Trauma and the Rhetoric of Recovery: A Discourse Analysis of the Virtual Healing Journal of Child Sexual Abuse Survivors (original) (raw)

haumatic events have the power to change a person's sense of self and safety in the world. This phenomena has been documented in numerous groups of survivors, including-but not exclusively to-war veterans, holocaust survivors, terrorism survivors, rape survivors, physical and mental abuse survivors, and child sexual abuse survivors, as they attempt to make sense of their experience and pursue recovery from the damage done (Herman). For those who make the decision to heal through the rhetoric of recovery, whether it is through personal counseling, support groups, or self-help literature, the discursive practice of narration becomes a primary mode of telling in order to engage in the discourses of healing. Child sexual abuse survivors have capitalized on the genre of narrative in order to heal their own emotional wounds as well as to create a public discourse that is aimed at ending the cycle of child sexual abuse through "speaking the unspeakable" in order to break the silence that this crime thrives on. 1 It is clear that many survivors of trauma have come to engage in oral and written discourses of telling in order to heal their emotional wounds as the increase in community support groups, published texts,' newsgroups and websites demonstrate.' Some tum to the oral tradition of individual counseling or community support groups, both of which value telling as a form of healing," Others tum to writing, utilizing the literate tradition-in the form of journals, stories, and autobiographies-to tell with pen and paper. More recently, individuals have turned to the web, with its newsgroups, web sites and chat-rooms to tell, and thus participate in the discourses ofhealing.