Traumatic trace: reverberations of childhood sexual violence on adults

Abstract

This article is based on concerns about the impacts of the trauma of sexual violence experienced in childhood and its consequences in adult life. As an object of study, we present the investigation of a letter published in open media access to information whose victim managed, in adult life, to denounce the perpetrator of sexual violence, in which the plot of his report brought the possibility of analyzing the discursive elements aiming at the theoretical elucidation of the notion of trauma through reading the psychoanalytic theory of Freud and Ferenczi. The objective was to expose theoretical constructions about trauma from the psychoanalytic perspective initiated with the study of hysteria carried out by Freud, seeking to understand the traumatic traces of sexual violence in the psychic organization of the subjects, above all, considering the developments and symptomatic manifestations in the life of the adult victim of sexual violence in childhood. In this way, the analysis of the published letter, which gives voice to the subject, is situated as an object for accessing the unconscious supported by the perspective that all research in psychoanalysis is clinical, even if the field is not clinical, as it supports the method of research that promotes access to understanding the impacts of trauma on the psyche. Research in Psychoanalysis made it possible to trace the singularity of the subject that promotes the problematization that is relevant to understanding the social phenomenon of sexual violence and its implications in clinical practice. In this scenario, it proved to be essential to understand the reverberations in adult subjects regarding sexual violence experienced in childhood, placing emphasis on the effects of denial, on the defense mechanisms created unconsciously by the victim to try to deal with the traumatic event, expanding the perspective of analysis for understanding of the subject and his symptoms for the redefinition of the remainder that persists from the trauma, the traces of the traumatic event.