e that the abuse has done psychological and emotional damage of the kind that can harden one against the fullness of life. That condition is like the condition of sin, in Allender's formulation.
Repeatedly, the author returns to the idea that the victim of sexual abuse, although in a situation not of his or her own making, incurs a kind of life obligation when coming to terms with sexual abuse to work through the psychological damage that the abuse may have done by acknowledging the abuse on one hand and placing oneself in the position of being powerless and humble before God on the other, "inviting" God to "bring about dramatic change" in the way life is lived and in the way an individual relates to others emotionally.
In other words, the abuse victim is meant to acknowledge the fact of abuse and the psychoemotional damage that it has done, and then open himself or herself to the power of God, not so much to suppress the memory of the abuse as to heal the harm that the abuse has done. The healing that Allender envisions is a consequence of systematic rejection of the state of sin and shame into which the abused individual has fallen--not because the abused person is responsible for his or her abuse but because the residue of the abuse experience fosters emotional isolation and estrangement from fellow human beings and spiritual distance from, or contempt for, God. The abuse, in this line of thought, has set up a situation in which the individual builds up a wall of resistance to authentic emotion and the ability to love others.
Some abuse victims want to put the whole experience behind them and forget everything that happened. That, Allender suggests, is as dangerous as the phenomenon of false memories (which in any case Allender sees as secondary to the evidence of emotional trauma that presents in a therapy situation). Ho
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