Joumal of Analytical Psychology 1995, 40, 63~75 REALITY AND MYTHOLOGY OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE ADOLF GUGGENBUHL-CRAIG, Zurich During my thirty-five years of psychiatric practice, I have had to deal with many children who were sexually abused and with many adults who were abused in their childhood. I have also done many psychi- atric examinations of abusers. Because in recent years the public and the professionals have become more aware of child sexual abuse, I decided to give a course on this topic at the C.G. Jung Institute in Ziirich. To do that I studied older and more recent literature in order to understand better the subject with which I was dealing. The literature, the books and articles about this topic turned out to be very confusing. For instance, some authors claimed that more than half of all children were sexually abused and suffered great psychologi- cal damage through that abuse. Others maintained that only a very small percentage of children, maybe about 5 to 15 per cent were actually confronted with sexual abuse. And many authors were rather vague about what they meant by child sexual abuse. Some included everything from a pat on the shoulder by a so-called friendly uncle to actual brutal sexual intercourse; or dreadful abuse of children between the ages of 4 and 6 was lumped together with sexual experi- ences of girls or boys of 15 with older men. Modern experts, especially, were inclined to consider any kind of sexual experience of a child with an adult as extremely damaging, while others questioned this assumption. For instance a third of all child sexual abuse as it usually appears in statistics refers to experiences with exhibitionists; but does the sight of an exhibitionist really deeply damage a girl or boy of, say, 12 years of age? At the beginning of my lecture at the C. G. Jung Institute, I emphasized therefore that it is very important to study child sexual abuse carefully. I stressed that I wanted first to look objectively, so to speak in a ‘scientific’ way, at the phenomenon, and only then draw conclusions. This approach produced passionate protests from the audience. Women screamed at me and I was called ‘a pig’. They said, “We are dealing here with a crime, and not a phenomenon which has to be studied with a clear mind.’ Every form of sexual involvement 0at-8774 © 1995 The Society of Analytical Psychology64 A. Guggenbiihl-Craig of an adult with a child, whatever it may be, has to be considered a horrible crime and the only decent reaction is one of rage. When I later mentioned that we have to look at the offenders in a psychological way and try to understand what motivates them, some women left in protest and reproached me for being on the side of these disgusting criminals. Later I met groups of incest survivors for a discussion. Some of them expressed very radical views. One of them, for instance, said: ‘When you look out of the window in the evening and see the father of the neighbouring family sitting down on his little girl’s bed and giving her a good night kiss, call the police immediately, or get in touch with the social worker. Do everything to have this father removed from the house’. Some of them insisted that every man has to be considered a potential child abuser and rapist. Never leave your husband alone at home with the children, these women advised their sisters. The most harmless man is able sexually to misuse any child — including his own. After this lecture and these discussions I stayed in England for a few wecks and read the English newspapers. There were reports about satanic child rites, about circles of paedophiles who sacrificed children, killed them, ate them, etc. It was described in a newspaper how in those satanic rites children were induced to watch the horrible maltreatment and torture of other children, so as to intimidate them and make them submit to sexual misuse, instilling so much fear into them that they would never tell anyone else about their experiences. However, every time at the end of these articles, it was mentioned that so far no evidence could be found of these satanic rites and that the police has not yet discovered a single case. Some psychotherapists, however, claimed that they had reliable patients who told them that they were victims of such satanic rites. Many patients seem themselves temporarily to have forgotten that they were victims of these satanic rites, but in the course of a long analysis recalled that once they participated in these rites as small children. I then remembered from my school days the history of the order of the Knights Templar; this was a society of knights founded in 1119 for the protection of pilgrims to Jerusalem. The order was very wealthy, especially in France; after the fall of Acre in Palestine their function became obsolete because few pilgrims could travel to Jeru- salem any more. The order became disliked and aroused suspicions. In 1305 they were accused of heresy, but especially of sexual misdeeds. They were accused of being homosexual and of abusing little boys — and sometimes girls — or of secret satanic rites. In the end this order was eliminated and erased and many of them were burned at the stake.Reality and mythology of sexual child abuse 65 Talso recalled from my studies of Jewish history, how in the Middle ‘Ages Jews were accused of abducting Christian children, killing them and sacrificing them in satanic rites. Whenever those rumours started to spread, pogroms were the result and many Jews were killed. So there is apparently more involved in child sexual abuse than meets the eye. There are the facts of child sexual abuse with which we often have to deal in our daily psychiatric work. These sad facts are just now very much at the centre of public attention. And then there is a phenomenon which seems to be stimulated by child sexual abuse, a phenomenon which is difficult to catch hold of and to describe precisely, which has to do with the basic psychological atti- tude of the collective and individual conscious and unconscious. The concern which professional people in medicine and psychology, and the interest which the public in general shows for a particular topic is not only connected with the particular topic itself. When something is the centre of interest we have to study two layers: first the phenomenon in which we are interested, and then the psychologi- cal background of the people or the society who are interested in the topic. Everything which interests us is always an expression of our personal psychological needs and phantasies and at the same time is connected with our collective mythological background. I shall not so much discuss the phenomenon of sexual child abuse; I shall be more concerned about what this phenomenon provokes or stimulates in us, or what needs it satisfies. We live in a scientific age and science sails under the flag of cause and effect. This is adequate for the natural sciences, but not adequate for psychology. According to the psychology of C.G. Jung the psyche is acausal: it is not ruled by causes, and does not follow the law of cause and effect. What makes our psyche, what characterizes our soul, is the fact that this is a part of us which cannot be explained by causality. The psychic reality can only be expressed and approached through symbols, through images and through mythological, sym- bolical stories. To put it in extreme terms: all psychology is myth- ology, or: psychology is modern mythology. However, the need for causality is very deep. Events frighten us less when we think we have found out the cause, and we hope too that by finding the cause we can influence events, that we can influence nature, and the behaviour of human beings, and that we can bring about healing. Oddly enough, nothing has stimulated psychological mythology as much as the need for causality. With our need for causes for human behaviour, of human suffering and joy, we have in the last one hundred years created innumerable psychological mythologies, mostly however believing that these are causes. These so-called causes —66 A. Guggenbiihl-Craig which are in reality psychological mythologies - for instance of neur- osis, are well-known: working mothers, non-working mothers, patri- archal fathers, absent fathers, too much discipline, too little discipline, sexual over-stimulation, the taboos against sexuality, too much close- ness of parents and children —- spoiling, too much coldness of the parents towards the children, oral, anal, genital frustrations, oedipal complications, lack of mirroring, false self, etc., etc. Members of the older generation might remember that for decades masturbation was a so-called cause of all kinds of psychological dis- turbances and sufferings. By tying their hands one tried to stop children from masturbating, and the penises of little boys were sub- jected to electric shocks: a well-meant deterrent against harmful mas- turbation. Today the mythological nature of all these ideas about the harm which masturbation was supposed to produce can be very easily seen. The search for simple, easily understood causes in psychology still goes on, and over and over again produces very fruitful psychological mythologies. In recent years more and more neurotic behaviour has been explained as being the result of child sexual abuse; some experts say for instance that up to go per cent of all anorexia and bulimia is caused by child sexual abuse. Of course causality in psychology cannot be dismissed altogether. But it should be understood more as a symbolic image of connection. Different events in a human life are often connected in a mysterious way which is difficult to understand, but this is not necessarily a causal way. I shall now mention another attractive feature of the mythology of child abuse. However, first | must emphasize again that child sexual abuse does exist, and that an unbelievable amount of suffering is connected with it. But I am talking here about the cloud of psycho- logical mythology which surrounds this phenomenon. There is a naive belief or hope in most of us that good produces good and evil produces evil. This belief is a worldly form of a religious attitude or mythology. A psychological mythology is therefore especially attractive when it claims that a so-called cause which lies behind much of neurotic and psychotic behaviour is something evil. This gives us the emotion to fight against it, to direct our anger towards it. Child sexual abuse is an evil deed; it is immoral. This mythology satisfies our moral needs. It offers even more. Today we live in a time when society is changing from a patriarchal to a matriarchal one. The change has already taken place in many fields; men might still dominate political,Reality and mythology of sexual child abuse 67 industrial and business life, but they have already lost many battles: most families are internally matriarchal; men have less and less to say within the family. ‘This change from patriarchy to matriarchy is the result of a justified revolt of women against men, even a rejection, or a hatred of every- thing male. Extreme feminists see in the male sector of humanity the source of most evil; they claim, for instance, that war and political strife are the results of the domination of the male over the female. If women ruled the world, so they say, we would then have eternal peace, not realizing that Aphrodite and Ares were lovers. Child abuse is not only the ‘cause’ of most unfortunate psychologi- cal development; this cause itself is evil, and the evildoer moreover is a man. So the ‘cause’ of most of our psychological suffering, the suffering of the whole human race, is really the evil patriarch, the brutish male, who, as a sideline, sexually misuses children whenever he has the opportunity. So this child sexual abuse mythology, misunderstood as a cause, satisfies many needs, and this makes it all the harder for us first to investigate the phenomenon fully, and secondly to deal with it adequately. The crusader and fighter against crime take over. Now it will be understood why I aroused so much anger when I said in the introduction to my lecture about child abuse at the C. G. Jung Institute that we should first to try to study the phenomenon of child abuse carefully. This was a completely wrong attitude. The right attitude would be: You know what the cause is, and you know it is evil and criminal, and our duty is to fight it and not waste time in carefully studying it. Child abuse mythology has yet another aspect. I mentioned my discussions with groups of incest survivors. Some told me dreadful tales, many experienced unbelievable suffering at the hands of their fathers or father figures and as a result of the carelessness and neglect of their mothers. Other so-called incest survivors told fairly harmless stories, such as: A male teacher kept a 14-year-old girl behind after the class was dismissed to help her with her homework. While sitting beside her, he gently stroked her hair and her back. Or an elderly cousin told dirty jokes, or a step-father once looked at a 15-year-old girl, when she went out for a dance, with lecherous eyes. But whatever these stories were, most of these women felt injured and had a deep hate against the fathers or father-figures. Some of them thought the law should punish these sinners even twenty years after the dreadful deed had taken place. Most of these women were pleasant, intelligent and sensitive. The hatred against the father or the father-figures seemed to me to be so deep that I wondered if there was not a religious dimension to it. In68 A. Guggenbiihl-Craig some way we are all abused children, sexually and otherwise. We are abused by God the father. Life as such, sometimes through no fault of our own, can be dreadful. Diseases torture us, deficiences make our life difficult, misfortunes make us miserable, our heavenly father, in some incomprehensible way, mistreats us over and over again. I think it is rather unfortunate that we use as a symbol for God ‘the father’. This is a disadvantage for the actual human father. I wondered if some of these women were not wrestling with God himself. They mistook the actual physical father or father-figure in this world for God almighty and therefore attributed all the evil of the world to him and reproached him for it. Sexuality is sometimes connected with love. Even in child sexual abuse loving feelings often exist between abuser and abused. What better image could there be for the relation between God and humans? God often seems lovingly to abuse us. Or perhaps they are wrestling not so much with God as with Satan — the dark side of God - and his representatives on this earth. I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture the rumours about satanic rites where children were sacrificed or frightened into obedience and eternal silence. In the mythology of child abuse we find an accumulation of arche- typal symbols. The child for instance is more than simply John or Mary. The child is the symbol of the divine child, which can be found in nearly all religions, but most markedly in Christianity. The child Jesus, born in the stable of Bethlehem, was the beginning of a new era promising eventually heaven and paradise, and the salvation of the human race. Whenever something new, something which might save us, appears, either individually or collectively it is usually represented symbolically by the child. The child is a saviour. The extent to which the child is a mythological symbol is seen in the fact that the nations of the western world have fewer and fewer children. They seem to have little interest in actual children, but at the same time the interest in the child is out of all proportion — child psychology is ‘in’, toys, childrens’ clothes, books, etc., etc. ‘As soon as the divine child appears, however, the child destroyer and murderer appears too. As soon as Jesus Christ was born, Herod had all the young children killed. The archetype of the divine child, the hope of the world on one hand, and the child murderer, the destroyer of all hope on the other, are archetypal polarities that belong together. In the field of child sexual abuse it is nearly impossible to distinguish between clinical observation and mythological images and tales. Some child psychologists, for instance, claim that children never lie concerning child sexual abuse, although we frequently experience howReality and mythology of sexual child abuse 69 children make wrong accusations, often under pressure from one partner in a divorce case. But mythologically the child who never lies is a correct image; the divine child is innocent, truthful and can never tell a lie. Psychology, psychotherapy and analysis all have a mythological background. A large part of our psychotherapeutic work is based on mythology. For instance, we help the patient to create or find out the mythological background of his own life, to create his personal mythology. In the course of many hours of psychotherapeutic work the massa confusa, the meaningless chaos which seems to the patient to represent his own life and suffering, is turned into a meaningful mythological history, into a novel, a drama, a tragedy — and maybe even a comedy. This is a part of the healing effect of psychotherapy. An incomprehensible life becomes a meaningful biography. There are different psychological schools, which give the patient different so- called explanations for his suffering. And we psychotherapists often believe that what we are giving a patient is a causal explanation of his life, when in reality we are just giving him a mythological possi- bility of bringing some meaning to it. There is Freudian mythology, Kleinian mythology, Adlerian mythology, Kohutian mythology, Jun- gian mythology, etc. They all make out of the meaningless story of a patient’s life an interesting mythological biography. But the character, the quality of a particular mythology, cannot be neglected and has a deep influence on our psychotherapeutic work. Not all mythologies are healthy; some are sick, distorted, one-sided and can have a damaging influence. It was James Hillmans who pointed out that classical analytic work is mainly based on the mythology of the child and that we thereby turn patients into childish irresponsible people. Hillmans suspects that the mythology of the child which dominates psychotherapy usually leads to an undesirable infantilization of patients, who are then unable to become responsible adult citizens; they remain or become little children who continually complain about mama and papa. Hillmans was so disgusted by the damaging one-sided mythology of the child which dominated psychotherapy that he abandoned the work of analy- sis and psychotherapy altogether and declared it to be immoral. How- ever, if doctors gave a medicine which had too many side effects, that would not mean that no medicine should be given at all, but simply that the medicine should be improved. I would call this throwing out the baby with the bath water. However Hillman helped us to think deeply about what kind of mythology is informing our work, to become conscious of the kind of mythology we are following and to find out if it is helpful or damaging. That is what I am trying to do in reflecting about the70 A. Guggenbiihl-Craig mythological side of our interest in sexual child abuse. Here we are dealing with a particular aspect of the mythology of the child, namely with the mythology of the eternally abused child which is closely related to the mythology of the victim. So-called good, healthy mythologies, if I might give them these banal adjectives, contain polarities, opposites. Archetypes can be understood as polar and are therefore represented by images of polarity. There is male and female, puer and senex, parent and child, God and Satan, heaven and hell, Aphrodite and Ares, the wounded healer, Jesus Christ and Herod, the victim and the persecutor, etc., etc. Hillman is right to complain about the fact that our work is too much influenced by the mythology of the child, a very one-sided mythology indeed. But things get even worse when we work mainly with the mythology of the child as only innocent, abused, and victim- ized. I must repeat yet again that there exists in this world a great deal of horrifying child sexual abuse, which brings with it great suffering, and we have to do everything to prevent it. The interest of the professionals and the public in this topic might help us to do more for its prevention. But it is our duty too to look at the mythological/ psychological background of the present-day interest in child abuse, what kind of need this interest fulfils, what kind of mythology it stimulates and what positive or negative results these mythologies might have. One of the myths behind our current interest in child sexual abuse is, as I said, the unipolar myth of the innocent abused child and victim. And this myth does damage. It becomes difficult to study the facts rigorously. For instance, I said in my first lecture at the C.G. Jung Institute that in big cities — and no doubt in the country too - girls meet an exhibitionist once in a while, and that I am not sure if this really is always so damaging. The audience protested passionately. These inno- cent little girls are deeply wounded by the sight of an erect penis — there is nothing to discuss here, nothing to investigate. I also mentioned that, as far as I remember from my childhood — and observe today — most boys have once in a while in their childhood been approached by somebody in a homosexual way — perhaps by a cousin, an uncle, a neighbour or an unknown man. But in my experi- ence, these homosexual gestures do not always provoke psychological damage. They are usually discussed with some interest among other boys. Some women in the audience then called me a pervert. These innocent children have met Satan — meaning a slightly abusive maleReality and mythology of sexual child abuse n ~and therefore were deeply damaged. The fact that I even raised the question of whether any one form of so-called child sexual abuse might be less harmful than another made me into a male chauvinist pig. ‘The one-sided, unipolar mythology of the innocent child victim can harm psychotherapeutic work with children - or adults - who were sexually abused. This is shown for instance in the way many therapists deal with the problem of the guilt feelings of these patients. Children who have been sexually abused often feel guilty because they have the impression that what happened to them might have something to do with themselves too. Older children especially feel ambivalent towards the abuse; they are sometimes not quite sure if they got some slight enjoyment out of it, or if they even encouraged the abuser. Many psychotherapists do not accept this guilt feeling as in any way legitimate. They insist over and over again that there cannot be any question of the slightest guilt and encourage the child to forget about it, to suppress it. This attitude of the therapist can be damaging to the psychological development of the child. The child is understood purely as a victim and any attempt on the child’s part to take some responsibility for what happened, or at least to acknow- ledge her/his ambivalence, is wiped out. This fosters a victim psy- chology in the child, an attitude which consists in putting the blame for everything which happens on somebody else. The growing reali- zation in the child that he or she is partly responsible for many things which happened, or might be torn between repulsion and attraction, is nipped in the bud. The child as a whole human being is not taken seriously. It is understood only as an abused innocent child and a victim and not as a human being with all its possibilities, polarities, contradicting drives etc. A lot depends of course on the age of the child at the time of the abuse; the abuse of a 4-year-old is very different from that of a 14~ year old. Moreover much depends on whether the abuse was a violent rape or a gentle seduction, whether there was tenderness, or merely sheer sadism and brutality. Sexual abusers are very seldom unknown strangers, they are mostly men who have some relation or connection to the child, if not as fathers then maybe as uncles, older cousins, neighbours, etc. The abuse might be discovered by a third person, but the discovery is usually connected with something the child said or communicated. Therefore these children often feel that they have betrayed the abuser, that they have done something harmful to somebody who might be near to them. This is especially painful when the abuser was very close, for instance a well liked step-father or even father. The expertsp A. Guggenbiihl-Craig often advise the psychotherapists to help these children to overcome the feeling of betrayal completely, and to forget about it. Some psychotherapists are so completely caught by the one-sided mythological image of the innocent pure child and victim that they do not respect the actual psychological situation ~ and this situation is indeed very tragic. These children are very often caught between two conflicting loyalties, the loyalty to themselves and the loyalty to people around them. The child has to tell for instance what the father did to him or her, but at the same time this means a betrayal to the maybe well-liked father or father figure. These children are in a conflict which cannot be solved. Psychotherapy should help these children to sustain and stand this tragic conflict. This would help them to mature. All our lives, as children and adults, are full of tragic conflicts, and psychotherapists of children or adults have to help their clients to tolerate these conflicts and so to grow and develop. By treating these sexually abused children as unable to stand a tragic conflict, we deprive them of their human creative possibilities and abuse them in the sense that we see in them not real human beings, but only one-sided archetypal symbols. Something of this applies even to the treatment of offenders. Many of the men who abused little girls or boys claim that they loved these children, but that this love was expressed in a way that was too physical. For many people who deal professionally with children, children have a certain physical attraction, otherwise they probably could not stand to be around them all the time. And therefore often, for instance, teachers, who approach their pupils in a mildly sexual way, are good teachers, and have a genuine love for the children. These offenders defend their love strongly and feel in some way unjustly attacked. In treating the offenders we often make two possible mistakes, based on our one-sided mythology. On the one hand we present their action as purely evil and try to persuade them that they were evildoers and should change their mind and their attitude completely. We see them as devils and want them to see themselves in the same way. Or, what is even worse, we make them into victims too. We tell them that we know that most child abusers have been abused as children themselves, and that their actions are therefore not really their responsibility. By doing that we suppress their archetypal polarity: we fail to treat them as human beings, who are always partially victims and partially perpetrators, and therefore responsible to a varying degree for what happens. Being caught in the unhealthy mythology which is often behind our interest and our dealings with child abuse has other consequences. I said at the beginning of my paper that part of this mythology isReality and mythology of sexual child abuse 2 that we think we have found Satan in person. We begin to believe we have found the root of all evil, the so-called cause of most neurotic and psychotic development. This can turn us into fanatical missionar- ies. Lately in my control work I have often come across candidates who have tried, with a certain fanaticism, to find out in every patient some dramatic sexual event in their childhood. When an incestuous dream appeared they picked it up very eagerly and began questioning the patient about whether he or she did not remember some concrete incestuous happening in their childhood or some experience of sexual abuse. And sometimes the patient does not remember — but accepts that nevertheless something must have happened. I have even seen instances when, out of compliance with the analyst, the patient finally admitted to some horrifying factual sexual experience as a child. Psy- chology is not mathematics or physics, but mythology. As I said at the beginning, the psyche can be understood only through symbolic images and mythological tales. But the kinds of images and mytho- logical tales which influence us are very personal. That is why we have to be so aware of what personally guides us in our work. In addition to the mythological background which I have described, I wonder if there is not another related mythological issue involved, namely the like or dislike of the mythology of the family. The family is a small unit, sticking together, defending itself against the outside. Families guard secrets, dreadful secrets, harmless secrets and very creative secrets. Even today, many children are brought up in families and influenced in their attitude to life by the family. And this small unit is a place where tenderness and love flow on one side and where on the other side unchecked brutality, abuse of power and horror reign. Now for some people who are very much concerned with the happiness and the development of humanity, it goes against the grain that there exist little secret circles into which the state, the public, the social workers, the teachers, etc. cannot see, where they cannot inter- fere. These people have a kind of a collective social vision and would like everything to be run by so-called competent professionals. They would like children to be educated mainly by trained educators, and to go to school as early as possible. When the famous American educator, Dewey, was asked at what age children should go to school, he said: ‘As early as possible’. Psychologists and educators with a similar attitude would like all aspects of the life of society to be under the control of professional organizations; they would remove the power of all these little secret circles, and all these perverse little families. Professionals should teach the children to play in play groups; they should take over sexual education, and they should teach the children how to use their spare time.74 A. Guggenbiihl-Craig This myth of professionalism in relation to the family is connected to the present-day fascination for the archetype of the child. Even in its rudimentary form, the family is a ‘whole’, a unit, an adult, responsible organism; it contains everything, responsibility, irresponsibility, hate, love, loyalty, betrayal, maturity, immaturity, evil and good. And this rounded, whole organism has to be undermined, infantilized, made into an irresponsible, helpless childish unit, which has to be split and dominated by the priests of professionalism. ‘Parents are the only people who are absolutely incapable of bringing up their own children,” is the slogan. Of course child abuse often happens within the secret family circle. The enthusiasm for fighting child abuse, however, might be reinforced by a deep desire to take away the power of the family and to leave the education of children only to professionals, the high priests of the infantilization of humanity. To come back to the main theme of this paper: we all have our personal mythology - mostly based on the collective ruling myth- ology. And this mythology is never perfect, never completely bal- anced. Perhaps that does not matter much, as long as we realize that it is mythology — as long as Freudians realize that their oedipal stories are mythologies, Kohutians that their mirroring and narcissism, are mythological images, not scientific explanations, Jungians that their anima is a mythological figure, no more and no less. Mythological images guide us, make us feel at home, and promote healing. The difficulty is to show our patients that we are unable to explain their suffering; we are, so to speak, only able to make it more bearable by providing them with mythological tales. But we have to be careful that our mythological base is not too one-sided, and therefore damag- ing, like the one-sided ‘innocent, abused child’ and victim psychology. SUMMARY For the last few years the phenomenon of child sexual abuse has been very much the centre of attention for the public and for the pro- fessional psychological world. We should be thankful that at last we are no longer shying away from these occurrences which do so much damage to children and are much more frequent than was commonly thought. But more is involved in child sexual abuse than meets the eye. We are dealing with a collective psychological phenomenon, which at the same time seems to be connected with child sexual abuse, but also has to do with a basic psychological attitude of the collective and individual conscious and unconscious.Reality and mythology of sexual child abuse 75 In this article ] am not so much concerned with the phenomenon of child sexual abuse as such. I am more concerned with the collective psychological factors which stimulate our interest in this phenomenon. The concentration on child sexual abuse satisfies our need for caus- ality. We find it very satisfying to know the cause for any psychopath- ology, although as Jungian psychologists we realize that psychology cannot be explained by causality. The interest in child sexual abuse can also be seen as a pseudo- religious phenomenon. We are all abused by God the Father. But instead of wrestling directly with God, we are inclined to lay the blame for much of our psychological misery on our actual fathers. The concentration of many of today’s psychologists on child sexual abuse is fostered by the general prevalence of the mythology of the child and the victim. It is very important to acknowledge the collective mythological forces which are partly behind our interest in child sexual abuse, because only by being conscious of these are we able to study this phenomenon and to help without doing damage by distorting the psychological facts. Blindness towards the mythological background of child sexual abuse can lead to deficient therapy. BACKGROUND READING. Bentovim, A., Elton, A., Hildebrand, J., Tranter, M., and Vizard, E. (eds). (1988). Child Sexual Abuse Within the Family: Assessment and Treatment. London: Wright. Driven, E., and Droisen A. (eds). (1989). Child Sexual Abuse: Feminist Perspectives. London: Macmillan Education. Jung, C.G. (1938). ‘Psychology and religion’ (The Terry Lectures). Coll. Wks 11. Masson, J.M. (1984). The Assault on Truth. London: Faber. Miller, A. (1983). For Your Own Good: The Roots of Violence in Child Rearing. London: Virago. (1986). The Drama of Being a Child. London: Virago. (MS first received January 1992)