Healing Sexually Betrayed Men and Boys: Treatment for Sexual Abuse, Assault, and Trauma is the new authoritative source for treatment of sexually victimized men and boys. Male victims and survivors of sexual trauma lived in shadow until the turn of the 21st century, when scandal after scandal about the sexual abuse of boys and men shed light on their suffering. These men and boys require different treatment roadmaps than their female counterparts. Yet there is little in the professional literature to help a clinician work with sexually traumatized boys and men.
Richard B. Gartner is a seasoned psychologist/psychoanalyst who has worked therapeutically with sexually abused men for over three decades. He is a clinician, advocate, teacher, lecturer, and nationally and internationally recognized expert on the subject. Dr. Gartner’s classic book, Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic Treatment of Sexually Abused Men, is one of the few written to guide clinicians. Now, nearly two decades after writing that groundbreaking volume, he follows up on his earlier work. Healing Sexually Abused Men and Boys, together with its companion volume, Understanding the Sexual Betrayal of Boys and Men, is a thorough, comprehensive guide to learning about and healing male victims and survivors.
Dr. Gartner has invited a group of experts to write about specific problems faced by these boys and men. Specialists from the psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, trauma, and legal worlds fill in the details about a wide range of interconnected subjects related to the complex reverberations of male sexual trauma. Healing Sexually Betrayed Men and Boys covers such diverse topics as:
- therapy with young sexually traumatized boys;
- the aftermath for men who were raped as adults ;
- covert seduction of boys and its aftereffects;
- treatment for substance addictions and sexual compulsions;
- couples work with male survivors and their partners or spouses;
- bodywork with male survivors;
- treatment for male veterans who suffered sexual trauma in the military;
- profiling sexual predators and working with survivors who have also been sexual predators.
This book is a valuable resource for clinicians at every level of training. With strategies for how survivors can build support networks and descriptions of clinical, familial, and community-based treatments, Healing Sexually Betrayed Men and Boys is essential reading for clinicians of all theoretical persuasions who work with male sexual abuse survivors. Filling in gaps in the relatively scant literature on the subject, it will also help sexually abused or assaulted men themselves understand what is available to them.