ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the therapeutic implications of the approach to disclosures of sexual abuse. These implications are basic perspectives that will color a therapist’s clinical practice in a general way. The chapter discusses the disclosure of childhood trauma as a life narrative, the function of therapist nonaction in the helping environment and the importance of conversational repair and event transitions in the successful therapy process. It describes what is perhaps the most difficult intervention a therapist can provide in the clinical setting. The chapter also describes a perspective in which the most valued action by the clinician is to do absolutely nothing. Narrative therapy progresses quickly from validation to editing, or narrative repair. However, the notion of therapeutic narrative repair is incomplete, particularly when considered relative to situations in which clients are constructing re-collections of childhood sexual abuse. The mere telling of the story in a safe, validating environment is the first step toward recognition of ownership, authorship, and agency.
