Читать книгу Faith Born of Seduction - Jennifer L Manlowe - Страница 24

Haddock gives the following account:

[After my uncle raped me when I was five] . . . the rest of my memory is I’m up to the right looking down on this little kid. At other times when I was being tortured or molested, I would mentally hide behind things and watch or underneath things and peek out periodically.

And Melinda:

I can remember learning how to float up to the ceiling and I could even float out the window, I was very talented. I learned to do that around age four. I remember searching inside myself since I had nowhere else to search, for how to do that. I remember doing that. I split . . . split off from myself. Too, I created parts of myself to handle these things. It’s a survival mechanism, and it has nothing to do with your creativity and intelligence. It has to do with a survival instinct.

Both Haddock and Melinda have been diagnosed as having dissociative disorders. Dissociative disorders, including multiple personality disorder, are diagnoses particularly applicable to severely abused incest survivors.⁴⁹ The DSM-III-R lists the essential feature of dissociative disorders as a disturbance or alteration in the normal integrative functions of identity, memory, or consciousness. The aim of dissociation is not to experience, not to remember.

Milder forms of dissociation include separating oneself from real and present atrocities through dreams and fantasies. Cherise’s story is a good example of a milder form of dissociation:

I dreamed that there was this alien family that would come and tell me that I really didn’t belong to this man and they were gonna take me away. I couldn’t wait to go to bed at night, it was my comfort, this family. This went on for years. And it wasn’t until I was twelve, I—I remember mentioning it to a teacher, we were discussing dreams and how every night we dream and we don’t remember. And I said, “I do.” She said, “Oh, well tell us one of your dreams.” And I told her my dream and she just looked at me. She said, “My God!” And I said, “I’ve had the same dream since I was eight years old.” And the look—it was the first time I realized that this was not a normal dream. And I never shared it with anybody else.

Janine remembers the time she told her mother she was “splitting in half, I mean it . . . right down the middle.” Janine recalls her mother’s response, “Oh honey, all young kids feel that way during adolescence.” It is as if Janine’s mother knew firsthand what her daughter was talking about and yet could not validate her daughter’s experience, possibly to avoid being threatened by her own memories of abuse. Janine posits her divided self at that time, “I think at that point I was truly living a double existence. On the outside I was this friendly cheerleader-type who was always smiling and affirming everybody, and on the inside I vacillated between crying for help and wanting to die.”

One label for this dynamic is called vertical splitting.⁵⁰ It is thought to be a common response among incest survivors. Currently it is well recognized as a coping mechanism by many clinicians. Dissociating serves many purposes. It provides a way out of the intolerable and psychologically incongruous situation (double-bind), it erects memory barriers (amnesia) to keep painful events and memories out of awareness, it functions as an analgesic to prevent feeling pain, it allows an escape from experiencing guilt, it may even serve as a hypnotic negation of the sense of self.⁵¹

Most psychologists believe that a secure sense of attachment with caring others is the foundation of personality development.⁵² When this connection is shattered, the traumatized person experiences psychic dissonance, she loses her basic sense of self. Developmental conflicts of childhood and adolescence—struggles over autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy—are destined to be replete with a sense of powerlessness. Because the developing child’s positive sense of self depends on a caregiver’s benign use of power and the parent perverts that power by sexually objectifying her, the child never feels an innate sense of self-regard, integrity, value, or self-respect. Her chance for developing a sense of interdependence in relation and personal sense of agency are seriously hindered from the onset of the abuse.

At the moment of trauma, almost by definition, the individual’s point of view counts for nothing. In rape, for example, the purpose of the attack is precisely to demonstrate contempt for the victim’s autonomy and dignity. The traumatic event thus destroys the belief that one can be oneself in relation to others.⁵³

A betrayal of trust also destroys the trust one could otherwise develop in oneself. A hypervigilant preoccupation with one’s appetites (both sexual and physiological), seen with women survivors who develop eating disorders, makes perfect sense if we understand the core dynamic to be one of abandonment. Such emotional desertion by caretakers results in an inability to trust and naturally manifests itself in one’s relationships to others, the self, and the body.

Psychologist David Finkelhor integrates the dynamics, the psychological impact, and the behavioral manifestations of the effects of sexual abuse.⁵⁴ He names these effects traumagenic and divides them into four categories: (1) traumatic sexualization, (2) stigmatization, (3) betrayal, and (4) powerlessness.⁵⁵

Traumatic sexualization refers to a process in which an individual’s sexuality, including both sexual feelings and attitudes, is shaped in a developmentally inappropriate and interpersonally dysfunctional fashion. This process may result in a premature eroticization of the abused child, who then relates to others in an erotic manner.⁵⁶ Traumatic sexualization may also result in the persistent intertwining of sexuality and arousal with the sense of shame and guilt often associated with the traumatic event. And while unsatisfactory resolution of developmental conflicts over autonomy leaves any person prone to shame and doubt, these feelings are felt acutely in the trauma survivor.

Shame is a response to helplessness, the violation of bodily integrity, and the indignity suffered in the eyes of another person.⁵⁷ Doubt reflects the inability to maintain one’s own separate point of view while remaining in connection with others. In the aftermath of episodes of abuse, survivors doubt both others and themselves. Many diagnose themselves as “crazy.”

A related concept is psychiatrist Frank Ochberg’s negative intimacy, a component of post-traumatic stress that the victim must confront therapeutically to resolve feelings of repulsion and degradation.⁵⁸ Negative intimacy is the intrusion of an undesired sexual experience, by someone known to the victim, which invades personal space and provokes associations of disgust and even self-loathing. The one being exploited is made a spectacle not only to her exploiter but to herself. She is forced to watch and experience herself being exposed. Sexual and physical attraction, which in her future might be desirable, is forever tainted by these earlier exploitive experiences. What could be desirable (sexual intimacy) becomes repulsive because of its association with the survivor’s past degradation (sexual violence).

Stigmatization refers to the negative connotations (badness, shame, guilt) that are communicated to the abused person by the perpetrator and often are subsequently incorporated into her self-image. His guilt becomes her shame. Many perpetrators disavow their guilt through the use of a variety of strategies including projection, rationalization—”You know you want it”—and denial. If that fails to expunge them of their guilt, they may attempt to justify the abuse on the basis that it is deserved by the victim.⁵⁹ The survivor is often overwhelmed with shame and dread about her worth as a result of introjecting the perpetrator’s guilt.

Betrayal for abused children refers to the dynamics in which children discover that someone on whom they are dependent (the perpetrator) has harmed them or failed to protect them (the co-offender/silent witness). For adults, betrayal issues tend to relate to a sense of a “just world,” wherein victimization does not come to people who do not “deserve” it.⁶⁰ Such child-victims often blame themselves and see their environment and even their bodies as having betrayed them. They find themselves feeling chronic vulnerability and a sense of meaninglessness, and often have a self-perception of inefficacy.⁶¹

Powerlessness is the feeling engendered when a child-victim’s will, desires, and sense of efficacy have been overcome or are subverted continually. Issues of powerlessness are particularly crucial for adolescents, who normally are struggling developmentally with issues of dependency and identity, and for children, who are vulnerable in any case. In incest situations, abusers often emphasize the victim’s helplessness as a control technique.⁶² If the victim resists her attacker/seducer often, the offender will escalate the offenses—becoming violent—to further humiliate the victim into submission. One survivor told me, “He was nice to me when I was very young, and when I reached adolescence and started refusing to play his games he got sadistic.”

These trauma dynamics are not limited to one part of a linear process. They operate before, during, and after the sexual contact. In a patriarchal culture, where parental power—especially paternal power—is defended at all costs, trauma dynamics surely apply as much to disclosure and intervention as to the abuse itself. Thus much of the stigmatization involved in the sexual abuse may occur after the experience itself, as the child encounters reaction among family, friends, and acquaintances.

These traumagenic dynamics also can be applied to the child’s life prior to the abuse. The four dynamics are ongoing processes, and the impact of the sexual abuse always needs to be understood in relation to the child’s life beforehand. For example, a child may have experienced a substantial amount of betrayal from other sources prior to the abuse, where the loyalty of significant others was continually in doubt. The betrayal of sexual abuse may be all the more serious because it is a compounding of a scenario that already existed. Traumagenic dynamics can be used to analyze sexual abuse as a process, rather than simply an event.⁶³

As I stated earlier, it is a well-known fact that many mothers who do nothing to protect their daughters from abuse are particularly dependent on their partners, both financially and emotionally. Such women often have a history of being raped or molested themselves as children and as a result are particularly needy, insecure in their worth and femininity, and absorbed in their own unmet narcissistic needs.⁶⁴ But no degree of maternal absence or neglect constitutes an excuse to tolerate paternal incest (unless one accepts the idea that fathers are entitled to female services from their entire families, no matter what the circumstances).⁶⁵ It is precisely this attitude of male entitlement that characterizes the incestuous father and his apologists.⁶⁶ Mental health professionals must scrutinize their gendered worldview and check their sexism at the door, if they are to be of any long-lasting help.