Abstract
The women’s narratives indicate that intimate and cultural violence go hand in hand, and that healing requires attention to both areas. For whose initial experience of violence occurred when they were young, the difficulty in this healing is that the violation often had serious implications for their childhood ability to create boundaries and evaluate danger that often persists into their adult relationships. A second difficulty in healing is that given the ubiquitous nature of stereotypes about Black girls and women, the relational and cultural context within which they approach healing is embedded in hostile attitudes toward their race, gender, sexuality, and class. The women I interviewed responded to this challenge with coping strategies and connections that allowed them to survive and maintain their lives. I examine these processes in this chapter, including their perspectives on how sexual violence impacted their intimate decision making, and relationships/encounters that helped them navigate the hostile terrain of negative stereotypes that showed up in places and relationships that were important to them.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Phillis I. Sheppard, Self, Culture and Others in Womanist Practical Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 117–118. For the purposes of this research, analysis focuses on mirroring and idealizing self-object and cultural selfobject experiences.
Read Pamela Cooper-White, Many Voices: Pastoral Psychotherapy in Relational and Theological Perspective (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 111, for discussion of other selfobject experiences including twinship, alter ego, adversarial, and companion.
Laura S. Josephs, “The Treatment of an Adult Survivor of Incest: A Self psychological Perspective,” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 52 (1992): 210.
Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence: From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 110–111.
Heinz Kohut, “The Disorders of the Self and Their Treatment: An Outline,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 59 (1978): 417.
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000).
Tracy Robinson and Janie Victoria Ward, “A Belief in Self Far Greater Than Anyone’s Disbelief: Cultivating Resistance Among African American Female Adolescents,” in Girls, Women and Psychotherapy: Reframing Resistance, ed. Carol Gilligan, Annie G. Rogers, and Deborah L. Tolman (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press, 1991), 87–103, quoted in Phillis I. Sheppard, Self, Culture and Others, 118–119.
Heinz Kohut, Self Psychology and the Humanities: Reflections on a New Psychoanalytic Approach (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1985), 227.
Rosalyn M. Story, And So I Sing: African American Divas of Opera and Concert (New York: Harper Collins, 2000).
Copyright information
© 2014 Stephanie M. Crumpton
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Crumpton, S.M. (2014). Navigating the Hostile Terrain of Intimate and Cultural Violence. In: A Womanist Pastoral Theology against Intimate and Cultural Violence. Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137370907_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137370907_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-47818-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-37090-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)