This paper is on sexual abuse, incest and memories. It focuses on the after effects that sexual abuse leaves on an individual.

There are three primary disorders associated with sexual abuse. They are compulsive disorder, eating disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The paper’s main focus is on the impact of memories on the sexually abused child. It will examine the memories of - what is real or not, and what is confused or distorted. It will further examine if in fact there is a real memory.

The subject of sexual abuse is one that always fascinated me, by its complexity and how it is so difficult if not impossible to get over it. Which means to be cured.

I am interested in this subject on a professional level, because I have patients who have been sexually abused. Some of these patients are aware of their sexual abuse, but many other patients are not aware of the abuse.

In my mind and in the minds of many others, it is one of the most despicable and horrible crimes that can be committed. Sexual abuse is a soul killer. The victim survives with their body, with their blood, their memories, their spirit. But deep, deep, down their soul has been altered forever. Once the soul has been destroyed, it can take a lifetime of hard work to try to reconnect to what has been robbed or taken away from the abused child.

Sexual abuse is horrendous because it is almost always committed on innocent and powerless victims. It changes the victim’s values of life forever and to survive, the victim has to create new parameters in order to continue to live.

The boundaries of the body as much as the ones of the soul have been betrayed. The abused do not go anymore with the flow of life, as most people do.

There is a side of this trauma so powerful that the spirit of the child seems to be flying away in another dimension and pushes the child to just put the trauma in the back burner just to get to the next chapter of their life. If the trauma is bad don’t think about it, tomorrow will be another day. So let’s ignore what happened and sleep then one will automatically wake up to new feelings and new horizons.

I have analyzed this subject on all the angles possible, dramatized, idealized, fantasized, forgot, suppressed and the results were always the same − taking the victim back to point A. Point A is no way to forget, no way to find a short cut. To accept, to move on, but the scars are present, consistently present on the victim’s body and in their behaviors, demeanors, attitudes, feelings. The scars are real. But are they strong enough for you to rebuild a new life without any memories?