``The one-sided, unipolar or split-off mythology of the innocent child
and victim has the capacity to hinder our therapeutic work with sexually
abused children - or adults.  The manner and method many therapists use
to deal with the guilt feeling of ``abuse'' victims amply demonstrates
my point.  Children who experience sexual abuse often feel guilty.  They
have the impression that they, somehow, were at fault.  Older children,
in particular, have ambivalent feelings about the abuse.  They are
uncertain whether the experience did not provide them with a certain
pleasure.  They often wonder if they failed to defend themselves or
possible encouraged the perpetrator.  Many psychologists reject these
guilt feelings out of hand as completely unjustified.  They maintain that
in no way can there be a question of guilt.  They encourage children to
forget the guilt, to put it out of their minds.

``This therapeutic position can be harmful for the psychological development
of a child.  Therapists simply think of and accept the child as a victim.
They energetically reject and deny any attempt on the child's part to assume
any responsibility for what happened or at least to recognize his or her own
ambivalence.  Therapists thereby impose a victim psychology upon the child,
a psychology which says that for everything that happens there is always
someone to blame.  They nip in the bud the child's growing awareness that
he is at least partially responsible for much that happens to him - or at
least for the back and forth tension between rejection and acceptance.  This
therapeutic position does not take the child seriously as a human being.'' p.61

_From the Wrong Side_ Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig, Spring Publications, 1955