A CLINICAL STUDY OF RAPE VICTIMS:
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF RAPE EXPERIENCES
UN PERSONALITY DYNAMICS AND LIFE STYLES

Dissertation for the Degree of Ph. D.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

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ABSTRACT
A CLINICAL STUDY OF RAPE VICTIMS:

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF RAPE EXPERIENCES
ON PERSONALITY DYNAMICS AND LIFE STYLES

By

Carol Hope Saturansky

Until recently there were few studies pertaining
to rape victims, and virtually nothing was known about the
psychological consequences of rape, though a p0pu1ar belief
was that women who get raped somehow are different from
women who have never been raped. This research was of an
exploratory nature, designed to gather clinical knowledge
of individual women rape victims, as well as data from pro—
jective test material. No hypotheses as such were pr0posed;
rather, several more general questions were asked in pre-
paring the research, with emphasis on the central question,
"Are there personality differences between women who have
been raped and those who have not, or is any woman by and
large as likely to be raped as the next woman?"

Rape victims were recruited for the study over a
period of five months. They responded to notices posted at
the U.C.L.A. Women's Resource Center, and on a bulletin
board at a feminist bookstore; through an ad in the Los

Angeles County Psychological Association Newsletter, and

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Carol Hope Saturansky
one in the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against
Women newsletter. A control group consisting of five
women who had never been raped, but had experienced a
traumatic accident at some time in their lives, was also
used, but only for comparison of the projective test mate-
rial.

Nine women who had been raped were interviewed
for six hours, over a period of at least six weeks, plus
an additional meeting was held for the purpose of adminis-
tering the complete Thematic Apperception Test and the Mach-
over Figure Drawings. The interviews were largely unstruc-
tured, allowing each subject to initiate topics of discus-
sion on her own at first, but if the subject did not, the
interviewer raised questions about the subject's family
history, early childhood memories, sexual history, current
relationships, plans for the future, psychiatric history and
dream life. The subjects were also encouraged to describe
the rape(s) in as much detail as possible, with their own
memories of feelings at the time of the rape, the interme-
diate interval, and the present included.

A clinical assessment of each woman was made by the
interviewer in terms of relative ego strength and present ad—
justment. Within the experimental group, similarities and
differences were examined in the areas of background, rape
crisis period, attitudes of family and friends and dreams.
No pattern of personality dynamics or life experience in

general could be found to be consistent for the rape victims

Carol HOpe Saturansky
as a whole.

The Machover Figure Drawings yielded no interesting
or significant areas of information or speculation about the
rape victims. The TAT data, however, did reveal some impor-
tant differences between rape victims and non-rape victims.
Rape victims told significantly more stories with themes of
suicide, men being negatively experienced and/or aggressing
against women, and romance or love stories.

While no special hypotheses are needed to explain
the frequency of the first two TAT themes, the third, that
of romance or love stories, does require some further ex-
planation. It is hypothesized here that the anger and fear-
fulness experienced by the rape victim toward men is success-
fully c0ped with by over-romanticizing men. In other words,
a step backwards in the perception of male-female relation-
ships is required if the victim is to move forward again in
relating to men after experiencing rape.

Litigation was also seen to be connected with some
victims' successful post-rape adjustment. Though further
research is necessary, it is hypothesized that the success-
ful court suit, for a victim of rape, can serve to focus
some of the rage and restore a sense of control over her
life. An unsuccessful litigation experience may, on the
other hand, serve to undo some of the previously made ad-

justments.

A CLINICAL STUDY OF RAPE VICTIMS:
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF RAPE EXPERIENCES
ON PERSONALITY DYNAMICS AND LIFE STYLES

By

Carol Hope Saturansky

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Psychology

1976

© COpyright by
CAROL HOPE SATURANSKY
1976

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

At this time when I may formally express my grati-
tude to the people who have been of help to me as I worked
on this research, I find that there are many names that be-
long here. Having chosen to do this work at a distance of
more than 2,000 miles from the Michigan State Campus, I was
forced to find or create a network of local people who could
help me with subject-finding, literature-reviewing, data
gathering, research methodology, and who would join in with
the free-associative discussions which occur so frequently
on a university campus, but are more like artifacts in the
West Hollywood community in which I lived. Two recent grad-
uates from M.S.U. who now live in California were especially
helpful in this regard: Toni Krupski and Rita Larson.

Other M.S.U. graduates vacationing in the West were also im-
portant for me to have contact with as I yearned for connec-
tion with my graduate school roots: Larry and Ginette
Langer. My self-imposed isolation from the East Lansing
wellspring at times would get the best of me, and these
peOple were important to me in reminding me of my task and
my graduate student identity.

When I did get back to East Lansing for the essen-

tial committee meetings, I was fortunate to be able to meet

ii

with probably as fine a dissertation committee as a student
could hOpe to have. My chairperson, Bert Karon, was sin-
cerely supportive and extended himself to help me with my
special long-distance problems. His insight and wisdom
contributed greatly to my own development as a clinician as
well as to the dissertation. I am forever grateful to him
for his fine sense of scientific curiosity and purpose.

Bob Zuckor was also a committee member, but I wish
to express special thanks to him as a friend-supervisor-
instructor, someone who has been helpful to me throughout
my graduate career, from year one to now. Jeanne Gullahorn
and Elaine Donelson completed my committee and added much
to the planning and discussion of the research. I thank
the committee as a whole for working so well with me and
with each other.

There are groups of peOple in Los Angeles to whom
I feel indebted for their help and support. These include
the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women, The
Sisterhood Bookstore, the U.C.L.A. Women's Resource Center,
the office of State Senator Alan Robbins, Queen's Bench
Foundation in San Francisco. I thank the faculty of Los
Angeles Mission College for their personal support, espe-
cially at times of typist-finding.

There are two individuals who stuck with me while
I went through this crazy time of life-dissertation writing.
Bert Forer helped me to keep my head together while he en-

couraged me to lose a little of it at the same time. His

iii

support was invaluable.

My special thanks go to Howard Toff, who at the
same time made my work both more difficult to do, and a
pleasure of life. He contributed greatly to my decision to
stay in Los Angeles, which made the dissertation work many
times more complicated. But because I stayed in Los Angeles,
because of Howard, I have grown in many ways, I have done
what I think is a meaningful piece of work, and I am very,
very happy. Thanks, How.

To the women who volunteered to tell of their rape
experiences and of their personal histories, I am most grate-
ful. Each woman had a sincere wish to somehow help others
by sharing their own feelings in this research, and they de-
serve a special thanks indeed, not only from myself, but

from women in general. Thank you, from all of us.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vii

CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Psychoanalytic Sources . . . . . . . . . 4
Experimental Studies . . . . . . . . . . ll
Victimology and Rape . . . . . . . . . . 12
Rape Crisis Studies . . . . . 16
Review of Statistical Information . . . 23
Four Recent Books . . . . . . . . . . . 24

III. QUESTIONS ASKED BY THIS STUDY . . . . . . . 31

IV. METHOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Interview Structure . . . . . . . . . . 35
Content of Interviews . . . . . . . . . 36
Projective Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Control Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

V. RESULTS . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Description of Subjects . . . . 40
Similarities. The Rape Crisis Period. . 49
Attitudes of Family and Friends . . . . S3
Dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Projective Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
TAT Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

VI. DISCUSSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
The Sample . . . 66

A Note Concerning Cindy and Jackie. . 70

Long Term Effects of Rape . . . . . . . 71

Going to Court . . . . . . . . . . . . 7S
Dreamlife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
TAT Data . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Some Subjective Statements . . . . . . . 84

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31E

TABLE OF CONTENTS-~Continued
CHAPTER Page
VII. SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
APPENDICES
A. JEAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
SALLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

B
C. JUNE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
D SARAH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
E

FRANCINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

’11

JUDY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
G. CINDY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
H. JOANNE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
I. JACKIE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . 123

vi

[‘Q

LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. Profile of subjects: rape data
and background information . . . . . . . 41

2. Dream themes shared by rape victims:
theme, frequency, dreamers . . . . . . . 57

3. TAT story elements of rape victims
and controls: means, standard
deviations and t-values . . . . . . . . . 62

4. TAT themes of suicide, violent
death/not suicide, and life
threats: means, standard devia-
tions and t-values . . . . . . . . . . . 63

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

There is not much written about rape victims. Un-
der the heading of "rape" in the library card catalogue one
finds mostly one or two references to rapists from crimi-
nology books, and dozens of books whose titles begin, "The
Rape of...", the object being either a city, a country, or
anything else which may be described metaphorically as raped.
As for its literal reference, little is to be found in pub-
lished writings. In 1932 an Italian anthropologist, Paolo
Mantegozzo noted the following conquest of a young woman,

as described by Dieffenbach, in his book Anthropological

 

Studies of Sexual Relations: "Two young men (in Polynesia)

 

wanted to have the same girl; they each pulled one of the
arms of the girl until the weaker sank to the ground in ex-
haustion. He does not tell what happened to the girl."
This literature review finds that not many modern writers
tell what happened to the girl either.

Rape shall be defined for the purposes of this pa-
per as forced sexual relations with a woman by a man, accom-
plished under actual or implied threat of severe bodily harm.
It may be difficult to eXplain why there exists such a la-

cunae in the literature on the t0pic of the rape victim, and

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an explanation will not be attempted here, but perhaps it
would be helpful to recognize the cultural attitude that
has existed in the past toward this act. It seems to have
been understood by many as a form of "love". Mantegozzo
pointed out how frequently in primitive societies rape, or
at least a simulated rape, was required in order for a mar-
riage to take place. In our own society, as well as in
primitive ones, women have been considered property. In
fact, rape laws in our country were formulated based on this
assumption. For that reason, a woman cannot legally be
raped by her husband, for one cannot steal what he already
owns.

It has been asserted that rapists depersonalize
their victims. Some treatment programs for these sex of-
fenders even include a process of learning to personalize
women. It seems significant to this writer that more atten-
tion is now being given to victims of rape, as well as the
psychology of women in general, now that there is an active
women's liberation movement which strives to end society's

depersonalization and objectification of women.

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CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Deutsch (1944), in considering what she assumed

to be natural passivity and masochism in women, speculated
about the possible evolutionary genesis of this and described
what we would call rape to be the origin of sexual relations
between men and women. "Everytime I see one of the numerous
pictures in popular movies or magazines showing an anthropo-
morphous ape or a powerful beastlike masculine creature with
a completely helpless female in his arms, I am reminded of
my old favorite speculation: thus it was that primitive man
took possession of woman and subjected her to sexual desire"
(p. 222). Deutsch implied that sexual desire in women was
not an intrinsic self-generated function, but a learned one,
and therefore rape was the necessary means by which a woman
found sex pleasurable. She conjectured that the sexual act
was originally "an act of violence," which the woman could
not resist, "and was gradually transformed for her into an
act of pleasure. The violent penetration and mighty embrace,
perhaps accompanied by wooing and caresses, thus became the
woman's sexual enjoyment." Deutsch, along with many other
writers up until Masters and Johnson (1966), mistakenly be-

lieved that a woman's sexual response was basically tied to

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the reproductive function, and was minimal, or certainly
inferior to that of a man. This belief, which was so preva-
lent, would necessarily generate other possibly mistaken no-
tions of what meaning rape has had to individual women.

Margaret Mead (1949) spoke of rape in terms of
what she calculated was an impossibility without willingness
on the part of the woman. "By and large, within the same
homogenious social setting an ordinarily strong man cannot
rape an ordinarily strong healthy woman. There are many
primitive societies in which rape is a daydream of one sex
or the other, or both, but there are adequate measures to
prevent its happening in reality" (p. 203). Mead also added
that modern day rape is a very different act from any be-
havior that can be postulated for the "small groups of crea-

tures at the dawn of history."

Psychoanalytic Sources

 

Though Deutsch was a psychoanalytic writer, her
thoughts on the subject which are reported above seemed less
directly derived from analytic theory than her own ideas of
evolution. In her discussion of rape fantasies she was more
directly influenced by analytic theory. She described rape
fantasies as frequent in adolescent girls, but for the most
part entirely unconscious, latently expressing themselves
in dreams with manifest content of criminals breaking into
the house or thieves stealing objects of value. These
dreams are connected with affects of fear rather than pleas-

ure. Those adolescent girls who experience a more conscious

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expression of rape fantasies seem to fantasize two-act situ-
ations in which there is first some sort of non-sexual hu-
miliation followed by the rape itself. Deutsch stated that
these fantasies vanish "with the giving up of masturbation."
Deutsch also referred to hysterical women who consciously
and deliberately lied about having been raped by Negroes,
and she suggested that these were "produced by the masoch-
istic yearnings of these women." Deutsch does not consider
any other motive, possibly sadistic ones, for these particu-
lar accusations. Again, her assertions are tied to the no-
tion of masochism, which she says is necessary if the woman
is to be adjusted to reality. She points both to reproduc-
tion, which she says is painful "from beginning to end,"
and "defloration," of which she says "the rape fantasy re-
veals itself as only an exaggeration of reality" (p. 277).

Abraham (1907) addressed himself to the experi—
encing of childhood sexual traumas, noting that there exists
a tendency to repeat the experience in adult hysterics. The
weight of this article concerned childhood sexual traumas,
for which he differentiates two types of situations. In the
first, the child tells the parent what happened, and hence
does not experience guilt. In the second case it is sup-
posed that the child who doesn't tell the parents shares
the blame for what happened by possibly being seductive, and
therefore feels guilty.

Anny Katan, sixty-six years later, indicates some
of the same things. After analysis of several adult pa—

tients who had been raped as young children, she too found

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that there was a tendency to repeat the traumatic incidents
in various ways throughout life. In addition, Katan found
severe disturbance in the normal develOpment of aggression
and suggested it to be due to the experience of the child-
hood rapes. The mechanism of the disturbance was postulated
as resulting in the ego's inability to integrate. Her pa-
tients "were fragmented, they could never feel that they
were whole persons. They regarded their own aggression as
dangerous and raw, whether it was turned against the self
or against the outside world" (p. 222).

Fodor (1948) spoke more directly to the issue of
rape fantasies. He described it as natural for women to be
afraid of rape in the same way as it is natural for men to
fear castration. He described the excessive fear of rape
as having been "conditioned by traumatic events." The arti-
cle continued with a case history of a woman who had once
been raped as a teenager, and several dreams of hers are
analyzed. He concluded that her rape fears were cover symp-
toms for the greater fear of birth: they related to pre-
natal experiences and memories from the womb and birth, with
displacement from the pressure and pain of extrusion (being
borne) to that of, in rape, penile intrusion.

Dreams are, or more prOperly put, "a dream" is de-
scribed by Factor (1954), who was the analyst of a 28 year
old woman who had been the victim of an attempted rape.

This woman pressed charges and thus appeared in court. The
night after her court appearance she dreamt that she felt

guilty and was in the courtroom, where the alleged rapist

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turned to her as if to say "Don't think you're getting away
with it." She awoke feeling sick to her stomach and she
stated, "I had that sick feeling because I felt he'd be
freed and might attempt to do something, or kill me."
Factor asserted that the dream was a "thin disguise" ex-
pressing guilt because of her unconscious complicity and
her wish that her potential rapist be freed to attempt it
again. Factor overlooks the possibility of realistic fear
of death or re-attack, and he gives no further evidence for
his position.

Finally, the last of what this writer could glean
from the analytic literature on the tOpic of rape is an ar-
ticle by George Devereux (1957) entitled "The Awarding of a
Penis as Compensation for Rape." Devereux analyzed a Greek
myth in which a young woman was raped by Poseidon and then
was asked by him what she would like as restitution. She
asks to be turned into a man and made invulnerable so no one
ever could rape her again. This newly invulnerable man,
chief of his tribe, now becomes impious, won't worship any
of the gods, and only worships his spear. Zeus gets angry
and has the Centaurs attack him, but since he is invulner-
able they must use quite a lot of force, bashing him on the
head with fir logs, driving him into the ground like a stake
and suffocating him with logs piled on top. When the body
was dug up it was found to be that of a woman.

Devereux's analysis of this includes the hypothesis
that the spear worshipping was actually a defence against

residual passive-submissive feminine urges; also he/she now

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identified with the aggressor (Poseidon) and so would not
worship another god; and also he/she was impious because
she had consorted with one of the gods and therefore had
indulged in incest. Devereux went on to discuss Greenacre's
(1952) suggestion that at times the penis is eXperienced as
a foreign body. This, backed by the identification with
the aggressor hypothesis, suggested to him that the spear
symbolized not only the victim's new penis, but also Posei-
don's. Devereux concluded that this supports the notion
that in attempted rape, part of the woman's self is on the
side of the rapist.

The above analysis seems a bit far fetched to this
writer. The notion of penis envy as an all-encompassing
explanation for a woman's psyche is being seriously examined
and questioned today.

Returning to Factor's article, his analysis is one
which is frequently made concerning a rape victim's guilt
feelings or fantasy life. This is an example of the problem
of sorting out the responsibility for the event's occur-
rence. As Deutsch had noted, women are capable of making
false accusations, and certainly there are cases of seduc-
tion where the women may be attempting to get raped. How-
ever, it is questionable to use as evidence for the women's
actual guilt in the matter the fact that a woman may feel
guilty after being raped.

Though not directly dealing with rape, another
analyst, Rado (1960), discussed emergency behavior, and he

described the riddance response which hypothetically occurs

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when a person is faced with insupportable pain in the form
of fear. This might well explain some of the behaviors and
thoughts of rape victims, and is included here for the pur-
pose.

Rado stated, "We are all familiar with the impulse
to tear away a severely aching part of the body. Similarly,
the suspense of a (presumably) impending disaster will
blindly drive the individual to the very misfortune he
dreads. He may then act automatically or yield to the ir-
rational impulse to 'get it over with'." Rado quoted from
Mark Twain's autobiography, where Twain tells of being
12 1/2 years old during a severe measles epidemic in which
a child was dying almost every day. Parents were keeping
their still healthy children locked up indoors at home, and
Twain was so kept. In Twain's words, "At some time or
other every day and every night a sudden shiver shook me to
the marrow, and I said to myself, 'there, I've got it, and I
shall die.‘ Life on these miserable terms was not worth
living, and at last I made up my mind to get the disease
and have it over, one way or the other." He subsequently
escaped from his house, went to a neighbor's house where a
child there had the measles, jumped into bed with the child
and successfully contracted the disease. Rado also referred
to combat fatigued pilots in recent wars, who struggled with
temptation to crash their planes while overwhelmed with
dread that their "number" would turn up.

Symonds (1975) describes victim behavior a bit dif-

ferently. He asserts that for most victims of violent crimes,

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rape victims included, the first response is one of shock
and disbelief; next comes fright bordering on panic (espe-
cially when one's life is perceived as in danger); then all
behavior is directed for self-preservation, which sometimes
yields distortions of perception, thinking and judgment;
finally a victim will respond with adaptive and innate pat-
terns of behavior from early childhood. He calls this
"traumatic psychological infantalism," and it is character-
ized by the frozen fright response of many rape victims.
He says it looks like c00perative behavior, but it is felt
more like profound terror. He asserts it is behavior akin
to submissive behaviors of other animal species, which ex-
pose their most vulnerable parts, offering themselves, so
to speak, to the aggressor. Sometimes the terror experi-
enced by the victim induces a "brain washing effect" that
causes clinging behavior of the victim to the criminal.
Symonds suggests that early life experiences with eXposures
to violence allow for an adult to be more physically and
actively defensive with an attacker. It is clear to him
that one's behavior during an attack is not necessarily re-
lated to one's behavior prior to the attack. "None of the
antecedant behavior (of the victim) has any material effect
on the impact psychological response of the victim when she
is suddenly subjected to the uneXpected violent assault on
her person. What antecedant behavior does do is to lay the
groundwork for persistent guilt and shame." Dr. Symonds is

a modern psychoanalyst.

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11

Experimental Studies

There was only one experimental study dealing with
rape victims that the writer could find to review here. It
was based on another study published seven years earlier.
Although this material does not directly deal with the rape
victim, but rather with the observers' responses to rape
(and other) victims, it will be included here.

In 1966 Lerner and Simmons explored observers' re-
Sponses to "innocent victims." Essentially, their point
was that pe0ple in general tend to believe in a ”just"
world, where people deserve whatever happens to them. In

their words:

It seems obvious that most peOple cannot afford,

for the sake of their own sanity, to believe in a
world governed by a schedule of random reinforcements.
To maintain the belief that there is an appropriate
fit between effort and outcome, the person must con-
strue this as a relatively "objective belief" -- one
that applies to everyone. If this is true, then the
person who sees suffering or misfortune will be moti-
vated to believe that the unfortunate victim in some

sense merited his fate.

Lerner and Simmons tested their hypothesis by means
0f inducing subjects who were earning experiment credits to
believe either that they had controlover how much electric
Shock a "confederate" subject was receiving, or they be-
lieved they had no control over the quantity of shock. They
a11 observed what really was simulated suffering from the
Shock through the two-way mirror. The subjects later were
interviewed about their personal feelings toward the "vic-
tims" of the "shocks". It was found that observers re-

jected least a victim whose fate they were able to alter.

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If they were unable to alter fate and stOp or reduce the
suffering, they chose to devalue the victim personally. If
the victim was portrayed to the subjects as a martyr, some-
one who submitted to the shocking because she knew the ob-
servers needed eXperiment credits, then that victim was
rejected the most. This is in keeping with the hypothesis:
one's belief in a just world is threatened if a "good" per-
son is seen as undergoing suffering. The "good" person
must really then not be quite so good.

Jones and Aronson (1973) also expected to find
that the more reSpected the victim, the less likely he or
she would be deserving of a bad fate, and therefore they
would be seen as having done something extra bad in order
to account for what bad things happened to them. This was
confirmed in their study in which fictitious women who had
been raped were described to a group of undergraduates. The
only variable manipulated in the descriptions was the social
status of the women victims: they were described as either
virgins, married, or divorced. The virgins and the marrieds
were attributed with the most fault in having the rape occur,

and the divorced women were seen as least to blame.

Victimology and Rape

 

Weis and Borges (1973) published a comprehensive
paper dealing with Victimology and rape, interweaving the
study of victims with the specific crime of rape, and embel-
lishing their material with sociological, historical, legal

and psychological vieWpoints. They examined what they

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called the "need" by society to have deserving victims (this
echoes Jones and Aronson). They also suggested that the
"dating game" or the culturally expected patterns within
which men and women socialize increases the likelihood for
rapes to occur, as sex role stereotypes are misleading and
in some ways incompatible with underlying human needs. They
described rape as a symbolic act in which women in our so-
ciety are socially controlled by men in that in order to
avoid rape they must cease from moving about as freely as
men.

Weis and Borges critically examined Menachem Amir's

1971 book, Patterns of Forcible Rape. The latter was a

 

fairly complete survey of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
police records which yielded such statistics as: (a) 48% of
the rapists were known victims; (b) 93.2% of rape cases are
between individuals of the same race; (c) 90% of group rapes
were planned in advance; (d) 58% of rapes by single men were
planned in advance; (e) 60% of the men in the study were mar-
ried. Amir did not, however, attend much to statistics con-
cerning the victim, and Borges and Weis noted that in his
section on "traumatic factors," Amir refers only to whether
or not the offenders have had an early traumatic experience
with a seductive woman. The authors implied that Amir is
biased since he virtually ignored the trauma of rape victims
themselves. However, some women in rape crisis centers have
appreciated and relied on Amir's statistics in order to bol-
ster their knowledge.

Finally, Weis and Borges addressed themselves to

14
the emotional responses of the victims. They noted that
there frequently is a loss in self esteem, an inability to
have normal heterosexual relations, followed sometimes by
suicide, according to an earlier study by Borges. They sug-
gested that trauma is lessened by increasing depersonaliza-
tion by the rapist, or it can be lessened by the victim
somehow being able to depersonalize herself in the rape.
It is assumed that this will then minimize the subjective
loss of personal integrity and lessen guilt feelings; they
suggest that the most effective ego defense against trau-
matic experiences is denial of personal involvement. They
added that more women prosecute in cases where the rapist
is personally unknown to them.

Other authors in discussing emotional responses of
victims dealt with victims of sex offenders in general.
Halleck (1965) suggested that many children and adult vic-
tims of sexual assault experience chronic personality dis-
abilities as a result. In another article (1962) Halleck,

a psychiatrist, Specified that in a sexual assault, a woman
undergoes an experience in which she is aware of overwhelm-
ing angry feelings toward her attacker, but she is helpless
to do anything about it. This leaves her to repeatedly
search her own motivations to discover if there was anything
she could have done to prevent the attack. He described
women as frequently blaming themselves for neglecting minor
defensive efforts. She is left feeling uncertain as to her
feminine role, and she feels degraded and helpless. Halleck

found that neurotic symptoms are often developed, and he

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15
recommended ventilation.

Another psychiatrist, Werner (1972), described how
the rape of one of his clients during the period of his
treatment interrupted the ongoing therapeutic process. The
client was hospitalized for two days, and following dis-
charge was beset by insomnia, appetite loss, frequent cry-
ing, and fears of being alone. Her diagnosis had been one
of a passive-aggressive personality with schizoid tendencies
and sex identity problems and difficulties in expressing
aggressive feelings.

Werner himself was called to testify for the de-
fense to show that his client was "preoccupied with sex" and
"a solicitor of the attack." (The circumstanCes of the rape
had been that the client and her boyfriend were parked in
their car when two other men, strangers, drove up, abducted
her into their car and left the boyfriend, who called the
police. Two hours later they were found in their car with
the client tied up on the floor.)

Since the rape, Werner's client continued to have
some difficulties with school, but she seemed more able to
stand up for herself when threatened with being drOpped from
her program. Werner suggested that perhaps the rape experi-
ence had served to strengthen her ability to stand up for
herself. He summarized that resolution of feelings about
the eXperience goes on for months or years; guilt occurs
based on rape fantasies which existed prior to the actual
rape; and it is helpful to reassure the victim that it is

normal to feel guilty.

16

Rape Crisis Studies

 

Ann Wolbert Burgess, an associate professor of
nursing, and Lynda Lytle Holmstrom, an assistant professor
of sociology, worked together counseling victims at Boston
City Hospital during a one year period. They reported on
their sample of 92 women out of a larger pool of 146 pa-
tients: 109 women, 34 female children and 3 male children
who were victims of forceable rape. The authors served as
the crisis-emergency team for all such patients, and re-
ported their findings in several papers (1973, 1974) and
finally a book (1974). Their work is extensive, but will be
summarized in the following paragraphs.

The procedure for victims reporting to the emer-
gency room consisted of medical attention first, followed
by psychological, followed by whatever referral would be
then deemed necessary. The victim was seen within one hour;
procedures included a brief history, diagnosis of trauma,
gynecological examination and laboratory tests, possible
administration of DES to prevent pregnancy, prOphylactic
administration of penicillin or oral antibiotics for venere-
al disease.

The psychological counselors were regarded as part
of the emergency ward treatment team (victims overall re-
sponded favorably to this treatment). The counselors no-
ticed differences in verbal style of the victims, finding
about 50% to be quiet and guarded, 50% talkative and expres-
sive. Their initial responses to the rape ranged from fear,

restlessness, tears and anger to smiling, calmness and

l7
composure.

The overall primary reaction reported was the fear
of death. Two brief examples: one 20 year old married
student was waiting for a bus when a car stopped and three
men pulled her into the car. She said to the counselors,

"I spent the whole time while I was riding in the car (blind-
folded) thinking of the girl (in a recent newspaper story)
locked in the closet who was murdered." Another 23 year old
hospital employee was walking home after her 3:00 to 11:00
shift when she was pulled into the bushes. ”...I was fright-
ened of dying - the thought of being killed when the rape

was over."

Anger was frequently noted to be directed at the
police, the assailant, the act itself, the hospital, the
counseling service, or the pelvic examination. A common
reSponse seemed to be "it's not fair." Shock and numbness
were also present, along with verbalized wishes to forget.
Frequently discussed was the topic of past, present and fu-
ture relationships with men. Either previous losses came
to the surface, or anxieties about the reactions of husbands
or boyfriends were verbalized.

Burgess and Holmstrom separated the responses of
the victims into two distinct phases: phase one being the
Acute Phase, marked by disorganization; phase two, the Re-
organization of Life Style Phase. During that first phase,
either verbal style, expressive or controlled, as described
above, was used. Somatic reactions, including physical

trauma, skeletal muscle tension, gastrointestinal

l8

irritability and genitourinary disturbances were observed.
Emotional reactions included the wide range of feelings
described above, with fear of physical violence and death,
and self-blame being most frequent. The origins of the
self-blame were attributed partly to the victim's socializa-
tion and partly to the attitude of "blame the victim." They
use a striking example of a woman who was assaulted in her
apartment hallway one afternoon by a man who then forced his
way into her apartment. She fought against him to the point
of taking his knife and using it against him, but in the
process she was severely beaten and raped. Later she said,
"I keep wondering maybe if I had done something different
when I first saw him that it wouldn't have happened --
neither he nor I would be in trouble. Maybe it was my fault.
See, that's where I get when I think about it. My father
always said whatever a man did to a woman, she provoked it."

During the reorganization phase, the changes and
responses seemed to depend on the ego strength, social net-
work of support, and the way people treated them as victims.
There was often an increase in motor activity, i.e., they
would change residences, travel, visit the family, change
their telephone numbers. Nightmares and dreams were spon-
taneously described by 29 out of 92 victims. Two types of
these dreams could be defined: where the victim wishes to
do something to an assailant, but wakes before acting; and
later in time after the rape, where the victim reports mas-
tery in the dream, and she successfully fights off or kills

an assailant. Finally, during this "reorganization phase,

l9
numerous phobias may develop, such as fear of the indoors,
outdoors, crowds, being alone, people behind, sex."

The authors stated that only a minority of victims
had reactions such as depression, psychosis, psychosomatic
disorders, suicidal feelings or acting out. These few vic-
tims had reported a previous history of psychiatric treat-
ment. Burgess and Holmstrom also referred to what they
called "Silent Rape Reaction Syndrome," which exists when
there had been in the victim's life an earlier experience
of rape or assault which the victim had told no one about.
Signs of this include (a) increasing anxiety with blocking,
silence, and stuttering; (b) sudden marked irritability or
avoidance of relationships with men or changes in sexual be-
havior; (c) history of sudden onset of phobias; (d) persist-
ent loss of self esteem; guilt; paranoia; nightmares.

A study done by Sutherland and Scherl (1970), in-
cluded 13 rape victims, and they described three phases of
reactions, rather than two as described by Burgess and
Holmstrom. The three phases are the acute, the outward ad-
justment, and the integration and resolution phase. Their
acute stage was comparable to that of the other authors; it
included reactions of shock, disbelief, dismay amongst agi-
tated or incoherent victims versus some who were unable to
talk about the experience at all. Guilt feelings were com-
mon, and the authors pointed out that clues to the victim's
unconscious or conscious perception of her role in the rape
are provided by examining when and to whom the rape is re-

ported. Anxiety in general was noted to decrease as the

20
victim became more able to discuss the rape, particularly
with close family members. Much of the focus during the
acute phase is on practical questions, such as: Should she
press charges? Will she see the rapist again? What about
the reactions of friends, neighbors, boyfriends? This first
phase is estimated as resolved within a few days to a week.

Phase two consists of an outward appearance of ad-
justment. During this time, which may last months, the vic-
tim attempts to deny the personal impact of what has happen-
ed. Anger and resentment appear to subside.

Phase three, the integration and resolution phase,
is marked initially by depression and by the need to talk.
The earlier, more recently denied concerns surface. Gradu-
ally the victim comes to accept the event and realistically
appraise her degree of complicity in the rape. Feelings
toward the rapist get reworked and resolved, with the ex-
pression of anger toward him for having used her and toward
herself for having tolerated it. This phase usually begins
with either a Specific incident, such as the diagnosis of
pregnancy or perhaps a proposal of marriage, or else just
a general deterioration of the denial defense. The authors
found that in one case in particular, this stage of depres-
sion was resolved as the victim began to recognize her life-
long pattern of punitive self-sacrifice. In this case she
was able to advance forward past immediate crisis resolution
into a strengthening of her ego, over and above where she
'was prior to the rape.

Both Sutherland and Scherl, and Burgess and

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Holmstrom provided a look at how the crisis of rape is ex-
perienced, from the point of view of the victim, and what
the more immediate effects of rape might be. These studies
were the first to attend to this in any systematic way.

Two large scale studies of rape victims were com-
pleted in 1975. The first to be discussed here is a ques-
tionnaire study conducted by Pauline Bart and published in

Viva Magazine in June, 1975. Through Viva's readership,

 

 

1070 questionnaires were completed, surveying rapes which
took place mostly three years prior to the questionnaire,
or less than one year prior. In 40% of the cases, the
rapist was a total stranger to the victim. Victims in gen—
eral reported loss of trust in male/female relationships,
nightmares, suicidal feelings, loss of self-respect, hos-
tility toward men, sexual problems since the rape, a loss
in sense of independence, and subsequent psychiatric care.
There were also reported some "good" effects of having been
raped: some felt stronger about standing up for themselves,
some learned self-defense techniques, a few joined women's
groups. Some statistically significant correlations indi-
cated that the more intimately the victim had known the
attacker prior to the rape, the more likely she was to suf-
fer sexual problems and loss of trust in men in general;
this supports Weis and Borges. Loss of self-respect was
correlated with those victims who were younger, had prior
knowledge of the attacker, were physically overpowered by
the attacker, and who felt the attacker as acting self

righteously or with contempt toward them. Twenty-two per

22
cent of the respondents sought psychiatric care, and of
them only 35% said it was helpful; half of the remainder
reported getting help subsequently from women's groups.
Only 9% of the victims who had been raped less than a year
before responding to the questionnaire had sought psychia-
tric help.

The other study was conducted by the Queen's Bench
Foundation, an association of women judges and attorneys
from the San Francisco Bay area. Their focus was on victims
of rape and the public systems which respond to them. In-
cluded in their survey is an assessment of the psychological
impact of rape. They were able to interview a total of 80
victims, recruiting them through advertisements in news-
papers and flyers, on radio stations and television spots,
and through referrals by professionals, other victims and
the police. Each victim was interviewed for one or two
hours during which time they told about their experience of
being raped and were asked up to 222 structured questions.
Like Bart, they concluded that

Stranger rapes generally have more impact on the

victims' sense of personal safety, while familiar
rapes effect their self-concept and social relation-
ships. Helplessness and feelings of dependency are
present under most circumstances of violent assault.
Shame, guilt and anxiety predominantly occur when the
woman's self-concept is weakened or threatened, and
this is influenced by the responses of peOple the
victim turns to for help and support. Ventilation of
feelings, particularly the victim's shame and anger,
is helpful to resuming normal life patterns while
denial and repression can prolong the effects of
victimization and result in compounded problems.

The fact that women tend to respond to a rape

experience with fear, anger, or detachment while

the rape is occurring, and with shame and guilt
afterward, is indicative of how social pressures

23

distort the reality of the rape situation. Rape ap-
proaches a death experience. The victim fears for
her life, probably as does the victim of mugging.
None of the rape victims reported concern regarding
the sex act itself, while it occurred; but afterward,
the sexual aspect of the aggressive act became a
critical issue for many women. They not only felt
shame in terms of what others might think, but they
internalized this societal judgment and blamed them-
selves. Shame and guilt were not felt by the V1c-
tims of attempted rape (p. 29).

Review of Statistical Information

 

It is interesting that the incidence of reported
rape is quickly rising while more of these studies appear
to publicly treat the experience of the victim with concern.
According to the Uniform Crime Reports from the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, there was a 121% increase in re-
ported cases of rape between 1960 and 1970. Another strik-
ing statistic is that of a 44% increase in reported rapes in
the San Diego Police Department since the local rape crisis
counseling team began in that area.

Some more recent statistics will put these figures
in perspective. In the state of California, from 1972-1973,
there were 8,349 rapes reported to the police, and they es-
timate that 80,000 rapes actually took place. For the 8,349
rapes reported, 3,350 arrests were made of suspected rapists.
Of these arrests, 600 men were actually convicted of force-
able rape, 300 of whom received some prison sentence. Of
those sentenced to prison, 145 were sent to a state facility,
and 155 to a county facility, which means a stay of less
than one year. The Los Angeles County Commission on Human

Relations estimates that one third of the women living in

24
Los Angeles County will be raped in the course of their life-
times.

The following is a portion of the testimony of
Lieutenant Winona Franz of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's
Department at the hearings of the California Senate's Sub-
committee on Violent Crime, March 27, 1975:

I have often thought about the woman who will walk
through the park and somebody will jump out of the
bushes and grab her purse and flee with it and she
will go home and tell her family about it. She will
tell her friends about it. She will pick up the phone
and call the police immediately. Demand prosecution
and will be a very angry lady.

Let the same lady walk through the same park and
the same man jump out of the bushes and knock her
down and rape her and it's a whole new ball game and
why is that? It shouldn't be, because of attitudes.
So, education is so important to change attitudes.
The woman that was raped in the park by the same man
will not want to tell us about it, will not want to
go to court because all of a sudden because of the
attitudes she is presumed to have done something
wrong and I think that it's a long overdue that we
do something about these archaic laws. It upsets me
to sit at defense council with a rap sheet showing
the fellow has three prior rape convictions and the
victim is sitting up there on the stand and the judge
is telling the jury to view her statements with cau-
tion and I can't tell the jury that this beast has
been convicted three prior times for rape (p. 77).

Four Recent Books

 

Against Our Will - Men, Women, and Rape by Susan

 

Brownmiller has been hailed as "the" book on the subject of
rape. Brownmiller's thesis is that rape is not a random act
by deviant or troubled men, but a world-wide social mechanism
by which men in general control women. She argues her thesis
brilliantly connecting and weaving together information from

legal history, anthropological works, art history, mythology,

25
science, psychoanalysis and psychology, religion, politics
-- as broad a spectrum of evidence from this earth's culture
as she seemingly could assemble in four years' writing and
researching. She describes how rape entered the law as a
crime of pr0perty, which is where rape stayed to this day
in the form of treating rape as a violation of male rights
of possession, since in many states there is legally no such
thing as rape of a wife by her husband as he already "owns”
her. Brownmiller describes the sociological and political
function of rape in wars and in racial and religious antag-
onisms as well as ordinary conflicts of power and authority,
such as the everyday violence in prisons and jails where
homosexual rape occurs as a means of establishing the power
structure among the inmates.

In her discussion of the rape victim, Brownmiller
states that ”Women are trained to be rape victims...girls
get raped. Not boys...rape seeps into our childhood con-
sciousness by imperceptible degrees..." (p. 309). She takes

on Helene Deutsch, labeling Psychology of Women a ”towering

 

work. It is a brave, pioneer study, a merciless exploration
of the shameful underpinnings of female psychosexuality as
it has been conditioned by men. Superstrict Freudian to the
end, Deutsch mistook what sometimes is for what must be, and
that is her tragedy —- and ours” (p. 316). Brownmiller be-
lieves that "the rape fantasy exists in women as a man-made
iceberg. It can be destroyed -- by feminism” (p. 322). Her
point is political: with men in the position of power,

their fantasies of dominance yielded a mirror image fantasy

26
of submission on the part of women throughout time. For
women who would not be conditioned into accepting themselves
as passive and submissive and who would refuse to act out
masochistic behaviors, were simply not chosen by men. Since
the cultural structure makes women economically dependent on
men, emotional dependence followed.

Her understanding of women's need to play the part
of the beautiful victim is demonstrated by her references
to mythology, Hollywood movies, and journalistic accounts
of crimes which always include, when a female is involved
as a victim, a physical attractiveness rating. She says
that "through legend and lore, history has mythified not
the strong woman who defends herself successfully against
bodily assault, but the beautiful woman who dies a violent
death while trying. A good heroine is a dead heroine, we
are taught, for a victory through physical triumph is a male
prerogative that is incompatible with feminine behavior" (p.
327).

She blasts the common belief that somehow rape vic-
tims are responsible for the rape, using statistics which
Show that compared to victims of other crimes, rape victims
are assessed as having performed the least amount of "pre-
Cipitant behavior,” this as described by the National Commis-
syion on the Causes and Prevention of Violence report (1969).
lkrownmiller includes in her book excerpts of testimonies by
'rape victims in order to illustrate this point and that rape
is an act of violence, not one of sex. She states that

‘there is no uniform response to a rape and no uniform time

27

for recovery. She concludes her discussion of the rape vic-
tim by examining the legal system of response to rape, par-
ticularly the existence of the cautionary instruction (the
judge is ordered by law in many states to instruct the jury
before they retire for deliberation: "A charge against the
defendant in this case is one which is easily made and once
made, difficult to defend against even if the person accused
is innocent. Therefore, the law requires that you examine
the testimony of the female person named in the information
with caution.")

Brownmiller began her book after attending a sympo-
sium held in New York City in 1971, organized by the New York

Radical Feminist Group. A book entitled Rape: The First

 

Sourcebook for Women was published in 1974 and contains the

 

material presented at that meeting as well as articles and
papers written afterward. An article entitled "The Psychol-
ogy of the Rapist and His Victim" by Lilia Melani and Linda
Fodaski, suggests some of the very ideas which Brownmiller
later includes in her own book: "We have all been raised on
sexual images of male conquest and female acquiescence.

From the earliest ages we are exposed to male fantasies about
females; thus women, struggling with and guilty for their own
active urges, came, tragically, to identify with the male sen-
sibility, so pervasive it 15...." They continue, "...Female
sexuality remains painfully undefined and unfulfilled. When
a woman attempts to become a sexual being instead of an ob-
ject, she is regarded with suspicion or condemned outright”

(pp. 91-92). Another paper by Lynn Farrow analyzes p0pu1ar

28

rape fiction written by women, particularly Peyton Place's

 

rapes of Selena Cross. Peyton Place is an unusual literary

 

event because the rape victim is not punished in the story
but a positive future is provided for her. "Grace Metalious'
purpose is to focus on the sexual politics of the rapist and
the rape culture, not to hammer the nails into the coffin of
the victim" (Pp. 104-105).

Against Rape by Andra Medea and Kathleen Thompson

 

focuses on the crime, sociology, prevention and self-defense
procedures, and also includes a chapter on "Psychological Re-
actions.” This chapter describes a three-stage adjustment
period similar to that described by Sutherland and Scherl.
This period is marked initially by hysteria, shock or crying,
then by an outward satisfactory adjustment, and if the third
stage is ever reached it is one which begins with depression.
Phase three is when the victim may feel guilty be-

cause she has had fantasies about rape; she may feel

that somehow she must have wanted it to happen. Fan-

tasy, of course, is far, far removed from reality.

In a rape fantasy you pick the man (usually attractive)

who rapes you, you direct his actions, and you pick

the circumstances. In your fantasy world you are in

complete control of everything, but because it is

rape you're also relieved of any responsibility. It

is sex without sin. Any woman who is deep into this

fantasy would be snapped out of it faced with the

brutal reality (p. 104).
The authors also list other reasons for which women have
guilt feelings: they feel they should have known better;
they became sexually aroused; they may feel guilty simply be-
cause the rape was an illicit sexual experience.

"There is a great myth about the overwhelming

affect of rape on a virgin. While no studies have been

29
conducted, it seems likely that the effects depend much more
on the woman's personality than on the existence or non-
existence of the hymen" (p. 105). The authors also recog-
nize the possibility of guilt as a response to feeling help-
less. "If the woman can believe that somehow she got her-
self into the situation, if she can believe that in some way
she caused it, then she's established a sort of control over
the rape" (p. 105). This is an hypothesis suggested by
Fairbairn quite briefly in 1952.

The Politics of Rape by Diane Russell is a collec-

 

tion of interviews with rape victims in which they describe
their experience and their feelings. Russell is a professor
of sociology who uses 22 of the interviews to illustrate
various points of view in our society which seem to yield
various responses and adjustments on the part of different
rape victims. After presenting each interview, the myth
about rape which the victim seemed to subscribe to is clear-
1y pointed out. For instance, the 55 year old mother of
four who was raped seven years prior to the interview seemed
to suffer a trauma that was deep and long lasting. She had
been terrorized by her assailant, but could not bear to tell
anyone about it because she felt that they would believe, as
she had, that it couldn't happen to a woman if she didn't
want it. Russell ties together the responses of the victims
with the societal forces around them, rather than delving
into a psychological or psychodynamic exploration of their
feelings, though the material is plainly there.

There has been no study reported which explores the

30
psychological aspects of rape using any sort of projective
tests, intensive interviewing, nor any which attempts to
organize the understanding of the victims through examining

early family history, sexual identification or individual

psychodynamic processes.

CHAPTER III

QUESTIONS ASKED BY THIS STUDY

1. What are the long term (at least from one to
five years post rape) effects of rape on a woman? In what
way, if any, does the experience of having been raped change
either the life style, social adjustment, or the deeper
structures of a woman's personality (sex role identification,
ego organization)?

2. What are the attitudes of families and friends
that the rape victim encounters? From her point of view,
how has the event influenced her relationships with people?

3. Are there real personality differences between
women who have been raped and those who have not, or is any
woman by and large likely to be raped as the next woman?

4. What are the characteristics of the guilt feel-
ings or feelings of responsibility that rape victims seem to
experience? Are victims who feel guilty different in a
major way from those who feel no guilt? Or do all women
feel guilty on some level?

5. Are women who have been attacked by strangers
different from those who personally knew their assailant?

6. What are the dreams and/or nightmares of rape

victims? Does dreaming style, frequency, content change

31

32
over time?
7. Are there psychological differences between
rape victims and non-rape victims to which projective tests

are sensitive?

CHAPTER IV

METHOD

Subjects

 

An attempt was made to recruit twelve rape victims,
each at least 20 years of age, and to assemble them into
two groups with six in each group, depending on the length
of time since the rape occurred. One group was to consist
of women raped between nine and eighteen months prior to the
study, and the other group was to consist of women raped be-
tween two and five years prior to the study.

A total of 12 women who had been raped volunteered
to be part of the study, but only nine of them were ultimate-
ly interviewed for the complete series of interviews. Of
the three that did not complete the interviews, two dropped
out after the first session, and one was deemed inapprOpri-
ate for the study (she had been raped just that week). Both
women who dropped out after the initial interview gave as
their reason that talking about the rape had made them very
anxious or upset and they hadn't realized how much it had
upset them, therefore they preferred to not talk about it.

It had been planned to sample the subjects from
either hospital emergency room records or rape crisis coun-

seling groups' records, but neither of these sources proved

33

34
directly workable. Instead, all of the subjects were self-
referred, responding to the following notice:

Research on the long term effects of rape on indi-
vidual women is being conducted by a woman Ph.D. candi-
date, trained as a counselor and psychotherapist.

Women who have been raped from 9 to 18 months ago, and
from 2 to 5 years ago, are needed for this study.

These women will be interviewed for about 6 hours,

over a period of 6 or 7 weeks. They will also be

given some psychological tests. A small amount of
money will be given to these women in return, and the
experience itself is potentially valuable to a woman.
If you are at least 20 years old and are interested

in participating in this research, call Carol at (phone
number).

This notice was hand written and placed on bulletin

boards at the following locations:

1. The U.C.L.A. Women's Resource Center. This is
a campus organization which coordinates various activities,
curricular and extra-curricular, for U.C.L.A. women.

2. The Sisterhood Bookstore. This is a feminist
owned-and-Operated bookstore located in the Westwood-U.C.L.A.
community of Los Angeles. The interior of this bookstore is
decorated somewhat like a living room, thus it serves as
something of a meeting place.

3. The Women's Building. A women's center located
in downtown Los Angeles, where a variety of cultural, polit-
ical and social events are planned and take place.

The notice was also published in the following news-
letters:

4. The Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against
Women newsletter. This organization is also a rape hotline

service, and their newsletter coordinates information and is

sent to many rape hotline groups throughout the county and

35
the state, plus other related organizations and some govern-
mental offices, as well as interested individuals who are on
their mailing list.

5. The Los Angeles County Psychological Associa-
tion newsletter.

An effort was made to encourage word-of-mouth re-
ferral. Also, various agencies and organizations that would
seem remotely related to this t0pic were contacted, and
there were accumulated long chains of phone numbers of dif-
ferent peOple and places. Recruitment of subjects was ex-
tremely difficult, and there will be further discussion of

this important problem in a later section.

Interview Structure

 

The subjects were told that the purpose of the
study was to increase understanding of how a rape experience
fits into the life of the victim and what changes, if any,
occur in the victim's life. They were told in the initial
phone contact that six hours of interviews were planned,
with approximately one session held per week, and that after
the initial interview hour, the next appointment will be
scheduled for the administering of the psychological tests.
Following these projective tests, the remaining five clini-
cal interviews were to be scheduled.

During the initial phone contact any questions that

the women asked were answered directly.

36

Content of Interviews

 

1. The interviews were initially conducted in a
manner not unlike that of initial psychotherapy sessions.
At the first meeting there was a warming up period in which
the subject Spoke about her current life or whatever else
entered her mind. It was h0ped that an atmosphere of ac—
ceptance and understanding was communicated and experienced
by the subject.

2. A tightly controlled structure was sacrificed
as it is recognized that the expression of personal human
eXperiences will necessarily vary a great deal according to
the individuality of the speaker. Therefore, the inter-
viewer allowed the subjects to initiate each topic area, but
if she did not, the interviewer introduced the following
areas: (a) early childhood memories; (b) family relations --
between self and parents; self and siblings; parental re-
lationship; (c) adolescence -- success in school; peer re-
lationships; dating experiences; (d) sexual history -- mas-
turbation; first intercourse; sexual fantasies in the past
and present; also reactions to menstruation and secondary
sexual characteristic deve10pment; (e) physical health his-
tory; (f) dream life -- recurring dreams, if any; nightmares;
whatever dreams are currently occurring; differences in pre-
and post-rape dreams; (g) relationships with current objects
-- current social status; (h) goals for the future -- career;
marriage; wishes; (i) psychiatric history.

3. Information directly concerning the rape experi-

ence was collected in the same way, allowing the subject to

37
volunteer information initially; then, if any of the follow-
ing subjects were left out, they were introduced by the
interviewer:

What were the actual circumstances of the rape in
detail? Was there prior knowledge of the rapist? What
feelings did the victim have during the rape itself?
What, if anything, was done in self defense or in re-
sisting the attack?

What happened immediately afterward? Where did the
victim go? Who was contacted and told, and how soon?

If a hospital was visited, what was done there?

Was there a pelvic examination? Were there female
personnel to talk with? Was DES or penicillin admin-
istered?

Was the rape reported to the police? What response
was there to the report?

Was there continuance of legal prosecution? What
influenced the victim's decision to prosecute? What
feelings were experienced in relation to prosecuting?
Was there a trial and what was the outcome? How did
the victim feel about the verdict at the time? How
does she feel now?

What was the response to the news of the rape from
her immediate family? Her parents and siblings? Her
friends? Employer? Boyfriend?

What psychological disturbances arose after (due to)
the rape, if any? Were there phobias or sexual fears?

If they remitted, how and when did they disappear?

38

What physical disturbances arose after (due to)
the rape? If there were any, and there was remission,
how and when did they disappear?

Was there a period of depression? Was there a need
to talk it over? By whom did the victim feel under-
stood? Was there any professional consulted for
psychological problems?

What dreams or nightmares were remembered from the
time period after the rape, or currently? Was there a
difference in the style, content, or emotional feeling
about the dreams as time passed Since the rape itself?
As many examples as possible were requested. (Request
for dreams may be made at the end of the first session;
thereby increasing the likelihood of collecting current
dreams stimulated by the current renewed talk about the
rape.)

What has been the victim's sexual adjustment Since
the rape? What were her initial feelings about sexual
intimacy immediately following the rape? What about
currently? What is the frequency of sexual intercourse
now and before?

What changes, if any, have there been in hetero-
sexual relationships? What were the victim's feelings
toward men immediately afterward and currently?

If there was a racial difference between herself
and her attacker, what feelings, if any, are experi-
enced toward that race as a whole? Are these different

from before the rape? IS there a difference in the

aCCf

Tape

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39
victim's response toward men and women of that race?
What is the victim's attitude toward the women's
liberation movement? What is her attitude toward sex
roles? Was there a change in attitudes since the rape?
What is the woman's overall impression of how the
rape eXperience changed her life, her life style, her

self? What meaning does having been raped have for her?

Projective Tests

 

The complete set of TAT cards for women, plus Card
3BM and 12M, was administered to each subject. Following
the TAT cards, the subject was asked to draw Machover Figure
Drawings (draw a person, a person of the opposite sex, and

an animal).

Control Group

 

A control group for comparison of the projective
test material was employed. Five women who were approximate-
ly matched with the rape victim sample for age, race and
education, and who had also experienced a moderately serious
accident at some point in their life, but had not ever been
raped, were recruited for the projective tests alone. No

other data were to be collected from this control group.

CHAPTER V

RESULTS

Description of Subjects

 

The following is a brief description of the nine
women who participated in the study, and the rape circum-
stances of each, with pseudonyms in place of their real
names. They shall be listed in order of current clinical
adjustment as evaluated by the interviewer. Although these
are subjective evaluations of adjustment, they were made by
an interviewer trained to make such clinical evaluations.
The criteria used in doing so include: (a) ego strength;
(b) quality of relationships with peeple; (c) use of intel-
lectual potential; (d) absence or presence of overt psycho-
pathology. The woman whose adjustment is rated the best is
described first. The women who are ranked further down the
list, generally speaking, were assessed as having less ego
strength and more overt psychOpathology.

1. Jean, a 37 year old white woman, is a Ph.D.
candidate in anthrOpology. She has been divorced for many
years, is the mother of a teenaged son. She was referred
to the study by a psychologist-co worker who read the L.A.

C.P.A. newsletter ad. The rape had taken place four months

40

 

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42

prior. The rapist was a complete stranger who, wearing a
mask and carrying what to Jean appeared to be a knife held
under a kitchen towel, broke into the house through an un-
locked window at about 1:00 a.m. one Friday night. He
stated that he was mainly interested in burglarizing the
house, but when it was clear that there was little to steal,
he took what cash she found to give him, and then what
appeared to be more of an afterthought, he raped Jean. She
was not physically harmed, and after he left she called the
police. Her son slept through the incident, but was awaken-
ed when the police came. The rapist-thief was never found.

2. Sally, a 30 year old white woman, is an under-
graduate student close to her bachelor's degree, with plans
to go to law school. She has been divorced for several
years; she works part-time as a legal secretary. She was
referred to the study by a friend who saw the notice in the
Sisterhood Bookstore. The rape had taken place two years
prior to our contact. The rapist was a Stranger to her, a
new tenant of the bungalow behind her house, one inhabited
by three other men whom she was acquainted with by sight;
all were "illegal aliens." He came in through an Open win-
dow in the early morning hours, woke Sally up as he assault-
ed her; She was beaten and she finally submitted. The police
were subsequently called, the man was caught, tried and con-
victed, and the case became a test case for the California
Supreme Court, deciding the legality of the "cautionary in-
struction." (The judge refused in this case to instruct the

jury to examine the victim's testimony with caution, and

43
after the defendant was convicted, the verdict was appealed
on the basis of the judge's omission of this instruction.
The court decided that the "cautionary instruction” was in
itself unconstitutional, and the verdict was upheld.) The
convicted rapist is now serving a prison sentence.

3. June, a 23 year old white woman, is a Ph.D.
candidate in psychology. She is legally separated from her
husband of three years; she is employed full time in a
professional capacity. She was referred to the study by
the ad in the L.A.C.P.A. newsletter. The rape had taken
place four and a half years prior. She was attacked by a
man who was a complete stranger, at about 2:00 a.m. in the
entryway to her apartment building, as She was returning from
her evening out. She did not see a gun, but felt a metal ob-
ject pressed against her. He told her he would kill her if
She screamed. She submitted, he left, and she went to her
apartment and called the police. He could not be identified;
no arrest was ever made.‘ About eight months later June ini-
tiated a lawsuit against the landlord of her apartment build-
ing for not having repaired the broken security lock door,
and She lost the case just two months prior to participating
in this research. The verdict in that lawsuit is being ap-
pealed.

4. Sarah, a 27 year old white woman, is an under-
graduate student majoring in botany and working part-time as
a research assistant in an unrelated area. She volunteered
for the study after hearing the announcement at the Los

Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women meeting, which

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44

she attended as she is one of the hotline rape counselors.
The rape had taken place seven months prior to her participa-
tion in the study, though in the third interview hour it was
discovered that She had been raped once before, four years
prior. The most recent incident involved a complete stran-
ger breaking into her apartment in the middle of the night,
through a window which had been locked. He raped her in
her bed, and after several hours of him sexually assaulting
her, she was finally able to chase him out by using a letter
Opener she found when he wasn't looking. The police were
called, she was able to give them a detailed description,
and the rapist was caught. He was brought to trial for at
least four other counts of rape, and he pleaded guilty in
the face of several different women being able to positively
identify him. He is serving a jail sentence at this time.

The rape which occurred four years before had in-
volved a man with whom Sarah had gone out a couple of times
a few months prior to the incident. They had had sexual re-
lations twice, after which Sarah decided not to see him
again since he was "strange. Like there was nothing loving
about it at all. He was 6'4" and very strong and no feel-
ings -- like it was slam, bam thing." She stated that after
sleeping with him twice she decided that was enough, and
told him why she didn't want to see him again. Several
months later he appeared at her apartment door and asked her
to move in with him. She laughed, thinking he was kidding
since they didn't even have a dating relationship at that

point, and he threw her down on the floor and raped her.

45
She described herself as too frightened to go to the police,
and she did not call anyone or tell anyone about it.

5. Francine, a 29 year old white woman, is an
engineer with a large aircraft company. She has two mas-
ters' degrees, is a Ph.D. candidate and has completed two
years of law school. She has never been married, though at
the time of the study became "pre-engaged." She was re—
ferred to the study by the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults
Against Women newsletter. She had been raped twice, about
two months apart, approximately a year prior to partici-
pating in the study. The first rape took place in the
rapist's car, after she was picked up while hitchhiking to
church. She was drOpped off in an unfamiliar neighborhood,
contacted the police after knocking on a couple of doors
and finding a telephone she could use. The man was never
found.

While the first rapist had been a stranger, the
second one was a neighbor whom Francine had known only
slightly better, as she said little more than "hello" to
him. He had, however, tried to be on better terms with her,
giving her his phone number, acknowledging he knew she lived
alone and that she should call him if she ever needed any
help. He was in his 40's and wore a wedding ring. One
night she did accept his offer of help, as she had just re-
ceived word from her landlord that her rent was being raised,
and he offered to try and intercede for her. He came over
one night to look at the landlord's note and she began to

tell him her money troubles and she started crying and he

46
put his arm around her and then continued to rape her.
After he left She called the police and two days later he
was arrested. They went to trial, but he was acquitted,
although she said the jury had as evidence a note to her in
his handwriting, as verified by an expert, asking for her
to forgive him; but it wasn't a solid enough case for them
to find him guilty.

6. Cindy, a 27 year old white woman, works as a
waitress wherever She can find a good job. She completed
all but her thesis for a master's degree. She is single,
but recently has been thinking of marriage with her boy-
friend of one year. She was referred to the study by the
Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women, where she
is a counselor. She had been raped four years ago, but
She remembers little of the incident. She had been hitch-
hiking with friends, a woman and a man, and they all
"crashed" after getting drunk at the home of a man they met
in a bar. They slept on the living room floor in their
sleeping bags, but in the morning when Cindy got up and
went to the bathroom, she realized she had been raped in
the night by the man whose house they were in. She knows
this only by the discovery of semen in the morning. She did
not report the incident to the police.

7. Judy, a 20 year old white woman, is an under-
graduate student majoring in pre-med, and she has been mar-
ried for about one year. She was referred to the study by
the notice in the Sisterhood Bookstore. She had been raped

two years prior to participating in the study, by a group of

47

men whom she had never seen before, one night while she was
with a girlfriend and her girlfriend's 14 year old sister
on the beach. One of the men carried a knife, and another
one had a gun. There were eight or nine men all together;
she's not sure how many of them assaulted her and her friend.
The 14 year old girl was spared because Judy told the men
that she had just had her appendix removed and if they
touched her the stitches would open and She would bleed to
death. They apparently were convinced, so they just held a
knife to her throat and made her watch. They left when they
saw some pe0ple coming toward them on the beach. The girls
ran to their car crying and didn't report the incident to
the police, although Judy's friend told her mother.

8. Joanne, a 23 year old white woman, is an unem-
ployed college graduate who for a time was in graduate
school and also law school. She is single, has been engaged
once, was referred to the study by her friend, Jackie (next
described). She had been raped three years prior and also
six years prior to participation in the study. Both inci-
dents involved strangers. The first time She had been study-
ing in a vacant dorm during a vacation period and two men ap-
proached her, followed her up to another room, and raped her.
She did not report the incident to the police or tell anyone
until six months later when she filed an affadavit with the
City Attorney.

Three years later a strange man came to her door,
saying he was a friend of a friend, using her friend's name.

She let him in because apparently her friend had given him

48
her name, and he asked to use her phone. At that point he
raped her. She did not report this to the police because
he threatened to kill her if She did.

9. Jackie, a 24 year old white woman, is an unem-
ployed college graduate with a recent degree. She is single
and was referred to the study by the notice in the U.C.L.A.
Women's Resource Center. She had been raped five years
prior to participation in the study. At that time she had
just been released from a six month stay in a psychiatric
hospital for severe depression and upon release found her-
self sexually promiscuous. She was willingly having inter-
course with one man when he demanded to have anal inter-
course. She refused and he raped her anally. She did not
report the incident to the police. She also was raped about
a week later, when she returned to this same person's house.
He was with a group of male friends showing stag movies.

She went into the bedroom and soon the men came in and asked
her to have intercourse with them. She agreed, but when a
particular man approached her and She refused him as he was
not attractive to her, he raped her. She did not report
this to the police either, as She was aware neither incident
would be considered rape.

One obvious characteristic of this sample is that
it is composed of women who all wished to talk about their
experience of being raped publicly, if anonymously. This
group of women may not be considered representative of rape
victims in general, and this problem, which is related to

the difficult nature of finding a sample of rape victims in

49
the first place, will be discussed later. It is important

to keep this bias in mind while examining the results.

Similarities: The Rape Crisis Period

 

Some of the women had Similar reactions during the
period immediately following the rape. Both Jackie and
Cindy minimized the effect of the rape altogether, and there
were no apparent behavioral changes or emotional changes re-
ported. Francine and Judy, however, both seem to have been
in low level chronic depressed states, and it appears that
the rapes greatly intensified their depressions. Strictly
speaking, one would not judge their individual depressed
states as that similar. Judy's condition might be described
as much more of an agitated depression, with paranoid idea-
tion much closer to the surface. Francine, on the other
hand, has at times expressed suicidal thoughts. She has
also been severely troubled by nightmares continuously since
the time of the rapes, for a period of over a year.

Nightmares and phobias which lasted for a shorter
period of time were more common for Sarah, Sally, June and
Joan. For these women there was a period of from six weeks
to about six months following the incident when there was a
good deal of fear at night, fear of going to sleep, or
frightening nightmares. While each of these four women ex-
perienced these fears and nightmares, the number and fre-
quency varied so greatly (lasting from six weeks to six
months) that one probably could infer different levels of

severity of reSponse. Sally, for instance, who was raped in

50
her room, had night fears stimulated by the Shadows in her
room, reflections of cars going by and lights flashing on
her window, and She would be on the brink of sleep but sud-
denly come awake with fear. Her experience of nightmares
per se had ceased shortly after the rape. Sarah, also raped
in her room, also responded to a sudden Shadow in her room
at night with terror, but her fears such as these terminated
after only a month or two.

Sarah and June both spoke of arranging to be with
peOple as much as possible, for to be left alone made them
feel frightened. June also described her insomnia following
the rape: she couldn't fall asleep because she was sure
someone was breaking into her apartment. She would hear
someone picking the lock. Unless she checked it, she would
be convinced that someone was there. She would lie in bed
trying to decide what to do, whether or not to run to the
phone. These fears finally ceased, but when she moved to
Los Angeles from New York about one year later, they re-
emerged in the new, unfamiliar environment.

Joanne and Cindy were the only two who did not con-
sciously experience (or admit to) a period of fear or night-
mares following the rape. Cindy stated she didn't think
about it, and Joanne spoke only in terms of the effect on
her sexuality. She described herself as having been in a
"catatonic state" for the next three days. She felt dazed,
unreal. She tried to forget about it (almost all of the
women stated that they wished they would forget), but she

was unsuccessful. Finally, She returned to reality after

51
three days but then "could have no sex life.” For the next
twenty months she did not want to have any sexual contact,
including kissing, with anyone. She felt "deadened" sex-
ually, she "did not want to be sexual, just suddenly ceased
to be a sexual being, like pre-menstrual.”

June and Sarah too spoke of a change in their sex-
ual responsiveness, though neither seemed to experience as
severe a change as Joanne. For both of these women the
sexual difficulties subsided within approximately two months.
June had been going with one man at the time of the rape,
and she went through the motions of sexual intercourse with
him one week later because she was "afraid that I wouldn't
be able to do it...Just to prove to myself I could do it.”
She didn't enjoy it, however. Sarah stated that it took her
about two months to enjoy sex again. She described herself
as having gone through a period of about a month and a half
in which she was "angry and really hated men. I was saying
I really wish I could be gay, it would be easier than to
c0pe with men." She reported being very aware during that
time of men making advances at her, men who knew about the
rape and who, it seemed to her, should have been more sensi-
tive. She was particularly angry with her father, whose
only comment to her concerning the rape was "pretty girls
have to expect this kind of thing."

Both Sarah and June, but also Sally and Judy are,
Since the rapes, more sensitive to men's verbal or physical
advances. Sally, speaking of men such as "construction work-

ers" who "try to pick you up": "Before, I would probably

52
have been mildly flattered and not much bothered by it. Now
I get threatened because I feel very insulted, it's an inva-
sion of privacy, whether it's complimentary or not...that
you can't walk down the street without being molested in
some way. I certainly didn't feel that way before." Sarah
described herself as less frightened of men now than before
she was raped, though she's not sure she attributes that to
the rape experience itself or the rape counseling group she
was in:

It's a good feeling. It's just that I'm angrier
now. For example, there's a man at work who's continu-
ally looking down a woman's dress, or he's always try-
ing to c0p a feel. And my normal reaction before I
was raped was to nervously laugh or as quietly as pos-
sible to avoid the situation. Now I feel like I won't
take crap from men. So when he started with me, and
he's done this with lots of women at work, I said,

"Get your fucking hands off me or I'm going to beat
the crap out of you.” And he just backed off. And
I wouldn't have done that before. The only problem
is I get angrier easier. I don't know if it's a
problem.

June, too, continues to be sensitive to this type
of interaction. She felt that even with her husband, she
was afraid of anything that felt like being coerced. If she
said "no" and her husband coaxed her, she became uptight.
She says she can't be "played with” after she says "no."

She also has a problem with a man who smells of alcohol, as
did the rapist. She also Spoke of a "phobia" of being phys-
ically restrained. She described having ugly fights with
her husband and if he blocked her passageway as she tried
to walk out, she would "freak out...panic, fear, being re-

strained mostly, and having no control, that's it, that I

can't do anything and am absolutely helpless." Before the

53
rape she remembers feeling somewhat like that in Similar
situations, but with nothing of the magnitude that she ex-
periences it now. She has memory flashes of the rape at

those times.

Attitudes of Family and Friends

Not all of the women actually told their family
members about the rape at the time of the rape. Only Sarah
and Jean did so around the time of the rape itself. Jean,
whose closest family member outside of her young son, lives
on the East Coast, did call her sister there after the in-
cident, and she felt good about having done so. Sarah had
originally intended not to tell her parents about her being
raped. However, after the first night in her apartment
after the rape, she was much more upset than She had been
for the eighteen hours or so before that, and she broke down
on the telephone when her mother called her. She then moved
into her parents' home for the next couple of months. Her
mother was understanding, but as mentioned before, Sarah
felt her father was "an insensitive slob."

Joanne told her friends about the rape immediately
afterward, but she kept it from her parents for six months.
She did not answer the question as to why she finally did
tell them after the six months, but as she described her
‘parents' response, they seemed enraged and embarrassed, but
of little help or support to Joanne. They swore her to se-
crecy about the rape, and that is why she was afraid of tell-

ing the interviewer about it, of talking into the tape

54
recorder, and of using her own name. (She was the only
woman in the study who wished to use a pseudonym from the
beginning and in fact strove to keep me from knowing her
real name for several weeks.) She said that her mother
asked her if She were a virgin when she was raped and when
she said "no", her mother seemed much more upset about that,
"she reacted mortally wounded about the fact that I wasn't
a virgin before the rape." When her mother told her father
about the rape, "his reaction was he wanted to kill the
rapist...I knew it was within my power to find out their
identity (the rapists'), but I didn't want my father to run
around with a Shotgun...I was afraid he'd get hurt, I didn't
want a scandal...I didn't want the police involved or to
make a racial incident out of it." She also spoke to a
friend of the family who was an attorney, and he advised her
to forget about prosecuting because the odds weren't in her
favor. He told her it would be her word against their word,
two against one, and they would tell the court that she had
volunteered to have sex with them.

Francine had not intended for her parents, living
in the Midwest, to know about the fact that She was raped,
but She told an aunt whom she was close with, and the aunt
let it slip to her parents, thinking that they knew. She
said that when her father found out, he called her and "he
wanted to know what I'd done, asking me in a very accusing
tone...he didn't even sound sympathetic, he just wanted to
know the facts." After she was raped the second time, her

aunt asked for her permission to tell them, and She gave it,

55
on the condition that she must also tell them never to bring
up the subject in front of her. At the time of the rapes,
Francine called the boyfriend she was involved with, who
was out of town on a business trip the first time, and the
second time he was at a party and refused to come to help
her out, contacting her again three days later. She sub-
sequently broke up with him. She was able to rely on one
very good girlfriend, however.

June's feeling about telling her parents was that
they would be of no help and would only get upset themselves,
especially her mother, and that She would have to comfort
them rather than they provide comfort for her. So she did
not tell them until four years later, when She was going to
be in court for the suit against her landlord. At that time
her therapist recommended that she tell them, and she did,
but she felt that her original fears about telling them were
only proved to be justified. In particular, her mother, who
came to the trial to be of support to June, began crying on
several different occasions in the courtroom, and June did
end up comforting her. June was able to tell many friends,
both male and female, and receive support from them, al-
though she felt that some people clearly did not want to
hear about it, seeming uncomfortable when with her. She had
the feeling that if a person had never been raped themselves,
he or she basically could not really empathize that well.
Thus She felt rather isolated with her feelings.

Judy, Cindy and Jackie never did tell their parents

about the incidents, although Judy and Cindy did confide in

56
some friends. Judy feels that to tell her parents would
be hurting them unnecessarily. "Any comfort I'd get would
be small compared to the grief I'd cause them." She has
told two friends and her older sister, but She says, "I
can't conceive of telling anybody about it, it's so awful."
She has been tormented with conflict over understanding why
she was raped, and assumes that peOple would probably con-
demn her for being raped, as She sometimes does to herself.
Cindy told her hitchhiking partners about being assaulted,
and they were of some help to her, taking her to the hos-
pital. She felt angry with the male companion, as "he
Should have been the soberest one and said, 'No, we don't
want to go to that place'." She herself had not felt there
was any danger in their going there. Finally, Jackie did
not tell anyone about her being assaulted, as she did not
necessarily think badly of it: it fit in with a deep in-

volvement in being hurtful to herself.

Dreams

Each woman described as best she could the dreams
she had around the time of the rape, any that she remembered
from her past in general plus whatever dreams were currently
being dreamed. There was an average of seven dreams report-
ed by each woman.

Of Sixty four dreams reported in total, twenty
eight may be seen as having a theme shared by one or more
of the other women in the sample. The remaining thirty Six

dreams seem to have themes more similar to those of the same

57

dreamer, and not sharing much thematic material with the

other dreamers.

The following is a table which Shows the

shared themes, the dreamers of each, and the frequency with

which it was reported.

Table 2.

Dream themes Shared by rape victims: theme,

frequency, dreamers.

 

 

Theme Description

Dreamers

 

(a) Rapist threatens death, victim Francine, June,
cannot move; passive; helpless. Jean, Sally (2x)
(b) Being chased by someone; unable June, Sarah,
to move. Judy (2x)
(c) Men are not what they seem. Francine, Sarah,
Jackie (2x)
(d) Rapist attacks; observers Francine, Joanne,
present but do nothing. Jean
(e) Girlfriends act rejecting of Joanne, Cindy
dreamer. Jackie
(f) "Oedipal" triangle scene. Joanne, Jackie,
Judy
(g) Attack by unknown assailant; Francine, June
struggle; defeat.
(h) Flying. Judy, Jean
(i) Mutilating a body. Joanne, June

 

The type of dream that appeared with the greatest

frequency in this sample was that of "rapist threatens death,
victim cannot move, passive, helpless," and there was a total
of five of these dreams described by four different women.

The next most common dream was that of "men are not what they

seem," reported four times by three of the women. Also

58
occurring four times was the dream with the theme of "being
chased by someone and being unable to move" which again was

reported by three different women (Judy reporting two).

Examples

For Theme (3): "I was in an apartment alone,
asleep and I suddenly woke up and there was a man who had
a knife at my throat and he pushed the blankets aside and
pulled up the kind of nightshirt I was wearing and he was
raping me and I was not so much aware of the fact that he
was raping me but whether or not he was going to kill me."
Most of these Theme (a) dreams occurred shortly after the
rape, although Francine's, whose dream is described here,
occurred almost a year later. June and Sally dreamed re-
runs of the actual incidents, while Francine's and Jean's
Theme (3) dream had slightly changed circumstances.

Theme (b) is self explanatory. Theme (c):

...the driver of the taxi offered to wait for me
while I changed my clothes, which meant I wouldn't
then have to call another taxi, so I was glad. I
changed my clothes and came back to him and perhaps
he was in my apartment and I discovered him going
through my wallet...I was surprised but not angry.
Now we're back in the cab and ready to leave and he
tells me that the workman I can see in a ditch over
there is not really a workman, he's an F.B.I. agent
observing things. (Francine)

Theme (d) is illustrated by Jean's dream:

There was a mirky muddy stream with a bridge over
the stream and this guy was attempting to rape me and
I was screaming and struggling and there were peOple
going over the bridge and they didn't hear me and
finally I wrenched myself from him and doing it I
literally threw myself off the bed and whacked my-
self on the files.

59
She added, "My psyche was really struggling with the situa-
tion."

Theme (e), that of girlfriends rejecting the
dreamer, seems not to reflect any overt connection with
rape, as in the following dream of Joanne's: "I dreamed I
was in a supermarket with a couple of friends and they were
treating me like they thought I should go away." Theme (h),
that of flying dreams, also seemed not to be rape related
in any way. Also, Theme (f), labeled "oedipal triangle
scene" as a shortcut label for a dream scene with two parent
figures and the dreamer, also seems not to be rape related:
"My father was not well and my mother was doing nothing to
help him but ridiculing and belittling him."

Theme (g), that of "attack by unknown assailant,"
is illustrated by this dream of June's:

I dreamed there was a horrible sadistic murderer
on the loose, and I was with a group of people, and
the murderer came into the area we were in, and the
people dispersed very quickly. I was with two men
who were protecting me. One man was leaning over me
Shielding my body, the other man was trying to push
the murderer away. In the next part I was dressed
like a revolutionary with army boots and ammunition
belts across my chest and everything with a super-
d00per machine gun, and the murderer walks toward
me, and for a moment I freak out, like I'm not sure
I can use the gun, so I point it away and fire a few
rounds and realize that it's very easy, all you have
to do is pull the trigger. So I point it back at
the man, and he takes off. And the last part of
the dream is really weird, these cheerleaders come
out and start practicing their cheers, and I get
very annoyed with them because there's this mur-
durer around, and these girls are frolicking around
doing their cheers and that's how it ends, with the
murderer in the crowd and these girls doing their
cheers.

Only one dream in the entire protocol describes the

 

confront
dreamer.
ablack,

I rememb

 

there wa
and ther
a month

dreams r
in the g

the use

across d
the indi
theme dr
twenty t
"men are
dreamed

ing the

Study Wa

60
confrontation of a rapist in which he is killed by the
dreamer. Sarah's dream: "I was frightened and there was
a black, faceless man coming at me, and I was running. And
I remember the fear I had, and I found a gun somewhere and
there was fear in killing somebody, and I blew his head off,
and there was relief afterward." This dream occurred about
a month after She was raped, and was preceded by a few
dreams re-enacting the rape. Sarah is also the only woman
in the group who finally scared her assailant off through
the use of a letter opener weapon.

The other thirty Six dreams with themes not Shared
across dreamers mainly seemed to express the conflicts of
the individual dreamers. Eight of the twenty eight shared-
theme dreams also seemed not to be rape related, and of the
twenty that remained, (and including the four from Theme (c),
"men are not what they seem," which is ambiguous), all were
dreamed either within a month or two after the rape, or dur-
ing the several weeks in which the interviewing for this
study was going on. Inferences from the dream data will be

discussed later.

Projective Tests

 

The projective test data, having been administered
to all of the rape victims plus five "control" subjects, af-
fords a chance to analyze statistically any differences or
trends that appear in the data. The figure drawings yielded
nothing of Significance, however. All but one subject drew

a female figure first. Five of the nine rape victim subjects

61
identified the figure as younger in age than their true
chronological age, and four of the five control subjects
did so too. The remaining control subject identified the
figure as older than her own age, and two of the rape vic-
tims did the same. The remaining two rape victim subjects
identified the figure's age as equal to her own age.

The drawings of the rape victims did not show any
special concern for sexuality, boundaries or attractiveness,
shame or guilt, or anything else in contrast to those of the
controls. Associations to the drawings also remain unre-
markable. When the total of fourteen sets of drawings were
examined blindly by two other psychologists (in an informal
setting), they could not pick out the rape victims or the
controls with accuracy better than chance. The figure draw-
ings, in conclusion, did not yield any interesting or sig-
nificant areas of information or speculation about the rape

victim subjects.

TAT Data

The Thematic Apperception Tests were administered
to both rape victims and controls and examined for common
themes. The following are the themes which were found to be
most prevalent: death, suicide or life threatening situa-
tions; men aggressing in a negative way against women; aggres-
sive acts, threats or weapons; women's life styles in con-
flict; sexual activity or fantasy; women acting assertively,
non-passively, "strongly"; romance themes or love stories or

fantasies. Of these themes, several were found to be

62
significantly more frequent among rape victims than con-
trols: stories with death, suicide or life threatening
scenes; those of men negatively aggressing against women;
and those of romance fantasies. These differences were sig-
nificant at p<.05 and p<.005 and p<.05 respectively.

Table 3. TAT story elements of rape victims and controls:
means, standard deviations and t-values.

 

 

 

Story Elements Rape Victims Controls

5? s2 55 s2 t
Death, suicide, 5.0 2.25 3.2 2.7 2.09*.05
life-threatening
scene
Men aggressing 2.22 0.57 0.6 0.3 4.15*.005
against women
Aggressive acts, 3.88 2.61 2.8 2.2 1.23
threats, weapons
Women's life 1.55 0.53 1.0 0.0 1.67(*.10)
styles in conflict
Overt sexual 1.77 2.19 0.6 0.3 l.70(*.10)
activity or
fantasy
Women acting asser- 1.44 2.02 0.6 0.3 1.25
tively, "strongly"
Romance or love 3.66 1.25 2.2 3.2 l.90*.05
stories or fan-
tasieS

 

The first category, that of death, suicide, or life
threatening scenes, was re-analyzed into the separate cate-
gories (death, suicide and life threatening Situation) and

when examined in that manner yielded the following results:

63

Table 4. TAT themes of suicide, violent death/not suicide,
and life threats: means, standard deviations and

 

 

 

t-values.
Themes Rape Victims Controls
X 52 X s2 t
Suicide 1.0 0.5 0.4 0.08 l.81*.05
Violent death/ 1.33 1.5 0.8 0.7 0.85
not suicide
Life threatening 2.66 1.5 2.0 1.0 1.04

scenes including
illness - deaths

 

Examples

From the group of TAT stories which emphasized
death, etc.:

Card 15: This is a rather ghoulish looking picture.
There are alot of tombstones around this figure, which
is an old man. It looks like something out of a horror
movie. The man is standing in front of the grave of
one of his victims. He is a mass killer, a Boston
Strangler, or what's the fellow in London in 1890, who
slit the throat of so many prostitutes, I forget what
he was called, perhaps it's that person. He will con-
tinue to kill peOple and he feels compelled to come
visit the grave of the woman that he's murdered. He
will continue to kill people, he will continue to fol-
low his ritual of visiting the grave. (Francine)

In the group labeled "men negatively aggressing
against women" it Should be noted that there is overlap pre-
sent. As in the above TAT story, which fits into the first
category, a man described as a strangler of women also is a
negative aggressor against women. Thus, the above story was
counted in both categories. An additional example for this

category, without the element of death:

64

Card 20: Looks like a man on the street corner
under a street light. Uh, and from the way he's
standing I'd say he is very unhappy, probably very
lonely, or very drunk. Uh, it looks like somebody
with very little purpose. Maybe somebody if I were
walking down the street I would kind of keep an eye
on but not be threatened by. Because of the way he's
standing. (Sally)

This category then includes stories which portray
men in a range of behaviors toward women, from a known killer
to just a possible threat, with the total impact being a
negatively experienced one for the women.

An example of a story which fits into the romance
category: "I see a woman that's in love. She met someone
very special and her whole life looks Shiny and bright and
she's dreaming about possibilities of what their life will
be like together and what they're going to do the next day.
Just what their life together will be like" (Sarah).

A story which illustrates the category of women's
life styles in conflict is by Sally:

This, this is uh, um, a woman who appears to be

pregnant and uh, it looks like, uh, it would be a
representation of a woman choosing a um, an alterna-
tive to the usual role that a woman is supposed to
assume, that of a wife and a mother, and uh, choosing
to become educated, and probably be a career woman as
Opposed to a family woman, and, uh, that's it.

As is the case in this story, Often the stories spelled out

the two roles Open to the woman and suggested the experience

of varying degrees of conflict.

The category of overt sexual activity or fantasy is
illustrated by the following example of a story by Joanne:

What it really looks like to me is a man who's try-

ing to find out if his watch is ticking. Doesn't have

much drama in it, so...this man and this woman have
spent the night together, um, which was not really the

65
intention of either of them, earlier in the day they
had left things...met in the bar section of a restau-
rant, and they hadn't really planned they would Spend
the night together. And he realizes that, that he's
late for work, he never even bothered to set a clock
and he's late for work, and she doesn't have anything
to do so she'd just as soon go on sleeping all day.
It's her place. SO he's gonna go to work and make an
excuse that his car ran out Of gas. And he won't call
her on the phone and he won't talk to her again.

It may be noted here that out of the three hundred
twelve Stories examined, only four mentioned rape (including
one which referred to "sexual abuse") and three of the four
mentioned it in the form of denial ("She was not raped,"
for instance). One Of these stories was by a control sub-
ject. One should also keep in mind that the control sub-
jects all knew that they were in the study because they were
not raped (and had been involved in a traumatic accident at

some point in their life).

CHAPTER VI
DISCUSSION

The Sample

 

One of the first conclusions that can be made from
this exploratory research is that there are few common char-
acteristics of the rape victims interviewed.

One must constantly be reminded of the bias inher-
ent in the sample, however. Each subject was self-referred
and willing to discuss the fact that she was raped. The im-
plications of this problem need discussion first.

One of the difficulties in arranging for a sample
of women who might be a bit more representative of rape vic-
tims in general was the protective cloak with which the
various organizations and individual women in the Los
Angeles area Shielded the victims. This is very understand-
able; for too many years rape victims who publicly announced
their circumstance, either in order to help prosecute a
crime, or care for their psychological or physical wounds,
were held in various degrees of disrespect from most seg-
ments of society. NO wonder the number of rapes reported
to police agencies is estimated at about one-tenth to one-
twentieth the actual number of rapes which have occurred in

fact. The very fact that this piece of research is being

66

67
done is a by-product of society's shifting winds, however.
Unfortunately, while attitudes toward rape victims and
women in general change in our society as a whole, individ-
uals continue by and large to reflect a more traditional
view of things. This applies even to the individual women
who at least consciously and actively are trying to change
their society.

Thus, while there exist women who are active in
trying to make this society more sensitive to the situation
facing a victim of rape, these same women protect and inad-
vertently screen the visibility of rape victims, suggesting
implicitly that there is really something shameful about the
fact that they were raped.

An example of how this works is the unsuccessful
efforts made to recruit subjects from a source who worked
with N.O.W. in Los Angeles and to whom I had been referred
by three or four different people. I finally reached this
woman on the telephone, and her attitude toward the idea
that I was trying to find women who had been raped to inter-
view for a research study was one of hostile defense. Be-
fore I could do more than state the above intention in bare
form, she bitterly told me that "these women have been hurt"
and I should not try and hurt them more by getting them to
talk about their experience. She would not help me directly
or even suggest other peOple that I might call.

There are three possible contributing factors to
her response to me. One is simply naivete about research;

perhaps she assumed that all researchers did was treat their

68

subjects coldly and like guinea pigs. (Of course, it is
also possible that this woman has indeed had contact with
researchers before me who were not helpful.) Another pos-
sibility is that she was psychologically naive in that She
felt that to talk about the experience would be a harmful
eXperience (while this may indicate psychological naivete,
it probably shows social acumen: rape victims have not been
rewarded for talking about it in the past). The third pos-
sibility is that while she happens to be an active member of
N.O.W., trying to remove the burden of guilt and shame from
the victim, she nonetheless unconsciously places it there
anyhow, and responds accordingly with the need to hide it
away.

Another example Of the subtlety of this problem is
the experience I had with the Rape Crisis Hot Line group.
My thought had been that if they were interested in helping
with this study, they would be able to take care of the
problem of confidentiality by simply letting their past
clients know about me and my study, and that way the sub-
jects could call me if they wanted to, and I would not have
to know in advance the names of any rape victims, thereby
assuring confidentiality. This group of women, not all of
whom were raped in the past themselves, but all seemed sin-
cere and interested peOple, at first welcomed the research.
Then, after some discussion, the following objections arose:
what if they recontacted a woman who had successfully been
repressing the whole event? Wouldn't the reawakened memory

be unnecessarily disturbing and possibly harmful? Also, some

69
past clients had asked to remain anonymous forever, and re-
contacting them would be betraying confidentiality. Finally
it was decided that I could publish my need for subjects in
their newsletter, which went out to several rape crisis
groups in the county plus many other organizations and in-
dividuals who were interested or affiliated. (These are
the reasons for the difficulty in finding subjects for re-
search on rape victims. This is why the sample is inher-
ently biased.)

The women who volunteered for the study may Share
personality characteristics that have more to do with the
fact that they are somehow Open enough, or sophisticated
enough, to want to be part of this kind of research. They
are women whom one may judge to be more exhibitionistic
than most (though I would disagree), or they may, as a
group, be motivated to participate by a more pressing need
to find someone to confide in or explore one's feelings
with. They may be more similar as a group to peOple who
decide to undergo psychotherapy than to the group of women
who have been raped. Indeed, seven out of the nine women
in the sample were in psychotherapy at some point after the
rapes occurred, two having begun therapy before being raped.
None of the women reported that they sought out therapy as
in any way a direct result of having been raped, however,
though I would judge Francine and Judy to be responding to
internal stress that was made more apparent and unbearable
to them due to their having been raped.

To really get at an unbiased sample, it would seem

70
as though the only appropriate methodology would consist
Of a longitudinal study of a large sample Of women, say a
freshman class at some university, with data collected over
a period of years, including their responding periodically
to a questionnaire which includes the query, "Have you ever
been the victim of a sexual assault?" That way the bias of
the volunteering rape victims would be removed, and it would
also be possible to get some pre-rape data on the subjects.
This course Of study is somewhat grisly; I would not like
to be the researcher who waits for members of my sample to
experience a life threatening situation just so that I may
study their response. This is not quite as unethical as
causing a painful situation to occur and then watching the
subjects respond, but it still is unpleasant.

Therefore, in the following discussion of what the
research has revealed, there will be only tentative general-
izations. What conclusions may be drawn may be done so
fairly for only the nine individual women interviewed, and

that is how this material will be addressed.

A Note Concerning Cindy and Jackie

 

There may be a question in some readers' minds
about the apprOpriateness of including these two women in
the sample of rape victims, since what happened to them was
not exactly what would be universally described as rape.
Our definition of rape was "forced sexual relations with a
woman by a man, accomplished under actual or implied threat

of severe bodily harm." Cindy was asleep during her rape,

71
thus there could have been no conscious perception Of
threat to herself at the time of the rape. Jackie had been
raped anally by the man she had consented to have vaginal
intercourse with; then several days later, after agreeing
to have sex with several men in a group, she was raped by
one man in the group whom she had singularly disliked, and
to whom she had tried to say "no." Both of these women,
when making their initial phone contact with me, prefaced
their wish to be part of the study with a comment such as,
"I'm not sure I would qualify. It wasn't exactly rape in
the commonly accepted definition of the word."

Both of these women did subjectively feel them-
selves to be victims of rape. They were included in the
sample because of that fact, and also because Of the dif-
ficulty in finding more subjects who would more cleanly
fit the definition. This study, being one of an exploratory
nature, it was deemed appropriate to use their eXperiences
in the interests of learning about rape victims, though the
generalizations made from the experiences of these two in-

dividual victims must be very limited.

Long Term Effects of Rape

 

For some of the women there were clearly unfortu-
nate long term effects of having been raped, and for others,
the long term effects were not as severe, or not as un-
fortunate. Though Burgess and Holmstrom find severe depres-
sion in only the few women in their sample who had previous-

ly undergone some psychiatric treatment, here are two women

72
who had never undergone such psychiatric treatment and are
so depressed. The rape circumstances Of Francine and Judy
differ: one was raped by a gang of men while she was with
two girlfriends; the other was raped first by a stranger
who picked her up while she was hitchhiking, and then a
few months later she was raped for the second time by a
neighbor whom she had trusted. The women differed by ten
years in age, Francine being 28 and Judy, 18 at the time of
the respective rapes. Both were born in the Midwest, but
so were several other women in the sample. Francine told
several peOple about her being raped, including the police,
while Judy talked to no one about it for a long time, and
to this day few people are aware of this part of her past.
The two women also differ in their dynamic constellations.
The question is, "Are there Similarities in quality or
quantity (severity) of pre-rape disturbances?"

Both women may be seen as somewhat obsessional
characters in the present, with Francine showing a history
Of the more successful use Of obsessional defenses. Both
women presently claim difficulties in their sexual lives,
and remember earlier days (before the rape) of relative de-
tachment from sexual feelings. Again, Francine had developed
more successful coping mechanisms for these problem areas.
Here it should be mentioned that the life circumstances of
the two women certainly brought some of these differences
to bear on subsequent adjustment of the two women. Judy had
been sexually molested as a child, had appeared in court as

a 12 year Old and had been disbelieved. She had also had a

73
pregnancy (by her future husband) which miscarried after
extensive hemorrhaging, and this experience seems to have
been critical in deepening the scars in her already shaky
sexual identification.

The rapes of both of these women appear to have
stirred up conflicts of control and guilt over sexuality,
hostility and passivity. However, raping any woman seems
to stir up such conflicts. How and if such conflicts are
resolved might just depend on the quality and quantity Of
earlier sexual encounters and the degree of freedom to ex-
press anger without guilt. Again, women in our culture fre-
quently have problems in this area, but the more obsessional
character may be worse Off. When raped, depending on the
circumstances, the obsessional type of woman may suffer much
more guilt over her subsequent feelings than another type
of character adjustment. And, depending on prior success
of defenses, time in life, and other life circumstances,
defenses may go awry years later.

Of the two women in question who are both overtly
depressed to a considerable degree Since the time of the
rapes, Judy may be judged to be far more seriously dis-
turbed on the whole. She is also the youngest member of
the sample.

Let us now look at the long term effects of rape
on another somewhat obsessional woman, Sally. She appears
to be relatively free from depression related to the rape,
and free from sexual difficulties Since the rape. Sally is

one of the Older women in the group, who also spoke of

74

earlier sexual detachment. She also related how over the
years She was able to work some of her sexual problems out,
with the experience of several different sexual relation-
ships which varied in satisfaction level. It seems likely
that this was an important factor in her subsequent post
rape sexual adjustment. She had been afforded more years
and more experience with her sexuality before undergoing a
rape than both Judy and Francine.

There is something to be said for a pre-existing
state of social and sexual maturity, then, as a major factor
in decreasing the long term effect of rape on some of these
women. The question this research raises here is, "How does
this maturity factor interact with degree of obsessional
defensiveness and guilt over anger?”

Let us look at this problem from a different angle,
from the more relatively non-rape-affected individual. Can
we speculate on the qualities necessary in order to remain
fairly untraumatized in the long run by a rape?

In my rough rank-ordering by adjustment of the sub-
jects (Table I), I have placed Jean and Sally at the top,
followed by June and Sarah. It may be inappropriate to dis-
cuss the long term affects Of rape on the top-ranked indi-
vidual, Jean, as She volunteered for the study after only
four months since her rape, the shortest time-span-since-
the-rape of any of the subjects. One of the women who did
not complete the series of interviews, but drOpped out after
the first meeting, had also been raped about four months be-

fore. She said She was unexpectedly upset after the first

75
session and was therefore dropping out. Jean, too, Spoke
of being unexpectedly upset after the first meeting, but
she continued as a subject. She was also seventeen years
the senior of the woman who drOpped out, and the mother of
a fifteen year old son. We may not be able to discuss the
long term affects of rape on Jean, but I think we may fairly
hypothesize that whatever they are, they will probably be
mitigated by her maturity and previous experience of her
sexuality.

The next three on the list of "well adjusted,"
comparatively speaking, share a few characteristics. Each
of these (as well as Jean) reported the incident to the
police. Not all felt they were treated well by the police,
but they all pretty much felt the treatment was better than
they had expected. The rape circumstances Of these three
were all different: one of the rapists had a weapon, two
did not; one beat the victim physically, two did not; two
took place in the victims' bedrooms after breaking into the
apartment in the middle of the night, one occurred in the
victim's apartment house lobby in the middle of the night;

all three went to court.

Going to Court

The role Of litigation in psychological adjustment
to trauma is probably very complex. Two of these three
women were able to prosecute their cases to the point of
conviction. I do not doubt that some of the reason for

their success has to do with the rape circumstances

76

(especially the fact that the rapist was apprehended). But
I am equally sure that if the victim had been either Jackie,
Joanne, or Judy, or perhaps even Cindy or Francine, litiga-
tion might never have been conducted. Certainly the rapes
probably would not have been reported to the police in the
first place. The circumstances might have been exactly the
same, yet I suggest that some women's immediate response
would be ultimately non-helpful and self destructive. I am
also suggesting that there seems to be a psychological bene-
fit to being able to go to court for a crime against oneself.

It appears to be psychologically reparative to
stand up and successfully defend oneself or take some action
Of revenge. To be able to express one's anger in the form
of a culturally approved litigation seems to be beneficial.
Without going into depth, which speculations are entitled
to go without, it is possible that for those individuals
who have already been cultured into our society successfully,
to use the system of law and to win a court case may be just
the therapy needed. Of the three women being discussed now,
June is the only one whose court case is a little different.
The other two have pressed charges and have helped to put
their rapist in jail (where they are now). June's rapist
‘was never caught. She decided, about eight months after
the rape, to sue her landlord for not keeping the security
lock on her building lobby in repair. Her case went to court
only recently, and was decided in favor of the landlord.
She is in the process of appealing the decision.

Her decision to go to court seems to be part of her

77
dealing with her anger and her sense of helplessness. It
may seem to some that the extraction of a sum of money for
damages from her landlord is not going to take away the
fact Of her having been raped. As a matter of fact, not
even the law of talion does away with a pre-existing damage
per se, though maybe in primitive magical thought it was
believed to do so. However, in modern psyches, the primi-
tive magical thought continues, even though our modern mind
understands the irrationality of it all. Perhaps litigation,
even when not directly connected with rape, represents re-
taliation and serves to heal some psychological wounds.

For instance, the interviewer felt relieved when
she Observed Judy's intense depression lift to a consider-
able degree, when by chance She found herself beginning a
legal suit totally unrelated to her rape during the latter
part of the interviewing for the study. She by chance had
used a gas station rest room off the freeway, and while her
husband went to return the key he discovered one of the
young male employees peeking through a hole into the wall
Of the women's rest room. Judy was being violated again,
without her knowledge this time, but again without her con-
sent, and her anger was more accessible to her this time.
Perhaps it was because of the shared feelings with her hus-
band that she could feel the anger more directly; perhaps
it was because to be peeked upon is a far cry from being
raped by a group at the point of a knife. It was, however,
Judy's idea entirely to file charges against the service

station owner and the boy in question. In the midst of all

78
this activity, some of her depression seemed to have lifted.

It has been Observed by many people that litigation
is used and perhaps abused by some peOple in a similar ef-
fort to express their hostility, but often within a paranoid
system of projection. It may even be considered a symptom
by some, of a paranoid condition to sue peOple or companies
regularly for abuses, sometimes for real ones, though often
they are imaginary ones. Such is an example of a defense
mechanism really not accomplishing its defensive task any
longer; it is in these cases really a symptom, and it usu~
ally gets the individuals into more trouble. But there does
seem to be something of value to a rape victim to be able to
go to court.

This is not to mention the value to society that is
afforded by putting a sex offender in jail. (Unfortunately,
jails as now constituted do not rehabilitate effectively.)
But there certainly seems to be value to the victim. It
may be simply that she is able to deal with her helplessness
by a court conviction. Or it may be that she can express
her anger in a societally sanctioned way. These possibly
may lessen psychological trauma, or it may be more a func-
tion of being able to Share the experience Openly and to
receive sympathy. One question raised here is, "Does acquit-
tal for the defendant, the rapist, serve to set the psycho-
logical adjustment Of the victim back instead of forward?"

Often, in our court system, if the rapist is acquit-
ted it is because the fact of the rape itself is disbelieved

by the jury. Such a verdict, after what has Often been, in

79

our imperfect legal world, a case of the victim being on
trial rather than the rapist, must surely have deleterious
effects on the psyche of the victim. One of the women in
the sample, Francine, went through such an experience.
Would she be as depressed today if the verdict had been one
of guilty for the defendant? I think there is a good
chance that she would never have become suicidal, as she
had been in the months prior to and during the time Of the
study (and after the trial).

The subject of how litigation affects the rape vic-
tim is complex and not handled directly by this research,

but it is certainly one which needs further investigation.

Dreamlife

 

The examination of these women's dreams does not
suggest anything special to be generalized. Burgess and
Holmstrom implied that of the twenty nine dreams and night-
mares reported by victims in their study, two types were de-
fined: where the victim wishes to do something to an as-
sailant but wakes before acting; and later in time after
the rape, where the victim reports mastery in the dream and
she successfully fights Off or kills an assailant. This
later type of dream was reported only once in this sample
of women. Unfortunately, Burgess and Holmstrom do not pro-
vide numerical figures with their dream data.

The women's dreams were not dominated by rape
themes; the majority of dreams dealt with other material,

more involving the individual dynamics of the women.

80
One young woman in the sample, Joanne, described
a rape fantasy-dream that occurred when she was fifteen, a
few years before She was actually raped:

...Some man was burglarizing the house and when he
came to my bedroom window he saw I was so beautiful he
had to make love with me, it wasn't really rape. That
dream was a positive thing. It prevented me from dis-
obeying my mother, because she wanted me to be a virgin.
So because I was raped I didn't have any responsibility.
I was grateful that he removed my responsibility. It
was justifying sexual experience. I know that was what
that dream was for. How to get into the sexual world
without my mother getting mad at me for it...

This adolescent fantasy-dream of Joanne's was the only one
of its kind reported in the sample. Her subsequent associa-
tions and analysis of the dream are interesting in that
Joanne would seem to fit Helene Deutsch's conception Of the
masochistic woman. Deutsch had described this type of fan-
tasy of rape in adolescent girls who later give up these
fantasies as they give up masturbation. As a matter of
fact, Joanne is the only woman in the sample who reported
never having masturbated. (For one other woman, Cindy,
there is no data on the subject, unfortunately.) Joanne
also reported a play situation she would enjoy as a child of
eleven: "...I played with a girlfriend make-believe and I
pretended to be a man and she was the woman and it was like
a kidnapping thing. Sort of a rape-kidnapping thing. We
didn't take our clothes Off, we just talked about it and she
was tied up...." This acted-out fantasy was not paralleled
by any fantasy in any other woman's interview data. The

data summarized from Joanne's interviews including her

dreams suggest the possibility that here is a case of an

81
individual who may have had such unconscious fantasies
about rape that somehow these fantasies influenced her be-
havior in actually getting raped. This is not to say that
She was actively trying to get herself raped, but that once
in the situation of being raped, the possible unconscious
complicity made it extra difficult to handle. In any case,
this is the only subject in the sample who presents any
concrete evidence to support the notion of unconscious com-
plicity. The evidence presented is by no means conclusive
to establish that complicity in this case.

To briefly summarize the discussion of dreams, it
appears that these rape victims did have dreams or night~
mares dealing with the rape situation usually in the period
of time immediately following the rape, and that would agree
with much of the previously reported data. There were few
other common dream characteristics shared by the women in
this sample. Both Francine and Judy continued to have
occasional nightmares about being raped after a minimum Of
a year; this strongly suggests that the experience had not
yet been successfully handled by these two depressed women.
Their nightmares of course contained many elements of their
individual dynamics that assuredly existed before being

raped, however.

TAT Data
The TAT stories of these rape victims significantly
differed from those of non-rape victims in a few areas, most

of which are understandable in a common sense way. The

fir
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82
first category was that of themes of death, suicide or
life threatening scenes. The fact that this group would
more frequently project such themes seems understandable
from the facts of their realities including such events.
While the control subjects also had experienced some kind
of "traumatic accident" at some point in their lives, the
type of experience varied from car accident to near-drown-
ing, and the time Spent in the "traumatic" situation in no
case was more than a few minutes. In the case of the con-
trols, most had not really thought much about the fact that
they were close to death until after the fact. The rape
victims by and large attested to feelings of imminent death
during the rape situation itself which lasted from several
minutes to several hours in length. In rape, the life
threatening situation is an interpersonal one as well, where
it is clear that control over one's life is with another
individual's will. These are some of the reasons why the
women who had been raped responded with significantly more
of these themes in their TAT stories.

Through further analysis it appears that it is the
theme of suicide in particular that accounts for much of
the differences. One way of understanding this is in terms
of the rape victims' heightened levels of hostility, which
have turned inward in its self-perception as unacceptable.
This may be a serious finding, that is, if it were general-
izeable to all rape victims. One cannot be sure even then
if the increased number of suicide themes is a by-product

of having been raped, or if it is somehow expressive of a

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83
self destructive character who might well get raped due to
self destructive life patterns. This needs further ex-
ploration.

The fact that there were found to be Significantly
more TAT themes of men negatively experienced and/or aggres-
sing against women in the rape victims' stories than that
of the controls seems to need little explanation. There is
one theme that does require some hypothesizing to explain
its frequent appearance in the TAT stories of the rape vic-
tims. That is the theme of romance or the love story fan-
tasy. Here again the inherent bias of the sample may be
the variable that accounts for this difference, but it may
not be at that. If a woman who has been raped goes through
a psychological reevaluation of the Opposite sex, might she
not also be subject to a need to overcompensate at times,
to try and gloss over, even romanticize men more than usual?
The one woman in the sample who had the most romantic and
most frequent count of romantic TAT stories was Sarah, the
same woman who had the only dream in which she successfully
kills the rapist. She is the same woman who fought off her
rapist with a letter knife. Perhaps some preoccupation with
men as love Objects is crucial to reestablishing one's
equilibrium, after one connects strongly and consciously
with rage and aggression toward men. Sarah is also the
woman who suggested that one possible positive by-product
of her having been raped is that She is less passive with
men and will not tolerate sexual ploys from men to whom She

does not feel attracted.

84
While Sarah had the greatest number of romance
tfliemes in her protocol (six), both Judy and Francine had
tlie fewest (two and three respectively). This would be in
kxeeping with the hypothesis: Judy and Francine are the
nuast depressed women in the sample, and their hostility is
.s<> conflicted it is rarely felt or eXpressed, thus yielding

14;) less need to romanticize the love object.

5 ome Subjective Statements

At the end of the series of interviews, each woman
'wzis asked to describe how She felt having been raped had
afifected her life. The following are some of their state-

rnerits about this.

(Jackie):

AS far as what effects the rape has had, I'm
clear on this one point in my own mind. The fact
of these particular rapes happening to me has no
effect on me. But the fact that any man in this
society can rape any woman, that had an effect,
and the effect would have been there even if I
had never been raped. The fear, the constant fear
not to go out after 9:00 p.m....The idea of rape
dominates my life now, in terms of being in fear
of men being able to rape women just Off the
streets, but it was not the rape that changed me
...I was down on myself and it made no difference
how he treated me...

(Joanne):

I don't think the rapes have affected my life
much. I wasn't very cautious then, but I'm not
sure I'm any more cautious now. I knew there was
evil in the world before that. I don't think
those situations could occur now. I probably
would have prevented them earlier on, not talking
to them at all. Even though today there are new
laws protecting the victim in court from being
asked all those questions, the jury is still emo-
tionally against the victim...Right now I wouldn't
prosecute a rape. Maybe in a few years. The prob-
lem is if you have a non-conventional reaction to
things they think you're guilty. If they say, "why

85

didn't you run away?", "because I was in Shock,"
they'll say "that's not normal, normal people
run away and scream." So you didn't follow a
certain standard way of reacting, so you're sus-
pect....Right now I'm feeling like I'll be very
happy when this interview is over so I won't
have to think about it anymore. I've tried to
train my mind to have a mental block. I don't
want to think about it. I assure you I won't be
dwelling on this subject after you leave....I
just don't want to think about it.

(Cindy):
I really wasn't too involved with the rape
because I was moving into A at the time.

I wasn't involved with it, at Ieast on a con-
scious level...I was alot madder at the system
than at the man. It was my own fault, staying
at this house and getting drunk....I probably
felt some guilt about it...I was just angry at
myself rather than being depressed...just angry
because I had done a stupid thing....When I
joined the hot line I expected I'd be fighting
the hospitals, police and the laws but it turns
out it's just helping the victim...it'S hopeless
anyway...I haven't changed much as far as drink-
ing patterns go because of the rape....l still
have gotten drunk with people I don't know....

I think I can tell who a potential rapist would
be....

(Judy):

It's just so terrible, thinking about get-
ting raped. I can honestly say it's just about
ruined my life....Sometimes I feel I'm stronger
about it than others might be. If I think about
it happening to anyone else in my family, I would
go crazy, I would have so much sorrow for them,
it's so hard to live with....I dwell on it alot
because this kind of violence happened to me....
I'm just going to have to rearrange my thinking,
become involved in other things....I guess it's
possible subconsciously that the guilt is still
there...because alot of people do feel that way,
that if you got raped you deserved it, so I would
never come out and tell peOple I got raped. So
that's a burden too, and there must be something
wrong with me if I can't tell people....

(Sarah):

I think about the rape nowadays, but not in
the same way. Where I work there are alot of
strange men (V.A. Hospital). It's kind of creepy.
If I went out alone at night more I would probably
think about it more, but I don't....The first

86

month or so I was very uptight about these guys
at the hospital, but I don't feel that way now
...I lock my car religiously now...and that's
different.

(June):

My fears have not yet totally dropped. I
still have them and I never had them before the
rape. I'm afraid Of house noises....Now if I'm
really anxious about something else it will
bother me...if my roommate's away it gets me a
little anxious....The thing that got to me most
was not the rape, not the sexual part but that I
thought I was going to die. When that anxiety
starts coming up I can't cope with it too well.

(Sally):

Some other feelings I've been aware Of. I'm
uptight about any kind of aggressiveness from men,
like construction workers who try to pick you up
....Before the rape I had some contact with women's
rights, I thought it was fine, but I didn't know a
whole lot about it. Then I was politically liberal,
now I'm radical....I think it's awful that women
have to get raped, but it's also awful that men
are driven to it. If they can be helped they
should be helped, it's in the interests of every-
body.

(Jean):

I see the whole situation now as a matter of
control, who was controlling whom....It's my feel-
ing that although he was in physical control and
he could threaten my life, I felt my passivity con-
trolled the situation -- my life was intact, my
child's life was intact. I think that's what he
was responding to at the end. That I wasn't a
hysterical woman who he would beat up. I don't
know, maybe that's just how I'm rationalizing it
for myself so I can live with the situation....

My feelings about men are not any different now.
This was a one in a million incident. The guy had
a problem and I always knew peOple in the world
had problems and also there are very decent peo-
ple....I was very angry with (the hot line's) atti-
tude. They brought it up to a level of what hap-
pens to all women in general, and for me it was a
very personal incident. I didn't want to talk
about statistics, this happened to me. I was some-
what hurt by that kind of insensitivity, telling

me to insist on my rights. It was a cause, rather
than a dreadful thing that happened to an individual
and it turns me Off....I am incensed at the treat-
ment Of this subject on T.V. You are bombarded
with this as entertainment and it's understood it's

87
fantasy and not happening really and I'm not
appalled or shocked. It's a horrible way to
know about something that does happen. It's
hard to verbalize my feelings. It makes it
almost commonplace and I think it's horrible.

These women have been affected in a variety of
wuays, from being in prolonged states of fear with multiple
pfusbic problems, to raised consciousness about the social
pfnenomenon of rapists and victims, to intense depression
arud guilt, to increased assertiveness and awareness of con-
tr131. The variation in response to rape is in keeping with

the variation in the individual differences of the victims.

frhtere is no evidence here for a typical rape victim.

CHAPTER VII
SUMMARY

The main conclusion drawn by examining the data
of this research is that the women who were raped differ
from one another in personality dynamics, rape circumstances,
and the effects on them of having been raped. They also
appear to differ from women who have not been raped in that
they carry around within them varying degrees of feelings
and impressions about themselves and about men that have
been influenced by their experience of being raped.

Some of the women seem to be more severely affected
by the rape experience than others. One worthwhile avenue
Of further exploration into this area might deal with the
identification of women who are high risk in developing a
severely depressed adaptation following a rape. This study
suggests severe depression might be linked to a difficulty
in expressing anger or rage about being raped in a person-
ality for whom such emotions are deemed highly unacceptable.
Also, it appears likely that the younger the woman, the more
immature or inexperienced sexually, the more difficult the
subsequent adjustment. If so called high risk rape victims
can be clinically differentiated, then the information would

be quite helpful to the members of crisis units and hot line

88

 

 

89
centers for rape victims which seem to be Springing up
around the country at this time.

There also appears to be some benefit to a victim
to be able to report a rape to the police and get through
the police-legal system without undue Stress. Letting peo-
ple know about the fact Of one's having been raped enabled
several of the women to get support, and facilitated focus-
ing some of the feelings of rage. I believe that for the
women who were able to prosecute the rape case successfully,
another benefit to them was the restoration Of a sense of
control over their life.

From the TAT data we may conclude that rape vic-
tims perceive aggressively behaving men as more dangerous
than do control subjects. Also, they respond with signifi-
cantly more suicide themes than controls. Rape victims also
described more romances or love stories in their responses
to the TAT cards. It is hypothesized that the anger and
fearfulness experienced by the rape victim toward men is
coped with by over-romanticizing men. It is as if the rape
victim, if she is going to successfully re-adjust to society
and to heterosexual relationships, needs to take a step back-
wards in her perception of men in order to move forward
again. That is, men may be romanticized and love relation-
ships idealized for a time in order to cope with the anxiety
of feeling so enraged at and so afraid of the opposite sex.
Furthermore, this over-romanticism is seen as a positive
step toward re-integration; those subjects who did not re-

spond with such stories were the most depressed in the group.

90

Thus, the rape victim successfully COpeS with her
fear of males and her anger toward them through the use of
both litigation and romanticism.

Some of the questions initially asked by this
study remain unanswered. The difficulty in finding sub-
jects and the inherent bias in the sample as it was drawn
made it impossible to draw firm conclusions about rape vic-
tims per se. In light of this study being exploratory, its
proper usefulness is as a generator Of hypotheses based on
somewhat more concrete data than the interpretation of a
single dream dreamed by an analytic patient forty years ago.
It is now seen as useful to study how the stress of a life
threatening situation is most successfully handled by the
personality dynamics of an individual. If women have been
brought up to be victims, as Susan Brownmiller suggests,
then it is important to identify those characteristics of
a person that might be encouraged in the development of
young women so that this victim orientation is discouraged.
Research into the area of the psychological effects Of liti-
gation on the victim of rape, or Of other crimes, needs to
be undertaken.

Areas of research that do not seem to be encouraged
by this study involve hypotheses relating rape fantasies to
actual occurrences of rape. One woman in this study did
appear to have had an almost conscious wish to be raped.
This woman admitted to extreme self destructive wishes in
general and had been hospitalized for several months before

she was in fact raped. The circumstances of her rape were

 

91
very different from those of the other women in the group
studied, however. This woman in no way could be judged
typical of rape victims or anyone else for that matter,
being a severely disturbed woman with quite a disintegrated
ego. There was one other woman in the sample who Spoke of
a rape fantasy-dream from her adolescence, yet the circum-
stances of her rape plus the reality of the other rape cases
studied here and elsewhere are so different from the rapes
of probably any woman's fantasies, that there is virtually
no reason to draw a connection for scientific purposes.
The study of women's rape fantasies unto itself is most
certainly a valid area for scientific inquiry, especially
as to how such fantasies relate to sexual development, sex-
ual preference, social behavior and personality dynamics in
general. It just doesn't seem to have much to do with the
reality of the woman's getting raped, and it is still to
be seen if it has any affect on the woman's adjustment after
having been raped. On the other hand, the scientific in-
quiry into men's fantasies of raping women seems to have

more to do with the occurrence of actual rapes.

 

APPENDICES

 

 

APPENDIX A
JEAN

 

i- .1. .“J

 

APPENDIX A
JEAN

Jean is a 37 year old divorced mother of a 15 year
Old son. She is a Ph.D. candidate and is presently doing
her dissertation field work. She is youthful in appearance
but presents herself as a competent, intelligent woman,
which She is. She is also very verbal, articulate and some-
what introspective.

Jean was born and raised in rural New England, an
Oldest daughter with a Sister four years younger. Her mother
was an Italian woman who resented her ethnic roots and so
married a Yankee with generations of Yankee blood in him.
The couple's relationship was marked by frequent arguments.
In Jean's perception, her father never lived up to her
mother's expectations for him. He remained a family support-
ing, blue collar worker.

Jean saw herself as a tomboy in her early years,
though She stated that she was forced into it Since there
were only boys to play with in her area. She grew up feel-
ing herself to be special to her father, while it seemed
that her younger sister, who was the prettier one and the
baby, received special attention from her mother. Jean was

the good student and also the musician, like her dad who

92

 

 

93
played country fiddle for fun. Jean began studying violin
at nine, was found to be talented and began private lessons
at eleven.

Her musical career assumed a central part of her
life after that. When She was fourteen she began having
an affair with her married music teacher, who was in his
fifties. She appreciated the attention, welcomed the ex-
citement and affection, but resented his demandingness.

She was with him everyday; she was his protegee, but she
relished the hours during which she went to public school,
as she considered that period of the day her own, whereas
the rest of the day was his. No one knew of their sexual
entanglement, though Jean feels that both her mother and
the head of the music school suspected.

When she was seventeen she won a summer scholar-
ship to study violin several hundred miles away and this
was the first time she lived away from home. This also
enabled her to break Off the relationship with her teacher.
She enjoyed the independence Of that summer, and decided
to accept a scholarship for the fall at a music school in
New York. It was there that She met her husband, the
father of her son. Though She had lived with this man for
two and a half years, they had gotten married mainly due
to her pregnancy, during which time her husband left the
country to study music in Europe. She was supposed to
follow after the birth of the baby, but she thinks he left
never intending for that to happen, as he filed for divorce

shortly afterwards.

 

94

Thus it was that Jean gave up her career in music
and moved back home again, so that her mother could look
after her child as she went out to work. She held a vari-
ety of jobs, including working on a newspaper, but after
a few years she decided to go back to college part time.
She at first took a few evening courses, but gradually she
went back full time, living on savings in order to support
her son and herself. By the time She finished her bache- I”?

lor's degree she realized she wanted to follow a career in

 

academia. She was admitted to graduate school in Los .«e

Angeles, and in 1972 she and her son moved out here. '
She has had one more significant relationship with

a man, someone she met after moving to Los Angeles. This

relationship did not work out for a variety of reasons, in-

cluding the facts that She has difficulty being dependent

on someone; he has had a career Shake-up and has no reli-

able job future while her career is just taking off; he is

not legally divorced and she thinks probably never will be.

That relationship had been terminated at the time of the

rape, but he was someone Jean called for support nonethe-

less. She was disappointed in what he had to offer her at

that time, however, and she now sees their relationship as

finally concluded.
Jean's plans for the future do not include another

marriage or any more children, although she does fantasize

from time to time about marrying a colleague and having a

close, intellectual bond with him and being able to carry

on with research and a career together.

APPENDIX B
SALLY

 

APPENDIX B

SALLY

Sally is 30 years Old, has been divorced for about
ten years, and is in her last year of college. She works
Part time as a legal secretary when she runs out of money,
and she now goes to school full time, intending to go on
to law school when she finishes. She is an attractive woman
With a serious demeanor and an air of self sufficiency about
her.

Sally was born in a rural section of Maine, the
Youngest child with two older Sisters and an older brother.
Her father had worked as a woodsman but died when Sally was
four, and she does not remember him. Her mother, who had
been orphaned as a child, relied on welfare in order to
financially support her four children. She worked hard as
the only adult member of a rural household with no elec-
t1‘icity, running water or indoor bathroom. Thus it was that
Sally grew up under conditions of extreme poverty.

Sally's oldest sister had some emotional problems
Which were not diagnosed at the time, but looking back
Sa11y knows there was something wrong with her. The sister
was overweight, slow, and subject to much teasing by the

younger Siblings. She is closest with her other sister,

95

 

96
and knows her brother least well. She is the only family
member living on the west coast; the rest of the family
lives in New England.

When Sally was 15 she went to live in a big city,
where her sister had gone in order to get a well paying job.
She lied about her age and was able to get a job, and she
and her sister continued to live in the home of a family
friend, working while continuing in high school. The girls
had intended to have their mother come to live there too,
but the Older woman found it too difficult living in the
City after a life in a very rural community. After a time,
the two Sisters moved into an apartment together, and Sally
quit school, learned commercial secretarial skills and be-
gan to support herself.

In her dating pattern she would go steady with one
boy at a time, and when she was 18 almost became engaged to
a very hot tempered, jealous and authoritarian young man.
At the last minute she broke Off the relationship and found
herself attracted to the opposite type of man, a very pas-
sive and devoted man. She never questioned the fact that
She would get married, so the two of them did so. However,
after about six months Sally found herself to be extremely
depressed and unhappy. They separated after another six
m(>Ilths and were divorced the following year.

At this point Sally began working two jobs, bought
a house, began dating older men and began to experience sex-
ual intercourse with some pleasure for the first time. She

aISO traveled in Europe for a while, and then moved to

 

97
California around 1968 after vacationing there and find-
ing that she liked it. She was able to get a good job as
a legal secretary and since her salary was so high, she
did not need a second job for the first time in years. Not
being used to having so much free time, Sally decided to go
to college at night. Soon she was going to school full
time and working only part time.

Sally has had several significant relationships
with men in the past six years, including one five year
affair with a married professional man. This was the man
Whom She called after being raped, and at that point he de-
cided to separate from his wife to try living with Sally.
As she sees it, that was when the relationship really broke
down: when they began seeing each other each day and
realistically learning about each other.

She is currently involved with one of her profes-
Sors at school. She does not see the need to get married;
She is pessimistic about the value of marriage, although
She thinks she might have a child someday. Since the rape
She has become less oriented to male/female relationships
and has gotten to know women better, and has acquainted her-
Self with women's rights issues. She is very self suf-
fiCient, owning a goat, chickens and rabbits and making her
own cheese, milk and using the eggs and rabbit meat to

Cre ate meals .

 

V“

APPENDIX C
JUNE

 

APPENDIX C
JUNE

June was born and raised in New York City. She
is 23 years old, very attractive, and very serious in her
attitude toward the interview. Her father is Jewish, works
as a union organizer; her mother iS Catholic. When her
parents married, her mother's family disowned her mother.
June is the youngest of three children; she has two Older
brothers, and each child was spaced four years apart from
the next. Her childhood years were confined to life in
and around the same apartment and neighborhood until she
'was 16 years old. At that time June entered college and
rnoved into a dormitory.

As a child June remembers being a tomboy. She had
(nae close girlfriend, but mostly felt "on the outs" with
Otflier girls. When she began menstruating at 13 she felt
She was a late beginner, and she was self conscious Of not
develOping breasts until around that same time. She "felt
Out.of itfl'

She was in an accelerated junior high school pro-
gram, skipping the eighth grade. When She was a junior or
Senior in high school, she "went from never going out at

aldl to dating men seven years older" than she, and her

98

 

99

mother "automatically assumed" She was having intercourse
with them. A strict curfew was imposed by her parents and
this initiated a period of intense family turmoil, during
which June was, as She described herself, a "crazy teenager."
She began breaking her parents' rules and stayed out late.

She withdrew from her family and experimented heavily with

 

drugs, and she also tried ShOplifting on a few occasions.

She did not actually experience intercourse, as her mother he
had feared, but she had indulged in petting with boyfriends. 1
During one period she slept with a packed suitcase under I,-
her bed, and threatened her mother with talk of leaving %

home. By the time she was a senior in high school she
acted on a suggestion of a friend to seek counseling. The
family began treatment together, and also June was able to
arrange for individual therapy for herself. She saw a
therapist once a week from that time forward for three
years, and then when she was in college she changed thera-
pists, seeing someone at the college three times a week.

At the time that June started college and moved
iJItO a dorm, her mother had a "severe psychotic depression"
quich June attributes partly to the fact that her children
had all moved out, and partly to menOpause. She was not
kHDSpitalized, though June, looking back, thinks she should
llave been. At the same time as her mother was depressed,
ller'f'ather suffered a heart attack. June moved back into
11er'parents' apartment, and she sees this time as a begin-
Iling for her pattern of mothering her own mother.

Around this time she had her first experience with

100

sexual intercourse, in a relationship with her employer, a
physician who was 38 and married. This relationship lasted
for two years until June discovered that he had other young
mistresses besides herself. After that she began dating
other men. At this point she was an undergraduate living
off campus in an apartment with two male roommates.

About a year later she was raped after walking
home alone one night from a holiday party. Details of the
rape are included in the text. About five months later

she began dating the man who later became her husband. He

 

was a post doctoral student, about ten years her senior.
A year and a half later, after she had begun graduate work,
they were married.

The next year they moved to Los Angeles, where her
husband wished to pursue his career. Since June was still
a student in her doctoral program, she lived in Los Angeles
for only a few months at a time, spending several months
in New York completing her course work and her master's
degree. Their marriage was not able to withstand the long
IHBriods of separation. At the time of the interviews, the
CHJUpIe had been separated for six months.

At this juncture in her life, several stresses
are exerting themselves very strongly: that of the marital
Separation and future divorce; the ill health of her mother,
‘Who is being treated for breast cancer; the ill health of
ller father, who has a heart condition; and her own ill
lIealth (she is under care for endometriosis, taking high

<1oses of hormones, suffering intermittant severe pain and

lOl
occasional hospitalizations with surgery a future possi-
bility). She has temporarily suspended work on her dis-

sertation at this time.

 

APPENDI X D
SARAH

APPENDIX D

SARAH

Sarah is a 26 year Old, plump, attractive woman
who has striking red hair and a very bubbly, talkative,
somewhat histrionic personality. She was born in the Mid-
west, the only child of older, Russian born, Jewish par-
ents, both of whom are professional counselors. She remem-
bers the move to California as positive, since school in
the Midwest had seemed more "repressive" and regimented
than it seemed in Los Angeles, where there was "more em-
phasis on recess Since the weather was good."

Sarah described herself as introverted and shy
for most of her public school years. She attributes this
irltroversion to a "lifelong physical abnormality" in her
1egs which she says was overreacted to by her mother and
that meant years of corrective shoes and physical therapy
several times a week. With all this Special attention
She felt physically and socially awkward. Her parents
Sent her to a private high school where she felt more in-
fe rior to the rich children of Hollywood stars. At one
p0 int in high school, "P.E. was so emotionally painful
that to get out of it I purposefully dislocated my knee"

and she was in a wheel chair for the next few months.

102

103

Sarah's relationship with her mother was and still
is unusually close and interdependent. As a teenager she
fought a great deal with her mother, who was overprotective
and domineering and weighed 250 pounds. One Of her dreams
from adolescence consisted of being submerged in water and
not being able to pull herself away from her mother. Once,
after her mother caught her with a cigarette, she "basically
beat the crap out of me" but for the first time her daughter
hit back and somehow knocked her mother unconscious, which
frightened them both considerably. It was after this in-
cident that Sarah was first sent for psychiatric treatment,
which she has continued with over the years with two or
three different therapists.

Sarah feels her mother to be practically omnipo-
tent, capable of reading her mind and predicting the future.
Her mother did inform her of the facts Of life, with the
help of various books, including medical texts. She was
not particularly physically affectionate with Sarah, but
her father was especially distant. Her parents were never
affectionate with each other in front of her, either. She
describes her father as "very controlled...he doesn't know
how to have a good time. He reads. Literature is a way he
eXpresses his feelings...politics and literature, ideas he
can share. That's it."

When she went to college, she lived in a dorm and
"acted out," going with many boys for the first time and
not studying, such that she flunked out after one and a

half years. She worked for the telephone company after

th
of
At

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nc
s}

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104
that for a year, and then after missing work with a bout
of mono, she was fired and decided to go back to college.
At the community college she earned a 3.9 index, discovered
her love of botany, and after a field trip to Hawaii she
was Offered a job collecting tropical plants. She regrets
not having taken the position, stating that at the time
she was "just too scared." Instead She went back to school,
worked on a political campaign and got a part time job as
a research assistant in order to support herself, and this
marked the first time in her life that her parents were
not financially supporting her.

From the ages of 19 to 23, Sarah had a series of
relationships with men that were not socially or sexually
successful. She had always thought of herself as a wall-
flower, incapable of having an attractive man, and when She
did date men whom she considered attractive, she was "para-
lyzed with fear of what are they doing with me when they
can have someone else better looking?" It really wasn't
until several more years of therapy that she felt she had
anything to offer a man, and also realized that "good look-
ing guys can also be jerks." But until then, she was ex-
tremely vulnerable to a man's attentions. At nineteen and
a half she had her first experience with sexual intercourse.
She actually enjoyed it until he told her "you're probably
going to be a nymphomaniac" and she thought he must be
right. She had experienced an orgasm at that time, but
she thought it was somehow wrong since they hadn't climaxed

at the same time. She had her next orgasm through

 

105

intercourse three years later. Her sexual and social re-
lationships with men were marked by Sarah feeling abused
and dominated, and her one long term relationship during
that time included her boyfriend Sleeping with several Of
her friends.

More recently her relationships with men have im-
proved. She plans to go on to graduate school for a Ph.D.
She also has recently joined Overeaters Anonymous which

has helped her considerably with a chronic weight problem.

 

APPENDIX E
FRANCINE

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APPENDIX E
FRANCINE

Francine is 29 years Old, single, and employed as
an engineer. She also has two Masters' degrees, is a Ph.D.
candidate, and has completed two years of law school. She

appears self assured and speaks in a kind of monotonic,

careful manner.

She was born in the Midwest, the oldest child of
21 fairly religious Christian Scientist couple. She has a
txrother two years younger and a Sister ten years younger.
Sire remembers her parents as quite strict with the children,
‘Wiuth many rules for behavior that were to be followed. She
arvd.her brother fought quite a bit, though now they are
Clxose friends. She got along well with her sister, but
dixdn't really Spend much time with her.

When She was 6 or 7, Francine had rheumatic fever,
anti though her parents' religion forbade conventional medi-
CiJle, after a while she required, and they permitted hos-
Pitalization. She subsequently missed much of the first
ngide, and was unable to participate in many athletic games.

What stands out most from Francine's memory of her
Parents' relationship was her mother's subservience to her

3fat11er. Each morning of their marriage she would serve him

106

t]

107

breakfast in bed, complete with fresh flowers on the tray.
Francine thought all women did this kind of thing as part
of marriage and thus she saw herself early on as probably
not the right material for marriage.

Francine went to a college in another state where
She studied math and physics and german. As part of the
language study program at this school, she lived abroad
for one year. During her sophomore year She had sexual
intercourse for the first time with her boyfriend who broke
up with her the next day. Francine had been extremely
naive about sex until she had begun college, and after
this first experience, She did not enjoy a physical rela-
tionship with a man for several more years, although she
"tolerated the boredom" when with someone She did care
about.

Francine graduated from college in three years and
applied for a job out of the country. She was accepted
and shortly before she was to leave, she received a letter
saying that they hadn't realized she was a woman until then,
and she would not be able to go since there were no "facil-
ities" for women. She quickly applied to other out-of-
state jobs in engineering; she wanted to leave as soon as
Iaossible as she was feeling very uncomfortable staying with
lier parents for any length of time. She finally got a
t)osition and moved to northern California.

After about two years there, she decided to go to
graduate school, so she moved to Oregon for that. During

tflis time she lived with a man with whom she had a

108

satisfying sexual and, to her, emotional relationship. It
seemed to her, however, that he was not as happy as she,
and she left Oregon for southern California to do her dis;
sertation research. While doing that, She decided to go
to law school. She feels She would have remained in Oregon
if her boyfriend had Shown more of an interest in her doing
so. AS it was, he seemed not to care, so she began law
school in LOS Angeles. After two years She was disillu-
sioned with law and went back to being an engineer.

Francine felt fairly lonely, especially at first,
after her move to Los Angeles. She did begin dating and
meeting peOple, but she thinks fondly of northern California
and Oregon. She sees herself as afraid of being dependent
on men. She is glad now to be working again and making a
good salary, because that allows her to feel more independ-
ent. Recently She became pre-engaged to a man who went
back to Oregon for a year of graduate work, leaving
Francine in Los Angeles. She feels more ready to think of
marriage now than She has in the past. There had been
several men who had proposed in the past, but for various
reasons, including the fact that Francine does not want
children, the proposals were not accepted. She has also
recently begun seeing a psychiatrist, and intends to con-
tinue with it for at least a year, as she is finding it
helpful in dealing with her recent (Six months) depression

and suicidal feelings.

APPENDIX F
JUDY

APPENDIX F

JUDY

Judy is 20 years old, has been married for one
year and is going to a community college, characteristically
earning all A's. She is a very thin, young looking woman
who seems overly polite and submissive. She speaks hesi-
tantly and softly.

Judy is the third child of four, with a brother
of 24, sister of 22 and a younger sister of 16. She was
born in a farming community in the Midwest where she lived
until she was about 8. At that time her family moved to
the West Coast, settling in one of the suburbs of Los

Angeles. Judy described the move as a mark for independ-
ence for her parents in separating from their parents.

Judy does not remember having many close friends
in elementary school or junior high school. She describes
herself as always getting along well with the members of
her family. Her father is an employee of a large engineer-
ing company. Her mother is a homemaker, and her parents
haVe been married for about twenty five years. Judy de-
Sc‘I‘ibes her father as more of a "partying person" than her
mother, however, and that is the source of whatever argu-

ments they usually have: whether or not to go out or stay

109

110
htnne. Her parents were openly affectionate with each
otflier and the children, though "not passionate really."
Tflie younger sister still lives at home, while the older
ssister is in the Air Force, and her brother recently mar-
ried and moved out though living in the same town as his
parents .
When Judy was 12 she was molested by a man in the
local park where she had been walking with a girlfriend
and her younger Sister and the friend's younger sister.
She told her parents, and the man was later arrested and
brought to trial, though acquitted. She remembers her
parents became really violent upon her telling them what
had happened to her, and she remembers her father "getting
a crowbar out and he was saying he was going to beat the
guy up. I was really bewildered at the time. I didn't
know what the guy was trying to do, I just knew it wasn't
right." The man was acquitted for "lack of evidence. They
said they couldn't convict him just because some little
girl says he touched her."
In high school Judy began using drugs heavily,
‘using anything that came her way but particularly L.S.D.
{She describes herself as quite immature at the time, simply
(icing what the other kids did. This included experimenting
Ivith sex, in which she was basically uninterested but she
tkuought she should like it since all the other kids did.
She: had intercourse for the first time when She was 16
‘Wifith a sadistic, disturbed young man who was her steady

boyfriend for the next eight months.

111

When he left town Judy and a friend went out a
couple of nights for "sports screwing" which involved pick-
ing up boys and after having sex with them in the car,
leaving them and verbally putting them down, reversing what
they felt were the more usual sex roles.

Around this time Judy began to go to high school
at night and she worked during the day. When she graduated,
she planned to go into the Air Force. She had met and
fallen in love with her husband, and after she became preg-
nant, she left the Air Force and got married.

After a few months of pregnancy, Judy began hemor-
rhaging and lost the baby. She was very upset by this ex-
perience, though her husband was able to provide some com-
fort. She is now somewhat frightened Of pregnancy, but
hopes to have one child in the future.

Judy plans to eventually go to medical school.

She would like to be a doctor for a small town somewhere.
.Judy feels her marriage to be strong. There are some prob-
lems, however, due to her bouts of depression and dis-
interest in sex, which, she says, stem from memories of

being raped.

APPENDIX G

CINDY

APPENDIX G
CINDY

Cindy is an attractive yet fragile appearing 27
year old woman who works as a waitress. She has completed
all but a thesis for a Master's. She has no intention of
returning to school, and She plans to become a kind of
crafts person who makes jewelry or furniture or knick-knacks
and sells them, traveling from craft fair to craft fair.

Cindy was born in the Midwest, the youngest
daughter of six children. She has four brothers and one
sister, who were from fourteen to twenty one years old at
the time of her birth. Thus She was raised much like an
only child. Her father, a laborer and truck driver, died
when Cindy was five. She has no memories of him or Of
her parents' relationship together. She does remember,
however, that as a child she missed having a daddy, and
once when she asked her mother about it, her mother said
that being married to one man for twenty to twenty five
years was enough for any woman. Her brothers were active,
however, in trying to fill in for her father.

Cindy remembers the years before college as dif-
iiicult for her. She went to private, Catholic elementary,

JCUIior and senior high schools, and She felt isolated and

112

113
friendless. She was a good student, but she felt her
education there was not very good. When she entered col-
lege she began to have more fun and develop more friend-
ships. She attributes her social success in college to
the fact that she had "learned to fight SO hard in high
school."

She had been fairly naive about sex, worrying well
into her teen's about how babies were made, wondering if it
had anything to do with sitting on boys' laps. She began
menstruating at 14 or 15 and remembers she had been afraid
she might never begin, Since all Of her friends had already
started by then. She cannot remember her mother's attitude
toward sex.

Her first experience with intercourse she described
as "fantastic," although later she added that She couldn't
really remember precisely when it was. She was 20, a senior
in college and had been casually involved with a man for
several months, sleeping with him regularly but not having
intercourse with him for a very long time. They were not
actually girlfriend and boyfriend. He was one Of the peo-
ple who lived in the house she lived in.

When She graduated from college, though she felt
attached to this man, she moved to Boston to find a job.
She did not meet many peOple or make any friends there,
although she got involved with her second sex partner
there, who "drOpped" her after two months. She became ex-
tremely depressed at that time, and applied for therapy at

a mental health center. After several months she was

114
assigned to a group, but by then she had already planned
to leave Boston and go back to the university for graduate
school. She did attend a few group sessions, finding it
helpful only in that She was given Valium, which seemed to
relieve some symptoms. (One problem which Cindy had not,
until recently, discussed with anyone, is her muscle tics
which she has had since childhood. She says that until she
discovered Valium in Boston, they were very noticeable and
would cause people to stare at her.)

One night while at graduate school, she impulsively
hitchhiked with a couple of friends (male and female) to
Aspen, Colorado, which is where she stayed for the next two
or three years. She lived with a man there with whom she
had a very stormy relationship, including physical fighting.
When they broke up finally, she moved to Denver where She
saw a psychological counselor for a few months who, Cindy
says, was very helpful to her. After a few months She
moved in with her current boyfriend. The two later moved
to California. Since he prefers the northern and she the
southern end of the state, they see each other as Often as
possible given the distance between them.

Cindy enjoys using drugs and alcohol. She seems
to prefer alcohol, which is more of a "party" drug to her,
though she also uses L.S.D. and "anything else I can find."
She tends not to smoke marijuana because it causes her to
become more withdrawn and physically tired.

Cindy contemplates marrying her boyfriend, although

she is not physically attracted to him. At times she feels

115
disgusted by all men, and intellectually considers "going
gay," though she doubts she ever will. She has recently
experimented with group sex, the homosexual components of
which made her slightly uncomfortable. She plans on moving

back to Colorado soon with her boyfriend from up north.

APPENDIX H
JOANNE

APPENDIX H
JOANNE

Joanne is a petite 23 year Old whose demeanor and
long straight hair suggest someone of teenage years. She
graduated from college in 1973 but is unemployed and col-
lects unemployment insurance. She Spoke very softly and
very rapidly, frequently mumbling or slurring her speech.
She was very hesitant about participating in the study, in-
sisting on a pseudonym from the first interview, and re-
fusing to allow tape recording from time to time.‘

Joanne was born in the Midwest and moved with her
family to the Los Angeles area when She was 11 or 12. She
has one brother, nine years her senior. Her parents are
upper middle class Jewish parents, whom, Joanne says, never
showed physical affection to each other or to their child-
ren.

Though she is nine years younger than her brother,
Joanne feels he was a very important influence on her
personality development. He was a "beatnik" in the 1950's,
and somehow he allowed Joanne to tag along to parties and
gatherings with his friends. She felt accepted by them
and grown up, and due to his influence, she says, She re-

alized that she did not have to agree with and Obey her

116

117
mother so much. Though she never sees him now, Joanne
continues to feel emotionally close to her brother.

Joanne has very vivid memories of various incidents
throughout her childhood. She tells of a series Of friend-
ships with girlfriends marked by a sense of competition and
rejection. She felt continuously under pressure by her
mother to conform, to pledge not to like rock n' roll, for
instance. She described herself as very compliant to her
mother's wishes.

When she was nine, Joanne's mother gave her a talk
about sex which included a discussion of V.D., contracep-
tives and prostitution. Joanne does not remember having
any sexual feelings until the day she first menstruated.
From that day on She was "hot," although she felt "brain-
washed" by her mother to think that premarital sex was bad.
Thus in her teenage years she had several experiences with
boyfriends in which she indulged in heavy petting, stOpping
Short of intercourse.

During this period she also found herself attracted
to Older black men from time to time. Once, when She was
15, her mother discovered her walking with a black man on
the beach and when she got home She was beaten by her
father with a strap. Since that time Joanne has continued
to be attracted to black culture.

Joanne did not want to go to college; in fact,
she wished to drOp out of high school. Somehow, She was
convinced to "compromise" with her mother, and so she

graduated early in an accelerated program. Then, somehow,

118
she was talked into going to college. After graduating
from college, She began graduate school, drOpping out due
to parental Objections. They preferred that She go to law
school, which She did. She then drOpped out Of law school
on her own and began another graduate program, drOpping
out after a few months. She worked for a while in a cler-
ical job, getting fired finally for coming in late. Since
then she has lived on unemployment insurance. She plans
on a Civil Service job eventually.

Joanne has been engaged once. Though he was nice
to her, She felt uncomfortable in the relationship with so
much attention from him. She still remains friendly with
him, but she is seeing several other men right now. She
says She prefers having several relationships going on at
one time.

At the time of her engagement, Joanne's mother
insisted that she see a counselor (her mother disapproved
of the marriage plans). She feels that the three months
of therapy were helpful in that she broke the engagement,
dropped out of school and was also able to financially

separate from her parents.

APPENDIX I
JACKIE

APPENDIX I
JACKIE

Jackie is 24 years old, a recent graduate from
college with a bachelor's degree. She Speaks rapidly and
clearly, most of her sentences seeming to be statements em-
phasizing hostility. At the same time she is polite and
even submissive in her actions.

She is the Oldest of two sisters, six years apart
in age. Her mother is described as controlling, wearing
the pants, sadistic and psychotic. Her father Spent five
years in a Nazi concentration camp, and is described as
passive, quiet, submissive and will do whatever his wife
wishes. Jackie remembers only one time that they were Open-
ly affectionate with one another, and she has no memories
of ever being cuddled or treated affectionately by them.

She believes that her sister gets along with them better
because they had already "crapped out" on her. When Jackie
was two, her parents separated for a while. She believes
She might have been their "excuse to stay together."

Jackie has very little memory of the events of
her childhood. She says her mother had written in her di-
ary that when she was six, her parents took her to a univer-

sity medical center for a psychiatric evaluation. She was

119

120
supposedly too independent and hyperactive. When she was
11 She was fitted for a back brace which She wore for the
next three years.

Another incident she remembers occurred when she
was about 12. She had stolen some headbands and when her
mother found them, she made Jackie undress completely and
she examined her vagina to see if her hymen had been broken.
She was very afraid of Jackie being promiscuous, although
Jackie reports she really had no interest in sex, but did
wish to do whatever her mother was set against. Conse-
quently, she saw herself as a "goody two Shoes" who tried
to get into "faster" crowds.

When she was a freshman in college, Jackie thought
that it was the appropriate time to lose her virginity.

She felt it to be a burden, and she finally decided to have
intercourse with a young man with whom She had gone out
once or twice. The experience was unpleasant but after
that she tried to make sure she slept with a man at least
once a month.

When she was 19 she became severely depressed and
attempted suicide by taking six Valium and telling her
mother. She was hospitalized at that point for six months.
On her release she was in the care of a half-way house, but
She felt "totally despairing, everything was meaningless,
there were no rules to follow in life, following my parents'
set of rules just got me into the hospital to begin with."
She became very promiscuous, stayed out past curfew, was

thrown out Of the half-way home, was arrested two days

121
later for possession of L.S.D. She Spent forty one days
in jail; her parents refused to bail her out. She was
manicky in jail so they sentenced her to commitment in
the state hospital. She was released after a few months,
but her parents "Shipped her back" until She was over 21
and of legal age. Finally, a social worker referred her
to a private psychiatrist, who she continued to see until
the present.

From 1970 to 1972 she supported herself by "turn-
ing tricks" and disability checks. When she was arrested
for prostitution She decided to cease that behavior. She
dates the beginning of identifying herself as a feminist
with the publication of the first issue of Ms. magazine at
the end Of 1972. She began to relate to women for sexual
gratification, though She has not really had a long term,
significant homosexual (or heterosexual) lover. She also
went back to college in 1973.

From time to time Jackie feels "disintegrated,"
with a sense of being totally empty inside. She has recent-
ly discontinued seeing her psychiatrist, who, she said,
gave up on her, and She terminated with her group therapy
group. Also, she recently stepped initiating communication
with her parents. She iS looking for a civil service job,
and She hOpeS her father will sell her a house he owns,
though she is not sure She is competent enough to take
care of it. She has one close girlfriend, but as She finds
herself less heterosexual, she says she can't enjoy being

with this friend as much, since the friend is a decided

122

heterosexual.

BI BLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Amir, Menachem. Patterns in Forcible Rape. Chicago:
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Bart, Pauline. "Rape Doesn't End with a Kiss." Unabridged.
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123

124

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