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Treating Emotional Trauma Caused by Parental

Abuse

ɳ Question

A considerable proportion of problems, difficulties and emotional
pathology of children (and of adults who are stuck in childhood)
arise from and are related to parental behavior and to inappropriate
and unhealthy parental relations toward their children. In the course
of psychotherapy, the therapist tries to help the children (or adult)
understand, identify and recognize latent feelings and conflicts and
the harsh reactions to which they give rise. They also encourage them
to express their feelings and to grapple in a more mature, more con-
structive and healthier way with their past experiences.

In family therapy the focus is on the unhealthy system and the
pathological relationships within the family which contribute to the
child’s problems of the child. (These include double messages relayed
by the parents, the children’s involvement in parental conflicts, ex-
treme parental demands and/or expectations from their children,
unethical and inappropriate behavior on the part of the parents, etc.)
In the context of private conversations the therapist is supposed to
either directly or indirectly heighten the patient’s awareness of the
parents’ role in his difficulties and his confusion and to encourage
him to direct his anger outward toward appropriate objects instead
of keeping it inside because internalizing it evokes excessive feelings
of guilt, self-flagellation and emotional symptoms which significantly
hamper a child’s or an adult’s day to day functioning.

An 18 year old girl sought psychotherapy for depression, severe
anxiety when in company and difficulty in concentrating on her stud-
ies. She applied for help without her parents’ knowledge because she
feared they would object and would punish her. At the third meeting
the patient told the therapist amid great difficulty and hesitation that
since she was ten her father had been abusing her cruelly and im-
modestly. She did not tell her mother about this because her mother

196 1 Medical-Halachic Responsa of Rav Zilberstein