Therapists, victims, and abusers are all dissatisfied with current services for child sexual abuse. This paper explores the utility of a new description of the phenomenon in terms of cybernetics, which allows analysis of the interactions between systems as well as within them. The systems of interest include the family, the professional helpers, and the law. Previous conceptualisations are reviewed, and applications of the cybernetic model are suggested for both treatment and prevention of the problem of child sexual abuse. Although family therapy is often cited as the optimal treatment model for this problem, clinical work with families in which sexual abuse occurs can be unsatisfying to all concerned. The pattern‐focused orientation of cybernetics suggests constructive initiatives which professionals may take at the levels both of individual families and of broader social policies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.