Working With Adult Incest Survivors

Drawing on their extensive experience, the authors present an approach to the treatment of the adult incest survivor. This combines cognitive- behavioural, psychodynamic, and family treatment perspectives to encompass the full breadth and scope of the healing and recovery process. While acknowledging the need for the survivor to become conscious of the incestuous experience and its impact, the authors view memory retrieval as only the first step in healing; the ultimate goal is letting go of the past to actively reinvent the present. The book presents specific guidelines for the initial, middle and end phases of the therapy, for family-of-origin therapy, and for treatment of the male incest survivor.

It is estimated that at least one in four or five women and one out of ten men was sexually abused as a child by a family member. Most of those people continue to suffer in adulthood because of undeserved guilt, anxiety, and shame. Reclaiming Our Lives, written by a survivor of abuse and a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of adult survivors of abuse, uses interviews with survivors and a healing approach to track the adult problems and what to do about them. Issues of trust, power, control, sexuality, and intimacy are examined in detail. The book concludes with an alphabet of survival tactics and a fourteen-step guide for growth for the survivor.

A comprehensive guide to the dynamics of incest and to therapy for survivors.

Understanding and treating adult victims of incest. “Highly recommended as an authoritative text on incest and its treatment” and “essential reading for all therapists,” Healing the Incest Wound was a groundbreaking book that put incest studies and treatment on the map. Now, almost 20 years later, this bestselling text is fully updated, offering the most current studies and findings on incest typologies, dynamics, and treatment strategies. Drawing on cutting-edge research on incest and other forms of child abuse, it includes attention to their neurological, attachment, affective, and dissociative sequelae. Courtois—a veteran practitioner and an expert in complex traumatic stress disorders resulting from chronic child abuse—presents a comprehensive revision to this classic treatment manual for therapists.

Presents a model for the treatment of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse that takes advantage of a relational approach and that integrates psychoanalytic thinking with the latest findings from the literature on psychological trauma and sexual abuse. Case examples illustrate the authors' treatment model. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

LI>As the partner of an incest survivor, do you feel like a neglected victim even though your life has been drastically affected by the aftermath of sexual abuse? Do you fee left out in the cold as you watch them go through recovery? Do you feel isolated or rejected, and think that no one else will understand your problems? Although the impact of incest or sexual abuse can destroy relationships and test long-standing commitments, the information in this book may be the key to holding your relationship together through the journey to recovery. Ghosts in the Bedroom provides comfort and guidance for partners in the process of recovery. Graber draws from personal experience to show how partners can accept responsibility for their own issues, support the recovery of the incest or sexual abuse survivor and work toward solving relationship problems together.

A widely used and accepted form of intervention, group therapy has been successfully applied to a variety of populations. This book addresses the here-and-now needs of practitioners working with adult incest survivors. It explores the benefits of this treatment modality in ameliorating symptoms experienced by this client population, and examines both content and process issues in incest therapy groups. Drawing on both current research literature and their own clinical experience, the authors discuss: group treatment research issues; problems experienced by clients; how to prepare both therapist and client for the therapy process; and typical group phases. Other topics explored include problems that can affect the group as a

The author, working from the Family Institute in Cardiff, has been treating adult survivors of child sexual and physical abuse for several years, and she has clearly and frankly described her work in this book. She begins be describing the context for working with her clients; then describes the way she has welded systemic thinking and a feminist perspective into a theoretical model she uses to understand the problem and to guide her own work with the survivors. The descriptions of the therapeutic process are, at the same time, profound and simply conveyed. Her work is further clarified by the inclusion of twenty case examples. She shares her own dilemmas about working with adult survivors, and in this way the book offers the reader support for the emotional impact of this work as well as a theoretical framework and suggestions about therapeutic technique.

For psychotherapists, encountering clients who have experienced sexual trauma or abuse is inevitable, whether or not the abuse is disclosed to the therapist; however, mental health professionals receive extremely limited (if any) training on how to identify or effectively support adult clients who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). Many people who experienced CSA, especially those who identify as male, remain isolated and invisible in their suffering as adults even within therapeutic spaces, facing what feel like insurmountable barriers - both internal and external - to getting help. When sexual abuse is intrafamilial, these barriers are both amplified and multiplied; and for reasons that this dissertation explores in depth, the same is true when the victim is a male. This study aimed to explore and qualitatively analyze the experience of psychotherapists with clinical expertise in providing mental health treatment to men with a history of CSA, using interpretative phenomenological analysis as a methodological framework. The author interviewed six licensed therapists about their perceptions of therapy with these clients, issues related to the abuse, particular challenges for male survivors, and how they experienced the therapeutic relationship with these clients. Through intensive analysis of interview transcripts, phenomenological clustering of data and inclusion of direct quotations from participants, the study's findings illustrate a tragically unrecognized reality about the plight of male survivors, their critically unmet mental health needs, and parallel challenges faced by the providers who treat them.

Practitioners helping adult survivors of child sexual abuse need to be aware of the thought processes of offenders. The premise of Anna Salter's major book is that those who do not recognize an internalized perpetrator when they hear one will often be frustrated by the tenacity of the survivor's self blame. Primarily oriented towards treating adult survivors, this invaluable book will also be useful for treating sex offenders. It includes discussion of crucial issues such as: what clinicians who treat survivors need to know about sex offenders; the different ways sadistic and nonsadistic offenders think and the resulting different `footprints' they leave in the heads of survivors; how trauma affects survivors' world-views;