Contesting Stories of Childhood Sexual Abuse

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Jo Woodiwiss

   Pages 1-10

3. A Story for Our Time

   • Jo Woodiwiss

   Pages 11-36

4. Beyond the Recovered Memory Wars

   • Jo Woodiwiss

   Pages 37-62

5. Choosing a Story: Making Sense, Finding Evidence

   • Jo Woodiwiss

   Pages 63-87

6. Making Contact: Knowledge and the Inner Child

   • Jo Woodiwiss

   Pages 88-110

7. Life with the Inner Child

   • Jo Woodiwiss

   Pages 111-129

8. Problems with the Children

   • Jo Woodiwiss

   Pages 130-150

9. The Contradictory Self

   • Jo Woodiwiss

   Pages 151-171

10. Healing and Growing Up

    • Jo Woodiwiss

    Pages 172-192

11. Compulsory Sexuality?

    • Jo Woodiwiss

    Pages 193-217

12. A Role for the Storytellers

    • Jo Woodiwiss

    Pages 218-226

13. Back Matter

    Pages 227-240

    PDF

Located within a burgeoning therapeutic/self-help culture this book explores stories of childhood sexual abuse, 'recovered memories' and multiple personalities, and explodes the myths surrounding women who, without memories, redefine themselves as victims.

• childhood
• children
• memory
• Therapeut
• women
• childhood studies
• sexual behaviour

'This is a challenging book written from a feminist perspective. Contesting Stories is really about 'the self' and how therapeutic discourses shape and limit the ways in which we make sense of our lives - particularly in the context of abuse...a thought provoking book which must surely be widely read for the challenges to conventional thinking that it embodies.'

- Carol Smart, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester

'Contesting Stories of Childhood Sexual Abuse argues that the tellers of 'stories' about such abuse are as much, or even more so, the victims of the limited and limiting stories of therapy, harm and recovery in circulation in contemporary culture...a significant and indeed provocative contribution to this intense debate.'

- Jeff Hearn, Universities of Huddersfield, UK and Linköping, Sweden

'This important book illuminates the ways in which the homogenous discourses of false memory syndrome and child sexual abuse represent adult women as victims while simultaneously demanding that they engage in active reconstruction of the self... this book offers vivid examples of the active, creative and agentic woman in therapy, as she mobilises many apparently fixed notions to suit her own chosen biography.'

- Dr Gail Hawkes, School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Science, University of New England, Australia

• University of Huddersfield, UK

  Jo Woodiwiss

JO WOODIWISS is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Huddersfield, UK, and a feminist activist. She has worked in the field of sexual violence and abuse for over a decade. She has published widely on childhood sexual abuse in relation to women's narratives, adult victims, and recovered memories.

Policies and ethics