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‘Misery Loves Company’: Sexual Trauma, Psychoanalysis and the Market for Misery

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Abstract

This article examines sexual ‘misery memoirs’, focusing on author/reader and genre/market relationships in the context of models of trauma and child sexual abuse. It shows that the success of sexual ‘misery memoirs’ is inextricably bound up with the popular dissemination of a feminist-psychoanalytic model of traumatic memory that has taken place since the 1970s. It also argues that, as the ‘truth’ of recovered and traumatic memories has been fundamental to its success, anxieties about false memory and hoax ‘misery memoirs’ have posed a challenge to the genre and established a market for ‘retractor’ narratives.

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Notes

  1. The term ‘feminist-psychoanalytic’ is taken from the work of Judith Haaken, who uses it to describe her own approach to CSA and therapy (Haaken 1994).

  2. There are exceptions to any rule and it is, of course, possible to find CSA and incest narratives written by males. However, such texts are not representative of the female-dominated genre and often relate to issues such as church-based sexual abuse. Such books should be considered part of a distinct sub-genre, not included under the sexual ‘misery memoir’ umbrella, because they emerged in different contexts and do not necessarily share the same markets as the books discussed in this article.

  3. for further discussion of the different ‘traditions’ in the context of CSA, including the difference between psychoanalytic and psychiatric traditions, see Sanderson 2006, 108–114.

  4. Although this article uses the 2004 Corgi edition, the book was originally published by Bantam Press a year previously.

  5. Although some scholars have disputed the common claim that Freud abandoned his seduction hypothesis completely, such debates are beyond the scope of this paper. Whether Freud fully retracted his seduction theory or not, it remains indisputable that ideas about the prevalence of CSA and recovered memories were not widely accepted until the late-twentieth century; see (Kahr 1991 and Hacking 1999).

  6. The ghostwriter’s credits include Anna Lowe’s Wake up Mummy: An Abused Little Girl, A Mother Too Drunk to Notice, another sexual ‘misery memoir’ from 2010.

  7. Not all authors of sexual ‘misery memoirs’ advocate the psychoanalytic or psychiatric interventions that were involved in their treatment; see Dardenne 2006, 150. However, those that dismiss psychoanalysis in this way are atypical and therefore it is reasonable to assert that most sexual ‘misery memoirs’ include some form of testimonial to the success of professional intervention—even if only advocated in combination with self help.

  8. see also Gilmore’s reference to the ‘self-narrator … imaging a reader’ and the importance of ‘attending to the addressee or implied reader of a life narrative … to observe subtle shifts in narrative intent’ (Gilmore 2001, 68).

  9. For a thorough description of the Jungian process see Ellenberger 1994.

  10. As Leith observes, regarding the genre more broadly, ‘there is something blackly comical about quite how generic their marketing is. Look on Amazon, under “Customers who bought this item also bought”, and you can see a great endless ribbon of more or less identical covers’ (Leith 2008).

  11. Although sales figures for My Lie are not yet available, the sales figures and international distribution of Out of the Dark indicate that the impact of such ‘misery memoirs’ is extensive both within and beyond the authors’ country. The Anglo-American feminist and psychoanalytic traditions are also comparable, in terms of the similar and interconnected development of CSA and trauma narratives.

  12. Sales figures for My Lie are not yet available.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck (University of London), and Dr Sarah Toulalan, University of Exeter, for reading earlier drafts of this article. I also extend my gratitude to the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/H019553/1] for supporting my larger historical project on medicine and sexual offences against children.

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  1. Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Victoria Bates

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Bates, V. ‘Misery Loves Company’: Sexual Trauma, Psychoanalysis and the Market for Misery. J Med Humanit 33, 61–81 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-012-9172-x

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