Father-Daughter Incest

by Judith Lewis Herman

Through an intensive clinical study of forty incest victims and numerous interviews with professionals in mental health, child protection, and law enforcement, Judith Herman develops a composite picture of the incestuous family. In a new afterword, Herman offers a lucid and thorough overview of the knowledge that has developed about incest and other forms of sexual abuse since this book was first published.

Reviewing the extensive research literature that demonstrates the validity of incest survivors' sometimes repressed and recovered memories, she convincingly challenges the rhetoric and methods of the backlash movement against incest survivors, and the concerted attempt to deny the events they find the courage to describe.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Feminism, Mental Health, Politics, Crime, Science

333 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Judith Lewis Herman is an author, psychiatrist, researcher, and teacher whose work has dealt with understanding and treating the effects of traumatic stress and incest.

Reviews

[Melody Newby · Rating 5 out of 5]

My heart hurts.... it hurts so much especially after reading this amazing yet heart wrenching text. I would urge everyone to read this book and read it as soon as you can.

"Female children are regularly subjected to sexual assaults by adult males who are part of their intimate social world. The aggressors are not outcasts and strangers; they are neighbors, family friends, uncles, cousins, stepfathers and fathers. To be sexually exploited by a known and trusted adult is a central and formative experience in the lives of countless women."

My heart aches and yet I don't want to turn my eyes away from what is a significant common occurrence: childhood sexual abuse. This book focuses specifically on father-daughter incest. The writer and a friend of hers discovered many of their clients in their clinical practice to have been sexually exploited or seduced by a father, step father, uncle, brother....However, the writings on this subject were very few and some toxic to the nature of this relevant social issue ( for example, placing blame on the victim and dismissing women's memories of a traumatic event).

The book was comprised of three parts. The first part definitely pulled me in as a Cultural Studies lover. A discussion of literary and academic/psychological instances of father-daughter incest. Cinderella is known as a story which vilifies step mothers and women in general. In other versions of Cinderella, her mother dies and her father begins to pursue her romantically. He is the villain.

Freud discovered that many of his hysterical female patients recounted memories of being sexually assaulted by their fathers, however, he retracted this statement. He refused to identify fathers as sexual aggressors...especially since they were respectable men in the community. Thus, he developed the seduction theory in which the woman fantasizes about her father sexually and therefore become hystrical.

The second part of the book discusses the writer and her research partner and colleague's case study group and research findings.

The patterns identified among women who have been sexually assaulted by a trusted male adult (women are significantly less likely to sexually exploit a child) depict a very traditional and patriarchal family structure. The father is overly dominant and the mother is passive and powerless. Sometimes, the mother is incapacitated in some way whether due to illness, loss of reproductive freedom (a mother who has had too many children, possibly due to religious beliefs that forbid birth control) and dependent on the father. She may be vulnerable.

Herman points out that feminism is key to effecting change by removing the current toxic patriarchal structure and introducing a societal model of power where the sexual division of labor among men and women are equal. Historically, the women's movement has been deeply involved with the rights of children (women's rights also advocated for the child labor laws we now have today).

The structure of the nuclear family needs to change. Although it is indeed changing with single mothers heading more and more households, fathers must share in the childcare duties equally. The logic is that men who have taken a nurturing role in their children's development are less likely to exploit them.

The topic of the family secret is common among incest survivors. Daughters hold the family together by keeping the incest secret: that her father fucks her. Once the secret is out, often there are dramatic events to follow. Women have often been blamed especially under older psychotherapy theories (Freud for example) with the question, "So, what did you do to seduce your father? What did you do to deserve it? Did you send the wrong signals?" There is this ideal of the the all-powerful alpha-male Father figure who can do no wrong that tenaciously grips our society.

The daughter is often confused since she often received special treatment from her father and actually enjoyed his presence-in many cases. Another significant pattern found was the estrangement of the mother from the daughter involved in the secret of incest. The mother-daughter relationship has been identified as important in the healing process of an incest victim. Women who have been sexually abused are angry at their mothers for being unable to protect them. Some mothers of victims avoided such information, while others either didn't know or were aware and did nothing. These women had lost power themselves and remained dependent on an aggressive, and dominant man. Often the mothers failed to protect their daughters because she could not protect herself from these types of men.
Mother and daughter must explore reuniting and working on a healthy relationship together during the healing process. On a larger scale, women must unite together to fight patriarchy.

The last section of the book involves therapy options and the coming out of the incest secret and how it is received by the public, the laws surrounding father-daughter incest and the involvement of community organizations such as the police, social workers, and religious institutions.

There is discussion on the perpetrators. These fathers range from a variety of ethnic and professional backgrounds. They are often aggressive and prone to violence and see women and children as property. They deny to their death beds that they had ever touched their daughters, when in reality most incestuous fathers had sexually molested other children outside of the family as well.

"For every Saturday our father beat us, we were given the chance to ask his and God's forgiveness the very next day. For God, the Father, and our father seemed to be one. At the very least, our father, from up high in his pulpit, in his black velvet robes with the purple satin vestments, projected the image of God to us. We hungrily accepted Christ into our hearts and our mouths. Communion was a problem because when my father said, 'This is my body which is given for you', and put the bread in his mouth and commanded us to 'Eat ye all of it,' I felt sick and confused, not remembering all those times he'd forced his body into my mouth."

I enjoyed the discussion on the advantages and the disadvantages of private therapy vs group therapy. Herman appears to support group therapy over private therapy. In some successful models of group therapy, there are three phases. The first phase, the victim learns to talk about her memories and her experiences. The second is a form of psychodrama where victims relive and act out past childhood memories, allowing themselves to feel the pain again. The last phase is the 'aftercare'. Sometimes this involved confronting abusers.
Often incest victims closed the circle of self help by helping other women. The victims transform from victim to survivor at the end of their therapy journey. A common statement among survivors is that, the memory of incest will always be there but after therapy, it just doesn't bother them that much anymore.

Now that we have progressed so far with the assistance of sexual abuse survivors, it is too late to ever remain silent.

There is so much more to this book. Read this. In all honesty, I cried when I started writing this review....I am not an incest survivor myself but the thought of the magnitude of such a crime and how it harms children and women moves me to tears. Men are affected as well although Herman points out that boys are sexually abused primarily by *men*.

[Schizanthus Nerd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t originally plan on reading this book. I was actually wanting to read Herman’s Trauma and Recovery, which I’ve heard spoken of as one of the go to books about trauma. I’m not sure if this is a geographical problem or not but when I went to buy a Kindle copy of that book I discovered it didn’t exist. I then decided to see what else Herman had written and came across this book, which was available on Kindle. Thinking there’d probably be significant overlap between the two I decided to dive right in. Without having read Trauma and Recovery yet I can’t say for sure but I’m guessing they’re quite different books.

Although I’ve read quite a few fiction and non-fiction books about sexual assault, I haven’t read a great deal specifically about incest. I often feel as though the gears move almost imperceptibly slowly where sexual assault is concerned, from the attitudes that surround it to practical help for survivors and reforms to the legal system.

I usually read recently published books that explore sexual assault so to encounter things I take for granted as revolutionary ideas was a whole new experience. At once a history lesson and confirmation of how important early studies into taboo subjects are in shining light into the darkness, this might not have been the book I was expecting to read but I still took a lot away from it.

Much of the information I came across in this book, which was groundbreaking when it was first published in 1981, read to me as either common sense or confirmation of information I’ve already come across. I found that encouraging because it proved we are actually making progress, even though it doesn’t always feel that way.

This book came about as a result of two women, Lisa Hirschman and the author, speaking in 1975 about the patients they’d both encountered who had disclosed a history that included incest. Both women contributed to the research but it was Judith Lewis Herman who eventually wrote this book.

Since nothing satisfactory seemed to have been written about father-daughter incest, we were finally driven to write about it ourselves.

This book is divided into three parts:

1. Using “survey data, clinical material, anthropological literature, popular literature, and pornography”, the author takes a look at the history of how society has dealt with incest. Spoiler: not well at all. From Freud lying about his own findings to pretty much anyone who could have have a positive influence on the lives of survivors instead discrediting, disbelieving and downright pathologising them, it’s a wonder survivors have had the courage to speak at all.

I know I don’t want to hear it. I have no idea what to do with these cases. And I don’t think I’m unusual.

Quote from a therapist

2. The author and Hirschman conducted their own clinical study, interviewing forty survivors of incest and twenty women whose “fathers had been seductive but not overtly incestuous”. Yes, I cringed every time I read the word ‘seductive’ in this context.

Consumed with inner rage, they nevertheless rarely caused trouble to anyone but themselves. In their own flesh, they bore repeated punishment for the crimes committed against them in childhood.

3. Dealing with the “social responses to discovered incest”, this section explores crisis intervention, family treatment and prosecution. This section also talks about prevention.

As long as fathers rule but do not nurture, as long as mothers nurture but do not rule, the conditions favoring the development of father-daughter incest will prevail.

The studies referred to throughout the book are mostly from the 1970’s and those discussed in the afterward, which was written in 2000, were predominantly published in the 1990’s. I’d be interested, now that another twenty years have passed, to find out what else has been learned, confirmed or disproven.

Although I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re still moving in the direction of more openness and less stigma for survivors of incest, I’m also very much aware that this topic remains taboo. It was telling for me when I compared the Goodreads statistics of this book and Herman’s Trauma and Recovery.

At the time of writing this review, Trauma and Recovery has almost 11,000 ratings and over 450 reviews. This book, in contrast, has just over 100 ratings and about a dozen reviews. I wonder if so few people have read this book, which was first released about a decade prior to Trauma and Recovery, or if many readers have chosen not to add this book to their Goodreads shelves, not wanting to admit they read a book about this topic…

The abuses have gone on for too long. Too many survivors have disclosed their secrets. It is too late now to go back to silence.

Content warnings include mention of abortion, addition, alcoholism, death by suicide, domestic abuse, foster care, mental health, neglect, physical abuse, self harm and sexual assault.

Blog - https://schizanthusnerd.com

[danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book was difficult to read due to nature of the subject. however, if you can get past that you learn a lot about the typical family structure that incest occurs in, characteristics of the father and the mother if she is present, and typical characteristics that children who are being sexually abused will display.

the book describes how to respond to news of incest. Herman firmly believes that the father should be removed from the family rather than the daughter and talks about the importance of maintaining normalcy for the daughter, re-establishing a stronger mother-daughter bond if possible, and in very specific and well monitored situations re-incorporating the father back into the family.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was difficult to read because I know someone that has been through this situation, but it also helped me to understand some of her actions and why she had some of the psychological reactions she did. When you know someone that has been through this situation, that makes this book difficult to read, but it will help you to understand. It is also a book that, from a clinical perspective, would likely help someone that works with clientele that have experienced this type of abuse, which is sadly the most common type of sexual abuse that is perpetrated upon women.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Father-Daughter Incest is a remarkable piece of feminist scholarship without being dogmatic or isolating. I really appreciate how comprehensive this book was on the topic of incest. It integrates rigorous clinical studies, socio-cultural history, analysis and critique of the justice system and social services, and of course the psychology of not only incest victims but also all individuals adjacent to the incest victim. By tackling the issue at so many angles, Herman gives due to complexity of incest at the individual, community, and structural level. While I am no expert at any of these disciplines, Herman’s writing is readable for novices trying to understand the systems that exist, which, intentionally or not, disenfranchise survivors of sexual abuse.

Further, I find that Herman suggests some rather radical solutions, in particular the recommendation for restorative justice. While many, like myself, may be fine with the idea of a pedophile rotting in solitary confinement for life, Herman argues for an approach that is healing for the victim and community rather than a vindictive one. Although the support priority belongs to the victim, resources should be directed to rehabilitating criminals as long as they are determined to have the capacity to reform. The aim is to prompt offenders to recognize the harm they’ve caused and prevent future abuse. Punitive measures will be in place in the instance of relapse and serve as a deterrent. Unfortunately, it’s hard for me to reach this degree of compassion for those who have committed such inhumane transgressions, but at least it helps answer the question Angela Y. David failed to properly address in “Are Prisons Obsolete?” I will acknowledge that what I perceive as justice may not be the same as what victims of incest feel is appropriate, particularly if the offender was a trusted family member. In abusive parent-child relationships, it’s difficult for children to fully resent or abandon their parents.

Another compelling suggestion Herman makes (that I myself do not perceive as radical) is the general restructuring of the family unit. In a traditional family, there’s a dire imbalance of power between the mother and father. Mothers of incestuous families, due to economic or physical debility, are not easily able to divorce themselves from the support of the father and remove their children from harm. Certainly advancements made by feminists have helped women to not be at the total mercy of an authoritative partner, but there are limitations as well. Men need to learn to engage in what is typically seen as “women’s work” (eg child rearing, housekeeping— both unpaid labor), otherwise women will essentially be working two jobs. I feel my braincells melting as I’m involuntarily remembering a conversation with an idiot telling me being a housewife is “so easy” and that feminism has solved all our issues. Certainly nurturing your children can be a very rewarding experience, but it’s literally a full time job. Consider the fact that there are services for babysitting, cleaning, cooking, driving, and managing schedules. These are all real jobs. You just expect your wife to do it for free without complaints.

While Herman does mention old school pornography (dirty mags) in passing, I would be interested in what she has to say about the porn industry in detail at its current state versus in the 1980s when this was published. Over the years I’ve grown less supportive of the stance that all kinks and sexual desires are permissible, especially if the kink is rooted to violence that occurs outside the confines of fantasy. Like, why do porn studios work so hard to normalize incest and the infantilization of women when in real life this stuff is usually unsexy and traumatizing? You are teaching people to become desensitized to these images and ultimately aroused by them. As Herman details through victim interviews and testimonies, there are people (mostly men) who approach incest victims with an uncomfortable eagerness. In the victim’s personal life, men may want to be with a woman they see as “damaged goods,” because they believe the sex will be more salacious. Even male professionals, like their therapist or psychiatrist, may pursue sexual relations with them because they see them as “sexually deviant” or more accessible due to their past. I was disgusted by the statistic that 70% of mental health professionals know a male specialist who has slept with their female clients. Obviously this behavior is rooted in a culture where women are seen as sexual objects that men are entitled to. As much as a failure I think Freud is, his Madonna-Whore dichotomy makes a lot of sense here.

[Nele · Rating 5 out of 5]

easily the most radicalizing book i have read to date, herman's analysis of the social structures that not only enable familial child abuse but make it inevitable is convincing and shocking and fills me with deep rage on behalf of all women and children that ever lived 💯 the occasional bouts of bioessentialism aside, her insights into the psychology of survivors are deeply empathetic without being sensationalist and her advice concerning the treatment and healing of not just the victims but their whole families was really interesting, especially the emphasis on the mother-daughter bond. also i know it was the 70s but the statistics she cites re: domestic abuse and therapeutic malpractice made me SICK. much to think about

[Nessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I could remember which podcast I was listening to that brought me to this author, and then this book. It was published 40 years ago now and so the literature on trauma, on PTSD, and particularly complex-PTSD has proliferated and is reflected in the psychological literature, in scholarly journals, in research papers, in addition to online forums and spaces that do anti-violence and trauma work across the helping professions and beyond. That being said, you have to appreciate the work of Judith and colleagues who dared to approach a topic that still is treated as taboo rather than endemic (as Judith also noted), most particularly within a time in which patriarchal values were more firmly entrenched in social norms, the legal-political system, and the White-American family structure and where the issue of incest seemed to be regarded by even some professionals as morally acceptable!

I think more than anything this book reminds its readers that not so long ago, sexism was upheld to the degree that incest, when made public, could be met with active avoidance, survivor-blaming, direct disregard, or even further sexual harassment by people in positions of power, police, judge's, other family members, and therapists/psychologists...Who am I kidding, things haven't changed much in that regard. Still a rampant problem of today, we need to heed Herman's call for a structural feminist approach to incest and abuse, where importantly, there is support and immediate wrap around care for survivors, and some form of transformational justice for the person responsible. We need to assume that the statistics we have regarding the number of survivors is not truly representative because, abuse is always underreported and familial abuse is often borne in silence.

It is also one that very importantly centers voices of survivors of father-daughter incest, the honest conversations forthcoming from qualitative research that share the details of their upbringing, the complex and fraught relationship with their fathers and their mothers, siblings therapists, etc. and how their experience of incest affected their future relationships and their mental health. Only hearing from survivors do we get a more close understanding of how abuse affects the psyche, can shape how we see the world, and reminds us of the fierce resilience of survivors especially when offered support and validation during and following disclosure.

This book does not treat incest as an aberration but a increasingly common occurrence in a society that gives men power over women as heads of the household, and fails to acknowledge nor compensate women for their labour. Judith's afterword notes the progress but also the barriers to change being the continuation of a power structure that uplifts men and pseudo-masculinity and reifies their labour and denigrates women's labour and stereotypical femininity.

Have to give Herman her flowers, she doesn't beat around the bush for a such a sensitive issue. Some of the research does show its age and limitations, specifically in that it seems to impose a heteronormative and cissexual understanding of abuse. You aren't moving beyond the binary system in this book unfortunately and in fact, sometimes it feels like its being further reproduced in under the guise of centering cis-female survivors. But people in the helping professions looking to retrace steps to one of the more formative explorations of incest, I would recommend looking at Herman's bold analysis of this topic.

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great book. It was well written and insightful, with a decent amount of time spent on each facet of the topic. The afterward from 2000 also provided more recent commentary, which I quite appreciated. I do have one point of contention, which is that I don’t necessarily accept or believe in, as the author does, Freud’s Oedipus and Electra complexes. There was one point in the book, mainly just around page 57, where she was talking about them and using them as the basis of a theory, and I didn’t find them that credible, especially since she didn’t provide any evidence there for them. I don’t know how she can so easily accept Freud’s insight here when she knows how wrong he has been elsewhere. It’s not necessarily an integral part of her framework, though, so it’s not a huge issue, and there are still parts of it which I would say have a basis in reality (male children growing out of identification with their mother and transferring that veneration over to their father, and other general parts of it) – but her total embrace of it I find hard to swallow (the incestual feelings on the part of children aspect particularly). Also, I think the author’s citation of the solution to incestuous assault is a little too optimistic/simplistic; even if men have equal child-rearing duties and men and women share the care of children, I don’t think incestuous assault of daughters by fathers will be eradicated until misogyny and male dominance are fully eradicated. Those are the only two points which I disagreed with, and, otherwise, I thought this book was overflowing with wisdom and information. I learned a lot. I also think that, despite what readers may think before diving into it, it’s not as unpalatable a read due to visceral revulsion or horror as it might seem; it talked about real-life experiences of incestuous abuse, but it wasn’t super explicit or grotesque, so I never had to stop to recuperate at any point in the book because of a preponderance of horrifying details. There were some horrifying details in here, though. But a lot of it was more to do with statistics and theory rather than the experiences of individual girls. Well, there were a lot of passages by victims talking about their experience, but, again, nothing appallingly specific. My point, anyway, is that it wasn’t as hard to read as one might expect. Moving on: I quite liked the voice of the author. The way she described things was clear and cogent. And this book is still, unfortunately, strikingly relevant; a statistic I found online says that, in the United States today, “about one in four girls and one in 20 boys in the United States experience child sexual abuse”. That’s basically the same as the rape statistics for women (1 in 4 will experience it in a lifetime, I think), but worse. And that’s just awful. It’s also a lot more victims than described by the statistics the author cites in this book, which means it’s gotten worse, victims report it more, or that the system has gotten better at identifying incidents of it. Whatever the reason, it is not reassuring. So this book – and research into this topic, plus systems being put into place to prevent it/help victims/deal with offenders – is more necessary than ever.

Quotes:
“Even though Freud had gone to such lengths to avoid publicly inculpating fathers, he remained so distressed by his seduction theory that within a year he repudiated it entirely. He concluded that his patients’ numerous reports of sexual abuse were untrue. This conclusion was based not on any new evidence from patients, but rather on Freud’s own growing unwillingness to believe that licentious behavior on the part of fathers could be so widespread. His correspondence of the period reveals that he was particularly troubled by awareness of his own incestuous wishes towards his daughter, and by suspicions of his father, who had recently died. . . .

At the moment that Freud turned his back on his female patients and denied the truth of their experience, he forfeited his ambition to understand the female neurosis. Freud went on to elaborate the dominant psychology of modern times. It is a psychology of men. The incestuous wishes of the male child, his hostile rivalry with his father, and the struggle to master these feelings and enter into the world of men became the central focus of psychoanalytic inquiry. The incestuous wishes of parents, and their capacity for action, were all but forgotten. This does not matter very much in the case of boys, for, as it turns out, boys are rarely molested by their parents. [Later, in the afterward from 2000, she says new research has shown that there is a large amount of boys who have been molested, generally by adult men, though still less than girls.] It matters a great deal in the case of girls, who are the chief victims. Since much of psychoanalytic theory originated in the refusal to validate a common and central female experience, it is not surprising that Freud and his followers were never able to develop a satisfactory psychology of women.” (10)

“Prejudice against the child victim within the medical profession bolsters a similar prejudice within the legal profession. The most famous legal text ever published in this country, John Henry Wigmore’s Treatise on Evidence (1934), set forth a doctrine impeaching the credibility of any female, especially a child, who complained of a sex offense. Wigmore warned that women and girls were predisposed to bring false accusations against men of good character, and that these accusations might convince unsuspecting judges and juries. He therefore recommended that any female complainant, but especially a girl who accused her father of incest, should be examined by a psychiatrist to determine his credibility. To support his opinion, Wigmore drew upon the pronouncements of eminent psychiatric authorities. Where their published case reports suggested the possibility of real sexual abuse, Wigmore, like Freud, falsified or omitted the evidence. For example, in his discussion of incest, Wigmore cited case reports of two girls, age seven and nine, who accused their fathers of sexual assault. In both cases, the original clinical reports documented the fact that the children had vaginal infections. The seven-year-old had gonorrhea, and the nine-year-old’s vagina was so inflamed and swollen that the doctor could not make a physical examination. This and other corroborating evidence was systematically omitted in Wigmore’s presentation, and the cases were discussed as examples of pathological lying in children. Wigmore’s assertions, supposedly based upon medical expertise, remained unchallenged for decades in the legal literature, and still retain great prestige and influence in the courtroom.” (11)

“Kinsey himself, though he never denied the reality of child sexual abuse, did as much as he could to minimize its importance. Some 80 percent of the women who had experienced a childhood sexual approach by an adult reported to Kinsey’s investigative team that they had been frightened and upset by the incident. Kinsey cavalierly belittled these reports. He hastened to assure the public that children should not be upset by these experiences. If they were, this was the fault not of the sexual aggressor, but of prudish parents and teachers who caused the child to become ‘hysterical’: ‘It is difficult to understand why a child, except for cultural conditioning, should be disturbed at having its genitalia touched, or disturbed at seeing the genitalia of other person, or disturbed at even more specific sexual contacts . . . Some of the more experienced students of juvenile problems have come to believe that the emotional reactions of the parents, police officers, and other adults who discover that the child has had such a contact, may disturb the child more seriously than the sexual contacts themselves.’” (16)

“This argument ignores the question of power. It avoids coming to grips with the reality that, in relations with adults, there is no way that a child can be in control or exercise free choice. Power, according to Constantine, is ‘a subtle element of interpersonal relations.’ On the contrary, there is nothing subtle about the power relations between adults and children. Adults have more power than children. This is an immutable biological fact. Children are essentially a captive population, totally dependent upon their parents or other adults for their basic needs. Thus they will do whatever they perceive to be necessary to preserve a relationship with their caretakers. If an adult insists upon a sexual relationship with a dependent child, the child will comply.

Given this reality, it makes no sense to invoke the idea of consent. Consent and choice are concepts that apply to the relationships of peers. They have no meaning in the relations of adults and children, any more than in the relations of freemen and slaves.” (27)

“If it must be conceded, first, that father-daughter incest occurs commonly, and second, that it is not a harmless pastime, then apologists for the incestuous father are thrown back upon their third and final excuse: he is not responsible for his actions. Most commonly, they blame his daughter, his wife, or both. Thus we make the acquaintance of the two major culprits in the incest romance, the Seductive Daughter and the Collusive Mother. Ensnared by the charms of a small temptress, or driven to her arms by a frigid, unloving wife, Poor Father can hardly help himself, or so his defenders would have us believe. Often he believes it himself.” (36)

“In short, even by patriarchal standards, the mother in the incestuous family is unusually oppressed. More than the average wife and mother, she is extremely dependent upon and subservient to her husband. She may have a physical or emotional disability which makes the prospect of independent survival quite impractical. Rather than provoke her husband's anger or risk his desertion, she will capitulate. If the price of maintaining the marriage includes the sexual sacrifice of her daughter, she will raise no effective objections. Her first loyalty is to her husband, regardless of his behavior. She sees no other choice. Maternal collusion and incest, when it occurs, is a measure of maternal powerlessness.

As for the question of the mother's responsibility, maternal absence, literal or psychological, does seem to be a reality in many families where incest develops. The lack of a strong, competent, and protective mother does seem to render girls more vulnerable to sexual abuse. Maternal disability of any sort represents a significant family stress and is perceived by all family members as a deprivation.

But no degree of maternal absence or neglect constitutes an excuse for paternal incest, unless one accepts the idea that fathers are entitled to female services within their families, no matter what the circumstances.Implicitly the incestuous father assumes that it is his prerogative to be weighted upon at home, and that if his wife fails to provide satisfaction, he is entitled to use his daughter as a substitute. It is this attitude of entitlement—to love, to service, and to sex—that finally characterizes the incestuous father and his apologists. In a patriarchal society, the concept of the father’s rights to use female members of his family—especially his daughters—as he sees fit is implicit even in the structure of the incest taboo.” (49)

“The asymmetry in the observation of the incest taboo makes sense psychologicall only in one particular kind of family: a father-dominated family, with a rigid sexual division of labor, in which mothers care for children of both sexes, and fathers do not. A patriarchal family structure secures to fathers immense powers over their wives and children. Traditionally, these powers include an unrestricted right of physical control, unrestricted sexual rights to wives (hence rape has no legal meaning within marriage), and extensive sexual rights in children. Fathers have the right to limit the sexual activity of their children, and to determine their choice of sexual and marriage partners (hence fathers ‘give away’ daughters in marriage). In modern Western society, these rights are legally abrogated when children reach majority. In many other societies, fathers’ rights, particularly in their daughters, are terminated only by marriage, and sometimes, as in ancient Greece, not even then. THe only sexual right in their children that fathers do not have in any society is that of personal use. But given all his other powers, a father may easily choose to extend his prerogatives to include the sexual initiation of his children.” (54)

“As the fathers felt their daughters slipping out of their control, they began to cast about for substitutes. If there were younger sisters in the family, the fathers often transferred their sexual attentions to them. In eleven families (28 percent), incest was repeated with younger sisters. In another ten families (25 percent), the daughters suspected that their sisters had been molested but could not be positive about it. In one third of the families, there was no repetition of the incest because there were no available sisters. The phenomenon of the father’s ‘moving on’ to a younger daughter has been observed by many authors, some of whom report even higher proportions of families in which this occurs.

Brothers were not molested, according to our informants. However, a number of brothers were physically abused, and several developed assaultive and abusive behavior in identification with their fathers. One of the daughters was molested by her brother as well as her father; she felt that her father, in breaching the incest taboo, had given her brother tacit permission to do the same. Others suspected that their brothers were carrying on the family tradition in the next generation”. (94)

“For the mother, whether or not she suspected the incestuous relationship, disclosure of the secret is utterly shattering. First of all, she feels betrayed by her husband and her daughter. But in addition to her personal feelings of hurt and outrage, she must cope with the knowledge that her marriage and livelihood are in jeopardy. If her daughter’s accusations are true, she faces the prospect of divorce, single parenthood, welfare, social ostracism, and even the possibility of criminal proceedings against her husband. These possibilities would be terrifying to any woman, even one in good health who was confident of her ability to manage alone in the world. How much more frightening, then, must such a future appear to a woman who is physically or mentally disabled, worn down by childbearing, intimidated by her husband, or cut off from social contacts and social supports outside of her family. Small wonder that many a mother, faced with the revelation of the incest secret, desperately tries to deny her daughter’s accusations. If she believes her daughter, she has nothing to gain and everything to lose.” (132)

“It is easy to make mistakes in treating sex offenders. Those schooled in a traditional model of psychotherapy may find themselves hopelessly lost. Traditional therapy presumes a patient who suffers inner distress, who seeks treatment voluntarily, and who agrees to confide in his therapist to the best of his ability, holding nothing back. The therapist, in turn, agrees to listen and intervene in a nonjudgmental manner and to keep the patient’s communications confidential. The goal for the patient is increased self-awareness and inner change. This model is absolutely useless when applied to sex offenders. Incestuous fathers are generally not in distress as long as they have sexual access to their daughters. They almost never seek treatment voluntarily, and they generally do not reveal the full extent of their offenses. Their goal is not to change themselves but to manipulate the therapist so that the therapist becomes an ally, protecting them from prosecution or even helping them to regain access to their victims. In this situation, insight-oriented psychotherapy is completely inappropriate.” (150-1)

“In the past two decades, the original premises of our incest study have been amply confirmed. It is now widely understood that father-daughter incest is not an aberration but rather a common and predictable abuse of patriarchal power. It is also a means of perpetuating the power of fathers, one of the many private crimes (rape, sexual trafficking, domestic battery) by which male dominance and female subordination are enforced. Perhaps those who grasp the importance of incest most fully are practical businessmen who profit from the sale of women’s bodies. A pimp explains to a naive student what he looks for in a prostitute:

Beauty, yes. Sexual expertise, somewhat. That can be taught easier than you think. What is important above all is obedience. And how do you get obedience? You get obedience if you get women who have had sex with their fathers, their uncles, their brothers—you know, someone they love and fear to lose so that they do not dare to defy.” (219-20)

“Our initial study did not lead us to suspect that childhood sexual abuse would affect survivors’ physical health. More recent research has made it clear, however, that survivors are as likely to end up in the office of a primary care physician as in a mental health clinic. In one study, survivors were more likely than others to make frequent office visits with multiple medical complaints, especially headaches and gastrointestinal problems. In another study, childhood abuse was associated with chronic pelvic pain. Although chronic health problems appear to be the lot of trauma survivors in general, traumatized children may be particularly vulnerable to traumatic disruptions in their maturing biological regulatory systems. Researchers following the development of sexually abused children are now reporting abnormalities in the central nervous system regulation of adrenal, thyroid, and reproductive hormones. These neurobiological abnormalities appear to persist long after the abuse has presumably come to an end. The implications of this growing body of evidence are quite disturbing, for it would appear that childhood trauma may have permanent effects on the developing brain.” (226)

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a groundbreaking book on incest and its devastating lifelong effects. One of the best and original book on this topic, it very effectively discusses patriarchy and feminism in this context as well and serves to show the extreme psychological damage that it does to a child and that it is obviously never the child's fault. It also addresses the legal and social system and how it should better support incest victims. A must-read!

[Ashraya]

This was difficult to read, but absolutely worth it.

[Boszka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting and thoroughly researched.

[Lore LongSoulSystem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though this is an early version of the Trauma and Recovery one, this is an excelent stand alone, and also a hard read.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's really so wild how Judith Herman had to systematically lay out arguments of chapter length that 1. yes it's harmful, and 2. no it's not the kid's fault (was this just a weird blip in Western intellectual history due to Freud?) - but grateful for her work, and that I live in a time where these are now mainstream views (at the very least among mental health professionals).

The feminist angle was interesting and convincingly argued, but I haven't done enough independent reading / thinking to form any conclusions. Also, the obvious thing to do would be to test the hypothesis with cross-cultural data (ie more patriarchal society should lead to higher incidence rates), but this is brought up in the book and considered not viable because of the lack of data - and the situation isn't much better several decades on. Probably won't be anytime soon either, because unwillingness to disclose, traumatic amnesia, people don't want to talk about it let alone study it, etc etc.

A good chunk of the book relies on conclusions from a single (thorough) study done by the author on white Catholic American women, and it shows in the composite portrait. This makes generalisation to other contexts a little difficult. Even so, I was floored by how exactly some parts of the women's experience matched in great detail.

[Jay Hun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once you can get past the reality of the occurrence of child sexual assault and in particular paternal incest this book is so impactful and informative. It explores the roles that many institutions have had in the covering up and perpetuation of harm when it comes to the history of incest. Extremely disappointing the way the judicial and psychological community has handled these cases. Going as far to invalidate and discredit victims to assuage their own discomfort with such a taboo act.

Judith did an amazing job exploring the role that society and the institutions play in incest. She also gave insight into the types of seductive fathers, family dynamics that create and support paternal incest. The long term impacts that it has on the female child who harm has been acted upon. As well as the ways that societal norms and attitudes that could help diminish if not completely eradicate paternal incest

[Serena Mancini · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive text about the effects of father-daughter incest on the daughter and family system. Though the subject matter is tough, the text itself is not overtly graphic. The book details the repercussions of familial incest on the daughter, family, criminal justice system, and victim advocacy using testimony of 40 invest survivors. It was particularly interesting in its discussion of the mother-daughter relationship as a result of father-daughter incest. Highly recommend this book for clinicians, case workers, and law enforcement.

“But for those who aspire to an image of free womanhood, incest is as destructive to women as genital mutilation or the binding of feet.”

[Marie-Claire Dassen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heel boeiend. Met name het niet kunnen loskomen van de relatie en de verwarrende gevoelens die kunnen optreden. (deed me ook denken aan die Engelse dame die werd geinterviewd in het de documentaire van Paul Therroux over de slachtoffers van die Engelse televisieman. Zij gaf aan misbruikt te zijn door haar grootvader, maar daarover niet boos te kunnen zijn omdat ze daarmee alle goede herinneringen aan hem zou kwijtraken, en dat was het enige plezierige dat ze in haar jeugd had). Gelezen op Kindle.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting report on research that was conducted in the US in the late 1960s. Incest is viewed from all angles (offender, victim, family, society, health care workers). Different approaches are described on how to try help all parties involved. Astonishing how different society as a whole was only some 50 years ago. I read this book because recently a well known Flemish writer made public that she was sexually abused by her father as a child. She said reading this book was an eye opener for her.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an interesting and extensive read, especially for someone who has been in a similar situation but fully consensual as adults. It was interesting to draw parallels from my own experiences to this books.
I found some parts to be exagerrated but to the books defense, it was written with abuse in mind.

[bárbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

tbh still one of the most thoughtful analysis of abuse and patriarchy

[Eila Jameson-Avey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every family member should read this. An in depth look at family dynamics and how patriarchy ruins lives.

[April Daniels · Rating 4 out of 5]

Presented as a "Resource for Further Reading" in both the 1992 and 1993 editions of Paperdolls: Healing from Sexual Abuse in Mormon Neighborhoods.

[r o a c h · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely outdated and liddled with sexist ignorance but still important.

[Jan S · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very informative book on Incest. Definitely an important read for both therapists and survivors.

[s · Rating 5 out of 5]

everyone should read this book

[Madison · Rating 4 out of 5]

been rewatching twin peaks, and felt this was an appropriate read. this is a great book on a terrible topic.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I confess. I did not actually finish this book, so my rating isn't really fair. However, I have now quit my job and lent it out, and it's not something I'm likely to return to for...you know, leisure reading. So, here's my abbreviated review:
I was looking forward to this book because of the extreme competence of Judith Herman's TRAUMA AND RECOVERY, which I consider a must-read for anyone doing trauma work. I was hoping this book would be equally helpful in working with incest survivors, since I felt somewhat out of my element. I don't know if this book would be helpful or not in this area. I never got past the second chapter. It was grueling. Herman spends the first chapter painstakingly convincing the reader that incest is a real problem, though detailed case examples and heartbreaking statistics. Apparently the book was first published in the 1980s, and maybe the prevalence of incest really was in question back then. I really didn't need to be convinced of this--I'm already a believer--and I probably should have skipped the beginning and moved on to practical application and treatment. As it was, I just gave up on the book. I guess I just want to warn the next person who attempts to read this.

[Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly interesting. Judy Herman is brilliant.