ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways intimate relationships help and obstruct recovery from childhood trauma. The women described a variety of experiences in their relationships with others. Their stories tell how social support can moderate the long- term consequences of stressful life events. When Selye produced a conceptual framework for understanding how stress affects somatic health, researchers have attended to the ways in which life events lead to psychological distress and in turn to the ways psychological distress leads to various physical health effects. The chapter describes a thematic analysis of ethnographic data obtained from women who, as children, were sexually abused and battered by family members. It provides field research in 1986-87 with a group of women who identified themselves as having been abused by family members when they were children. In order to assess the level at which obstruction exacerbates the trauma of abuse, it must be accounted for separately and treated independently within research models.
