The psychotherapeutic treatment of child and adult victims of sexual trauma reveals a characteristic feeling of shame. The first hypothesis envisaged considers two psychological aspects of the personality: Ideal Ego and Ego Ideal. The critical elements for these are, on the one hand, the reaction of the Ideal Ego to the experience of a sexual attack and the irreversible narcissistic damage it causes. On the other hand, the Ego Ideal suffers from the abandonment felt due to the process of shame following a sexual trauma, the shame of seeing oneself as a mere object, something used and discarded by the aggressor. In this article we discuss the second hypothesis, to the effect that in psychotherapeutic treatment, the subject’s expression and recognition of shame constitute an essential aid for affirming and reconstructing identity. Through a clinical analysis, our reflection focuses on the occurrence of both sexual trauma and the feeling of shame.
Feeling of shame; identity; narcissism; psychotherapy; sexual trauma