Child sexual abuse: The loss of innocence

The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 2010

ABSTRACT

A Brief Summary of Freud's Psychosexually Based Psychological pPerspective

Psychoanalysis has had a long gestation, during the course of which it has experienced multiple rebirths, leading some current authors to complain that there has been such a proliferation of theories of psychoanalysis over the past 115 years that the field has become theoretically fragmented and is in disarray (Fonagy & Target, 2003; Rangell, 2006). In this paper, I survey the past and present landscapes of psychoanalytic theorizing and clinical practice to trace the evolution of Freud's original insights and psychoanalytic techniques to current theory and practice. First, I sketch the evolutionary chronology of psychoanalytic theory; second, I discuss the key psychoanalytic techniques derived from clinical practice, with which psychoanalysis is most strongly identified; third, I interrogate whether Freud's original theoretical conceptualizations and clinical practices are still recognizable in current psychoanalytic theory and practice, using four key exemplars – object relations theory, attachment-informed psychotherapy, existential/phenomenological and intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy; and fourth, I discuss recent unhelpful, disintegrative developments in psychoanalytic scholarship. To this end, I critique the cul-de-sacs into which some psychoanalytic scholars have directed us, and conclude with the hope that the current state of affairs can be remedied. Psychoanalysis is simultaneously a form treatment, a theory, and an " investigative tool " (Lothane, 2006, p. 711). Freud used each of these three facets of psychoanalysis iteratively to progress our understanding of human mental functioning. Among Freud's unique theoretical insights into the human condition was the historically new idea that humans are primarily animals driven by instincts (Freud, 1915a, 1920) who undergo growth via universal developmental (psychosexual) stages that are influenced by family and social life. This was in opposition to the prevailing view of his time that humanity was God's highest creation. Freud (1908) challenged the cherished belief that humankind is rational and primarily governed by reason, replacing it with the disturbing notion that we are in fact driven by unacceptable and hence repressed aggressive and sexual impulses that are constantly at war with the " civilized " self. Freud himself and Freud scholars (Jones, 1953; Strachey, 1955) consider that the Studies on Hysteria (Breuer & Freud, 1893) mark the beginning of psychoanalysis as a theory and a treatment. These early papers place the causes of the symptoms of hysteria firmly in the psychological, not the neurological domain (although such a distinction is no longer sustainable), thus moving thinking about the cause of hysterical and other psychological symptoms from the brain to the mind. This insight underpinned a paradigm shift in thinking about the mental functioning of human beings, for which there was a scant vocabulary and embryonic conceptualizations. The theory that organized early clinical observations gradually unfolded, many precepts of which have entered the psychological lexicon as givens, concepts that are now taken for granted. Three of these bedrock concepts are the existence of the Unconscious, the notion of hidden meaning and the idea of repression.

Psychological Reports, 1998

Since the late nineteenth century explanations of sexual trauma have invoked unconscious mental mechanisms of forgetting. Memories have been seen as submerged only to be therapeutically recovered. Explanations and related therapies have tended to be either hotly advocated or decried, not the least were those of Janet and Freud. Once again there is a vigorous debate surrounding the status of recovered memories. This paper was undertaken to contribute to reasoned and balanced dialogue by exploring an historical dimension. There is a renaissance of interest in the oeuvre of Janet. In this article Janetian sources are examined in which he criticised Freud's views on sexual trauma and elaborated his own position, a position which is yet significant today.

British Journal of Psychotherapy, 2020

This article describes the long‐term psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a young woman who had experienced trauma during her childhood. The details of the trauma were unknown, as all memory of the trauma had been repressed. Past trauma is analysable through a prism of transference, dreaming and dreams, mental states and thinking processes that offer an opportunity to explore and analyse the influence of both reality and fantasy on the patient. The presented case describes a therapeutic process that strives to discover hidden meanings through the unconscious system and illustrates the movement from unconscious to conscious during exploration of the patient's personal trauma in treatment. The author discusses the importance of classical and contemporary psychoanalytic models of childhood sexual trauma through the discovery of manifest and latent content, unconscious fantasies and actual events of trauma. It is suggested that the complexity of trauma is clarified by the tension between...

Sexual abuse is a complicated issue. Variety of causes, consequences, and resources will be concluded and explored in the style of APA .

The Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 1998

there are several clinical vignettes that show Freud in the unusual role of psychotherapist to young boys. In such cases his approach was rather uniform and simple. A first phase was characterized by early onanism and consequent severe threats were regularly assumed, so that puberty could be viewed as a revival of the genital stimulation, now strenuously opposed by the ego. Freud's specific idea was that the punishment with which the child had been threatened, was now used by the boy for reproaching himself in retrospect. A simple explanation of the uncon scious struggle, technically based on the transformation of images into thoughts, was sufficient for putting the neurosis to an end. Freud was so convinced of the validity of the schema that he applied it to explain the attacks of night terrors in a 13-year-old boy, the case history of whom he knew only from the pediatric literature. Notwithstanding the scarcity of information, he dared the following reconstruction: The boy had been threatened with severe punishment because of early masturbation; with the onset of puberty the temptation had revived and the struggle for repression had taken over the previous threats (Freud, 1900, p. 568). Despite the simplicity of this schema, while narrating the only two vignettes reported in detail, Freud twice incurred the same sort of slip. In the first case, while relating the boy's material to the mythological castration of Kronos by Zeus (Freud, 1900, p. 619), he did not immedi ately realize that the mythological atrocity was committed not by Zeus on his father Kronos, but by the latter in his father Uranus. In the second case he wrote "Tarquinius Superbus" instead of "Tarquinius Priscus," again substituting the name of the son for that of the father (Freud, 1901, pp. 198-199). The first error was analyzed in The Psychopathology o f Everyday Life. Freud explained it as the effect of a sort of counter-will: He wanted to conceal something, but what he wanted to suppress •Training Analyst, Istituto di Psicoterapia Analitica. I would like to thank Patrick Mahony for his careful reading and useful comments.

Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2020

Psychoanalytic clinicians are aware that the therapeutic setting, in its seductive draws and regressive pulls, can awaken the patient's infantile sexuality. It has been harder, though, to recognize that it also kindles the analyst's. This erasure is partly due to North American analysts' privileging of object relational approaches to sexuality, and the neglect of sexuality's driven, embodied dimensions (Green). Relying on Laplanche and others drawing on French metapsychology (Stein), I propose that some erotic countertransferences are fueled by these forces. These present with unusual phenomenological intensity and they are neither rare nor problematic. When unaddressed, however, they can disrupt a treatment or even culminate to sexual transgressions. I explore our resistances to acknowledging such countertransferences, which includes positing them as more manageable and less disorganizing than they, in fact, may be. Laplanche's work on the sexual, by which he refers to the demonic aspects of infantile sexuality, and relational theory (Dimen, Goldner) helps deepen our thinking on this topic. I close by suggesting that the dyadic space of supervision and/or personal analysis may be insufficient to reign in the plenitudes of such erotic responses, and make an argument for their management being a matter not only of the individual analyst, but also a problem of the group (Dimen). For me, an ethics of psychoanalysis begins in an acknowledgment of the way we can slip into pretending to ourselves that analysis is somehow pretend, pretending to ourselves that what happens in analysis is fundamentally in some way not real … As if the thing we call real life were not based on just such illusions. (Morris, 2016, p. 1175) It has become commonplace, when discussing the topic of erotic countertransference, to reference Harold Searles' seminal paper, written in 1959, where he reassures analysts that they need not feel shame, anxiety, or embarrassment when finding themselves experiencing erotic feelings toward their patients. The analyst's erotic responsiveness, he proposed, may be difficult to discuss openly but it is neither rare nor exceptional. To the contrary, erotic feelings for one's patient may, in fact, even be diagnostic of how the analytic work is progressing-and are, thus, entirely expectable; "in the course of [my] work with every one of my patients who has progressed to, or [was] very far toward, a thoroughgoing analytic cure," he famously wrote, "I have experienced romantic and erotic desires to marry, and fantasies of being married to, the patient" (p. 180, italics added). These romantic desires, he wrote, "have been present not briefly but usually for a number of months, and have subsided only after my having experienced a variety of feelings-frustration, separation-anxiety, grief" (Searles, 1959, p. 180). This passage, written five decades ago, is readily offered in clinical case conferences, supervisory settings, and training institutes as a way of trying to dispel the shame and anxiety clinicians often feel in admitting to sexual feelings toward their patients. Since Heimann (1950) changed the psychoanalytic field by making the then-radical-now-a-stapleof-our-work proposition that countertransference is not a hindrance but a source of valuable CONTACT Avgi Saketopoulou, Psy.D.

Human Relations, 1997

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2008

Medical History, 2012

This paper analyses how, prior to the work of Sigmund Freud, an understanding of infant and childhood sexuality emerged during the nineteenth century. Key contributors to the debate were Albert Moll, Max Dessoir and others, as fin-de-siècle artists and writers celebrated a sexualised image of the child. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most paediatricians, sexologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and pedagogues agreed that sexuality formed part of a child’s ‘normal’ development. This paper argues that the main disagreements in discourses about childhood sexuality related to different interpretations of children’s sexual experiences. On the one hand stood an explanation that argued for a homology between children’s and adults’ sexual experiences, on the other hand was an understanding that suggested that adults and children had distinct and different experiences. Whereas the homological interpretation was favoured by the majority of commentators, including Moll, Freud, and to some extent also by C.G. Jung, the heterological interpretation was supported by a minority, including childhood psychologist Charlotte Bühler.

How does personality develop? According to the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, children go through a series of psychosexual stages that lead to the development of the adult personality. His theory described how personality developed over the course of childhood. While the theory is well-known in psychology, it has always been quite controversial, both during Freud's time and in modern psychology.

Psychoanalytic Psychology, 1994

Johanna Krout Tabin (1993) continues the long tradition of casting aspersions on Ferenczi's sanity at the end of his life. She wrote that his personal problems blighted the value of his contributions. She credited Freud with the idea that the child splits the ego in response to sexual abuse. We question her attribution of this idea to Freud and instead document that this was one of Ferenczi's central contributions toward the end of his life. We challenge her judgment of Ferenczi's personal problems, and we comment on the Freud-Ferenczi relationship, particularly the handling of Ferenczi's final paper. In her article, "Freud's Shift From the Seduction Theory: Some Overlooked Reality Factors," Johanna Krout Tabin (1993) stated, "The very concept of a child's splitting of the ego to deal with the traumatic consequences of sexual Requests for reprints should be sent to Lewis Aron,