Sexual Assault and Birth Trauma: Interrelated Issues

A host of corresponding sensations and dynamics may be present during birth
and during sexual abuse. Physical, emotional and environmental similarities between the original experience of
birth and sexual abuse imbue these traumas with common symptomology, feelings and life patterns. The
“terrain” of both traumas is the body which often stores both memories and affect. Later sexual abuse traumas
often become merged with earlier birth and prenatal traumas. In the therapeutic setting the symptomology,
abreaction and artistic expression of these two issues can be highly similar. These issues and concerns have
only been briefly dealt with in the literature. Only a handful of clinicians, consulted during the preparation of this
paper, were familiar with or knowledgeable about significant psychological relationships between sexual abuse
and the trauma of birth. PRIMARY THEMES OF THIS ARTICLE Childhood sexual assault is one of the later life
experiences which: 1) has a particular propensity to reform a latent birth stress into full blown trauma; or 2) can
further activate reverberating elements of a painfully traumatic birth creating a compounding of the birth trauma
(Grof, 1985; Roth, 1987). In compounded birth trauma an incidence of sexual assault, and what has been
designated as “rape trauma syndrome” by Burgess and Holmstrom (1974), are experienced through and
layered upon earlier interpretations of the traumas of birth (Grof, 1975). 3) Similarities between sexual abuse
(SA) and birth traumas (BT) predispose their issues and symptomology to interconnection in the psyche (Irving
in Carter, 1991). The experience of birth and sexual abuse, and the nature of how the psyche copes with these
traumas means that as separate experiences they can have a legacy of similar feelings, life patterns and
symptomology. 4) Sexual assault and traumatic birth can therapeutically present in manners which for all intents
and purposes appear similar. While working psychotherapeutically with either sexual abuse or birth trauma the
symptomology and issues of the other trauma may simultaneously and spontaneously appear (Bernhardt et al.,
1993). COMPOSITE EXPERIENCES OF A TYPICAL CLIENT The client in regression is gagging, has feelings
of a weight pressing down. There is the sense of being hot, sticky and maybe even being naked. In amidst the
feelings of chaos and confusion, the body feels drugged and nauseated. There are few spoken words coming
forward in expression which is largely body memory retrieved from what feels like a place of darkness and
betrayal.