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This is an ambitious work that attempts to demonstrate the traumatic impact of sexual and physical abuse on children from a psychoanalytic perspective. The author attributes a wide variety of
symptoms and dreams in abused children to certain types of sexual and physical overstimulation. For example, visual or tactile exposure to sexual stimulation by adults may produce enuresis, night terrors, and disturbances in sexual behavior, while exposure to punitive beatings and violent yelling results in symptoms and dreams pertaining to killing and destruction, learning problems, and delinquency. The first volume describes the typical symptoms and dream content associated with aberrant parental practices in the form of bedsharing, visual and tactile sexual contact, yelling and beatings, and anal stimulation.
The work is based on 100 clinical case studies of sexually and physically "overstimulated" children, many of whom meet the criteria for physical or sexual abuse. Of these 100 cases, 23 were obtained from the classical psychoanalytic literature, while the remaining 77 cases involved children who were treated at the Judge Baker Child Guidance Center in Boston and were known to the author. Brief vignettes of the 100 cases are presented in the first volume, along with a brief description of statistical findings. There are also chapters devoted to theoretical issues and treatment techniques. The entire second volume is devoted to more detailed histories of the 100 cases, with appendices containing an index of statistical findings and the results of a questionnaire sent to parents.
The author employs a research design that compares the percentage of physically or sexually overstimulated children exhibiting symptoms or pathological dream content with the percentage of children who manifest similar symptoms or dream content, but who were not exposed to this type of stimulation. The level of significance was determined by the chi-square test. This research is compromise