Citation

Penning SL, Collings SJ. Child Abuse Res. South Afr. 2016; 17(1): 36-48.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, South African Professional Society on the Abuse of Children)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Exposure to interpersonal violence during childhood has been found to be associated with a range of traumatic re-enactment behaviours including: perpetration: in which the individual is more likely to subsequently go on to victimise others; revictimisation: in which the individual faces a greater risk of exposure to subsequent interpersonal violence, and self-harm: in which victimised individuals face a greater risk of subsequently inflicting harm on themselves. This articles reviews empirical literature on traumatic re-enactment behaviours that has been published over the past 30 years.

FINDINGS from the review are presented in three parts: (a) forms of traumatic re-enactment, (b) traumatic antecedents to re-enactment behaviours, and (c) factors which have been found to mediate/moderate the association between developmental trauma and re-enactment behaviours. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the literature reviewed for future research, theory, and practice.

Language: en