Early sexual abuse, becoming a mother, and resilience
Shabanova Vandelet, Elena
Early sexual abuse, becoming a mother, and resilience - 2015.
93
This exploratory, qualitative, clinical study deals with the impact of late-childhood incest on three mothers, focusing on their experience of becoming a mother and their capacity to invest in the child depending on his or her gender and the place he or she occupies in their unconscious psyche. The authors offer hypotheses about what constitute indicators of non-elaborated initial trauma at the threshold of maternity as well as others indicating its elaboration that coincide with the construction of a resilient process. They suggest that in the case of non-elaboration, the traumatic sequellae will be expressed by a reactivation of the trauma either during pregnancy or at childbirth, or yet again during mother-child interactions whose effects will differ depending on the child’s gender. On the other hand, they hypothesize that the possibility of a resilient rebound corresponding to a partial or complete elaboration of the initial trauma requires the young mother to have already been able to rely upon a positive, invested, paternal, masculine image that was sufficiently attractive to allow for her separation and which can act as a counterweight to the image of the aggressor. On the methodological level, this study combines two approaches: a prospective longitudinal and a retrospective one. The data from interviews were recorded, then analyzed in a double-blind situation. The comparative analysis of clinical data that were obtained confirm these hypotheses.
Early sexual abuse, becoming a mother, and resilience - 2015.
93
This exploratory, qualitative, clinical study deals with the impact of late-childhood incest on three mothers, focusing on their experience of becoming a mother and their capacity to invest in the child depending on his or her gender and the place he or she occupies in their unconscious psyche. The authors offer hypotheses about what constitute indicators of non-elaborated initial trauma at the threshold of maternity as well as others indicating its elaboration that coincide with the construction of a resilient process. They suggest that in the case of non-elaboration, the traumatic sequellae will be expressed by a reactivation of the trauma either during pregnancy or at childbirth, or yet again during mother-child interactions whose effects will differ depending on the child’s gender. On the other hand, they hypothesize that the possibility of a resilient rebound corresponding to a partial or complete elaboration of the initial trauma requires the young mother to have already been able to rely upon a positive, invested, paternal, masculine image that was sufficiently attractive to allow for her separation and which can act as a counterweight to the image of the aggressor. On the methodological level, this study combines two approaches: a prospective longitudinal and a retrospective one. The data from interviews were recorded, then analyzed in a double-blind situation. The comparative analysis of clinical data that were obtained confirm these hypotheses.
Réseaux sociaux