Sexual abuse, sexuality and desire of daughters: A reflection on the changing familial relationships

Pages: 837-841
Neetu Sarin (Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, School of Human Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi)

Psychoanalysis and Feminism have been concerned with questions of femininity and sexuality in women. In India, having a daughter is particularly fraught with anxieties of dependence, sexuality and legitimacy of her needs. The unwantedness of a girl child coupled with sexual abuse make the phenomenon of sexuality and selfhood traumatic. Often in cases of childhood sexual abuse (with its subsequent emotional neglect) leads to states of dissociation, frozen self-states (Bromberg, 2001) and a tumultuous relationship with one’s body. The body becomes the site at which traumatic memories get enacted. Questions of sexuality become intertwined with questions of existence. Often these women survivors require relational and interpersonal spaces within and outside families where the shame, pain and confusion of the abuse and sexual development can be mentalised. In this paper, the complex weave of care and desire in parenting is examined, where care without an acknowledgments of the sexual parts of the young woman only leads to more oppression and violence. Sexual development without an affective care points towards the psychological poverty of the Indian family. Withdrawal of affection post puberty and emotional distancing from the daughter often become traumatic markers in the life of the young woman. What are the spaces a young daughter can access in India to find a home for her desire? Psychotherapeutic work can be used to create a gender identity and bring into language the unconscious gendered experience. The paper charts the psychological changes and changing familial relationships with a daughter. Sexual abuse and emotional neglect have been mindfully twinned to locate the experience of the young daughter and her psychological place in the family.