Healing from incest: Resurrecting the buried self

Writers on the incest experience estimate conservatively that 10% to 30% of all girls and 30% of all boys have had at least one childhood experience of incest. Incest is emotionally devastating to a child as it involves betrayal, and the irretrievable loss of trust in the adults in the childʹs life. Little is written about the healing processes of incest survivors. The purpose of this study was to generate a substantive grounded theory that provides an explanatory schema for understanding the healing process of adult female incest survivors. The sample consisted of 10 adult women who had a history of incest and who volunteered to participate in in-depth interviews. Data were analyzed using grounded theory techniques. Data analysis revealed that these women had buried an integral part of the self because of the trauma of incest; The healing process required resurrecting the buried self through a series of seven phases. The model generated from this research provides a heuristic for nurse therapists that assists in assessing and counseling incest survivors.