Integrating the Shattered Self: Psychotherapy with Adult Incest Survivors

Abstract

NICKI ROTH: Integrating the Shattered Self: Psychotherapy with Adult Incest Survivors. Jason Aronson, Northvale, NJ, 1993, 177 pp., $25.00.The horror, unspeakable invasiveness, and tragic loss of innocence that accompany incest experiences of childhood ordinarily leave their victims with emotional scars and struggles of enormous magnitude. The psychotherapeutic treatment of incest victims is therefore an enterprise that demands of therapists great patience, empathy, perserverance, a steadfast desire to investigate and actively share in an experience of profound human suffering, and a relentless faith in the healing powers of the therapeutic process itself.In Integrating the Shattered Self, Nicki Roth provides the reader with an eclectic therapeutic model that focuses upon the coping skills and strengths of incest victims as they must, time and time again, confront their horrific pasts. With the skillful use of numerous clinical vignettes, Roth illustrates how and why sexually molested children must defend themselves by every available psychological means in order to prevent the evils of incest from literally destroying their sense of selfhood. She further demonstrates her compassion and respect for her clients by recognizing that although the psychological defenses that originated in childhood to cope with sexual abuse--dissociation, out-of-body experiences, splitting, obsessional thinking, denial, overly nurturant and overly responsible behavior, and self-abuse--are likely to become maladaptive in the contemporaneous relationships of adulthood, clients should not be labelled sick or mentally ill simply because they continue to protect themselves by relatively outmoded psychological measures. Nor, as Roth trenchantly reminds us, should incest victims be bombarded by despotic therapeutic interventions that are designed to radically threaten and remove long-standing psychological defenses.I think Roth deserves particular commendation for declaring her courageous convictions about the incest experience, moral declarations that are rarely found in the writings of mental health theorists and practitioners. First, she effectively assails the popular and mistaken notion that victims of sexual abuse must ultimately forgive their abusers in order to recover fully from their wounds and escape the trap of perpetual anger. She astutely points out that society rarely pressures victims of murder, terrorism or genocide to forgive their captors or destroyers. Yet, there is societal pressure placed upon incest victims to feel sorry for and forgive their molesters. As Roth suggests, it is acceptable and perhaps even highly therapeutic for incest survivors, if they so wish, to remain angry and refuse to offer absolution to their abusers.Second, Roth addresses the matter of the evilness of adult perpetrators of incest. …