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

on a conception of human nature and human life as fundamentally vulnerable,
frail, and humans as endowed with few and faulty defense mechanisms. 45
Believing that traumatic events and experiences are “psychological blows, wounds to
the spirit,” and that severe traumatic events in childhood can damage the development of a
child, Hacking explains that historically, trauma was understood as a physical phenomena
that “took the leap from body to mind just over a century ago, exactly when multiple
personality emerged in France, and during the time when the sciences of memory were
coming into being.” 7
In a discussion on rape trauma, Winkler considers traumatized individuals not necessarily
as frail or vulnerable, but as a whole self or person who has experienced harm from
objectification of the body: “rapists who traumatize the victim’s body objectify the body,
and this objectification results in the victim feeling as if there is a separation between
the body and the mind.” 46 Children who are sexually abused similarly are understood to
experience an objectification of the body, with the result of a possible separation of the
self, between the body and the mind. Winkler continues:
Trauma then surfaces – sometimes without meaning, sometimes without warning,
and sometimes as a shattering feeling. The body feels like an object, and
may feel in some ways separate from the mind. The feeling is one in which the
mind and body act together, but in a manner that feels disjunctive – unlike a
healthy situation in which the body and the mind act in unison. 46
The trauma discourse is useful as a means of understanding the impact of acts of
violence during childhood, and for determining therapeutic interventions in adulthood for
someone who experienced such trauma in childhood. This discourse, however, does not
facilitate an understanding of the person as whole, perpetuates a mind and body dualism,
and does not provide the space for a discourse on healing. In summary, a trauma framework
does not make it possible to consider the whole person in the context of their lives.
2.2.3 Therapy
Treatment for women who have been sexually abused is typically focused on addressing
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), dissociative disorders, anxiety, and depression
resulting from child sexual abuse. Hall recommends shifting from using specific diagnoses to
focusing on symptoms, contending that this would provide greater flexibility in responding
to the complexity and the context of the symptoms. 42 At the same time, there is a concern
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