Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Assessment of Perigenital Sensitivity and Prostatic Mast Cell Activation in a Mouse Model of Neonatal Maternal Separation
Published on: August 13, 2015
Early sexual abuse and nightmares in the analysis of adults
Abstract:
An examination of the nightmares of four adults in analysis who had been sexually abused as children revealed a characteristic distortion of the body representation as it appeared in the manifest content of the dream. The authors believe that childhood sexual trauma has profound and pervasive effects on the development and consolidation of the body image. Experienced as a grave assault on body integrity and function, it mobilizes primitive anxieties and specific genital anxieties, resulting in distortion, fragmentation, or disintegration of the body representation. The frequently observed multiple somatization of victims of sexual abuse is attributable to such a damaged and persecutory body representation.
Related Concept Videos
Theory of Romantic Attachment in Adulthood
Nightmares and Night Terrors
Nightmares often...
Psychosexual Stages of Personality: Oral
Weaning, typically occurring around the age...
Psychosexual Stages of Personality: Phallic
Psychosexual Stages of Personality: Genital
Psychosexual Theory of Development
The Five Stages of Psychosexual Development
Freud's psychosexual...

