The treatment of incest victims is often painful and difficult. With patience, the vast majority of those who have experienced incest can experience considerable improvement and enjoy an enhanced quality of life without succumbing to repeated victimization.
The study of incest as an actual phenomenon rather than as a fantasy is a relatively recent event. In , an authoritative text proclaimed that the incidence of father-daughter incest in the United States was 1 in a million families. By the early s, feminists, traumatologists, and contributors from the emerging study of dissociative disorders were engaged in a vigorous study of incest and the treatment of incest victims. However, during this time, there emerged a trend of calling into question the recollections of those who reported incestuous abuse, mounting militant defenses of accused perpetrators.
Certain books and media were accused of encouraging false reports. As a result, for over a decade and a half the study and treatment of incest has been under a cloud of suspicion that has impeded the advancement of knowledge about this devastating form of abuse. Scholars have backed away from even using the word, to the point that it has become difficult to research unless one searches under more bland and innocuous terms. This is not the format in which to review 2 decades of acrimonious and polarized debate.
I will proceed on the basis of what, in my view, are the best data and knowledge now available. That data and knowledge strongly affirm that abusive incest is common, that its consequences are detrimental, and that it usually leaves its victims with considerable psychiatric damage and distress. The contemporary study of incest and the contemporary treatment of incest victims proceed in the face of profound pressures to dissociate them from the mainstream of psychiatric concern.
Defining incest is further complicated by the fact that the term is often used in connection with a set of values and assumptions associated with a classic 2-parent nuclear family.
