Warring Minds and Bodies of Abuse Survivors

A large number of women who have been the victims of sexual violence (rape or childhood sexual abuse), and whose bodies have been made into objects and have been the sites of terrible traumas and betrayals, often identify themselves as their minds and not their bodies (Bass, 1991). Survivors often hold a dualistic view that bears an interesting resemblance to the mind-body dualism advanced by the philosopher Descartes (1596-1650), who argues the mind and body are two radically different entities. Many survivors of abuse disavow, disown, or dissociate from their bodies. From this perspective, Descartes’s claim, “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) makes a good amount of sense, life-saving sense even.

There is another way to this mind-body dualism. Doleo, ergo sum. I have pain, therefore I am. Survivors who self-mutilate often do it to feel. These experiences of pain prove their existence. With both claims, “I think, therefore I am,” and “I have pain, therefore I am,” the outcome is the same: the mind and body are divided and divorced from each other. More strongly, they are at war.

In the course of writing about abuse and the mind-body dualism, I have struggled with the question of whether I think abuse victims are disabled in some way or not. Clearly, some abuse survivors are physically disabled as a consequence of their abuse. Others were physically disabled prior to their abuse, making them particularly vulnerable to predators. Similarly, some survivors developed mental illnesses as a consequence of the abuse, while others were mentally ill and therefore targeted. What about those who were not disabled prior to their abuse and do not have physical or mental disabilities as a consequence of that abuse but yet are not integrated, unified, whole in their person in ways that many therapies recommend? Is this a disabling condition?

Wholeness and Integrity of a Fractured Person

With many abuse survivors, there is the psychological sense of being self-fractured as well as the person being fractured. The warring narratives within a person are played out or are manifested in a sharp separation of mind and body. One thing that strikes me as I read many self-help and recovery books for victims of childhood sexual abuse is a near chorus of voices recommending the integration of mind and body. The therapeutic recommendation—both in more traditional therapeutic models as well as alternative ones—is that to restore her humanity, a woman must stop waging war against her body. Moreover, she must integrate mind and body. According to this line of thinking, she needs to be made whole because otherwise, she is living only in or as part of herself.

This therapeutic model makes two assumptions: the mind and body are separate and the mind holds the key to the integration. The integration is often conceived as a matter of bringing the unruly and unreliable body under the control of the mind.

At first glance, there is something very compelling about this view. But this view, perhaps, relies on two unwarranted assumptions:

• everyone wants to be fully unified in this way and live as a coherent, embodied whole (though what this means is open to question)
• everyone can integrate in this way

Does this ideal of integration presume a kind of able person-ness that has parallels to able-bodiedness and sound-mindedness? Put another way: Is a healthy person one who not only has a healthy mind and a healthy body but has the proper order or relation between the two? My worry is it assumes a certain degree or level of integration of mind and body as being “normal” along with a conception of integrity as wholeness. For those with bodies, hearts, and minds that have been formed and forged in abusive conditions, the wholeness and integration may not even be possible or are sharply limited. “Whole,” “normal,” and “integrated” are normative categories, and we need to be attentive to how they function. Such therapeutic recommendations, perhaps unintentionally and unwittingly, reinscribe the very dualism they are designed to overcome.