ABSTRACT
A group of seven women who had psychosis and had experienced childhood sexual abuse were interviewed about their lives. The methodology employed was interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). On a questionnaire for abuse all reported having undergone extreme sexual abuse but not other forms of abuse such as physical abuse.
They were interviewed about their adult experiences, including interpersonal relationships and symptoms. Their testimonies revealed long-term struggle with relationships and a strong theme of condemning the self and feeling shame or disgust: these themes were manifest both in everyday experience but were also manifest in the content of persecutory voices, for example, sometimes the voices would mention past abuse and condemn or insult the person. Some participants described alterations in experience of the body involving a feeling of constrain or distortion: it is suggested that this may have been a form of dissociation. All the participants described difficulties forming intimate relationships, emotional difficulties including anger, difficulties with employment, anxiety, and frequent depression over their lives. In spite of voices or delusions referring to sexual abuse, the participants saw no links with the past and present psychotic features; the importance of this is noted for therapy.
