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Introduction Notes Introduction 1. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS): 2010 Summary Report (2011), by Michele C. Black, Kathleen C. Basile, Matthew J. Breiding, Sharon G. Smith, Mikel L. Walters, Melissa T. Merrick, Jieru Chen and Mark R. Stevens. http:// www.cdc.gov./violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf , accessed January 20, 2014. 2. Ibid., table 2.1, 18. 3. Ibid., figure 2.2, 25. 4. Ibid., figure 4.5, 49. 5. Womanist works on violence committed against Black women include: Toinette M. Eugene, “Swing Low Sweet Chariot: A Womanist Ethical Response to Sexual Violence and Abuse,” in Violence against Women and Children: A Theological Sourcebook, ed. Marie M. Fortune and Carol J. Adams (New York: Continuum, 1995), 185–200; and Eugene, “Lifting as We Climb, Womanist Theorizing about Religion and the Family,” in Religion, Feminism and the Family, ed. Anne E. Carr and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen (New York: Westminster/John Knox, 1996), 330–342; Toinette Eugene and James N. Poling, Balm for Gilead: Pastoral Care for African American Families Experiencing Abuse (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1998); Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, “The ‘Loves’ and the ‘Troubles’ of African American Women’s Bodies: The Womanist Challenge to Cultural Humiliation and Community Ambivalence,” in A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering, ed. Emilie M. Townes (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993), 232–249; Linda M. Hollies, “When the Mountain Won’t Move,” in Violence against Women: A Theological Sourcebook, ed. Marie M. Fortune and Carol J. Adams (New York: Continuum, 1995), 314–327; Teresa A. Snorton, “The Legacy of the African American Matriarch: New Perspectives for Pastoral Care,” in Through the Eyes 180 Notes of Women: Insights for Pastoral Care, ed. Jeanne Stevenson Moessner (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 50–65; Carolyn A. McCrary, “The Wholeness of Women,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center, no. 25 (June 1998): 258–294; and McCrary, “Intimate Violence against Black Women,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center, no. 28 (Fall 1998): 3–37; Traci C. West, Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence and Resistance Ethics (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Teresa L. Fry Brown, God Don’t Like Ugly: African American Women Handing on Spiritual Values (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2000); Kelly Brown Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003); Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004); Monica A. Coleman, The Dinah Project: A Handbook for Congregational Response to Sexual Violence (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2004); Emilie N. Townes, Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Chanequa Walker-Barnes, “The Burden of the Strong Black Woman,” Journal of Pastoral Theology 19, no. 1 (Summer 2009): 1–21; Phillis I. Sheppard, “No Rose-Colored Glasses: Womanist Practical Theology and Response to Sexual Violence,” In In Spirit and in Truth: Essays on Theology, Spirituality and Embodi- m e nt in Honor of C . John Weborg , ed. Phillip J. Anderson and Michelle Clifton Soderstrom (Chicago: Covenant Press, 2006), 241–256; and Sheppard, Self, Culture and Others in Womanist Practical Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). For further analysis of the cultural, religious, theological, and psycho- logical dimensions of intimate violence read: Marie M. Fortune, Sexual Violence: The Unmentionable Sin (Toledo, OH: The Pilgrim Press: 1983), and Fortune, Sexual Violence: The Sin Revisited (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 2005); Rita Nakashima Brock, Theologies by Heart: A Christology of Erotic Power (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1988); Larry Kent Graham, Care of Persons, Care of Worlds: A Psychosystems Approach (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1992); James N. Poling, The Abuse of Power: A Theological Problem (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1991); Maxine Glaz and Jeanne Stevenson Moessner, eds., Women in Travail and Transition: A New Pastoral Care (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1996); Marie M. Fortune and Carol J. Adams, eds., Violence against Women and Children: A Theological Sourcebook (New York: Continuum, 1995); Jeanne Stevenson Moessner, ed., Through the Eyes of Women: Insights for Pastoral Care (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996); Elaine Graham, “Practical Theology as Transforming Practice,” in Blackwell Reader in Pastoral and Practical Theology, ed. James Woodward and Stephen Pattison (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2000); Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, “How Sexuality and Relationships Notes 181 Have Revolutionized Pastoral Theology,” in The Blackwell Reader in Practical and Pastoral Theology, ed. James Woodard and Stephen Pattison (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), 233–247. Christie Cozad Neuger, Counseling Women: A Narrative Pastoral Approach (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001); Jeanne Stevenson Moessner and Teresa Snorton, eds., Women out of Order: Risking Change and Creating Care in a Multicultural World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010); Pamela Cooper-White, The Cry of Tamar: Violence against Women and the Church’s Response, 2nd edition (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 2012). 6. Nancy Boyd-Franklin, Black Families in Therapy: Understanding the African American Experience, 2nd edition. (New York: Guilford Press, 2003), 84. 7. I borrow the term intimate violence from ethicist Traci C. West to encompass the multiple forms of sexual, physical, and emotional vio- lence that women have experienced in encounters and relationships with males. These experiences include childhood sexual assault, molestation and incest, rape, and partner battering, and it also includes experiences with strangers (rape or other assault by a stranger, sexual harassment by a stranger). The use of the word “intimate” refers to the nature of the violence committed against the woman’s body rather than the quality of the relationship with the perpetrator. In Wounds of the Spirit, West explains, “Therefore, stranger rape would still be considered intimate violence even though the assault did not take place in the context of an ongoing intimate relationship. For sexual violation of a woman’s body constitutes intimate violence regardless of whether the assault occurs within a chosen relationship of intimacy or not,” 104. 8. Read Patricia Hill Collins, “The Past Is Ever Present, Recognizing the New Racism,” in Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism (New York: Routledge, 2005), chapter 2, 53–86. 9. Townes, Womanist Ethics, 31. 10. Ibid., 62. 11. Ibid., 116. 12. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1994), 186–187. 13. Darlene Clark-Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Midwest,” Signs 14, no. 4 (Summer 1998): 915. 14. Chanequa Walker-Barnes, “The Burden of the Strong Black Woman,” 4. Borrowing from Black Feminist Trudier Harris’s examination of the Strong Black Woman icon (a derivative of the mammy mythology) as an example of African American strategies that counter white rac- ist assault on Black female identity, Walker-Barnes writes, “African American authors’ reinscription of the centrality of strength to Black womanhood emerges from their attempt to defy negative racial 182 Notes stereotypes and to portray Black women’s character as above reproach. Thus, the legacy of the SBW serves important financial, psychological, and cultural functions for African Americans, even as the suffering of Black women goes unnoticed or, worst, glorified when noticed.” Read also Teresa A. Snorton’s “The Legacy of the African American Matriarch,” 50–65. 15. Heinz Kohut, “The Disorders of the Self and Their Treatment: An Outline,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 59 (1978): 414. Read also Pamela Cooper-White, Many Voices: Pastoral Psychotherapy in Relational and Theological Perspective (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 111, where she discusses Ernest Wolf and others who built on Kohut’s initial selfobject-transference experiences to identify a total of six selfobject-transferences: mirroring, idealizing, twinship, alter ego, adversarial, and companion. For the purposes of this discussion, analy- sis is limited to mirroring and idealizing selfobject and cultural selfob- ject experiences. 16. To be clear, the splitting defenses and adaptive behaviors related to narcissistic wounding are similar in their presentation; however, they are not the same as splitting defenses enacted in posttraumatic splitting following intimate violence. Although narcissistic wounds are related to empathically failing nurturing contexts that can impact character/ personality formation, they may or may not also include traumatic encounters like childhood neglect, sexual and/or physical abuse. Classic narcissistic wounds are related to events and experiences that occur between zero and three years of age, at a time when intrapsychic core formation is taking place. They come about as a result of experiences that force the enactment of intrapsychic defenses (disavowal, dissocia- tion, repression) that become organizing elements in the intrapsychic core. When working with people who experienced sexual, physical, or emotional abuse in the early stages of development, the transference that develops between client and
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