The woman in the story did not experience a true PTSD. [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder 創傷後壓力症候群]. Rather, this is a stress response or Phobia of being raped.
Simulated raping by her friend is an expected rape by someone whom she consented to have sex. This is by definition not a threatening experience for her, it is almost like a sex game with some low degree of violence by a non-aggressive man.
This method worked sucessfully in her case because her imagined fears of being raped is now disproved by the simulated rape which resulted in pleasurable experience. So her brain networks reconnected or rewired such that the "raping scene" is now more strongly associated with normal sex pleasure than with her fear responses. So she no longer has nightmares about raping scene which she self-created after listening to the rape victim's account. The fact that this simulated raping has worked proves that she did not have a real traumatic experience that PTSD clients would have.
This needs to be done under the guidance of professionals - the risk of this treatment method are that she really develops a PTSD from the simulated experience if it were not well-controlled. Also, it will NOT be effective if her imagined fear was NOT simply centered around a vague concept of being raped or the rape process. For example, if her fear was about a perpetrator hiding around the corner or following her back, this kind of simulation would not work.
Real PTSD as a result of traumatic experience of being raped will not be treated like this. The simulation would likely to become a re-experience of the traumatic memories, doing more harm than good.
- only work for those without actually being raped.
- Her problems or symptoms are completely different from real cases who have experienced sexual assault
- She has not experienced any real trauma
- so there is no traumatic memory
- what she has been treated was only a simple fear!
- like fear of height
- so she went through the simulation finding making love with rape scenario was fun
- hence she was treated
- That she can be treated this way proved that she has only a simple fear of being raped, no trauma at all.