Product Description

The Courage to Heal is an inspiring, comprehensive guide that offers hope and encouragement to every woman who, was sexually abused as a child -- and those who care about her. Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible. The authors weave personal experience with professional knowledge to show the reader how she can come to terms with her past while moving powerfully into the future. They provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, a map of the healing journey, and many moving first-person examples of the recovery process drawn from their interviews with hundreds of survivors.

Definitive in scope, The Courage to Heal speaks directly to the survivor in a warm and personal way:

• TAKING STOCK -- outlines the effects of child sexual abuse and the ways women cope over time.
• THE HEALING PROCESS -- explores each stage from the decision to heal and remembering through breaking silence, knowing it wasn't your fault, nurturing the inner child, and grief and anger, to resolution and moving on.
• CHANGING PATTERNS -- offers in-depth guidance for shifting self-defeating patterns in specific areas of one's present life, including self-esteem, feelings, intimacy, sexuality, and dealing with families.
• SUPPORTERS OF SURVIVORS -- provides insight and strategies for partners of survivors, family members, and counselors.
• COURAGEOUS WOMEN -- profiles survivors who share the challenges and triumphs of their own healing journeys.
• HONORING THE TRUTH -- a substantial new Afterword that refutes the "false memory" argument and presents a thorough and enlightening response to the backlash.
• RESOURCE GUIDE -- fully updated for this edition -- informs readers about therapy, healing activities, recommended reading, support groups, self-help programs, and services and organizations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2597 in Books
• Published on: 1994-06-29
• Released on: 1994-05-19
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

From Library Journal
Based on the premise that "everyone wants to become whole," this book offers help and encouragement to women who were sexually abused in childhood. Through moving firstperson narratives, it illustrates how to come to terms with the past and work constructively towards the future. Along the way it describes the effects of sexual abuse, maps the stages survivors pass through, and offers practical guidance on dealing with self-defeating behaviors and building self-esteem. Supportive strategies are recommended to families, friends, and health-care professionals. The final "Resources for Healing" lists services and self-help programs and a bibliography. Compassionate and supportive. Jodith Janes, Univ. Hospitals of Cleveland
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by Patricia Pettijohn
The classic and definitive self-help guide for women survivors of sexual abuse, The Courage To Heal is a tool for recovery that works. This is also the book often cited by those who challenge the credibility of incest survivors. Some survivors of childhood abuse recover memories of these traumatic early experiences years after the original events, and it is these recovered memories that are said to be false memories, implanted in the allegedly impressionable minds of survivors. I was curious to see how this revised and expanded third edition would differ from the much maligned first. In addition to an Afterword that carefully analyzes and refutes the false memory syndrome argument, the authors have made revisions throughout the book which offer guidelines for assessing confusing memories. The authors' commitment to survivors is clear throughout the book, beginning with the book's endorsements, which come not from therapists, but from anonymous survivors. This is a comprehensive, supportive, carefully worded and often passionate book, as helpful for those who are the partners, friends or family of survivors, as for survivors themselves.

About the Author

A workshop facilitator for survivors, their partners, and counselors, Ellen Bass is co-editor of I Never Told Anyone and the author of several volumes of poetry. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Customer Reviews

BAD SCIENCE
I think this book has caused a lot of needless pain. I don't address these ideas to those who have always had memories of their abuse, however:

Any book that encourages people to believe they were abused with absolutely no concrete evidence is DESTRUCTIVE. Any book that encourages people to get as angry as they possibly can, as sad as they possibly can, and let their abuse define them and take their lives over is destructive. This book has been successful because people feel empty and confused, and they need something to hang onto. How does it help to decide all your problems are caused by abuse in your childhood? This is NOT the answer.

The Courage to say "This book doesn't work!"; the courage to get negative ratings for my review
I purchased this book to "heal" from sexual abuse at the hands of a boyfriend during my high school days. I've since realized that "healing" is a broadly-used term for a trendy concept. The authors, Bass and Davis, never really define healing. Well, maybe they don't because they aren't psychologists, psychiatrist, neurologists, or pastoral counselors. They really don't know what to say!

Yes, this book includes A LOT of vulgarity. I do not believe that we need to be so vulgar when we're discussing sexual abuse. Especially when there are very sensitive women trying to read this book. The vulgarity comes off as "angry womyn" syndrome- don't we want to overcome that stereotype?

Yes, this book is amateurish! The advice is very basic. If you've read other self-help and pop-psych books, you won't find anything new here. Observations of the obvious with "feel good" statements thrown in.

No, this book does not promote forgiveness. Forgiveness has nothing to do with condoning the action. It means not allowing the memory of someone and his/her actions to live in your head forever. Check out the books by the Linn brothers for true forgiveness and healing, from a healthy, biblical perspective.

Yes, this book promotes witch craft. Rachel Bat Or changes her name from Ruthann Theodore. To honor this changes, she holds a Neopagan ceremony. I do not recommend showing this to women, as many are too fragile to work through said ceremony without attracting negative energy. (Pagan lit states that you have to be in a certain frame of mind before rituals!!!) Also, be careful what spirits you invite into your circle- you could pick up very bad energy that plays upon your mind. NEXT, there's the troubling story of Kyos Featherdancing. The woman is bitter, angry, ugh! I don't think women will learn much from her- except how to create more anxiety, ulcers, depression, etc. Kyos, a Native American, follows in the religious footsteps of her pagan grandmother. Be careful that you don't misappropriate their culture and get involved in Native American rituals- you don't know what you'll conjure up.

I was a little weirded out by grown women holding each other in their laps. That happens at workshops and it is recommended for survivors. It's also appalling that the others encourage women to confront their abusers w/o any evidence. Check out other reviews for how this goes against the constitution.

This book will definitely appeal to Neopagan feminists who don't want to go through a healthy healing process. For women who reject traditional thought processes, want something intuitive, and don't want to play by the rules, The Courage to Heal is the book for them. That's why I give it 2 stars- it fits a niche. This book did not help me grow. I stuck with it, but threw it out after S.R. Benjamin's story.

Bashing
I read so many reviews on here that say that this book is filth and a horrible buy and that whomever is interested should seek professional help and advice. I am currently seeing a licensed therapist and conferred with her over whether or not this would help and she supported it 100%. Yes admittedly there is such a thing as 'bad therapy' where they foster and encourage mistaken beliefs of abuse but to throw ALL accounts of abuse into that category is nonsense and absolutely ridculous. The ppl that write these reviews are the same ppl that proposed the idea of 'false memories' If you remembered the abuse before you entered therapy then it is NO fault of the psychiatrist that you feel and think like you do. I am a sexual abuse survivor myself and I am absolutely appallled at the backlash survivors are getting when attempting to seek help. The authors prior occupation as a creative writer matters not in the fact that all this book is intended to be is a place to read excerpts from others like you. Its only purpose is to let you know that your not alone and that with work it does get better. People would sooner think your lying than face the fact that humanity breeds filth. I would recommend this book for anyone already seeing a therapist so that you can work together to work through it. The best advice on knowing if it happpened or not is to listen to your heart. Only you can know for sure, if it feels like it did than im sure that there is some truth to it. Do what you feel is best for you regardless of what you hear or read anywhere. Your never alone. Whichever decision you come too you are never alone.