The Courage to Heal

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The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (first published in 1988) is a book written by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, aimed at a female audience who have suffered child abuse and who seek to overcome the associated trauma generated by it.

Many websites discuss "The Courage to Heal,". The recovered memory movement is hostile to the book and has asked for it to be banned in some countries.[[1]]

1 Overview
2 Supporters' view
3 Critics' view
4 External links and references

[edit] Overview

The book has been issued in several editions, and has sold more than a million copies. The most recent edition, at the time this article was written, has the book divided into the following sections:

Taking Stock
The Healing Process
Changing Patterns
For Supporters of Survivors
Courageous Women
Honouring the Truth: A Response to the Backlash.

(The sixth section was added to respond to negative reactions to previous editions, notably the claim that the book promotes false memory.)

The book was written as a response to the author's frequent encounters with women who were the victims of sexual abuse during their childhood and adolescence. The authors present a path to healing from the trauma of childhood abuse. They additionally suggest that people experiencing dysfunction in their lives, who feel that something traumatic happened in their childhood that they do not currently remember, should investigate these feelings. They say that extreme childhood trauma, of which sexual abuse is one, is often spontaneously repressed to allow the child to continue growing up. The authors outline how the damaging effects of child sexual abuse can be wide-ranging: depression, anxiety, alcoholism, drug addiction, dysfunctional relationships, dissociative identity disorder, self-mutilation, suicidal thoughts and others. The latest edition features language more inclusive of male sexual abuse victims.

[edit] Supporters' view

Many men and women who have suffered child abuse have found this book a turning point in beginning the process of healing from child sexual abuse. They acknowlede that child sexual abuse is a wide-spread phenomenon that often leaves little legal evidence. Additionally, if the perpetrator is a family member, they are often reluctant to admit to having perpetrated the abuse. Their loved ones, wanting to preserve their own view of the alleged perpetrator, and retain their relationship with them, also have a vested interest in denying that the abuse ever took place.

The book tells women that they are not alone, but that one in four girls and one in seven boys have been similarly victimised. It gives specific and detailed steps about how other survivors have healed from their abuse. Some of the women's stories detailed in the book have recovered their memories of abuse following a traumatic event. While others have never forgotten them but have been triggered to act on their memories by a current life event.

The book encourages men and women to trust their feelings. If they feel that something traumatic happened to them as a young child, not to ignore it. By going back to deal with the childhood trauma of sexual abuse, the victim can unravel why they make bad relationship choices, unlock physical symptoms and conditions playing out in their adult lives and overcome often lifelong obstacles to funcationality.

Survivors, therapists and mental health workers often recommend this book as a starting point for those who have decided to confront and deal with their abuse history. They say that the merit of the book's advice, is in the improved quality of life of those who have recovered memories of abuse and healed as a result. Many survivors who recover abuse memories, do so without the aid of therapy and, because of extreme anxiety and fear instilled at the time of the abuse, never report it to police or the perpetrator.

[edit] Critics' view

Though critics recognize that child sexual abuse is very common, and that there are confirmed cases of amnesia regarding sexual abuse, whether these are cases of "repressed memory" is still inconclusive.

Critics contend that because Bass and Davis have no formal training in psychiatry or psychology, they are not qualified to write such a book.

Elizabeth Loftus affiliated with The False Memory Syndrome Foundation go so far as to claim the repressed memory is entirely non-existent. this link for a detailed article on repressed memories, by Elizabeth Loftus.

Though survivors claim The Courage to Heal has been invaluabe for them in dealing with the affects of child sexual abuse, critics claim that the spontaneous recovery of memories of childhood trauma itself damages and traumatise the survivor.

Most of the criticism of the book comes from The False Memory Syndrome Foundation or its members, an organization 'which is clearly extreme in many ways', according to one expert academic [2].

However the false memory movement has gained a foothold in the media which is reluctant to take on board that people can remember traumatic events decades afterwards in later life.