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

community. 15 Treatment needs to be responsive to the individual, and not dependent on
any particular approach, indicating the need for a diversity of interventions. 5
Typically, women who were sexually abused in childhood are not construed as capable,
strong, whole women who happen to have experienced sexual abuse as children. The abuse
is not understood as a reflection of the broader social practices or as an individual act of
violence. One approach to working with women who experienced CSA that integrates these
broader social practices is described by Warner as Visible Therapy. 43 In this approach,
Warner argues “it is necessary to explicate the embedded assumptions produced through
practices of abuse, and which serve to construct children’s experiences of that abuse, in
order to ward against their reproduction within therapy relationships.” 43 Her assumption
is that the problem is not the individual who was abused, but rather is in “the narratives
which situate both past and current relationships but which, through reiteration, obscure
their own social production.” 43
The literature on working as a therapist with women who have been sexually abused in
childhood is typically not only framed in a deficit, trauma and interventionist manner, but
is grounded in specific theoretical perspectives that either exclude the body, or consider
the body but not the body in the socio-cultural and political context. An interventionist
manner of framing and responding to, sexual abuse perpetuates a mind and body dualism,
and has limited capacity to incorporate the broader context of the women’s lives in the
healing process. In order to reflect the complexity of the women’s healing process, research
needs to be done in a manner that provides an understanding of the women’s experiences
and that considers the body, without perpetuating a mind and body dualism.
2.2.4 Healing
In my experience, when women talk about their healing they are referring to more than
their physical health. While physical well-being is a goal, and an outcome, of healing for
women who were sexually abused in childhood, examples of healing also include events
such as the ability to sleep through the night, to not dissociate unintentionally, to be able
to go to the doctor, to be safe with one’s children, to resolve a depression, or to deal
with addictions. Anecdotally, I have heard from women that healing to them may be
their return to university, or employment. There is a gap in the literature regarding what
healing means, yet it has direct relevance to women’s physical well being.
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