ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the dilemma regarding the legitimacy of writing about patients who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse. The agony experienced in writing this chapter is understood as reflecting the patient’s difficulty to know and own something about her inner world, due to the mechanisms of dissociation and denial. Patients struggling with an early trauma often experience the secrecy not only as something that must not be told but rather as something that cannot be told – an unspeakable arena, residing outside the territory of words. The dialectic involved in revealing the secret is both an internal and external drama. Perhaps the only way to know something about this drama is in a non-intellectual or ethical way, but to come into emotional contact with the patient, the therapist needed to deal with the dilemma created by her request to talk about her story in public. Her request was an invitation to cope with the challenge of fulfilling the task to raise the awareness of the greater public regarding the phenomena of sexual abuse – by providing a new model that would, at the same time, continue to protect her sense of safety and privacy.
