Steven Levenkron, MS on Childhood Sexual Abuse of Women

Mental Help Net (www.mentalhelp.net) presents the Wise Counsel Podcast (wisecounsel.mentalhelp.net), hosted by David Van Nuys, Ph.D. "Steven Levenkron, MS. on Childhood Sexual Abuse of Women", posted August 15, 2007. Levenkron defines sexual abuse broadly as sexualized contact between an adult and a female child between 1 and 13 years old. Girls who have been abused experience pain and terror. They come to believe that "no one will ever protect me again" and come to act accordingly. Attachment and behavioral disorders may follow, as well as depression, social withdrawal, obsessional symptoms, and trememdous self-blame and self-hatred. The longer abuse remains a secret, the more opportunity occurs for these symptoms to become institutionalized in identity. More severe cases of abuse may result in dissociation, and dissociation-related psychosis (not schizophrenia-style psychosis). Clinically, abuse victims may present with eating disorders, a tendancy towards self-mutilization (e.g., cutting and burning one's self), presumably personality disorders (although these are not described), and precocious addiction and/or sexuality. Victims may also avoid sexuality entirely, and go so far as to make themselves physically and emotionally unattractive (e.g., by becoming obese, by dressing poorly, etc.). Victims may slide into further victimizing relationships, as abuse has become normalized, or may act out pseudo-abusive relationships with others through sexual domination activities.