The Language of Sexual Abuse

We sought to determine whether the psychological effects of sexual abuse systematically affect the language of abuse survivors. To accomplish this, we used a computerized lexical analysis system to compare the Rorschach responses of 30 female psychiatric inpatient abuse survivors with those of a matched group of female psychiatric inpatients with no abuse history. We then replicated the results in a holdout sample of 20 additional female inpatients. Our findings suggest that childhood sexual abuse has enduring and identifiable effects on the language of abuse survivors.