Whose Dissociation Following Sexual Harassment? (article)

Many people over the years have responded to reports of sexual harassment, or even the idea of it, in the same way that many reacted and still do react to rape: “No, it couldn’t have happened,” “he couldn’t have done that,” or “it couldn’t have happened that way.”

Even if they realized that yes, he could have done it, or yes, he did do it, so often there was a sense of disbelief, and a need to protect the harasser, not the women, girls, men, or boys who have been harassed. Until this past year, beginning with accusations against Harvey Weinstein, harassment survivors have so often been doubted or accused of lying; even if they were believed, the harass-

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ment they suffered was diminished or denigrated.

The lack of trust, empathy, and compassion in those responses has secondarily traumatized many harassment victims. It also reveals that those who don’t believe and validate the harassed may well be in denial and dissociation of a painful truth: “It could happen to me.”

Sexual harassment as defined by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. It has taken a concerted public expression of rage for accused harassers to be held accountable, and for society to begin ending its long inability, perhaps refusal, to recognize sexual harassment as hostile, an attack that is damaging to the people who have suffered and survived it. As Louise Fitzgerald noted in “Still the last great open secret: Sexual harassment as systemic trauma” (Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 18:4, 2017, 483-489):

[S]exual harassment remains today the most pervasive form of violence against women, often encompassing other forms of violence in its ambit. This stubborn and pernicious persistence rests largely on (1) a pervasive system of attitudes and beliefs, accruing over centuries and embedded in a variety of cultural institutions, that denies and rationalizes systemic abuse of women; and (2), the organizational and institutional actors that serve to maintain this system….

Many studies have been conducted and papers written the past three decades about the impact of rape, sexual assault, and harassment on the people who suffer them. There have also been studies that have shown that secondary victimization occurs when authorities do not believe but rather insult, criticize, or otherwise mistreat people (most often women) when they report rape, sexual assault, or harassment. Margaret E. Bell, Amy E. Street, and Jane Stafford found that the psychosocial well-being of sexual harassment victims in the military was affected by whether they were treated compassionately or mistreated when they reported the harassment to authorities. The authors believe the same results would be reached in civilian cases (“Victims’ Psychosocial Well-Being After Reporting Sexual Harassment in the Military,” Journal of

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Trauma & Dissociation, 15:2, 2014, 133-152).

What researchers don’t tell us is why society needs to disbelieve or discount reports of harassment. What unconscious dynamics make people who are willing and able to believe someone’s account of theft or nonsexual assault not only disbelieve the survivor of a sexual attack, but to feel more empathy for the attacker? This question has also come up in response to Jerry Sandusky’s sexual assault and rape of boys at Penn State, and after a judge sentenced a former Stanford University student to six months in jail and three months’ probation for rape, reasoning that “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him” (Liam Stack, “Light Sentence for Brock Turner in Stanford Rape Case Draws Outrage,” The New York Times, June 6, 2016).

Many news stories and articles have tried to find answers. One continually cited reason is fear of retaliation—it has silenced low- and mid-level managers who are aware of a superior’s harassing or abusing behavior. Another reason is the fear no one will believe them.

One reason for the disbelief is a lack of understanding about shock, post-traumatic stress disorder, and dissociation that can make a sufferer seem calm in the eyes of someone who expects tears, anger, or hysteria. Conversely, those who are overwhelmed by someone else’s pain and emotions often need to deny them—family members, co-workers, supervisors, friends, and law enforcement officers. Even mental health clinicians dissociate; many of us have found ourselves dissociating as a patient described horrific treatment by an abuser or rapist. Of course, if we are alert for our countertransference, we can try to be sure we stay present with our patients.

It’s also likely true that many people haven’t wanted to believe that harassment is an attack and that someone who has been harassed can be as traumatized as anyone else who has been sexually assaulted (and harassment is often accompanied by sexual assault or misconduct). Fitzgerald is unequivocal that harassment is violence, but she also acknowledges that there is a myth in society that claims “it’s no big deal” (“Still the last great open secret,” 486). Therein may lie the ultimate answer to why anyone would not believe or be empathic to someone who has been harassed: they need to make it no big deal because they want to deny and dissociate from the fact that it could happen to them. The possibility of at-

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tack, invasion, denigration, and being helpless is too painful to consciously acknowledge.

Literature across the spectrum of mental health recognizes that with sexual abuse, assault, and rape, there is often dissociation and denial. Jody Messler Davies and Mary Gail Frawley devote a large part of their book, Treating the Adult Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse (1994), to working with a patient who remains dissociated years after being attacked. Actors Rose McGowan and Natassia Malthe recall dissociating after they were raped by Harvey Weinstein.

Society’s reluctance to recognize harassment as violence isn’t surprising considering how it is only in the last half-century or so that it has started to condemn the practice of blaming rape victims. There are so many ways of attacking someone that society has not hesitated to acknowledge: beating, stabbing, shooting, murdering. However, these crimes don’t incite dissociation and denial—or blame and disbelief of victims—in the way that sexual assaults ranging from harassment to rape do. It is clear to me that the problem is the fear among men and women who disbelieve and denigrate that they too could be vulnerable to sexual invasion.

Louise Fitzgerald’s paper was published just last year, before the wave of revelations and accusations of harassment by powerful men. There is now more of a public acknowledgment that sexual harassment is wrong, and that many people chose to look the other way, protecting the accused and dismissing those who were harassed. Of course, we don’t know how much dissociation and denial will be present when each instance of harassment is reported. We don’t know how many people need to dissociate, disbelieve, and consciously or unconsciously pretend that it can’t happen to them.

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