After Thoughts: The Trauma Myth: The Truth About the Sexual Abuse of Children -- and Its Aftermath Review

Check out my first impressions here.

First I want to start with a word about something I found after reading this book. When I was searching for video of the writer to add to this article, I ran into a LOT of criticism toward the book. At first I thought well that’s to be expected and I was warned that it was out there, but then I started to read some of it. It really felt like people were bashing this book without having even given it a chance. They heard about it somewhere ran to Amazon.com, read a few reviews listed there, added to the negative reviews, and ran off to troll anywhere else they could find mention of this book. I fully expect that sort of thing to happen here. May I ask that if you must flame this book here, please do not just flame it because you have only read the title and nothing else. I am specific about this because this is a marketing title. It is slightly misleading, and Susan Clancy has stated that she doesn’t care much for the title herself. If you read it flame a way, debate is good, necessary, and healthy. If you haven't read it, try and keep the critiques based on personal experience and fact.

So what is this all about. The Trauma Myth is about bringing awareness to people that in most cases sexual abuse to children isn't always immediately severely damaging to children as it happens. The damage from the abuse tends to manifest itself later in the victims life as they come to understand what was done to them. When most of us think of child abuse we see children being forced into painful sexual acts by terrible horror people we would never allow in our lives. Even with a more progressive awareness of the facts that most abuse starts with people that you know and trust we still do not necessarily believe that those people exist in our lives and spheres of influence, and even if they did you would know and react. Ask yourself a serious question and really think about it, would you turn in your brother, wife, or stepfather if someone came to you and told you what they did to a child? Would you even think to suspect them in the slightest?

In the opening and heavily throughout the book Doctor Clancy makes heavy use of victims' and experts' testimony to paint the mental pictures of what is the truth in the readers mind. Expect to hear a lot of no nonsense accounts of experiences and feelings straight from people who were victimized as children. For some this will be quite an emotional ordeal. I found myself stopping several times to process what I just read from a victim. My own feelings and experiences kept bubbling to the surface as I turned page after page.

Doctor Clancy will use accurate and specifically psychological terminology. This may be a book you might want to keep a dictionary handy, but she does do a good job offsetting the difficulty. After given the actual clinical term for something she will immediately go back and clarify what she just said using simpler clearer language. I did find that this habit of immediately explaining things over again did seem to bog the pace down no matter how vital it was for a general audience's understanding of the material.

As a personal note, a lot of the material Doctor Clancy covered in the book seemed like things that I had always suspected and always thought made the most sense. Children being mostly abused by people they trust makes sense. That there is a political movement behind a lot of the understand people have and the information they are exposed to. Stuff like a lot of the educational programs geared toward children are completely ineffective as far as preventing the abuse.

A child might be able to identify an adult's actions as wrong or weird, but to be able to conceive that these acts will lead to depression, anxiety, mistrust, and/or shame years and years later as an adult is a little much. Furthermore a lot of the situations are contextually complex, since a child lacks the life experiences to help draw out the subtle details of the situation how could we expect a child to make the same decision that an adult would make in that same situation. Children always do the best they can with what they have.

There were quite of few things that I got out of this book that shocked me. First that sometimes a child can feel pleasure from the abuse. This makes sense if you think about it. That it is more common than I expected that children not only allow the abuse to happen but go along with it. I was a child raised with a lot of fight in me for some reason, and I had no trouble standing up to most people (most people pretty much included every adult in my life) that I didn’t fear so I expected other children to have had as much fight as I did.

Something else that stuck me was the way that a lot of relationships between child and abuser seem parallel adult sexual relationships. Acts of abuse tend to happen with a child and a person they trust. Same with normal sexual relations with adults. That the child may want to make the person they care about happy. Most marriages tend to work this way with someone wanting to make the person they love happy. Children who are abused sometimes want the attention that they receive from the abuser. I can't speak for everyone, but I can say that I too tend to crave the attention of the person I am dating. It just bothers me that even those these things can be quite similar (the first being totally wrong and the second being desirable) people treat victims so terribly. (I WANT TO MAKE THIS CLEAR THE CHILD ABUSERS ARE SCUM THE CHILDREN ARE NOT.)

I highly recommend reading this if only to experience the humanity that stems from the stories of the victims. I understand that some people just cannot tolerate the views expressed within but give this a chance anyways.  You will not find bravery like what comes from these victims speaking up like this often. For that I say this is a good enough read, but beyond that this book makes you think and in these we all could be better off with a little more thought in our lives.

First Impressions: The Trauma Myth

I have always been interesting in the science of human psychology, but I also have a personal stake in the field of child abuse. Without getting into details it is why I picked up The Trauma Myth by Susan. Since it is a relatively new book I had heard nothing about it and expected more of the same, but I was surprised by the content thus far of what I have read of it.

First I have to address the appearance of the cover. It has a gradient gray background that starts off at the top corner lighter then gets much darker by the bottom. Within the  there is a line of little paper doll cutouts of little girls and boys all holding hands standing at the edge of the darkness. Now in the darkness the bold white lettering of the title catches your eye like a beacon in the night. Up in the top corner the subtitle reads "The Truth About the Sexual Abuse of Children -- and Its Aftermath".

This is a cover designed to be sensational and to move books. Starting with the title like I said it is the light within the shadows (more on that in a bit).  It takes about more than half of the space on the cover with the word "myth" taking up even half of that space.  Even before reading this you  know it is trying to tell you that you have been lied to by the world and it is trying to light your way to the truth. Now a book on child abuse having images of those chains of little paper cutout children is pretty standard affair, however the fact that they are standing in a line between light and shadow means something. One could look at this and see many things, like children looking toward a bright optimistic future with a dark past lurking just behind their eyes. Maybe the dark history of this children are represented by the shadows and this book (the title actually) is meant to cast a light on that dark history; to expose the truth of it to the world. Either way I don't know, but I do know that this looks like a book you would see featured on the Oprah Show, Dr. Phil, or The View. It's simplistic and provocative all at the same time.

Before I get into what I have read so far I should mention that my mood was a dark as the thunderclouds rolling in the sky. I thought the flashes of lightning and roars of thunder would be an appropriate backdrop to the start of this book. Now after only reading the preface, introduction, and the note to the reader my mood has changed dramatically. That is a sign of how moving this book's contents are.

[Insert Spoilers Here]

With the preface you are introduced to Frank. Frank is basically every representation of a normal guy. One day Frank is on a train reading the newspaper and comes upon an ad looking for people how have experience child abuse in their childhoods to participate in a study. Frank has had a secret he has kept within since the age of nine that is tearing his average everyday life apart. Frank detours his life at this moment because it is finally time to let this secret out. Frank was abused by a man when he was a boy. Frank meets with Doctor Clancy (graduate student at the time) and shares his story. Frank explains to her that there was a beloved friend of the family that would conduct sexual behavior with frank in exchange for baseball cards. Frank goes on to say that he loved this man, and enjoyed the attention he received from him. Sometimes he said that it felt good. When the man Frank knew moved away Frank was sadden by this and missed him dearly. While Dr. Clancy listened to his story she could understand his shame and guilty for what had happened to him. How he felt "aberrant".  So while wrapping up the session with the doctor he posed a question to her that had stalked him for years. Was his case unusual? We all hear about how traumatic and scary sexual child abuse is. Heck one of the few television shows I still watch on occasion is Law & Order: Special Victims Unit which is based on how terrible these events are believed to be.  She bent the truth here and she said she regretted it. She told him that child abuse cases were very common, but she was interrupted by Frank. He looked her in the eye and clarified "No, not the sexual abuse part". . . "if other kids react to it like I did… you know, do what I did?" She just equivocated.

The introduction spends the next 22 pages talking about sexual child abuse. It is quite informative and interesting. She approaches using proper psychological terminology, but then she goes back and explains things she just said in more simpler and easier to understand terms that most anyone can understand. She goes into a lot of the history of the subject and shows how its evolved into what is in the mainstream consciousness. She also give a good detailed understand of the views she is trying to oppose with this book.

Personally for sometime now I felt like it was time that the truth finally came out about sexual abuse. That the media should stop telling these (she preempted what I was planning to say here) monster hiding the closet sensationalized stories and start getting the truth out there. Not all abuse is frightening, aggressive, and painful.  These views for what sexual abuse is like for children have permeated the zeitgeist (You have no idea how much I hate this word). Stories like Frank's are just overlooked or worse altered by experts and figures of the media to scare people about child abuse. Chances are that if you child is abused its not going to be done by some sick freak stalking them over the internet and fucks them with razorblades but by someone you know and trust with experiences a child won't feel are terrifying. If you think I am wrong think about it. How maybe straight guys you know right now would consider it abuse that the hot 19 year old college coed that would baby sit them when they were seven would ask "hey wanna touch my boob?" Now think about how many of those same guys who would brag about that sorta thing after a few beers who can't seem to keep a stable relationship to save their lives.

I'll continue to review this book as I continue reading this book, but by no means are my postings on this a substitute for reading this. So go and get a copy of this for yourselves.