When we speak of incest, we are referring to the sexualization of a familial relationship. The perpetrator could be the father or the mother, a grandparent, a brother or sister, an aunt or an uncle, a cousin, or another person who is like a member of the family. The sexualization of the relationship can result in an overt act, with or without penetration, or it can remain in the realm of the emotional, attitudinal or energic. It can involve torture, force or coercion, or it can be subtle, accomplished by suggestion alone. No matter what, incest always involves a boundary violation, whether the incest is overt or covert. The violator is the senior family member, and the incest is ALWAYS the fault of this person. This is because a family member has the absolute right to assume that their sexuality is safe in the presence of another family member. Once this safeguard has been violated, the child is never again the same; something is changed forever. An innocence is lost; a trust has been betrayed.

When incest occurs, it is as if a mirror has been shattered. The self of the victim is, indeed, shattered. On the level of the conscious personality, there may or may not be apparent symptoms. Sometimes incest survivors become sexually active early in life; this happens because the child learns an erroneous lesson through the incest ... the child learns that intimacy equals sexuality. While this is not true, and should never be true in the context of the family, the incest survivor nevertheless has had another experience. Sometimes survivors remain sexually inactive or fear physical intimacy throughout their lifetimes, especially if they have not had a healing therapy to deal with the experience. The relationship to sexuality is almost always affected in some way. Trust is virtually always disrupted, as well. Sometimes trusting others becomes an enormous issue; sometimes survivors indiscriminately trust virtually anybody. Incest survivors tend to become victims of other sex crimes later in life, and it is thought that this is because their sense of what is appropriate around sex is so profoundly disturbed by the early incest experience.

Some of the things incest survivors fear are: loud noises, men’s voices, nighttime, going to sleep, basements, garages, back seats of cars, getting shots or having anything put into their bodies, dentists’ fingers, being approached from behind, secrets, boundary violations, not being noticed, being noticed, speaking up for themselves, being in relationships, being alone, being awakened, dreaming, losing control or not being in control, letting someone in, intimacy, crying in front of someone else, appearing weak or needy, trusting others, speaking the truth about their experience, orgasm, having relationships that are non-sexual, locked doors, hands around their throats, massages, anesthesia, confinement , not being able to breathe... the list goes on and on. While many people, even people who are not incest survivors, may fear some of these things, incest survivors fear them for different reasons: they are associated with a traumatic, sexual betrayal.

On the level of the unconscious, the damage to an incest survivor is inevitable, and it is great. Incest survivors are always hurt at the deepest level of self experience. Often, the self-esteem is greatly damaged. A child who is used sexually often cannot help but feel that s/he is not loved and cherished for his or her total self, that somehow, it is only her/his sexuality that makes him/her desirable. S/he comes to feel inadequate, unloved, unwanted, uncherished, used, manipulated, exploited, unworthy, broken, like a piece of shit, blemished, tarnished. S/he feels it is her fault; s/he is the cause; s/he should have said no; s/he shouldn’t have felt any physical or emotional pleasure from the experience (sometimes there is physical pleasure; sometimes there is an emotional gratification from the attention or the closeness); s/he should have spoken up; s/he should have stopped it. But it is usually not possible, at least, not for a long, long time. I often say that when the incest occurs, it is as if the clock stops on at least a part of the growing up experience. The sexual self of a 7-year old who is incested, for example, remains 7 ... and s/he will be unable to stop the incest, in all probability, for many, many years.

In addition to the damage to the self-esteem, deep damage occurs to the sense of safety to the incest survivor. S/he comes to feel that the world is not a safe place; that tomorrow is not a safe time; that s/he is dying; that there will never be safety; that no one will ever rescue her/him; that no one can ever understand. The loneliness and isolation of the incest survivor are heart-breaking.

It is understandable then, that the incest survivor in recovery from childhood incest is often furious, sometimes MORE furious, at the mother, even when she is not the perpetrator. The rage is often at the mother because she failed at protecting her child from the incest. The rage is often because the mother failed to notice that there was anything wrong with the childhood picture. The incest survivor often says, "How could she not see that I was being molested? How could she not notice that I was acting inappropriately, crying all the time, missing school, suddenly sullen, etc.?" In working through the incest, the survivor often has to confront, acknowledge and deal with this first level of betrayal ... that the childhood home was not safe.

And when we are dealing with parental incest, it is true, as Heinz Kohut, the founder of self psychology says, that incest rarely occurs in a vacuum ... more often, it is an act of gross abuse which occurs in the context of an environment which is ALREADY NON-RESPONSIVE to this vulnerable child on an on-going basis.

Incest survivors have many resources to deal with the paralyzing after-effects of their trauma. There are 12-step groups, other support groups, knowledgeable therapists, many excellent books ... these things are now available. Also available is this website, and your questions and comments are welcome here.