Discussions of treatment and recovery from child sexual abuse often focus on the therapeutic aspects of speech and witness. Using concepts from Lacanian theory and from Sandor Ferenczi’s account of child sexual trauma, this article argues that speech and witness are not, in themselves, sufficient to facilitate recovery. While misogyny and violence are embedded within the available symbolic contexts within which survivors must attempt to recover, social and political change is needed to enable recovery for survivors of sexual abuse. Implications for recovery from other socially sanctioned traumas, such as racial trauma, are explored.
BaillyL. (2009). Lacan: A beginner’s guide. One World Publications.
4.
BerlantL. (2011). Cruel optimism. Duke University Press.
5.
BracherM. (1994). On the psychological and social functions of language: Lacan’s theory of the four discourses. In BracherM.AlcornM. W.CorthellR. J.Massardier-KenneyF. (Eds.), Lacanian theory of discourse (pp. 107–128). New York University Press.
6.
BumillerK. (2008). In an abusive state: How neoliberalism appropriated the feminist movement against sexual violence. Duke University Press.
7.
DeanJ. (2006). Žižek’s politics. Routledge.
8.
EvansD. (1996). An introductory dictionary of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Routledge.
GeorgeS. (2016). Trauma and race: A Lacanian study of African American racial identity. Baylor University Press.
11.
GlynosJ. (2000). Sexual identity, identification and difference: A psychoanalytic contribution to discourse theory. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 26(6), 85–108. https://doi.org/10.1177/019145370002600605
12.
GunkelD. (2014). Master-signifier. In ButlerR. (Ed.) The Žižek dictionary. Routledge.
13.
HarkinsG. (2009). Everybody’s family romance: Reading incest in neoliberal America. University of Minnesota Press.
14.
HomerS. (2005). Jacques Lacan. Routledge.
15.
HookD. (2016). What, for Lacan, makes the function of the father work? Of Abraham and the goat, or, of Elliott and ET. Psychology in Society, (51), 113–116. http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2309-8708/2016/n51a9
MiltenburgR.SingerE. (1999). A dissociative identity disorder is a developmental accomplishment: Reply to Van der Hart and Steele. Theory & Psychology, 9(4), 541–549. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354399094006
26.
MusserA. J. (2018). Sensual excess: Queer femininity and brown jouissance. New York University Press.
