... in fact quite the opposite. I fucking love this blog post and I am in total agreement. You know it's interesting but the more secular a country is the lower the rates of violent sexual assault are...also teenage pregnancy is lower also. So I truly think you're on to something about sex negative repressive religions being associated with a rape culture.  

A massive paradigm-shift in my own consciousness came like a flood when, as an adult, I felt the god/sex power within me. It wasn't "thinking" about a concept of divinity or religion or spirituality or "believing" this or that. It was feeling and experiencing and it was profound because all the fear and repression around sex made a helluva lot of sense. Of course the religious culture of my upbringing was terrified of my sexuality. My sexuality was powerful. I felt my power.

There are a number of concerns I have with the intent and style of how this essay was written:
Iwonder if you even asked the client what her relationship with God is
and what she wants her relationship with to be. It seems like you are
doing the same thing the mother has done - defining God for her. Sure,
what the mother must've been painful to hear, but by not exploring the
relationship the mother had shared with the daughter (and vice versa),
then it seems to me that you're feeding into the false assumption that
the mother believes that God is punishing her, when really we don't know
if the mom was just using this to defensively deny the seriousness and
tragedy of what happened to her daughter, and that the underlying
feelings they share for each other could be overshadowed by God.
What also boggles my mind is that you use the tragic story of your client to
perpetuate your own belief systems about God, so it just seems as
though this essay is less about your client's trauma and more about you.
There's nothing wrong with that. I just wonder if you're generalizing
the nature of your conversation with your client in order to promote a
message. I only say this because you make no mention of the client's
current relationship or thoughts about God or even how she feels now
about what happened to the past, or why she's even seeing you to begin
with. Instead, you take just enough to make your argument.

Christina,

Thank you for your literary criticism. I appreciate you letting me know how this blog falls on your ears.

Yes it is a tragic story - but I am not literally speaking of just one client. Unfortunately I have heard versions of this story more times that I can count. I'm sure you understand that there is no way I could disclose private information about any single client. This would be a mega violation of trust. Furthermore, I am bound to protect all information regarding client sessions - and it is necessarily privileged information.

So perhaps your "spider senses" are tingling because you are seeking grounding details that I would NEVER share.

There may be a time when I discuss how I work through these types of volatile issues in detail with a single and specific person - however it isn't this blog...

My creative process is this: I excitedly write when I have insights. So when you say that this blog is more about me than my clients trauma - the only thing I say to that is - of course it is. It has to be.
While meditating last weekend (after a week of some pretty gnarly sessions) on the kinds of abusive responses that parents have with their children's sexuality, experiences, and tragedies, it made me ponder the question - what are parents and teachers so afraid of anyway? Why is pleasure so scary? Why must a mother spit on her daughter because her daughter's in puberty and discovering her body?

What would happen if we had an entirely different frame of viewing sexuality? What if in our culture - we considered sex as god??? And so flowed my blog...

This particular blog is exactly a spring board to share this thought. For me, it is a re-contextualization, moving from the literal, individual and the local - to the larger context, the metaphorical, the global. Asking myself a simple question - "What if..." and trying on the idea that sex and pleasure have a relationship to our sense of infinite / god/ well being / feeling good... one that is in-here instead of out-there...

So did I ask my client to try this idea on? Yes I did. Several in fact. The responses were exactly what I expected - which was a feeling of empowerment and energy in the body... people see me exactly for that reason.

Personally I could care less what anybody believes - including myself. Beliefs are irrelevant to reality. Gravity, for example, does not care what you or I believe.
My interest in beliefs have to do with the ways they cause pain and suffering in my own head - and/or the heads of clients. In the same way, I have found that in changing a frame, story, or belief - problems can suddenly and completely disappear.

Putting it simply, if we are willing to change our frames, we can change our feelings about life.

From talking to lots and lots and lots of folks over decades - I notice that people use their beliefs - unconscious or otherwise - to create massive amounts of guilt, shame, and fear regarding sex - both within their own psyches - and in the psyches of others.

The reason I put the disclaimer in the beginning of this piece is because I already knew that you - or somebody - would "call me out" on my therapeutic methods - on sharing private information on a public blog - on not taking my client's pain seriously - on pushing my own agenda - pushing my own beliefs - on not listening - on being insensitive - and so on and so on....

In my experience - cross religions - cross cultures - when I mention sex and god in the same sentence, it hits a touchy spot...

That's my point.

I enjoy challenging the way I think about things. I personally find incredible power in challenging things that I think I know or believe. If you happen to get something from that, great. If you don't, great.

You are right Christina: I write for me. I write to capture fleeting insights/ thoughts/ideas/ before they disappear forever. Insights are like fireflies glowing at dusk on a hot summer evening that I must savor before they disappear. Why do fireflies glow by the way? For sex, of course. But that's a different blog for a different day.

I do like your article, Lawrence. as it is very delicious blasphemy and a pun towards the bible thumpers. I simply do not believe in a god or other beardy creature that will come here one day on some fancy wings and take us to paradise. the entire concept of god in my opinion is an attempt to delegate everything to some all empowered parent. a massive projection. the people subscribing to religion then of course exert the control like you outlined.

frankly if you were my therapist and I would seek help from you about my abuse (yes... like the clients you mentioned) and you would spin the conversation towards a 'god', i would probably interrupt the session immediately and discontinue using your services.

the reason is this: i consider religion the biggest lie in human history and essentially the crime of the century, every century over and over. no other concept has triggered more blodshed and fucked up minds.

i consider psychology to be SCIENCE, so some \one in that profession coming up with a concoction of 'god' disqualifies him/herself as a scientist.

and look for instance at the erotic iconography of the catholics. on one hand they make libido (i prefer this word to 'sex') the essence of some evil spirit, and then on the other hand their entire pictorial language is erotic, inlcuding sado-masochism and inlcuding sexual connotations of children. no wonder that paesexuality is so wide-spread in those circles.

the common theme among many cultures and religions ist the evilization of female sexuality. don't forget that. and out of that, the line of argument that abuse and rape somewhat was caused by the victims behaviour.

Rape is not about sex; it is about power.  That the rapists were not punished is telling, suggesting that authorities may have – even though subconsciously –
agreed with the rapists. This also would seem to imply that the rapists and the authorities might not disagree with the mother. Now, here come the contradictions.

The believers talk about the omnipotence of their gawd but yet, in this case, used their power to subjugate the young woman. The mother surely is confused, as she, a gawd believer, on the one hand alludes to the gawd’s power (punishing the young woman) but tacitly siding with the rapists who imposed their power on the young woman.While gawd may be the creator and inside of us, another contradiction arises with transcendence.Most Bible believers are transcendentalists, where theirs is an externally imposed ethical system; they do not seek power within themselves.  Yet, when siding with the rapist, they seem to be expropriating some of that power from their
gawd. At this point, one could argue that they are at war with their gawd, but we might ask if they are at war with themselves. This focuses on their very survival as human beings; it is an identity crisis. Xianity (and other patriarchal religions) are symbols of this, as Ludwig Fuerbach so eloquently wrote about in The Essence of Chirstianity.

Some historical perspective in all of this is needed. For hundreds of years the Catholic church used the Malleus Maleficarum as the definitive word in how to treat women.  Written 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger and first published in Germany in 1487, this work spelled out how women were to be regarded. We see, for example:

For as regards intellect, or the understanding of spiritual beings, they seem to be of a different nature from men; … Terrence says: Women are intellectually like children.And Lactanius (Institutiones, III): No woman understood philosophy except Temeste. …

But the natural reason is that she is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations. And it should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib … And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always deceives [Concerning Witches who copulate with Devils].”

It is widely known that the Bible, as well as many other Western “holy” books and writings contain passages deprecating women.

Again, we see a contradiction within the religion about who has power – the gawd or humans, men in this case, as Xianity is patriarchal. As somewhat of an aside but germane, perhaps this conflict helps explain why fundamentalists reject the central role of science as a way of discovering who we are and what we are about, for people are empowering themselves. Susan Griffin argues persuasively in Women and Nature that men have allocated power to themselves and are destroying nature by dominating it and subsequently destroying it. Those
natural philosophers, starting with the Enlightenment, did seek power but rationalizing by saying they were doing what gawd wanted by discovering “him” through the exploration of nature – but by tearing it apart. Women, be aware – the “witches” – ironically were the ones understanding nature by being in it, and this is what the patriarchs not only were afraid of but despised.

The rape incident described here, then, is merely the tip of
the iceberg of a much deeper problem concerning power, identity, and death, of
which religiosity (in the deleterious) sense is mere window dressing.  However, these are subjects for other forums,
I suspect.

It seems that there are logical issues with your: " when really we don't know if the mom was just using this to defensively deny the seriousness and tragedy of what happened to her daughter, and that the underlying feelings they share for each other could be overshadowed by God."  Lawrence clearly stated, "her mom said proudly, 'is punishing you for being a little whore.' ” Hence, prima face, we DO know was not only blaming the daughter but that "God" was punishing her.  Judging intent behind statements is problematical, but we must take into account what fundamentalism masks (a subject of a previous post).  If one adheres to a patriarchal religion, especially as evidenced by statements such as this uttered by the mother, it must be assumned that the adherent subscribes to the ideological import of that religion.  Your phrase "overshadowed by God" can be analyzed, again, in terms of the ideology.  Clearly, this mother's concept of "God" is that of a harsh judge of the Puritanical variety.  "God" is not one of a liberal variety, again, evidenced by the very phrases of the mother.  The cat is out of the bag, as it were.   As an extension of my previous remarks, I would argue that fundamentalists are afraid of their own existence, hence power; that is why the contradiction exists between their tacitly affirming the power of the rapist and that of their god.  Further, to say that feelings are "overshadowed by God" has as much epistemological import as saying that a person is overshadowed by a pile of bricks, Santa Claus, or any other phenomenon.  The statement must be read contextually, and the mother's blaming the daughter clearly gives us that stage on which this little drama is played out.

Fireflies also glow to detract predators and and attract prey, so in a sense their features are far more multi-faceted than just sex. But I suppose it's about context.
Interesting you think I'm challenging you or calling you out when really I'm trying to learn more about the connections you make with your clients and the ideas you have about religion and sex. I didn't negate your ideas or criticize your sessions. Like I clearly stated, there's nothing wrong with you using examples from your work to promote your ideas. That said, the example you used was vague and I just wanted clarification.
Yes I do know very well about confidentiality. I've used examples of sessions in my blogs as well. However, I personally very rarely mention clients who have histories of abuse or trauma because those sessions are simply far too complex and quite honestly many of these people need professional help and coping strategies for their trauma, which I would refer them to instead of or in accompaniment of our sessions if necessary. It would be remiss of me to discuss their sessions then wax poetic about my own ideas about them when I know it goes much deeper than that. Of course, I'm not a tantric master ;) So, educate me on what you define as confidentiality and what you choose to share and not share for the sake of your writings. You mentioned that you were not speaking about one client in particular in this piece - is it fair to say that the depiction of the client in this essay is merely a generalization and if so what specific patterns do you see in your clients who have been raped or abused and blamed for these violations? In this instance, you can mention that your client was gangraped and scolded by her mother but you can't mention the relationship she shared with her mother or her own beliefs - can you explain the difference for me?
Also in your response you talk more about people who condemn themselves for experiencing pleasure and yet you begin your essay about a client who was gangraped as a young girl. In fact you write:

 Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seemed clear that you alleged the mother was blaming her daughter for being raped by using God as a scare tactic and not because "she's in puberty and discovering her body." Are we still talking about the same client?

To me, confidentiality means untraceable. There would be no way to determine whom I'm speaking about. 
Writings are about sharing and stimulating ideas. I have benefited in my life - very directly - from things that I have read that challenged my beliefs, myths, and perceptions. 
Patterns I see in clients that have suffered abuse, rape, trauma etc...relate to self loathing. There is this kind of sickening sense within them that there is something inherently wrong with them on the inside.
I see maifestations of mental disorders. I see paranoia, lack of emotional control, lack of financial or emotional stability. Often I see severe mental or physical self abuse. 
Spiritual and religious principals often cause supression, repression, or denial - obfuscating the facts of what actually happened. 
In this instance, it struck me that the mom instilled her shame in this girl at a critical, defining moment - the moments followings the incident. These critical / defining moments help us to give meaning to powerful events in our lives. These defining moments can change the direction of our lives, our self esteem, our willingness or ability to move forward after traumatic. 
These moments of meaning are critical to psychological healing and survival. 
In the moments right after rape - where care, compassion, love, understanding, proper medical attention, a wilingness to openly discuss exactly what happened, to be on the daughter's side, and stand up to the gang of boys and make sure that they are properly punished... a very powerful healing can occur. 
However, in this meaningful moment, the mother shared her own embarassment about her daughter's behavior. Mom shared her shame that she raised a slut who won't be joining her in heaven. Mom condemned her daughter to hell in that moment. 
I'm sorry Christina - I don't care what belief or stories anybody has - there is nothing that makes that kind of parental behavior OK. Nothing. 
Instead of processing, healing, openly discussing - this child now feels like a social outcast. She told me "I feel dirty to my soul." Decades later - she still deals with the trauma of the rape. It was the KEY moments that followed her gang raping that gave meaning to the event for the rest of her life. 
I was not talking about the same client in the piece you quoted above. 
Perhaps you underestimate the intensity of belief that people have in their personal ideas of what god is. God was not a scare tactic of the mother's. For that mother, God is a real man, with an exclusive guest list of who gets into heaven. And now, by mere virtue of the fact of being gang raped - the mother truly believed her daughter would spend eternity in hell, separated from from her forever.
mom was also deeply ashamed because the community knew the gang raping was her daughters fault. Only an evil possed whore could bring "good boys" to do such bad things. 
These may not be literal ideas for you ( that is an ill tempered beared old man who's just waiting for you to slip up so he can send you to hell)- but if you think they are not literal ideas for billions of people on our planet, you are deeply mistaken. 
I have heard these kinds of stories - literally hundreds of times. 
If you wish to discuss in private space how I help people deprogram themselves out of this kind of literal, cultish, religious thinking, I will be glad to chat sometime in the future. 
I hope this answers at least a question or two... 

Hey Katharina,
One secret to any kind of work with an individual is being willing and able to meet them exactly where they are in their belief systems. I've learned that I can't just take somebody from point a to point b simply because I am comfortable traversing that territory.
For many, many folks, the subject of God/no god is a bridge too far. I used the god language in that session because that's the language she used to describe what happened to her. God was the language that was used to give meaning to the gang rape.
Changing the meaning of critical events can be life changing for people... 
Thanks for reading...  if you hit me up on fb, or email me directly, I'll give you a link to some pretty cool stuff that I wrote that I'm sure will tickle you pink :)

Insights are like fireflies glowing at dusk on a hot summer evening that
I must savor before they disappear. Why do fireflies glow by the way?
For sex, of course. But that's a different blog for a different day.

I also want to tell Lawrence and Christina that I truly appreciate what both of you have said. Having the opportunity to read Christina's thoughts and your replies are enriching to say the least.
I identified with Christina when I read "Interesting you think I'm challenging you or calling you out". I also Identify with much of your response Lawrence, but I think you are both partly missing what each other is saying. Still very thought provoking and enriching!

It is definitely cool the way comments tease out very nuanced things... human beings  want to feel understood... that certainly motivates me to write...

Yes, I think - feel it is the need for all to be heard and to be heard clearly, the "I AM" I am here and I am heard! whether in counseling-blogging-child-parent etc....we all have-carry voice, what a joyous sound it makes!...

Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.  Alexander Pope 

I couldn't agree with you more Katharina! While I do like your take on empowering your client, all of the abusive things that I experienced that I was told were tests from 'god' and all of the useless prayers that I offered up to save me from said abuse, have led me to the belief that there is NO god. In fact I saw a therapist who tried to use his religious beliefs to change my opinions on issues like abortion and I stopped seeing him. That was over 8 yrs ago, and I wasn't brave enough to seek counseling for the abuse again until March if this year......I hope that no one else has to have my same experience.

I couldn't agree with you more Katharina! While I do like your take on empowering your client, all of the abusive things that I experienced that I was told were tests from 'god' and all of the useless prayers that I offered up to save me from said abuse, have led me to the belief that there is NO god. In fact I saw a therapist who tried to use his religious beliefs to change my opinions on issues like abortion and I stopped seeing him. That was over 8 yrs ago, and I wasn't brave enough to seek counseling for the abuse again until March if this year......I hope that no one else has to have my same experience.

About 12 years ago, I went to a therapist who recommended that I do this crazy thing where I was to go get my energy tuned up and blah blah blah... It cost me like 1500 bucks and it was supposed to change everything...
In fact it did change everything. I immediately came home after the rediculous experience and fired my therapist. Wish I had done that about 5 years earlier.

Why don't you look that up MB.  We all know that you are not the southern belle that you want everyone to believe - so innocent and fragile. 
Fireflies glow because they have little light bulbs in their tails.  They turn the bulbs off and on with a switch.

@Soapy