Assault on Childhood

Abstract

What happens wh en th c traumas of th e early years a re not m crely genera tcd intrapsychically but inst ead are enac te d ph ysically up on child re n by powerful figurcs in their lives? The pain a nd misery that result from an as sa ult on child hood su ch as that expe r ie nce d by a victim of incest ca n damag e th e development al path and de ter an otherwise productive and loving journey throu gh ad ult hood. In this volume, Incest-related Syndromes ofAdult Psychopathology, ed ite d by Richa rd P. Kluft the con t ribu to rs review th e lasting effec ts of ch ild hood incest on adult su rvivors. It is not a treatment manual but ra t her a multi-faceted discussion of the psych op athology that incest often leaves in its wak e. M any of us as therapists have encou n te re d well-documented cases of people who bear th e lon g-term effec ts of incest. Som e read ers m ay be su rprised to find that th ese patients are not unusual: in on e sa m ple (Russell , 1986) , 16% of wom en had ex perienced some kind of incest , with 5% having been victimized by th eir fathers. For those who need proof that th ese report s of incest are not fa n tasy, a no ther stu dy (H erman and Sch atzow, 1987) showed that 74% of the ir population ob taine d confir ma tio n from a no t he r source and 9% more found st ro ng lik elihood of confi r mation; most of th ose remaining had not tri ed to co nfi rm th eir expe r ie nces . Kluft 's volum e goes on to document th e high number of pa tien ts in variou s ca tegor ies of psychopathology wh o have suffe re d damaging incest expe rie nce s wh ich they will need to explore a nd process before they ca n begin to hea l t hemselves. Though th e expe r ie nces of female su rvivors of incest is focused up on in thi s volume, given the ex te nsive lit erature on this subject, it is a lso not ed that a t least 10% or more of all victims of se xua l abuse a re m al e. The aim of this book is to a le r t th e cl inician to th e pres en ce of inc est as important mat erial to deal with or face t reatm ent fai lure. Kluft has two exce lle nt con t r ibu t ions in add itio n to his introducti on and ed it ing. Chapter Two, On the Apparent Invisibility of In cest : A Person al Reflect ion on Things Kn own and Forgotten, is a warm and hu m ane explora tion and review of eve nts in Kluft 's own you t h. Klu ft sifts throu gh his own life 's m e mories to recogn ize a ne w wh ere he had previously witnessed , witho u t underst a nd ing, the horrors of incest hidden behind the scree n of norma I ex is te nce. Hi s so liloq uy im plicitly invi tes his read ers , particularly men , to become more consc ious of the vulnerabi lity of