title: Cherchez la femme, cherchez la femme: a paradoxical response to trauma.
abstract: This personal narrative is the author's account of early childhood trauma and its lingering effects experienced as a paradoxical response. What is later acknowledged (in the paper) as dissociation manifests itself throughout adolescence and adulthood as a fierce desire for attachment that permits no sense of relationship, "a many-times-distorted derivative of the unconscious libidinal wish-fulfillment, an ingeniously chosen piece of ambiguity with two meanings in complete mutual contradiction" (Freud 1917). This paper raises the following questions: How is trauma internalized? How does the internalization of a traumatic event impact one's capacity for relationship, and one's ability to distinguish between and derive pleasure from real versus fantasy relationships? If women are intrinsically more relational than men, and sexual trauma can distort one's sense of attachment, what is the impact on a woman's growth and sexuality? How does a victim of such a trauma and the therapeutic relationship address and overcome the pain and damage caused by this kind of experience?
authors.forename: Penelope
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hollander
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000523:psychology*