You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In view of the timeliness of the topic, any book on child sexual abuse is in danger of having its purpose misunderstood. It is easy for such a book to appear to be more prurient than scholarly, more controversial than illuminating and more in the nature of publicity than therapeutic enhancement. This is a serious book. Made up of contributions from analysts from diverse schools, the volume achieves a remarkable coherence because of the excellent editing, especially the introduction and final chapter, both written by the editor.
In his introduction, Howard Levine mentions a remarkable estimate of almost one-third of middle class adult females reporting having experienced some potentially traumatic sexual encounter in childhood. This estimate leaves out the possibility of sexual contact with an adult female. Fifteen percent of the women surveyed reported physical contact with an adult male. Similar percentages were estimated informally for adult males. These encounters were potentially, although not necessarily actually, traumatic. Levine describes the controversy about whether Freud suppressed awareness of actual childhood seduction when he abandoned