Women's Narratives of Healing from the Effects of Child Sexual Abuse

Scale (DES). 42
Recognizing that dissociation and dissociative experiences have been conceptualized
and defined more than most phenomena, Hall believes there are problems in how women
abuse survivors “are portrayed in some characterizations of dissociation and related behaviors.”
42 A discussion on memory and dissociation leads to a discussion on multiple
personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder (D.I.D.). A broad and in-depth discussion
on multiple personality disorder and memory is provided by Ian Hacking. 12 D.I.D.
will not be considered in this research except in the way that the women include their
experiences as a part of their stories. I conceptualize D.I.D. as well as other mental health
diagnoses and ways of coping, such as addictions, as women’s constructive and creative
ways of coping with hurtful childhood experiences. Sam Warner states:
Collapsing different strategies of coping into extant and separable disorders
militates against a useful therapeutic engagement with such strategies. The
feelings that underlie such strategies may also be ignored, as engagement stops
as diagnosis begins. Women’s legitimate anger, hurt and ambivalence may
then be translated into, for example, a decontextualized notion of ‘emotional
liability’ which reiterates precisely those aspects of feminity which foundationalize
gender in the first place. Such gendered discourses may then be used as
the unacknowledged referents in the construction of psychiatric classifications.
Such labeling further confirms women as essentially wrong or flawed and thus
compromises appropriate therapeutic action. 43
In the field of physical therapy, attention has been paid to sensitive practice, which
would be the equivalent to universal precautions for working with women who have been
sexually abused as children, who want “safe, accepting environments and sensitive and
informed health professionals with whom to work in partnership on all their health concerns.”
3 The implications of following a sensitive practice approach for the health field
are significant. First, for women who were sexually abused in childhood, sensitive practice
will have an immediate and potentially lasting impact on their daily lives and on their
health. Second, for health practitioners, a sensitive practice approach can impact on their
effectiveness, and on the quality of care they are able to provide.
2.2.2 Trauma
In an article published in 1992 that offered a conceptual framework for clinicians and
researchers assessing and treating survivors of sexual abuse, the author claims:
14