SPECIAL FEATURE Long-Term Sequelae of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Perceived Family Environment, Psychopathology, and Dissociation

In this study, 105 abused and nonabused women were examined for patterns of adult psychopathol-ogy associated with childhood sexual abuse and to test the extent to which these patterns are independent of other pathogenic properties of the family environment. Clinical and nonclinical Ss completed the Family Environment Scale, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), the Rorschach, and the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale. Greater nonspecific impairment among abused women may be a consequence, at least in part, of pathogenic family structure rather than sexual abuse perse. However, MMPI and Rorschach responses suggest sexual abuse may render victims especially vulnerable to specific disturbances involving soma and self. Abuse was associated with greater use of dissociation, but covariance analysis revealed this effect to be accounted for by family pathology. There was no evidence that sexual trauma is associated with hypnotizability. A satisfying, empirically based understanding of how child-hood sexual abuse affects later adult adjustment remains quite elusive despite extensive study. This problem has been aggres-sively pursued in two relatively noninteracting clinical research traditions—not surprisingly, findings and inferences have ap-peared disconnected and sometimes at odds. In the general developmental psychopathology literature, childhood sexual abuse has been associated with the following in a broad spectrum of adult symptoms and pathology acros