who abuses children, outline of the residual effects experienced by survivors from both a male and female perspective, a discussion of therapies and other aids for breaking the cycle of continued victimization, suggestions of what survivors might experience while going through therapy, a consideration of the complications of sharing the facts of the abuse with the survivor's children, an exploration of the difficulties in learning to trust again and a discussion of what is meant by a "true" survivor. The book is interwoven with first person accounts of survivor's experiences with both incest and extra-familial abuse. Sexual abuse is seen in the context of other assaults on childhood such as alcoholism and physical abuse.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-1150 |
| Date | 01 January 1985 |
| Creators | TOWER, CYNTHIA CROSSON |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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