Recently Published
Beyond Betrayal: Taking Charge of Your Life after Boyhood Sexual Abuse
Providing empowering action steps and written specifically for survivors of male sexual abuse as well as their spouses, partners, and loved ones, Beyond Betrayal is based on Richard Gartner's decades of experience as a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and advocate for sexually abused men. Covering both male and female abuse of boys and young men, Dr. Gartner explores the different types of abuse and explains how as a child one trusts out of necessity—and how the betrayal of that trust ravages one's self-concept as a man while also wreaking havoc on one's relationships. In reading this book, you'll discover how to safely experience emotions again and relate to others with confidence and security. Dr. Gartner also helps you shed the long-held conviction that you can either be a man or a victim but not both, and he teaches you how to determine who you really are and develop new, more flexible concepts of masculinity. Beyond Betrayal shows you that you can take charge of your recovery while living your life to its fullest potential.
A portion of all book sales from this web site will go to MaleSurvivor.
Excerpts from writings by Richard Gartner, Ph.D.
Betrayed
as Boys
“Betrayed as Boys”
is about what happens to boys who grow up in dreadful circumstances, often in
a family where incestuous boundary violations repeatedly recur. It is also about
the psychotherapeutic treatment of these boys when they become men who at last
must face their abusive histories. Finally, it is about the inner experience
of therapists who try to draw on their skill and inner resources as they evolve
in very complex treatment situations.
A portion of all book sales from this web site will go to MaleSurvivor.
Finding
a Therapist
How should you go about finding a therapist? Dr. Gartner
explores this and other questions in this excerpt from his book Beyond Betrayal.
Memories
of Sexual Betrayal
This discourse is about how to understand those who as adults
seem to recall hitherto “forgotten” memories of sexual betrayal,
especially those who “recover” these memories while in a therapeutic
setting.
Buy Memories of Sexual Betrayal
What
About the Boys?
Sexually abused boys are likely to face problems as adults,
but the good news is that healing is possible.
Cinematic
Depictions
How have movies portrayed forced, incestuous, or inappropriate
sexual relations with underage boys? The films I discuss demonstrate how deeply
ingrained in our culture is the expectation that boys will encode early sexual
behavior with women as pleasurable initiations. By contrast, sexual behavior
between boys and men is portrayed as shameful in the movies, something to be
hushed up or, perhaps, revenged. Together, these characterizations reinforce
and perpetuate attitudes toward sexual victimization that make it difficult
for boys to process and heal from traumatic experiences.
Predatory
Priests
The media, the public, and the Church have spotlighted the
effects of the scandals on the Church rather than the effects of priest abuse
on its victims. Child sexual abuse has ominous relational implications for its
victims. It often results in distrust of authority; seeing relationships in
hierarchical, exploitative terms; distance and isolation; and fear of relating.
Dissociation, an adaptive response to trauma, can become a characteristic, dysfunctional
response to stress. Boys often have particular problems because of socialized
masculine-gender norms that men are not victims and concerns about the implications
of same-sex abuse for their sexual orientation.
Coming
to Terms with Sexual Abuse
The media, like the public at large, is more comfortable
thinking about the effects of the scandal on the Church than about the effects
of sexual abuse on boys.
Aftereffects
of Boyhood Sexual Abuse
Since 1980, there has been an outpouring of books and papers
on childhood sexual abuse. The emphasis in them has nearly always been on sexually
abused girls and their reactions to the abuse as women. But, as Holmes and Slap
(1998) conclude, “the sexual abuse of boys is common, underreported, underrecognized,
and undertreated”. Approximately one in six boys experiences direct sexual
contact with an adult or older child by age sixteen.
Sexual
Victimization of Boys by Men
Sexual abuse of boys by men and older boys has been misunderstood
in the professional and lay literatures. Confusing same-sex victimization with
homosexual orientation, many abused boys, and people they talk to about it,
understand it as a sign of the victim’s or the abuser’s homosexuality.
Goals,
Process, Themes and Treatment
What can we hope will
happen by the end of psychotherapy for an adult who was sexually abused in childhood?
A number of writers have addressed the steps and/or the process of therapy with
sexually abused adults. Here is a general description of the recovery process.
Myths
about Boyhood Sexual Victimization
Preconceptions abound
about the sexual abuse of boys and men. Here are some of the common myths.
Testimony
of Dr. Richard Gartner before the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Subcommittee
The text of Dr. Gartner's
statement before the Senate Subcommittee on January 26th, 2004, supporting a
change in New Jersey's law which would help to protect children from sexual
predators in charitable organizations.
Sexually
Abused Men:
An On-Line Discussion at HealthyPlace.com
Follow the above link
for a transcript of Dr. Gartner’s on-line discussion with audience members
at HealthyPlace.com about male sexual abuse and the stigma surrounding it. Topics
range from depression, flashback and compulsive behaviors as coping mechanisms
to how being betrayed affects intimate relationships in adulthood.