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The Ultimate Betrayal: The Enabling Mother, Incest and Sexual Abuse
This pioneering self-help book takes a close look at a topic that has been ignored or downplayed by other books on incest and childhood sexual that the non-perpetrating parent usually bears a great deal of responsibility for the child's abuse. In this examination of the complicated dynamics of abuse, the enabling mother is not treated as a victim, rather as an adult responsible for her failure to protect her child. Self-help exercises are interspersed with case histories and analytical material throughout the book, useful to both survivors and therapists.
- GenresPsychology
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 9, 2018
The book is premised upon a powerful and important idea: that Mom plays a big role in the incest/abuse dynamic. This is the only book on the subject I could find that seemed to give any attention to the deep wounds mothers can cause in abuse situations - especially when they enable and perpetrate abuse themselves, out of resentment.
I gleaned a couple of good insights from the book - the primary one being that a strong sense of loyalty to the mother is common in these scenarios - I feel that even after years of estrangement. Another insight was the tendency of the abuse-enabling mother to control her daughter's feelings. I found elements of my mother in every ''type'' of parenting described. I think that helped me to let go of her a little, to realize the ''love'' I feel for her is basically a trauma response that enabled my abuse to occur.
Other descriptions couldn't have been further off the mark from my situation - but that is to be expected in a book that can only draw generalities.
Despite those few positive points, I really didn't like this book. Reading it was unsettling and not in an enlightening way.
Let's start with how we survivors, ourselves, are portrayed. To read "The Ultimate Betrayal'' one might conclude that survivors of childhood abuse, particularly those of us with complicit mothers, are almost universally impulsive, self-destructive, drawn into abusive relationships, promiscuous, drug-addicted, and filled with the desire to molest children. In fact, the author states that victims of sexual abuse ''often'' feel compelled to victimize others, which doesn't have a shred of evidence to support it. While it's true that child molesters frequently have a sexual abuse history, survivors of childhood abuse are statistically no more likely to molest children than the general population.
There are few if any positive paradigms to embrace here, just one case study tragedy after another, usually ending on a note that suggests healthy change is not likely for the survivor. Pages filled with women stuck in abysmal relationships, women who hate themselves, women who refuse to protect their own children, and women who, in the author's view, expose themselves to further rape and sexual assault through risky behaviors. (The book is also riddled with the therapist's own bizarre beliefs, including an untenable interpretation of NAMI and an assertion that feminism makes it impossible to blame the mother. The ideas are put out there so carelessly I have a hard time trusting her critical thinking skills.)
Early in the book, the author urges the reader to accept that Mom enabled the abuse - fine - but then offers the consolation, "Don't panic, you can still have a relationship with your mother." I'm hard-pressed to judge any survivor's choices in this area, but that a therapist would unilaterally endorse any sort of toxic relationship with an abusive or abuse-enabling parent is distressing to me. I would have been much more comfortable if the author had said, "You get to decide whether a relationship with your mother is appropriate or not, and you don't have to decide right this minute." Later she describes clients continuing relationships with the sexual abuse perpetrators as if it's no big deal. While it's obvious why a *victim* would make this choice, it baffles me why a so-called expert would not draw attention to the deep and ugly harm this can cause.
She is at turns judgmental and non-judgmental, using shaming language to describe clients' sex lives, but reassuring us it's not the victim's fault she's so promiscuous. One of the grossest points is when she decides to share graphic, disturbing case histories of clients and reassures the reader, "It's okay if you get some vicarious pleasure out of spying on the intimate traumatic details of another person's life." Is that seriously how she thinks a trauma survivor is going to react to that content? At a later point, she makes a comment about how it's wrong to withhold sex from someone ''you can be reasonably expected to owe it to." WTF. In what universe is sex owed to anyone at any time? I can't think of a more horrible way to frame such an issue for people who have had their own personal autonomy ripped out of their hands countless times. I just want to take this woman, sit her down, and school her on how much she doesn't know about me.
The author also seems to have subscribed to the fallacy ''the plural of anecdote equals data." She has observed patterns in her clients therefore every client must fit the pattern. Indeed, she later forces her own paradigm onto a client who is outraged at the idea that she found her own abuse pleasurable. According to the author, her client is just ''blocking'' her memories of pleasure and in denial about it. Heaven forfend we actually take survivors at their word. (To the author's credit, she seems to want to alleviate the pain of those who did experience pleasure - a normal response for many and a common source of shame.)
Ultimately the result of reading this book is that, based on the fallacies and bizarre beliefs of the author, I don't trust her expertise or ability to help people in my situation. I actually kinda feel worse, having read it.
One of the most powerful pieces of writing on this subject I have ever read is the short feminist essay The Collapsible Woman by Vanessa Vaselka (you can find it with Google) which challenges the dominant paradigm of trauma survivors as weak, self-destructive messes who can't handle our lives.
"If you have been raped or abused, you're scarred for life. You will never be as you were before the experience. This is also true for falling in love, getting your heart broken, going to war, having a child, or reading a great book. Everything that cuts deeply marks us. Being "scarred for life" isn't the defining characteristic of a person who's been raped; we're all scarred for life the second that we intimately relate to the outside world. The difference is in the nature of the wound."
Do we have issues? Yes. The extent of those issues is going to vary from person to person, but the more often we hold up The Collapsible Woman as the standard - indeed, the ideal - the more likely we are to fulfill that prophesy of being perpetual victims. I've been in a healthy, loving relationship for 16 years, I have a Masters degree, a career I love, great friends, and yes, life is hard because of trauma. It was all so very hard. I lost precious time to depression, anxiety and PTSD, and I'm losing sleep right now. But every good thing I have built was worth fighting for. And I desperately hope that young women reading this book aren't thinking that a lifetime of self-destructive suffering is all the future holds for them.
Whatever you were taught you deserved, you deserve better. The real pain of it is you have to go out and get it for yourself.
I gleaned a couple of good insights from the book - the primary one being that a strong sense of loyalty to the mother is common in these scenarios - I feel that even after years of estrangement. Another insight was the tendency of the abuse-enabling mother to control her daughter's feelings. I found elements of my mother in every ''type'' of parenting described. I think that helped me to let go of her a little, to realize the ''love'' I feel for her is basically a trauma response that enabled my abuse to occur.
Other descriptions couldn't have been further off the mark from my situation - but that is to be expected in a book that can only draw generalities.
Despite those few positive points, I really didn't like this book. Reading it was unsettling and not in an enlightening way.
Let's start with how we survivors, ourselves, are portrayed. To read "The Ultimate Betrayal'' one might conclude that survivors of childhood abuse, particularly those of us with complicit mothers, are almost universally impulsive, self-destructive, drawn into abusive relationships, promiscuous, drug-addicted, and filled with the desire to molest children. In fact, the author states that victims of sexual abuse ''often'' feel compelled to victimize others, which doesn't have a shred of evidence to support it. While it's true that child molesters frequently have a sexual abuse history, survivors of childhood abuse are statistically no more likely to molest children than the general population.
There are few if any positive paradigms to embrace here, just one case study tragedy after another, usually ending on a note that suggests healthy change is not likely for the survivor. Pages filled with women stuck in abysmal relationships, women who hate themselves, women who refuse to protect their own children, and women who, in the author's view, expose themselves to further rape and sexual assault through risky behaviors. (The book is also riddled with the therapist's own bizarre beliefs, including an untenable interpretation of NAMI and an assertion that feminism makes it impossible to blame the mother. The ideas are put out there so carelessly I have a hard time trusting her critical thinking skills.)
Early in the book, the author urges the reader to accept that Mom enabled the abuse - fine - but then offers the consolation, "Don't panic, you can still have a relationship with your mother." I'm hard-pressed to judge any survivor's choices in this area, but that a therapist would unilaterally endorse any sort of toxic relationship with an abusive or abuse-enabling parent is distressing to me. I would have been much more comfortable if the author had said, "You get to decide whether a relationship with your mother is appropriate or not, and you don't have to decide right this minute." Later she describes clients continuing relationships with the sexual abuse perpetrators as if it's no big deal. While it's obvious why a *victim* would make this choice, it baffles me why a so-called expert would not draw attention to the deep and ugly harm this can cause.
She is at turns judgmental and non-judgmental, using shaming language to describe clients' sex lives, but reassuring us it's not the victim's fault she's so promiscuous. One of the grossest points is when she decides to share graphic, disturbing case histories of clients and reassures the reader, "It's okay if you get some vicarious pleasure out of spying on the intimate traumatic details of another person's life." Is that seriously how she thinks a trauma survivor is going to react to that content? At a later point, she makes a comment about how it's wrong to withhold sex from someone ''you can be reasonably expected to owe it to." WTF. In what universe is sex owed to anyone at any time? I can't think of a more horrible way to frame such an issue for people who have had their own personal autonomy ripped out of their hands countless times. I just want to take this woman, sit her down, and school her on how much she doesn't know about me.
The author also seems to have subscribed to the fallacy ''the plural of anecdote equals data." She has observed patterns in her clients therefore every client must fit the pattern. Indeed, she later forces her own paradigm onto a client who is outraged at the idea that she found her own abuse pleasurable. According to the author, her client is just ''blocking'' her memories of pleasure and in denial about it. Heaven forfend we actually take survivors at their word. (To the author's credit, she seems to want to alleviate the pain of those who did experience pleasure - a normal response for many and a common source of shame.)
Ultimately the result of reading this book is that, based on the fallacies and bizarre beliefs of the author, I don't trust her expertise or ability to help people in my situation. I actually kinda feel worse, having read it.
One of the most powerful pieces of writing on this subject I have ever read is the short feminist essay The Collapsible Woman by Vanessa Vaselka (you can find it with Google) which challenges the dominant paradigm of trauma survivors as weak, self-destructive messes who can't handle our lives.
"If you have been raped or abused, you're scarred for life. You will never be as you were before the experience. This is also true for falling in love, getting your heart broken, going to war, having a child, or reading a great book. Everything that cuts deeply marks us. Being "scarred for life" isn't the defining characteristic of a person who's been raped; we're all scarred for life the second that we intimately relate to the outside world. The difference is in the nature of the wound."
Do we have issues? Yes. The extent of those issues is going to vary from person to person, but the more often we hold up The Collapsible Woman as the standard - indeed, the ideal - the more likely we are to fulfill that prophesy of being perpetual victims. I've been in a healthy, loving relationship for 16 years, I have a Masters degree, a career I love, great friends, and yes, life is hard because of trauma. It was all so very hard. I lost precious time to depression, anxiety and PTSD, and I'm losing sleep right now. But every good thing I have built was worth fighting for. And I desperately hope that young women reading this book aren't thinking that a lifetime of self-destructive suffering is all the future holds for them.
Whatever you were taught you deserved, you deserve better. The real pain of it is you have to go out and get it for yourself.
October 4, 2011
October 2011 Review
This is the third time reading through the details of this amazing discourse of abuse and the resulting trauma survivors carry. I'm finally getting a clearer picture of what 'really' might have happened. I've 'remembered' some additional details that shed light on the fact that several abuses occurred in my life. Mostly through young adult and marriage to a man that was abused himself. I went to him because of being damaged by two rapes in my life. Not so much my childhood as I had originally suspected. It is a process, but I'm working through my own personal memoirs and discovering that we are not only survivors but conquerors in this life. The knowledge that has been gained could heal seven generations prior and seven generations coming...this work is profound. Do yourself and your family a favor by reading this. Chewing it, digesting it, and healing.
June 2010 didn't review...still healing!
September 2009 Review
This book was very difficult for me to work through, with questions at the end of each chapter, as it addressed the many levels of thought and patterns that become part of who we grow up to be.
I had ordered it through Barnes and Noble because I wanted to know if I was a mother that had contributed to the demise of my children. What I found was that my mother was emotional abusive to me and in turn I had married a man much like her. This laid the foundation for me to become blinded by what I thought was love and where I sold my soul in an effort to be the best mom there was.
Ultimately, what happened was that my children were not protected and I was deceived into believing that good intentions and karma were enough to sustain a happy home. There were many cancers in my childhood and in my young marriage that framed me for devastating consequences.
If only we could go back and make different choices and learn to be individuals, not what we believe that others expect us to become. I was a product of my mother's good intentions and in turn I made my children products of my own poor choices as well as naiveté belief that all people are good. To the contrary, I feel now that there are those born from bad seed and may not ever find their direction in life.
That being said, I am of good seed although broken from the beginning, maybe there is nothing I could have done any better.
This book will serve as a resource for me in the months and years ahead as I learn who I am while trying, oh so desperately, to encourage my children to follow their own hearts and always remain true to themselves.
We can never be too careful and knowledge is power! No matter what stage of life you are in, this book could be a help for you. It could be the secret tool to unlocking success and happiness in your own life as well as the lives of your friends and family. My heart reaches out to those that are emotionally abused for I've found that this is the worse kind of manipulation that anyone could ever suffer.
My heart is empowered to go on...to press for higher ground and make a difference in the world.
Read this, work through the questions, it could save your life or the lives of those you love! Always remain true to yourself and if you don't know what you want or need, find out, research, cast your coins in the fountain and change the stars.
We are only stuck in our present circumstances if we do what we've always done before. Change it up, learn something new, and be free!
This is the third time reading through the details of this amazing discourse of abuse and the resulting trauma survivors carry. I'm finally getting a clearer picture of what 'really' might have happened. I've 'remembered' some additional details that shed light on the fact that several abuses occurred in my life. Mostly through young adult and marriage to a man that was abused himself. I went to him because of being damaged by two rapes in my life. Not so much my childhood as I had originally suspected. It is a process, but I'm working through my own personal memoirs and discovering that we are not only survivors but conquerors in this life. The knowledge that has been gained could heal seven generations prior and seven generations coming...this work is profound. Do yourself and your family a favor by reading this. Chewing it, digesting it, and healing.
June 2010 didn't review...still healing!
September 2009 Review
This book was very difficult for me to work through, with questions at the end of each chapter, as it addressed the many levels of thought and patterns that become part of who we grow up to be.
I had ordered it through Barnes and Noble because I wanted to know if I was a mother that had contributed to the demise of my children. What I found was that my mother was emotional abusive to me and in turn I had married a man much like her. This laid the foundation for me to become blinded by what I thought was love and where I sold my soul in an effort to be the best mom there was.
Ultimately, what happened was that my children were not protected and I was deceived into believing that good intentions and karma were enough to sustain a happy home. There were many cancers in my childhood and in my young marriage that framed me for devastating consequences.
If only we could go back and make different choices and learn to be individuals, not what we believe that others expect us to become. I was a product of my mother's good intentions and in turn I made my children products of my own poor choices as well as naiveté belief that all people are good. To the contrary, I feel now that there are those born from bad seed and may not ever find their direction in life.
That being said, I am of good seed although broken from the beginning, maybe there is nothing I could have done any better.
This book will serve as a resource for me in the months and years ahead as I learn who I am while trying, oh so desperately, to encourage my children to follow their own hearts and always remain true to themselves.
We can never be too careful and knowledge is power! No matter what stage of life you are in, this book could be a help for you. It could be the secret tool to unlocking success and happiness in your own life as well as the lives of your friends and family. My heart reaches out to those that are emotionally abused for I've found that this is the worse kind of manipulation that anyone could ever suffer.
My heart is empowered to go on...to press for higher ground and make a difference in the world.
Read this, work through the questions, it could save your life or the lives of those you love! Always remain true to yourself and if you don't know what you want or need, find out, research, cast your coins in the fountain and change the stars.
We are only stuck in our present circumstances if we do what we've always done before. Change it up, learn something new, and be free!
January 23, 2011
A great book hamstrung by clumsy packaging and presentation, The Ultimate Betrayal is essential reading for anyone who has been sexually abused as a child or who knows someone who was sexually abused as a child.
Illuminates the sneaky hidden power dynamics that compel mothers to allow, encourage and contribute to the childhood sexual abuse of their children. Not for the faint of heart. Should probably lead to or be read in conjunction with therapy.
Illuminates the sneaky hidden power dynamics that compel mothers to allow, encourage and contribute to the childhood sexual abuse of their children. Not for the faint of heart. Should probably lead to or be read in conjunction with therapy.
March 31, 2019
In "The Ultimate Betrayal: The Enabling Mother, Incest and Sexual Abuse", Dr. Audrey Ricker explores an aspect of unabated father-daughter incest abuse that is rarely focused upon, that being, the complicit mother - the emotionally inadequate mother more afraid of losing her husband then coming to the rescue of her own child. For me, the book was excellent food for thought... and a good argument, I believe, for redirecting therapeutic focus in certain cases.
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