title: Early sexual abuse and nightmares in the analysis of adults.
abstract: An examination of the nightmares of four adults in analysis who had been sexually abused as children revealed a characteristic distortion of the body representation as it appeared in the manifest content of the dream. The authors believe that childhood sexual trauma has profound and pervasive effects on the development and consolidation of the body image. Experienced as a grave assault on body integrity and function, it mobilizes primitive anxieties and specific genital anxieties, resulting in distortion, fragmentation, or disintegration of the body representation. The frequently observed multiple somatization of victims of sexual abuse is attributable to such a damaged and persecutory body representation.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Arvanitakis
authors.forename: R M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Jodoin
authors.forename: E P
authors.initials: EP
authors.lastname: Lester
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lussier
authors.forename: B M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Robertson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents / Q000523:psychology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D004325:Dreams; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010553:Personality Development; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D011606:Psychosexual Development