The Trauma Myth: The Truth about the Sexual Abuse of Childrena "And Its Aftermath [Großdruck] [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

I am astounded by the negative reviews of this book. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and a veteran of many years of therapy, I found this book to be one of the most healing and affirming that I have ever read on the subject. I can only conclude that many of the reviewers have not actually read the book.

This book is extremely clear, very well-written, and deeply compassionate. Ms. Clancy reiterates again and again how much damage is done to children who are sexually abused. Nowhere in this book does she suggest or imply that the sexual abuse of children is less than horrible, or that its victims do not suffer or are not hurt.

She simply points out that for many victims (not all, and she makes this clear as well) the abuse when it happens is not, to the child, "traumatic" in the ordinary sense of that word. I was abused by a relative whom I deeply loved and trusted, and the abuse was not violent, unpleasant, or terrifying in any way at the time it occurred. In fact, it occurred in the context of this relative providing me with comfort over other events happening my life which were traumatic (a violent alcoholic parent).

It was years before I was able to begin to sort out my deep confusion, shame and pain over all of this. I'm still sorting it out, and Clancy's book has felt to me like a beam of light illuminating what happened to me and giving me a fresh and healing perspective on it and a way to reframe it that makes so much good sense to me.

I feel that some of these reviews are knee-jerk reactions to what they think the book is saying, rather than a response to a careful reading.

Clancy uses circular reasoning to conclude that sexual abuse is not traumatic in her book, "The Trauma Myth".
Her book is based in part on an article she co-authored with Richard J. McNally, entitled, " 'Who Needs Repression? Normal Memory Processes Can Explain Forgetting' of Childhood Sexual Abuse", published in The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice (2005/2006, Fall/Winter 4(2)).
In this study, Clancy asked 27 adults who reported sexual abuse as children to rate their levels of trauma at the time of their abuse on a 10-point scale, with #10 to indicate "extremely traumatic" and #1 to indicate "not traumatic at all". The average rating was 7.5.
Any logical person would consider 7.5 on a 10-point scale to be quite high.
Not Susan Clancy!
She concluded that child sexual abuse "experiences were unpleasant, distressing, or confusing, but not traumatic (e.g., terrifying) at the time they occurred." (p. 70)
How did she arrive at this conclusion?
She limited her definition of "trauma" to abuse that was "overwhelmingly terrifying or perceived as life threatening". (p. 67)
Then she determined that only two of her subjects perceived that level of threat, and parenthetically dismissed one of these subjects' reports as "bizarre" and "questionable" (p. 68).
Clancy discounted all lesser levels of distress as nontraumatic, essentially re-rating them all as #1 on her 10-point trauma scale.
Why did she even bother asking them to rate their levels of trauma if she planned to ignore their reports?
Clancy considers the following reports of two of her subjects as lacking in trauma:
"I went from confused to bewildered to scared . . . it culminated in me feeling somewhat angry and betrayed."
"I didn't think of it as sex, I just thought of it as disgusting . . ."
To further make her case, she wrote that two men, "while reporting that the [rape] was painful, did not describe it as traumatic [recall Clancy's definition of trauma: 'overwhelmingly terrifying or perceived as life threatening']. In the words of one of the victims, 'He would always say if you love me you'll do it. It hurt, and after a while I knew it was wrong, but not at the beginning.' The other victim of penetration reported, 'I didn't like it-- I knew it was wrong-- but it was better than having to go back to DYS [Department of Youth Services custody]'."
Clancy dismisses painful rape of a child as nontraumatic simply because the victims did not describe the abuse as "overwhelmingly terrifying or perceived as life threatening".
She also dismissed as nontraumatic all other painful emotional states described by her 27 subjects, including:
"definitely feeling dirty"
"I couldn't breathe"
"I was shocked at what was happening, and I think I was afraid, there was a lot of weirdness, insecurity, a lot of anger"
"I thought it was my fault."
Clancy categorizes all such psychological reactions as, "unpleasant, distressing, or confusing, but not traumatic."
Clancy acknowledges that, "All of our subjects (1) had either symptoms or diagnoses of PTSD [posttraumatic stress disorder] and (2) reported negative life effects from the abuse." (p. 71)
Yet, this does not influence Clancy to consider that they might have suffered trauma at the time of their abuse. Instead, she states that since child sexual abuse is, "not necessarily traumatic at the time it occurs", "it may be the retrospective interpretation of the event, rather than the event itself, that mediates its subsequent impact." (P. 72)
In her words, the later PTSD is the result of, "an understandable tendency to project our adult fears, repulsion, and horror onto child victims".
So, she claims, it is adults, especially therapists per her book, "The Trauma Myth", who project their own project fear, repulsion, and horror onto child sexual abuse.
She ignores her subjects' own reports of contemporaneous fear, repulsion, and horror.
And then she entitles her book, "The Trauma Myth", categorically painting sexual abuse as nontraumatic with one sweeping brush stroke.
To reiterate, a mean score of 7.5 on a 10-point scale of trauma is very high.
Clancy has no objective basis to dismiss as a myth her subjects' experiences of having been traumatized by their sexual abuse, simply because their reports did not meet her overly-restrictive criteria of overwhelming terror or having feared for their lives.

It is important to note that the McNally-Clancy article was published in the journal, "The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice", which claims to be peer-reviewed and endorsed by, "The Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health" (CSMMH). Scott Lilienfeld is founder and editor of this journal and of the CSMMH. Many of the coordinating committee and fellows of the CSMMH have a long history of affiliation with the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and of advocating on behalf of accused sex abuse offenders in legal actions. These fellows include Elizabeth Loftus, Paul McHugh, and Harrison Pope. I believe it is necessary to question the degree of scientific objectivity of the peer-review process of this article by Clancy and McNally.

Clancy's book also oddly neglects to adequately incorporate the vast body of psychological research documenting the myriad short-term damaging effects of sexual abuse on children. It is standard for psychologists to first conduct an unbiased review of the literature on our subject and to include that review in our books and papers. Clancy failed to do conduct such a review. Instead, she selectively cites only a few studies that support her position. This approach suggests that Clancy has a biased agenda rather than an objective of honestly representing the work in the field. This raises questions of potential bias in her research methods, her interviews of victims, and her interpretation of her results.

As a psychologist for 24 years, I have treated hundreds of abused children and adults abused as children. Cases of children experiencing only "confusion" her thesis) during the time period of their abuse are very rare. In most cases, abused children and adults abused as children report that during the time in which they were abused, in addition to confusion of various types, they experienced a combination of many of the following:

1. Physical pain, in some cases extreme.
2. Disgust for the sexual acts, abuser genitalia and emissions.
3. Terror in cases of extreme force, restraint, or restriction of the child's breathing, gagging, etc.
4. Terror based in threats to self, loved one, pets, etc., to ensure compliance and/or to prevent disclosure.
5. Fear based in the abuser over-riding their attempts to escape, ignoring their pleas for the abuser to stop, etc.
6. Fear, shame, and guilt, based in an awareness that private parts should be covered and not bothered (molested), and an awareness that the abuser was making great efforts to hide the abuse, to keep it secret, and to ensure that they kept it secret, causing the child to understand that these acts were harmful and morally wrong, as in hitting someone, stealing, lying, etc.
7. Betrayal and hurt in cases of abuse by loved ones, based in an awareness that the abuser was engaging them in harmful and immoral acts, and in many cases, that family members were allowing the abuse to continue.
8. Guilt and shame for not escaping or physically fighting off the abuser. (The truth is that children usually understand in the moment that they will be overpowered or assaulted for resisting)
9. Feeling like an "accomplice" based in receiving gifts and special privileges from the abuser. Clancy portrays these "gifts" as "benefits" that the child derives from sexual abuse. This equates child victims with prostitutes who trade money for sex. But, children cannot enter "contracts" to be sexually exploited. Sexual abuse is imposed on children against their will and with no knowledge of the meaning of sexuality. Abusers then use gifts and favors to further manipulate and entrap children.
10. Anxiety-producing sexual arousal during the abuse, in cases in which the abuser took precautions to prevent or minimize the perception of pain.
11. Residual sexual feelings and responses that caused great anxiety, crying, tantrums, pleas to caregivers to, "Make it [the sexual response] stop", etc.
12. Rage at the abuser for inflicting the above.
13. Social, behavioral, and cognitive (including academic) problems driven by the above.
14. Physical damage, including damage to internal organs, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and in some rare cases, death.

In addition, when children first disclose their abuse, the supportive caregivers in their life typically are devastated to have discovered the true basis for their children's recent psychological and physical problems, such as separation anxiety, nightmares and night terrors, frequent crying, assorted fears, defiance, temper tantrums, academic problems, urinary and bowel "accidents", etc. All of these are clear indicators that the sexual abuse was damaging to the child pre-disclosure.

I do not discount the rare cases of children feeling only "confused" during the period of their sexual abuse. However, this reaction usually occurs only in cases that do not involve pain, coercion, and threats, that involve more "mild" sexual acts, that are very short-term, and in younger children.

My internet search reveals that Susan Clancy is an experimental psychologist. I have found no evidence that she is a licensed psychologist or psychotherapist of any kind. I do not believe that a non-therapist is adequately experienced to write a book about the effects of child sexual abuse.

It is significant to note that Susan Clancy is a member of the "International Committee of Social, Psychiatric, Psychological, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Neurological Scientists", a group that submitted an amicus brief in on behalf of Roman Catholic priest Paul M. Shanley in his appeal of his conviction of child sexual abuse. Shanley's sexual assault convictions were recently upheld on appeal. See: (...)

As Susan Clancy mentioned in her book "The Trauma Myth", Sigmund Freud originally posited the widespread prevalence of child sexual abuse, later to recant and claim that these were likely patient fantasies. In the face of societal pressure as I understand it, Freud "caved" in order to save his position as "go-to guy" for all matters psychological. Clancy equates this with the modern day complicity on the part of psychological/therapeutic professionals to hide the complexity underlying the issue of child maltreatment, who (she claims) opt instead to stay with the simplistic notion that "trauma" defines all childhood abuse. I won't get into the limits of self-report in research or into the clear problems of defining what "trauma" means to practitioners versus the public. And I also won't deny that Clancy's expose' has given some measure of relief to some survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA).

What I'm more concerned with is the "one step forward, one step backward" nature of this book. Clancy spends two full chapters explaining how the trauma model of CSA can be hurtful and silencing to those who do not recall experiencing their abuse this way, and to be fair many of the reviews here would back her up. After these elaborate examinations, Clancy gives the usual cursory nod in the Conclusion to the conundrum of the shame and self-loathing that survivors feel, even though they were too young to appreciate the act in which they were involved/experiencing, and to the fact that parents/guardians need to be more vigilant about protecting their charges. I feel the prioritization here is questionable in motive. It is far safer, cloistered in the halls of academia, to partition off and magnify a part of the debate that many experienced in the field would consider self-evident than it is to give serious examination to the complicity of our culture in this issue. That parents are victims/participants of this culture (separated by jobs, etc. from extended and immediate family) in no way minimizes the effects on their children of an absence in guardianship and of the "conditional disbelief" in their child's experience, to the extent that the child knows full well what topics/behavior will jeopardize the love they receive from them. This is true about almost all employment in our society but includes academic life, where a career cloaked in the "search for truth" is often used to justify a great deal of disconnect from family and the "messy" involvement with children and their developmental needs. This larger cultural phenomenon is the "elephant in the room" about child maltreatment that begs serious discussion and I see the refocusing of the discussion by Clancy to "trauma" as not too different from Freud's shifting of reported abuse incidence from a view of fact to one considered largely fantasy.

A second criticism goes to Clancy's invoking Occam's Razor of parsimony to argue that if survivors recall the abuse as not being hurtful or threatening, that this should be taken at face value. Although Clancy leans towards a hypothesis in which adult survivors are keying in on societal norms when they later recode the abuse as shameful and disgusting, equally clear is that such survivors had strong hesitation of reporting as children their confusing experience to a parent or guardian. The latter can be incorporated into an argument that does not even consider what is being learned from the intersection of psychology and developmental neurobiology: Imagine a child not understanding a sexual abuse experience approaching their parent/guardian with the information and the parent exhibiting accepting concern of the incident. The child incorporates this as (a) my experience was `real', and (b) my radar that detected `wrongness' of the experience is being validated by my guardian. If a child already knows that revealing an incident of abuse is likely to elicit a negative reaction from the parent, then NOT revealing the incidence can be seen as a survival mechanism, both for themselves and for the parent, since by default the parent is the means of the child's survival. The fact that the incident is not shared (validated) with a loved one can be seen as a form of neglect. And what invalidated CSA survivors AND victims of childhood neglect commonly share is a pervasive adult feeling of being worthless and unlovable. So the filthy and worthless feeling is quite probably not as much about allowing and/or participating in the sexual victimization as it is about not being worthy of protection by, and indeed jeopardizing the standing/reputation/livelihood of, a (non-perpetrating) parent. Seen in this light, imagine the confusion and anxiety when the perpetrator actually IS the parent/guardian.

Finally, I take issue with any writing that claims to be science and yet reads more like a legal brief. I get the feeling that Clancy, like a good lawyer, was leaving out past studies or credits which, valid in their own right, would dispute the uniqueness of her findings. In particular, I thought it odd that the work of Jennifer Freyd was referenced only peripherally......strictly for her theory of "betrayal trauma" and less for her work on the `shareability' of child experiences and the complicity of the culture in the perpetuation of "...knowing what you're not supposed to know and feeling what you're not supposed to feel" to quote John Bowlby. In this regard, the book was reminiscent of the deeply flawed
"The Nurture Assumption: Why children turn out the way they do" by Judith Harris.

In the end, I'm glad I found "The Trauma Myth" at the local library; I don't ......and didn't .....buy it.