"Reach for the Rainbow: Advanced Healing for Survivors of Sexual Abuse"
By Lynne D. Finney, J.D., M.S.W. Survivor and Therapist"The Courage to Heal : A guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse"
By Ellen Bass and Laura Davis (you can get this on audio tape too)These serveral other books deal with just working through your feelings and comforting yourself. Though not written for survivors exclusivly, they are helpful to survivors because the books teach how to take care of yourself.
"The Creative Journal : The Art of Finding Yourself"
By Lucia Capacchione
It's just creative journal keeping...giving you exercises to explore yourself and your emotions. This is a most wonderful book for self caring:
"The Woman's Comfort Book: A Self-Nutruring Guide for Restoring Balance in Your Life"
By Jennifer LoudenFor those who don't have time to read the huge 'Courage to Heal book' This is a much shorter copy:
"Begining to Heal: A first Book for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse"
By Ellen Bass and Laura DavisFor teens: "The Me Nobody Knows: A Guide for Teen Survivors"
By Barbara Bean and Shari BennettSome older books but still good....(late 1980's)
"Recovering From Rape" By Linda Ledray
"No Fairy Godmothers, No Magic Wands: The Healing Process After Rape"
By Judith Katz"Everday Self-Denfense : Protect Yourself with Attitude, Intuition and Strategy"
By Khalrghl Quinn'Street-smart and politically savvy, Everyday Self-Defense goes through and beyond inner healing to strength, confidence
Reviving Ophelia; Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. by Mary Pipher, Ph.D.Ballantine Books, 1994; 293 pages plus a short bibliography and index; paper, $12.50
read by the reviewer, August/September, 1996
reviewed - neil, September 3rd, 1996
Reviving Ophelia; Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls
As best I can tell, this book is really about rape, but I should also mention that the author seems only dimly aware of that. At any rate, it s a very good collection of analysis and stories about the horrific pressures facing young teenage girls in 1990's America. Mary Pipher, the author of this book, is a therapist in a Nebraska town, and her expertise and practice focuses on junior high school (and high school) age girls who are in very deep trouble. It is a readable book that gives such a comprehensive rendition of the wide variety of pitfalls and snares that 1980's and 1990's society specifically sets for young teen-agers. The book shows how terribly, they, and all of us, suffer from it.As a reviewer, I see rape and the fear of rape, as the author describes as by far the number one cause of the psychological ailments, though she sees that as only one of a wide variety of stresses.
The author states in the beginning (in fine print in the front matter) that the many anecdotes she relates are actually composites - not necessarily literal stories from her therapy practice (no doubt a necessity when you re publishing case histories from a small town). Thus, it s not quite the same as reading stories from real life. This is important when an author makes the fiction/non-fiction distinction quite clear at the outset (not all authors do this). The stories are mostly close to real life tales with some exceptions:
one example is that most of the stories she tells have (relatively) happy endings - one would think from reading the book that a few simple therapy sessions cure all, so to speak - which substantially decreases her credibility, in this reviewer's eyes at least.
There is one great advantage of her writing approach in that the reader does get the sense that these problems are NOT hopeless, and that there ARE ways of arresting, one at a time, the difficulties that these girls face. It certainly is true, that honest, sensitive, intelligent, committed, and insightful talk has enormous curative properties as the author shows. Ms. Pipher starts off the book with the profound change that she sees in so many girls in their first years in Junior High. So many go from being bright, vivacious, confident, interested, outgoing, inquisitive, and eminently reasonable human beings, to sullen, withdrawn, reactive, low-self-image , self hating, secretive, disillusioned, and disinterested persons, practically overnight. The change often coming these days, at the age of twelve, thirteen, fourteen. Ms.Pipher's basic analysis begins with the mass media. She focuses some of her therapy sessions on asking clients to bring in slick advertisements from popular magazines and asking the girls to analyze exactly what those ads were telling them about themselves. She made it a matter of making the covert influences overt, and help the girls understand what was being covertly told.
Ms. Pipher, in Reviving Ophelia, discusses some general societal pressures that get kids, girls in particular, into serious psychological trouble. The author goes on to tell some pretty perceptive tales of the family pressures that these kids have to bear, and tells some very realistic stories regarding mothers, fathers, divorce, and other pressures from with in a family unit.
Although Ms.Pipher clearly understands some of the important family pressures, she focuses mainly on kids-in-trouble in families that are actually loving and nurturing. She is looking to the larger society as the source of the problem.
Another factor that she mentions over and over is that she has learned that the current situation that teen-agers find themselves in, bears little relation to the circumstances of a generation ago. She doesn't compare what it was like for her growing up in that same Nebraska town with what it's like for kids now. She recognizes that it s now a much more devastating situation and doesn't pretend that typical experiences of even twenty years ago matches that of the current day. I find this to be a good perception which I think is tragically lost on many would-be helpers.
This book is good for anyone dealing with girls (or guys for that matter) of this age - either as parent, teacher, friend, relative, counselor, companion, or in any other helpful capacity, it might very well be a very helpful eye-opener.
Sex Crimes by Alice Vachss Alice Vachss' book, Sex Crimes, is really an excellent book, certainly the best I've read on the subject of the everyday business of rape prosecution. She was the Assistant District Attorney (ADA) for Special Violence, that is, the rape crimes prosecutor for Queens County New York during the 1980's and her rendition of her experiences is riveting and action-packed. She tackled some of the more famous cases - big city serial stuff, 'son of sam' and etc. but besides that, she had to contend with a boss, the Queens County DA, who was not particularly keen on rape crimes prosecution. For example, they put her office directly under the holding pen for rapists, and allowed the plumbing to deteriorate to the point that the sewage from the rapists' toilets was constantly leaking in dribbles and chunks all over her office. She had to do her job spitting bullets in all directions. Alice is one very heavily enraged DA, best attitude I've ever seen in a public official in that field. Rape: The Ultimate Violation by Judith Rowland Judy Rowland's book is also pretty interesting. She was the ADA for special violence (rape) in San Diego a little earlier - 70's I think. She found that her cases were weakened on account of her witnesses (the victims) appearing unsettled, nervous, unsure of themselves, and other stuff when they appeared on the stand in court, easily frazzled and torn apart by the defense attorney. So, she did some major research, and came upon what was apparently then a new field - "Rape Trauma Syndrome". She carved out a niche for herself searching for "expert witnesses" all over the country who could convince judges and juries that the difficulties that the rape victims were having on the stand was not an indication of an "unreliable witness", no no, it was the indication of someone who'd been raped!! Turned around a lot of rape prosecutions in Southern California for the better, and created legal precedents that, I presume, still stand. Go Judy !!! . . . One interesting part I remember was that one of the expert witnesses she found was a policewoman from another city, Chicago I think it was. Apparently, there had been a rapist stalking a Chicago neighborhood and the police decided to run a decoy operation to trap him. So a group of detectives went out as backup for a policewoman, who was dressed in normal clothes and who walked the neighborhood hoping to draw the rapist out. Sure enough, one dark night, he pounced in classic fashion, from out of the bushes, dragged the policewoman down, out of the street, and began tearing at her clothes. Fortunately, the detectives showed up pretty much on time (I think there was a bit of a delay, I'm not sure), pulled the man off and arrested him. But the interesting part is, the policewoman didn't really recover just like that . She was severely traumatized and went through some very real degree of rape trauma syndrome, just from being physically assaulted by some killer and almost raped, all the warning and training notwithstanding. Judy Rowland wrote a good book, "Rape: The Ultimate Violation", kinda long and not quite as fast-paced as Alice's, but engaging and inspiring all the same. Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape by Linda A. Fairstein The last of the three by ADA's is Linda Fairstein's "Sexual Violence". She worked across the bridge from Alice, as the special violence prosecutor for New York County (Manhattan). Unlike Vachss, who had to fight in all directions, and Judy, who was kind of on her own somewhat, Linda was the insider, an excellent relationship with Hogan, the famous New York DA, and Linda basically had all the right connections. Also an informative book.