Quote: algernonpj wrote in post #2

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Zitat

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believe all that — I truly do — but somehow it doesn’t answer the question, does it? Not fully. Not for me anyway. I look at Elizabeth Smart and I wonder about what she’s got inside her, that thing that Mitchell couldn’t touch, couldn’t break. Was she born with that? Or did her parents give it to her? Can it be isolated, taught, shared, cultivated?

In our whiny, victocratic, nurse-your-wounds, therapy-and-drug laden culture, this poised young woman gives you faith

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I've always wondered about this.

Viktor Frankl , a Austrian psychiatrist who survived the camps, wrote 'Man's Search for Meaning' in an attempt to answer the question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning

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Eglman, thanks, and you raise an excellent point. Some women never escape the demons from a single unwanted advance, much less years of subjection like she endured.
If Elizabeth Smart has found the cure for what happened I'd be very interested to know about it. I know more than one female who could benefit from what she has found. Keep us posted please.

Elizabeth Smart describing her feelings....

“I felt like my soul had been crushed. I felt like I wasn’t even human anymore. How could anybody want me or love me or care about me? I felt like life had no more meaning to it.”

“It’s feelings of self-worth. It’s feelings of ‘who would ever want me now?’ I’m worthless. That is what it was for me the first time I was raped.

“I was raised in a very religious household, one that taught that sex was something special that only happened between a husband and a wife who loved each other and that’s what I’d been raised, that’s what I’d alwayss been determined to follow, that when I got married then and only then would I engage in sex. And so, for that first rape, I felt crushed –’Who could want me now?’ I felt so dirty and so filthy I understand so easily all too well why someone wouldn’t run. Because of that alone. I mean, you can imagine the most special thing being taken away from you –not that that was your only value in life –but something that de-valued you? Can you imagine going back into a society where you’re no longer valued? Where you’re no longer as good as everybody else?

“I remember in school in one time I had a teacher who was talking about abstinence and she said ‘Imagine you’re a stick of gum. And when you engage in sex, that’s like getting chewed. And if you do that lots of times you’re going to become an old piece of gum and who’s going to want you after that?’

“That’s terrible, nobody should ever say that. But for me I thought ‘oh my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum. Nobody re-chews a piece of gum. You throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value. Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even made a difference, your life already has no value.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-f...ing-kidnappers/