The body responds to extreme experiences by secreting stress hormones. These are often blamed for subsequent illness and disease. However, stress hormones are meant to give us the strength and endurance to respond to extraordinary conditions. People who actively do something to deal with a disaster—rescuing loved ones or stranger, transporting people to a hospital, … Continue reading →

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April 14, 2023 9:31 am

One of the ways memory of helplessness is stored is as muscle tension or feelings of disintegration in the affected body areas: head, back, and limbs in accident victims, the private parts and rectum in victims of sexual abuse. The lives of many trauma survivors come to revolve around bracing against and neutralizing unwanted sensory … Continue reading →

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April 13, 2023 12:44 am

Violence seems to beget violence, from generation to generation. In violence, we do not just consider injuring others but also give the green light to doing so, often with a forceful as unrestrained as it is self-justified. Vengeance, bloodlust, severe dehumanization, rape, torture, acting with extreme prejudice—whatever its form, violence is aggression with no restraints, further fueled by a mindset that adds an emphatic, not-to-be debated stamp of approval. There are plenty of views about what constitutes and causes violence, but any deep understanding of violence has to include our capacity for extreme aggression and the dehumanizing of others, especially toward those who offend us. How do women cope with their experiences of wife rape? Women implement a variety of coping strategies to deal with the violence in their lives and protect themselves from harm. Women who are abused by their husbands must manage the violence and this involves the attachment of meaning to the violence and development of strategies to cope with it. The meanings the woman attaches to the violence and the resources she believes she has shape strategies for living with, or ending the violence. Women coping with sexual violence is defined as the actions take to avoid or control distress. Women’s coping responses are active, constructive adoptions to the experiences of abuse. The responses of any particular woman will depend on how she defines her experience, the context within which it occurs, and the resources which are available to her at the time and subsequently. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

Just as battered women and other survivors of repeated acts of violence learn to manage the violence, my research indicates that wide rape survivors too develop strategies to cope with their experiences of sexual abuse, beginning with the first incident. For the majority of women in this study, the first forced sexual experience was merely one in a long line of abuses to come. Indeed, only seven women were able to escape the relationship after having been raped only once. Six of these women terminated their relationships immediately after the first incident of rape. Those women were either separated or seriously considering separation from their partners at the time of the rape, and several had the economic resources to survive on their own. For example, Rhonda and her husband were separated at the time of the incident but maintained an amicable relationship. On the night of the rape, he entered her house, which was not unusual, and then, she says, “It was like something just snaped in him. He grabbed me and said, ‘We gonna have sex, I need to f*ck.’” Rhonda was raped for 7 hours before her husband finally left. At the time of the rape, Rhonda owned her own home, had a job, and was already separated from her assailant, so the decision to remove herself from any further contact with her husband was easy to make. Whereas Rhonda’s circumstances allowed her to immediately end all contact with her husband, most of the women in this study were not in a position to do this. For example, although Karen also identified her first experience as rape, it took her 2 month to save money and finalize her plans to leave. She was raped 11 more times during this period. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

The vast majority of women in this sample did not leave the relationship after the first incident but instead tried to manage the violence. After the first incident, all of the women reported feeling a similar sense of shock that the assault was happening to them and a general feeling of disbelief that someone they loved was responsible for their pain. Debbie is typical in her response to the first rape: “The first time, I though, ‘I don’t believe this is happening, I just don’t believe it.’ I was in shock—totally numb—and I don’t know how I ever got over being that numb. It just blew me out, and I thought this can’t be happening to me.” Most of the women reported that they though the first assault was an aberrant incident that would never happen again. Shock, confusion, anxiety, fear, helplessness, and a belief that this will only happen once are common psychological responses to victimization. Indeed, for most victims of haphazard crimes, this coping mechanism of treating the incident as a single occurrence may suffice. However, many survivors of wife rape (more than 80 percent of women in this sample) learn that the first incident is not aberrant but an ongoing problem. Thus, after the initial shock has ceased, survivors of wife rape are forced either to develop strategies to manage the violence or end the relationship. Two fundamental goals in managing violence are protecting oneself from injury and justifying the continuation of the relationship. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

During the course of the relationship, a woman’s coping strategies often change as it becomes clear to her that she will or will not be able to avoid an assault. My interviews revealed that a variety of strategies were employed by women to protect themselves, including minimizing the risk of violence, diminishing injuries once the violence had begun, and emotionally surviving the violence. A primary way women in this sample tried to cope with being raped by their partners was to minimize the risk that violence would occur. As Sally told me, “You know what’s gonna happen, and you’re trying to think in your brain, how can I stop this without getting hurt? And you don’t know how to stop it without angering him because you know you’re going to get killed, and it’s like looking a murderer straight in the eye, and they have this cold-blooded look, and you know you’re dead unless you can do something.” There were several strategies implemented by women to minimize the risk that they would be sexually assaulted. Active resistance—most women in this sample attempted, on at least one occasion, to minimize the risk of violence by physically resisting their partners. One quarter of the women in this sample were successful at least once in resisting their husbands’ attempt to rape them. For example, Erica physically resisted to the point where her husband grew tired and gave up. On one occasion, Samantha was able to kick her husband in the groin and escape. Several other women used weapons, such as guns or knives, to deter their partners; Teri stabbed her partner in the arm with a kitchen knife. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Clearly, these women were courageous and creative in their attempts to resist their partners’ attacks. However, most of the women in this sample said they learn not to resist but merely to “give in.” Debbie recalled how she quickly learned not to resist her husband: “I love in an apartment where you go up the steps to get in, and do you know how many times I’ve been dragged up the stairs? Get away? It just doesn’t happen. So I learned quick, and then I never fought back or anything because it would just prolong the agony. It’s over quicker if I just give in.” Avoidance—most of the women in this sample found that a more successful strategy than active resistance was simple avoidance. Indeed, several women tried a tactic similar to Natalie’s: “He would come home from work angry over something and take it out on me. So I would try to stay out of his way.” Danielle knew that she was particularly at risk for being sexually assaulted after her husband watched pornographic movies, so she made extra efforts to avoid him at these times. Many women avoided the bedroom, feigned sleep, or went to bed only after they were certain their partners were asleep. Other women in this sample used more direct tactics to avoid their husbands. For example, Debbie particularly feared her husband when he had been drinking. When he came home drunk, she regularly took advantage of his ulcer by putting tabasco sauce into his food. The result was that he became very thirsty and continued to drink more beer, not realize why he was so thirsty. Debbie says that, “if I was lucky; he would pass out and leave me alone.” Otherwise, Debbie was forced to have sexual intercourse until he passed out from sheer exhaustion. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Placating their husbands—the most popular tactic for minimizing the risk of assault was for women to placate their husbands. Placation took many forms, including not seeing close friends of whom their husbands did not approve, quitting their jobs, distancing themselves from their families, maintaining a clean home, having dinner ready at specific times, and keeping the children quiet at all times. These were all components of what these women perceived as their roles as “good wives,” and they tried actively to meet their husbands’ expectations in order to avoid violent episodes. The majority of women told stories similar to this account by Annabel, who remained with her husband for 29 years: “I felt if I could just be what he wanted—a good wife—and stay at home, then he would stop.” Cory remembered thinking, “OK, I can play housewife, I can do that.” Like many battered women, most of the women in this sample understood that if they could fulfill their partners’ expectations about being a good wife and mother, they would reduce their risk of experiencing violence. However, it should be emphasized that these women were not merely passive in their acceptance of their husbands’ demands and gender role expectations; placating their partners was an active coping strategy used to minimize their risk of being abused. Although most of the women went to great lengths to please their husbands, they all learned that they could not manipulate every situation and avoid being sexually assaulted. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Thus, they tried to minimize their injuries as a way of maintaining some form of control over the violence. Stacey said, “I would try to manipulate him during the sex, not for my own needs or orgasms, but to control his anger and try to reduce it so I wouldn’t het really hurt.” Many of the women tried to appease their husbands sexually in order to minimize their risk of harm. For example, Annabel knew that she had to “service him [her husband] to keep the peace.” Natalie told me, “I would fake it (orgasm)—I was the best damn actress—I could have won an award. I even did things to him when there were tears in my eyes.” One quarter of the women in this sample said they sometimes performed oral sex on their husbands, although they despised this act, so that the abuse would end quickly. This was particularly difficult for several of the women, who were incest survivors and recall being forced to engage in fellatio with their assailants when they were children. Other women in this sample recalled engaging in what they referred to as “perverse” activities, such as anal intercourse and bondage, to reduce their risk of injury. Although she despised having anal intercourse, Lorraine remembered that she allowed her husband to do this so that he would not severely batter her in front of the children. When rape appeared inevitable, these women had little choice but to focus their energy on limited their injury and emotionally surviving the attack. All of the women who experienced more than one assault described mechanisms that allowed them to survive the actual rape. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

When it comes to incest survivors, many victims of sexual assault resort to psychological measures to minimize the trauma. Some women find their time perception and sensory perception altered as they disassociate themselves from the experience or treat it as if it is happening to somebody else. This process is defined as “cutting off” as not just a coping strategy but also an act of resistance. In doing this, a woman refuses to let her partner control her mind and feelings. One of the most prevalent survival strategies was best described by Debbie as “orbing out.” She recalled, “He would be all over me, and then I just went out in my mind—I just wasn’t there anymore. I took myself somewhere else, and I fond out later that I had done that a lot. Even growing up and all, if anything hurts me, I orb out—I get total numb. Although this strategy was consistently employed, particularly by the one quarter of the women in this study who were survivors of incest, some women reported out-of-body experiences only during certain episodes. For example, Karen described having “out-of-body experiences—like I was watching from a corner of the room because I couldn’t feel anything”—only during the sexual assaults but not during the physical assaults. Several other women said they coped with the actual rape by focusing their thoughts ironically on the happy days of their marriages or on other aspects of their lives. For example, Kayla recalled, “I would lay there and pretend it’s not happening to me. I would think of shopping or the kids or whatever else I had to do.” Others, such as Rebecca and Wanda, repeated the same phrase continually in their minds in order to distract themselves from what was happening and help them to cope with the assaults. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

All of these mechanisms enabled he survivors to cope during the actual time of crisis and to minimize emotional trauma. These offenders cannot be taken lightly. Please try to understand their philosophy of life and society. They have no fear of man-made laws or the laws of God…to them crimes as serious as murder comes easy…these people will stop at nothing. They are like a secretive society, bonded together by a common need and desire to mete out havoc on society. There are plenty of views about what constitutes and causes violence, but any deep understanding of violence had to include our own capacity for extreme aggression and the dehumanizing of other, especially toward those who offend us. The more intimate we are with our own violent urges and their roots, the less likely we are to be irresponsible with such urges, and the deeper our understanding will be of others’ violence. This does not necessarily mean that we will then be more likely to excuse or marginalize it or look the other way, but we will be able to more skillfully related to it and its origins, getting a deeper sense of how to best approach and work with it. As uncomfortable as it may be to bring our own violence or capacity for violence out of the shadows, we owe it to ourselves—and everyone else—to do so. People who are the victims of violence may feel a loneliness, accompanied with the terrors of manic-depression and suicide. It is not just the loneliness, not the shock, not the fear, not the sense of failure, but the sense of a dying, of a relationship dying, and no one can stop it, not really—not yourself, your work, your money, your efforts, your hopes, your dreams; not your realities, not your friends, not anybody. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

And then the victim comes to realize that there will be more grief to come, more hard realities to face, certainly more hurt and abuse; and they pray, and pray that in the breakdown of their home, their family, their relationship with their husband, that in some way their children ma find enough strength to endure and grow because that is where the real guilt and sense of failure lies. You know you can never repair what has been broke; it is to the children, not anybody else that you have a responsibility. It is them you need to feel for not mama or daddy, not really; it is to them that the dawn must speak and comfort and help grow; it is to them that hopefully out of the mess, their goodness might survive. Man as we know him is regarded not as a completed being but as a being in a certain definite phase of one’s possible transformation. This transformation is considered to be possible in one lifetime, that is, it is considered that a man born in one phase can, during one lifetime, pass into another. If we take the example of a butterfly then a man born in one phase can, during one lifetime, pass into another. If we take the example of a butterfly, then man is approximately a caterpillar. And the vast majority of people die as “caterpillars.” However, out of the masses of caterpillars a small percentage of transforming beings is constantly emerging. These evolving beings are, for us, people of higher mind. We can know of their existence by traces of their activity in history, chiefly in rt and in religions. Possessing a more perfect mind than ordinary people they possess greater knowledge. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

We have schools that have as their aim to bring ordinary people, who have felt or realized the necessity of escaping from their present state, near to the ideas coming from people of higher mind, because these ideas alone can assist their transformation, that is, their transition to a new level of being. The solution of the thinker must be capable of exciting a sympathetic vibration in the personality of the man. Or more exactly, the thinker instinctively shies away from certain solutions and gravitates toward others simply because they strike or fail to strike a resonance in one’s temperament and background. The process of life can no longer be adequately described by the metaphor “level,” and the metaphor “dimension” must replace it. The multiplicity of beings demands a principle of organization which in the past was the hierarchical principle with the concomitant image of levels. Besides social and political levels, there are other processes described in terms of the body-soul level, the organic-inorganic level, the levels of religion and culture, and the levels of nature and supernature. Levels, however, are static, with no implications between them, and the only interaction is by interference, that is, control of one level by another, or revolt of one against the other. Since the Renaissance and the Reformation, however, these levels have been gradually broken down so that a new insight into the unity and compenetration of life demands a new metaphor. “Dimension” is a geometric image which expresses unity within diversity. Dimensions have their property that they meet in a point but do not interfere with each other. They do not life next to one another, nor above one another, nor below one another. They lie in one another, and are untied in the point where they meet. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Though all dimensions are present at any given point one of the will predominate in the process of life. This dominant dimension is called a “realm” (Bereich), as for example, the inorganic and organic realms and the historical and spiritual realms. The simultaneous presence of all dimensions is explained by the distinction between the potential and the actual. Both are realities, for the potential has a power for being that has not yet been activated. Potential dimensions exist within actual ones. Since the actualization of potencies is a gradual, evolutionary process that extends in its totality over millions of years, some dimensions will prevail over others. However, these successive realms do not constitute a pyramid of levels, for the lie within, not atop one another. One can say, therefore, that in the atom is present the spiritual power that created Shakespeare’s Hamlet, just as the movements of the atoms in Shakespeare’s body participated in the spiritual acts that produced Hamlet. Evidently, tensions and ambiguities exist in every life process, but these are not conflicts between levels. They are conflict between forces that operate in every dimension. The four dimensions are the social, historical, intellectual, and personal. No specifically religious dimension is constructed because religion cannot be confined to a special realm; it permeates all dimensions, giving them depth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

The hour of need always brings a corresponding measure of power from God to meet that need. The Church of Christ must lay hold of the equipment of the apostolic period for dealing with the ongoing influx of evil spirits hosts among her members. Believers today may receive the equipment of the Holy Spirit whereby the authority of Christ over the demon hosts of Satan is manifested, for this is proved not only by the instance of Philip the deacon in the Acts of the Apostles, but also by the writings of the “Fathers” in the early centuries of the Christian era. These writings show that the Christians of that time recognize the existence of evil spirits, knew that they influenced, deceived, and possessed men, and believed that Christ gave His followers authority over them through His name. And this authority through the name of Christ, is available for the servants of God even at this present time. The Spirit of God is making this known in many and diverse ways. God gave a recent object lesson through a Chinese Christian, Pastor His, who acted upon the Word of God in simple faith without the questioning caused by the mental difficulties of Western Christendom. And He has awakened a portion of the Church in the West through the last Revival in Wales—by an outpouring of the Spirit of God which has not only manifested the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the twentieth century as in the days of Pentecost, but has also unveiled the reality of satanic powers in active opposition to God and His people, spotlighting the need among the Spirit-filled children of God for equipment for dealing with them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Incidentally, too, the Revival in Wales has thrown light upon the Scripture records, showing that the highest point of God’s manifested power among men are invariably the occasion for concurrent manifestations of the working of Satan. For it was like that when the Son of God came forth from the wilderness conflict with the prince of darkness and found the hidden demons in many lives aroused to malignant activity, so that from all parts of Palestine crowds of victims came to the Man before whom the possessing spirits trembled in impotent rage. The awakened part of the Church of today has now no doubt of the real existence of spirit-beings of evil, and that there is an organized monarchy of supernatural powers set up in opposition to Christ and His kingdom who are bent upon the eternal ruin of every member of the human race. And these believers know that God is calling them to seek the fullest equipment obtainable for withstanding and resisting these enemies of Christ and His Church. In order to understand the methodology of this deceiver-prince of the power of the air, and become acute to discern his program and his tactics in deceiving men, we should search the Scriptures thoroughly to obtain a knowledge both of his character and how hi evil underlines are able to possess and use the bodies of men. The World is in process of becoming a Kosmos, a unified, structured, historical whole in which all the parts interact with one another. However, the forms of thought and action are still chaotically individualistic, and so the World as a historical reality is being born in labor pains of two wars. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

At almost the precise midpoint of the 20^th century, George Orwell published 1984, hi scorching indictment of totalitarianism. The book pictured a government in total control of the mass media. Mr. Orwell’s brilliant neologisms, like newspeak and doublethink, entered the language. The book became a powerful assault weapon in the fight against censorship and mind-manipulation, which is why it was banned for decades in the Soviet Union. While it helped rally forces opposed to dictatorship of the mind, however, the book’s projection of the future turned out to be highly questionable. Mr. Orwell correctly envisioned such technologies as two-way television screens that could be used to deliver the state’s propaganda to viewers while simultaneously spying on them, and his warnings about potential invasions of privacy are, if anything, understated. However, he did not foresee—nor did anyone else at the time—the most important revolution of our era: the shift from an economy based on muscle to one dependent on mind. He did not, therefore, anticipate today’s astonishing proliferation of new communication tools. The number and variety of these technologies is now so great, and changing so swiftly, that even experts are bewildered. To confront the army of technical abbreviations, from HDTV and ISDN to VAN, ESS, PABX, CPE, OCC, and CD-I, is to sink into alphabetical asphalt. Even to scan the advertisements for consumer electronics is to come away dazed. Rise above this clutter, however, and the basic outlines of tomorrow’s Third Wave media become strikingly clear. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

The electronic infrastructure of the advanced economies will have six distinct features, some of which have already been foreshadowed. These half-dozen keys to the future are: interactivity, mobility, convertibility, connectivity, ubiquity, and globalization. When combined, these six principles point to a total transformation, not merely in the way we send messages to one another, but in the way we think, how we see ourselves in the World, and, therefore, where we stand in relationship to our various governments. Put together, they will make it impossible for governments—or their revolutionary opponents—to manage ideas, imagery, data, information, or knowledge as they once did. Our account of bargaining has so far focused on just one dimension, namely the total sum of money and its split between the two sides. In fact there are many dimensions to bargaining: the union and management care not just about wages but health benefits, pension plans, conditions of work, and so on. The United States of America and its NATO allies care not just about total defense expenditures, but how they are allocated. In principle, many of these are reducible to equivalent sums of money, but with an important difference—each side may value the items different. Such differences open up new possibilities for mutually acceptable bargains. Suppose the company is able to secure group health coverage on better terms than the individual workers would obtain on their own—say, $1,000 per year instead of $2,000 per year for a family of four. Now the workers would rather have health coverage than an extra $1,500 a year in wages, and the company would rather offer health coverage than an extra $1,5000 in wages, too. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

It would seem that the negotiators should throw all the issues of mutual interest into a common bargaining pot, and exploit the differences in their relative valuations to achieve outcomes that are better for everyone. This works in some instances; for example, broad negotiations toward trade liberalization in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) have had better success than ones narrowly focused on particular sectors or commodities. However, joining issues together opens up the possibility of using one bargaining game to generate threats in another. For example, the United States of America may have had more success in extracting concessions in negotiations to pen up the Japanese market to its exports if it threatened a breakdown of the military relationship, thereby exposing Japan to a risk of Soviet or Chinese aggression. The United States of America had no interest in actually having this happen; it would be merely a threat that would induce Japan to make the economic concession. Therefore, Japan would insist that the economic and military issues be negotiated separately. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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April 11, 2023 9:31 am