Sexual Acting-out as Response to Childhood Trauma

With the women and men who come to us for treatment of sexual acting-out, we discover again and again that the roots of their problematic behavior are found in the traumatic wounds that they suffered as children.

Webster’s Dictionary defines trauma as: “1a. an injury (as a wound) to living tissue caused by an extrinsic agent, 1b. a disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from mental or emotional stress or physical injury.”

Trauma entails a violation of the integrity of the self. All physical, sexual, and emotional abuse constitute such violations. A traumatic state is a condition that results when a person does not have the necessary resources, support, and safety to deal with the traumatizing event. In overt and covert child sexual abuse, the physical and/or the psychic boundaries of the child are violated. The child is incapable of defending herself against these violations. She is truly powerless over most aspects of her life. She is dependent on the support of others – on parents or parent-substitutes – and is completely vulnerable. She is at the mercy of her environment and of the caretakers in that environment.

That powerlessness would be thought of as undeniable except that we encounter repeated examples of adults who were once powerless, victimized children, who see themselves as somehow having been responsible for that victimization. As children, their ability to deny their own dependence and powerlessness allowed them to survive, to cope with abuse, to reconcile confusing contradictions (“Daddy says he loves me, I love Daddy, Daddy is striking me, I must deserve this”), and to live in a fantasy where the world, i.e. one’s caregivers, was not so precarious and violent. For the child, the truth of what was going on when he was being abused was too much to handle. A child needs safety and support to even entertain the awareness of being abused. In that situation, denial served a necessary protective function.

With the women and men who come to us for treatment of sexual acting-out, we discover again and again that the roots of their problematic behavior are found in the traumatic wounds that they suffered as children.

Webster’s Dictionary defines trauma as: “1a. an injury (as a wound) to living tissue caused by an extrinsic agent, 1b. a disordered psychic or behavioral state resulting from mental or emotional stress or physical injury.”

Trauma entails a violation of the integrity of the self. All physical, sexual, and emotional abuse constitute such violations. A traumatic state is a condition that results when a person does not have the necessary resources, support, and safety to deal with the traumatizing event. In overt and covert child sexual abuse, the physical and/or the psychic boundaries of the child are violated. The child is incapable of defending herself against these violations. She is truly powerless over most aspects of her life. She is dependent on the support of others – on parents or parent-substitutes – and is completely vulnerable. She is at the mercy of her environment and of the caretakers in that environment.

That powerlessness would be thought of as undeniable except that we encounter repeated examples of adults who were once powerless, victimized children, who see themselves as somehow having been responsible for that victimization. As children, their ability to deny their own dependence and powerlessness allowed them to survive, to cope with abuse, to reconcile confusing contradictions (“Daddy says he loves me, I love Daddy, Daddy is striking me, I must deserve this”), and to live in a fantasy where the world, i.e. one’s caregivers, was not so precarious and violent. For the child, the truth of what was going on when he was being abused was too much to handle. A child needs safety and support to even entertain the awareness of being abused. In that situation, denial served a necessary protective function.