Expressions cliniques et projectives de la distorsion et de la répression de l’affect chez les femmes victimes d’inceste

Abstract

ObjectivesThe originality of our work lies in the fate of affects in adult women who have been repeatedly sexually abused by their fathers during their childhood and/or adolescence. We are particularly interested in the effects of their emotional life trauma. MethodsA qualitative methodology was chosen, combining clinical research interviews and a projective Rorschach test for three women followed in a victim support association. After they had given their consent, we made sure they were followed by a therapist because the research could reactivate dramatic memories and cause them to feel unwell. ResultsFrom the Rorschach, we can identify the lack of connection between affect and representation in our patients. For two patients, the affect is volatile, which can be of a pleasant nature and then quickly switch to displeasure or generate anxiety. In the third patient, it is repressed. This repression prevents the expression of affects, which would fail to be taken care of by the psyche because of their disorganizing character. DiscussionWomen who have lived through a traumatic experience such as incest, seem to have their emotional life affected. At the end of this research, the term distortion is discussed, referring on the one hand to deformation and on the other hand to imposed movement. It thus cumulates the idea of constraint by the other and discontinuity (touching on the mode of quality). We can put forward the hypothesis that the affect would be distorted, due to an early impossibility of the environment to give meaning to the experiences of the young child. The latter was caught early in the desire of the incestuous parent, leading him to submit to the expectations of the aggressor and to forget himself. In addition to distortion, another way may be possible, that of repression where the affect is repressed, the subject withdrawing from his psychic and emotional life in order to no longer feel. Emotional distortion and repression seem to be associated with the self clivage as the subject cuts himself off from a part of himself by refusing to recognize parts of his emotional life (repression), or to identify affects as if he had lost his ability to discriminate (the good/bad). Can’t this be seen as an effect of identification with the aggressor? ConclusionRecognizing the fates of affect (distortion and repression) in women who have suffered from incest encourages us to question the classic therapeutic accompaniment modalities based on free association. Initially, this call for associativity could resemble a threat to which the subject would respond either by withdrawing or withdrawing (affective anaesthesia), or by a feeling of dilution of limits. In order to arrange the therapeutic framework, the clinician, relying on transference and counter-transference, could offer words to qualify the incest emotional experience abused by incest. Indeed, the latter could redouble the difficulty in identifying and recognizing what is good, bad, pleasant, or on the contrary unpleasant in relation to primary experiences, which have hindered the reflexive function.