Remembering, reclaiming, re-remembering: an autoethnographic exploration of professional abuse

Abstract

This thesis is an autoethnographic exploration and articulation of aspects of my lived experience of the longterm impact of professional abuse. It is a context-dependent single case study written from a researcher-participant-counsellor perspective. In my review of the literature I demonstrate the challenges of researching and documenting the direct experiences of women who have been sexually exploited by male professionals. These challenges stem from our natural human tendency to deny traumatic experience, and from the prevailing culture of many social institutions which continues to have the effect of silencing women’s voices and discrediting women’s experience. The methodological approach I have taken in this thesis is evocative autoethnography. I have chosen this approach in order to document and analyse my present embodied experiences of remembering past abuse, continuing feelings of loss, and unfulfilled longing for resolution and release. I explore the relationship between my past and present selves in context, and consider the therapeutic possibilities of combining memory work, lifewriting, poetry, and imagination to create texts of remembering and re-remembering, to reclaim both what is and what might have been.