Title : Study of resilience in cases of incest, father-daughter, step-father and step-daughter in the pre-pubber and puberous period among adult women and mothers: How to overcome the traumatisms of an incestuous relationship?
Abstract:
Sexual abuse of a child is a form of maltreatment. Among recent studies in this area, the Canadian study (Burczycka and Conroy, 2017) indicates that 70.3% are intrafamilial abuse and that of all cases of sexual abuse, 81% of victims are female (Silva and Collin-Vézina, 2017) and that the majority of victims feel deleterious effects (Bilan DPJ-DP, 2017; Koçtürk and Yuksel, 2019). However, over the past thirty years, research has highlighted the possibility of recovery for victims of incest (Berthelot et al., 2019). These “so-called resilient” people used adaptive strategies allowing them to protect themselves from the trauma of the abuse of which they were victims (Barnes and Josefowitz, 2014; de Becker and Maertens, 2015). This thesis reports the results of research carried out with 33 adult women and mothers who experienced incest during childhood and/or adolescence at the hands of their father or stepfather. To do this, a mixed analysis (Student’s t test and multiple regression analysis) was used to establish two profiles and to respond to the following three hypotheses: adaptation strategies, the attachment bond and mentalization. The first results converge with the state of knowledge on the issue, since 21 refers to participants with traditional clinical impacts and 12 refers to participants engaged in a resilience process. Student’s t test results showed no difference, but Cohen’s (1988) d effect size indicated higher d at subscales and multiple regression analysis showed three unexpected results. The results of the qualitative analysis are in the same direction as those above. To conclude, the present doctoral study corroborates research which shows that resilience is difficult to operationalize.
