Sexual abuse in childhood: a cognitive-developmental analysis

Abstract

Childhood sexual abuse is discussed through three therapy processes with adult patients, illustrating various possibilities: suspect, certainty and falsehood. The authors emphasize that childhood sexual abuse within the family is often the tip of the iceberg and that the underlying causes must be looked for in an early and subsequent chronic distortion of the caring-attachment relationship which through the construction of operational models of the self, the other and the relationship, will lead to an excessive or out-of-context or simultaneous activation of the various Interpersonal Motivational Systems.