Abstract
The research comes from a postmodern perspective that harmonizes with the qualitative investigation, this study summarizes the importance of language as a determinant of the reality, the problem, and the solution to itself. The purpose of the study was to analyze the narratives of 11 women with child sexual abuse histories in order to know the image that the participants have of themselves. They were identified dominant oppressive narratives loaded with negative descriptions of themselves and some from the family culture. It is discussed the determinant influence of language, family and culture in the construction of these images and it is concluded the importance of thinking about their origin, as well as constructing alternative realities that may result more functional for them.
Highlights
The study is based on the social constructionist approach, which emphasizes the intersubjective influence of language, family and culture on the social construction of reality [1] [2]
The analysis of interviews revealed that the dominant narratives shared by the 11 women in the study included negative descriptions of themselves as devaluation, indignity and impurity images
In the 11 women in this study, were appreciated a negative identity of themselves; the participants considered themselves with negatives description, like “trashy”, “dirty” and “unworthy”. Those narratives are similar from those found by Jackson, Newall and Backett-Milburn, whom find a low self-esteem feeling and sensation of dirtiness [16]; their study was at an early age, with children and adolescents. In this point Kamsler mentions that the women who experienced child sexual abuse began early to form a negative and self-destructive concept of themselves derived from the experience of being considered as bad or dirty girls by the aggressor or the persons closest to the child [9], that is the family
Summary
The study is based on the social constructionist approach, which emphasizes the intersubjective influence of language, family and culture on the social construction of reality [1] [2]. White & Murray argue that the narratives impose beginnings and endings, and that those impositions are arbitrary to memory because they emphasize or disesteem some aspects [6]; on the other hand, whatever is emphasized or omitted has real effects on the lives of people [7], in this sense the language creating realities, and to determine destinies; is precisely the fact of relating which determines the meaning that is going to be attributed to experience, at the same time, the meaning that the members attribute to the facts will decree their behavior
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