Sexual Abuse and Intimacy

Adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse suffer a multitudeof long-term effects, including distorted ideas about sexuality,inappropriate sexualized behaviors, fragmented identity, andfeelings of powerlessness and betrayal (Olafson&Boat, 2000).Victimization influences an individual's self-concept, isassociated with increased use of image-distorting defenses such asdissociation, denial, and projective identification, and increasesthe likelihood of future abuse. The current study sought to explorethe cycle of abuse by examining implicit and explicit measures ofintimacy among female inpatient and university participants. Allparticipants completed a modified version of the Adult DimensionsInventory (Chaffin, Wherry, Newlin, Crutchfield,&Dykman,1997) in an effort to assess experience of childhood sexual abuse,and three versions of the Stroop Task: Neutral, General Threat, andIntimacy-Related. The university participants also completed theExperiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR; Brennan et al.,1998), a self-report measure of attachment-related anxiety andavoidance. Results showed that a more intrusive form of sexualabuse led to a significant impact upon the cognitive processing ofemotion-laden and neutral stimuli. This impact, however, manifesteddifferently for inpatient and university participants: sexuallyabused inpatient participants tended to avoid processinginformation while abused university participants were distracted byemotion-laden stimuli.Finally, results showed that within theuniversity sample there was a greater discrepancy between implicitand explicit measures of intimacy among sexually abusedparticipants compared to non-abused participants.

Klappentext
Adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse suffer a multitude of long-term effects, including distorted ideas about sexuality, inappropriate sexualized behaviors, fragmented identity, and feelings of powerlessness and betrayal (Olafson & Boat, 2000). Victimization influences an individual's self-concept, is associated with increased use of image-distorting defenses such as dissociation, denial, and projective identification, and increases the likelihood of future abuse. The current study sought to explore the cycle of abuse by examining implicit and explicit measures of intimacy among female inpatient and university participants. All participants completed a modified version of the Adult Dimensions Inventory (Chaffin, Wherry, Newlin, Crutchfield, & Dykman, 1997) in an effort to assess experience of childhood sexual abuse, and three versions of the Stroop Task: Neutral, General Threat, and Intimacy-Related. The university participants also completed the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR; Brennan et al., 1998), a self-report measure of attachment-related anxiety and avoidance. Results showed that a more intrusive form of sexual abuse led to a significant impact upon the cognitive processing of emotion-laden and neutral stimuli. This impact, however, manifested differently for inpatient and university participants: sexually abused inpatient participants tended to avoid processing information while abused university participants were distracted by emotion-laden stimuli. Finally, results showed that within the university sample there was a greater discrepancy between implicit and explicit measures of intimacy among sexually abused participants compared to non-abused participants.