The invisible wound
The invisible wound. Sexual Abuse in Childhood: Recognizing and Overcoming Trauma is a popular science handbook from the self-help area of the American psychotherapist Wayne Kritsberg , which was first published in the USA in 1993 by Bantam Dell Books under the original title: "The invisible wound: A new approach to healing childhood sexual abuse ”. In 1995 it was published in German by the Swiss publishing house Oesch. A second German-language edition was published by Bastei Lübbe in 2000 , translated by Brigitte Stein.
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The two central messages of the book are: Sexual abuse of children , girls and boys, usually has serious long-term consequences for those affected; However, these consequences can be cured if the person affected - Kritsberg usually speaks of survivors - remembers the incident and confronts the repressed pain.
In the first part of the book, Kritsberg provides a typology of numerous forms of physical and emotional sexual abuse. This paragraph also serves to give those affected who are in doubt what has really happened to them. According to Kritsberg's experience from group psychotherapy , those affected who no longer have a conscious memory of the incident often react to descriptions that are very similar to their repressed experience.
At the end of the first part, Kritsberg analyzes three types of defense mechanisms that affected children develop in order to be able to survive the trauma : repression , denial and dissociation .
In the second part of the book, Kritsberg describes the stages of the “healing cycle” that are necessary to uncover the “invisible wound”, to face the pain, fear, anger and shame, to express the pain and finally to close the wound heal. An important approach is the healing of the " inner child ". In the chapter "A safe place" Kritsberg gives tips for the search for a psychotherapist, for individual and group therapies, self-help groups and families.
In the third part of the book, Kritsberg gives instructions for writing a “diary of healing”.
Many of the 22 chapters in the book are based on case studies from Kritsberg's practice.