ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the link between women, madness, and childhood sexual abuse, demonstrating the way in which diverse manifestations of ‘madness’ amongst women are in fact the characteristic symptoms of childhood sexual abuse. The understanding that most women develop severe eating disorders in the wake of being abused as children challenges the classification of eating disorders as an independent diagnosis and phenomenon. Viewing contemporary eating disorders as a ‘female mental disease’ constitutes another link in the long chain of branding diagnoses attached by the male hegemonic establishment to symptoms caused by childhood sexual trauma. Eating disorders are in fact but one in a cluster of complex symptoms induced by childhood sexual abuse. Complex PTSD (CPTSD) is thus the best and most appropriate diagnosis for such women and should replace branding diagnoses that ignore their traumatic history. A CPTSD diagnosis also leads to better, more appropriate and effective forms of treatment for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
