Psychology of rape

Type of psychology: Counseling; Clinical; Psychotherapy, Psychopathology

Rape, the sexual penetration of a person without his or her consent, has been documented for as long as written accounts of human experiences are available; however, it has increasingly been a topic of interest for modern researchers since the 1970s. This criminal act leads to significant emotional consequences for its victims, who are at risk for psychiatric conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, which can last for decades despite many modern psychotherapeutic treatments.

Introduction

In the United States, rape is defined as the oral, anal, or vaginal penetration of another person without his or her consent. The penetration can be penile, digital, or with any other object or material. Rape is a specific form of sexual assault, which refers to any unwanted sexual contact with another person—including touching, kissing, or revealing private parts—without consent. The concept of consent is crucial to the definition of rape. New York State law defines lack of consent as resulting from the following situations: forcible compulsion, incapacity to consent, a lack of expressed or implied acceptance, and clear expression of non-consent. A person is deemed incapable of consent when he or she is any of the following: less than seventeen years old (commonly known as statutory rape or childhood sexual abuse), mentally disabled, mentally incapacitated, physically helpless, or committed to the care or custody of the perpetrator (i.e., inmates in jail or prison cannot provide consent to prison employees, and patients cannot give consent to health care providers during treatment). Therefore, rape is not limited to situations in which one person physically forces another to have sexual intercourse. It also includes the sexual penetration of people who are unable to agree soundly to the acts. These include the following: individuals who are incapacitated by alcohol or drugs, individuals with cognitive impairments such as dementia or intellectual disabilities, children and teens who are considered too young to understand the implications of sex with an adult, and people in a relationship in which they may be unduly influenced because they rely on the other person for their care and wellbeing.

Rape is a type of trauma, which is an event that threatens a person or a loved one's life or bodily integrity, leading to intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Traumatic events such as rape are considered harmful to the victims because they can have long lasting physical and emotional consequences. Unlike many other forms of trauma, such as car accidents or natural disasters, rape is an interpersonal trauma that is committed by other people. As a result, rape victims often experience significant challenges to their social functioning, such as difficulty trusting other people. One common misconception of rape is that it is motivated by sexual desire; for example, a man sees an attractive woman and is sexually aroused, leading him to have forced sexual intercourse with her. Research has shown, however, that many who commit rape are motivated by power and control and not by sexual desire.

Misconceptions about Rape

In a series of studies beginning in the 1980s, Mary Koss demonstrated that rape is widely misunderstood and underestimated. She elucidated three important facts about rape that have since served as the foundation of rape research. First, rape was much more common than most people assumed: by 2016, one in five women had an experience that met the legal definition of rape in their lifetime. Second, the majority of rapes were not committed by strangers, but by someone known to the victim, such as an acquaintance, a date, a romantic partner, or a spouse. Third, in 2017, more than 75 percent of rape victims did not report their experience to police, and more than half did not tell friends or family. These statistics challenged many people's commonly held ideas about what constitutes rape, which are known as rape scripts.

When people are asked to describe rape, they typically describe a woman who is physically attacked by a stranger and subsequently forced to have vaginal sexual intercourse with him. Afterwards, the woman reports this assault to the police like she would a robbery or other crime. Although this "stranger rape" scenario is the most common description of rape, it only accounts for a minority of women's reported rape experiences. Three out of four victims of rape report experiencing what is now known as "acquaintance rape" because they knew their assailant prior to the assault. Often, they were interested in some form of romantic or sexual contact with the rape perpetrator, such as dating or kissing, but did not consent to sexual intercourse. Another discrepancy between a typical rape script and many women's experience is the lack of physical force. In nearly half of rapes, victims reported drinking alcohol. When a person uses alcohol or drugs to the extent that they are passed out or too drunk or high to be aware of their actions, unwanted sex is considered "incapacitated rape." The substance use can be voluntary or involuntary, but the consequences of substance use are the same: typical cognitive functioning, such as thinking clearly and making decisions, is impaired under the influence of alcohol. Therefore, consent is not possible.

These common misconceptions about rape create unique challenges for people who have experienced this form of sexual trauma. They are at risk for increased stigma and self-blame compared to victims of other trauma, leading to increased negative experiences when disclosing the rape to friends, family, or law enforcement officials. Because many people think of rape as a crime committed by strangers that leaves bruises and clear signs of force, women who experienced acquaintance rape or incapacitated rape are less likely to be believed by others. As a result, many women do not feel comfortable telling other people about their assault for fear of being accused of lying or blamed for the experience. Very few report their experiences to law enforcement, and among those that do, conviction rates are exceedingly low.

The "just world hypothesis" is often used to explain why rape victims are susceptible to blame and shame from others. According to the just world hypothesis, good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. As a result, people are able to feel safer because they consider themselves good people who are subsequently protected from negative events. A woman who is raped, therefore, must have done something to deserve it, because bad things do not happen to good people. As a result, people often assume that victims were sexually promiscuous or provocative prior to their sexual assault, and thus sent mixed signals of consent to the perpetrator. However, experts reject this view, and many organizations and individuals work to overturn such conceptions and bring awareness to the realities of rape.

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, many scholars, especially those working in feminist theory, increasingly identified situations in which activity classified as rape becomes pervasive and normalized, a condition known as rape culture. This can develop when prevailing social attitudes regarding sexual behavior and gender trivialize the consequences of rape, blame the victims, or otherwise accept myths and misconceptions about sexual assault. The results may range from widespread sexual objectification and denial of rape to outright acceptance and promotion of sexual violence. Examples often cited include the use of rape as a weapon of war, rape in prison culture, and the conditions on some college campuses. The concept of rape culture also proved controversial, however, undergoing criticism from both those who see it as an overreaction and those who feel it does not go far enough in explaining the prevalence of rape.

The Psychological Consequences of Rape

Rape victims often endure significant emotional distress as a result of their traumatic experiences. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychological condition that may occur after any traumatic event. PTSD is a series of anxious symptoms that develop in the aftermath of trauma including rape. There are four symptoms clusters that characterize it. The first is intrusive symptoms: individuals continue to reexperience aspects of the rape through repeated, involuntary memories of the rape, nightmares about the rape, flashbacks (during which one feels as though the rape is happening again), and significant distress when reminded of the event. Intrusive symptoms cause significant distress for the person experiencing them.

The second cluster of symptoms are those pertaining to avoidance: persistent efforts to avoid reminders of the rape, or trauma triggers, including internal reminders such as thoughts and feelings pertaining to the event, and external reminders such as people, places, activities, situations, or objects that remind the person of the rape. Avoidance symptoms may be a conscious effort to not experience the distress that occurs from intrusive symptoms. The third cluster refers to negative alterations in thinking or mood: inability to remember key aspects of the rape, strong negative beliefs about oneself or the world, a distorted sense of blame for the rape, persistent negative trauma-related emotions (e.g., fear, helplessness, horror, anger, and shame), significantly reduced interest in activities or other people, and difficulty experiencing positive emotions such as happiness. The last symptoms cluster refers to changes in arousal and reactivity: inability to concentrate or sleep soundly, a heightened startle response when surprised or afraid, hypervigilance (e.g., feeling on edge and in danger more frequently), and aggressive or reckless behavior.

PTSD is associated with changes to the areas of the nervous system responsible for responding to threats. Traumas such as rape trigger survival instincts that take over the bodily response by increasing blood circulation to major muscle groups that are used in the fight-or-flight response in an effort to maximize our chances of escaping by fighting back, running away, or staying completely still. Mental capacities are often diminished in an effort to maximize this physical response, leading to difficulties thinking logically or forming memories. With PTSD, survivors continue to respond as though the threat is still present even in situations they used to consider safe. Thus, their autonomic nervous system continues to be triggered by perceived threats, leading to the symptoms described above.

In addition to PTSD, victims of rape often experience depression; in fact, when PTSD is present, a depressive diagnosis is also present in approximately half of trauma survivors. Suicidality, anxiety, alcohol and substance abuse, somatic complaints, sleep and eating disturbances, sexual difficulties, relationship difficulties, and physical problems are also common emotional consequences of rape. These symptoms tend to begin immediately and last a long time: More than 90 percent of rape survivors report many of these symptoms within a week of their assault, three-quarters have significant symptoms one year later, and one in six women report symptoms nearly decades after their assault. Furthermore, the intensity of psychological symptoms is comparable for women who were raped by a stranger or an acquaintance, and for women who were incapacitated due to drugs or alcohol or were physically forced.

Treatment Options For Rape Survivors

Between the 1990s and 2010s, a number of treatments were been created, researched and identified as effective for survivors of rape. Individual psychotherapy is the most common treatment modality for the reduction of symptoms of PTSD and psychological distress. Many of the empirically supported treatments to reduce PTSD and other symptoms following rape incorporate similar therapeutic components.

First, survivors are provided psychoeducation about trauma and PTSD so that they have a better understanding of their symptoms and its impact on the way they think, feel, and behave. Second, they learn and practice specific techniques to reduce overwhelming fear and anxiety and increase relaxation. Third, principles of exposure therapy are utilized. Survivors, with the help of their therapists, are asked to consciously recall the rape in vivid detail, either through writing or describing it aloud in therapy, so that the traumatic memories can be organized and processed in a safe, controlled manner, and cognitive distortions such as self-blame can be identified and challenged. Exposure therapy can sometimes be used in conjunction with eye movement desensitization reprocessing. Various coping strategies are utilized to reduce the distress that conscious recollection triggers, and this process is repeated until it is much less distressing for the individual to think about the rape in detail.

In addition to individual therapy, there are forms of group therapy that have demonstrated effectiveness in treating post-traumatic symptoms of rape survivors. Psychopharmacology (i.e., medication) may be utilized to treat post-traumatic symptoms as well, as certain antidepressants and antianxiety medications are approved for the treatment of PTSD or concurrent depressive and anxious symptoms.

Bibliography

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing. Print.

Frazier, P. A., & Seales, L. M. (1997). Acquaintance Rape is Real Rape. In M. D. Schwartz (Ed.), Researching Sexual Violence Against Women: Methodological and Personal Perspectives (p. 54–64). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Print.

Groth, A.N. (1979). Men Who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender. New York, NY: Basic Books. Print.

Harding, Kate. Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture—And What We Can Do About It. Boston: Da Capo Lifelong, 2015. Print.

Jackson, T.L. (Ed). (1996) Acquaintance Rape: Assessment, Treatment, and Prevention. Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Press. Print.

Katz, B., & Burt, M. (1988). Self-blame in Recovery from Rape: Help or Hindrance. In A.W. Burgess (Ed.), Sexual Assault (Vol. II, p. 151–168). New York, NY: Garland. Print.

Kilpatrick, D.G., Resnick, P.A. Ruggiero, Conoscenti, and McCauley. (2007). Drug-facilitated, Incapacitated, and Forcible Rape: A National Study. Final report submitted to the National Institute of Justice, NCJ 219181. Print.

Koss, M.P. (1985). "The Hidden Rape Victim: Personality, Attitudinal, and Situational Characteristics". Psychology of Women Quarterly, 9, 192–212. Print.

Koss, M.P. (1988). Hidden rape: Sexual aggression and victimization in the national sample of students in higher education. In M.A. Pirog-Good & J.E. Stets (Eds.), Violence in Dating Relationships: Emerging Social Issues (p. 145–168). New York, NY: Praeger. Print.

Koss, M.P., Dinero, T.E., Siebel, C.A & Cox, S.L. (1988). "Stranger and Acquaintance Rape: Are There Differences in the Victim's Experience?" Psychology of Women Quarterly, 12, 1–24. Print.

Lerner, M.J. & Miller, D.T. (1977). "Just World Research and the Attribution Process: Looking Back and Ahead". Psychological Bulletin, 85, 1030–1051. Print.

Proulx, Jean. Pathways in Sexual Aggression. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. Print.

Rothbaum, B.O., Foa, E.B., Riggs, D.S., Murdock, T., and Walsh, W. (1992). "A Prospective Examination of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Rape Victims. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 5(3), 455–274. Print.

Tracy, Natasha. "Rape Therapy: A Treatment for Rape Victims." Healthy Place, 26 May 2016, www.healthyplace.com/abuse/rape/rape-therapy-a-treatment-for-rape-victims. Accessed 12 Oct. 2018.

Vasterling, J.J., and Brewer, C.R., (Eds.). (2005). Neuropsychology of PTSD: Biological, Cognitive, and Clinical Perspectives. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Print.