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Incest refers to sexual relations between closely related persons. The degrees of kinship defined as incestuous vary, but virtually every known society has prohibited father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister from having sexual contact or marrying. Only in recent decades, though, has society recognized incest as a social problem. Earlier, the cultural prohibition, known as the "incest taboo," was of primary interest and a topic of considerable theoretical concern. Many leading social theorists, including Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, and Claude Levi-Strauss, considered the incest taboo foundational to human social organization.

Consistent with understandings of the taboo, most people long viewed the incidence of incest as extremely rare, and until the 1980s, no prevalence studies of incest occurred. The closest thing to survey data came from general studies of sexual behavior, such as those by Alfred Kinsey, but these studies did not focus on incest and did not separately define or report it. Although incest was prohibited by law in most jurisdictions, the conviction rate of incest offenders was extremely low. As late as the mid-1960s, for example, the annual conviction rate of offenders did not exceed two cases per million persons in any U.S. state. Social scientists recognized that the actual incidence of incest must far exceed the rate of detection by law enforcement. Yet, the available evidence and the cross-cultural studies suggested that the incest taboo was uniquely powerful. Other forms of sexual offenses and sexual pathologies were of professional and occasionally public concern, but not incest.

A series of developments, beginning in the 1960s, led to a changed awareness of sexual offenses within the nuclear and extended family. The emergence of family therapy as a clinical specialty in the 1960s was important in establishing a concern with the child victim of incest. Family therapists initiated a rejection of key elements of Freudian psychoanalysis, particularly with respect to the role of incest fantasies in mental life, and their work led to the first of many treatment programs in which child victims received counseling. The child protection movement, originally organized to draw attention to the physical abuse of children, and the anti-rape movement of the early 1970s drew public and mass media attention to child sexual abuse as a social problem. They also spurred new legislation, such as the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974, which made it a criminal offense for professionals working with children and public officials not to report suspected instances of child maltreatment. These movements classified incest within the more general category of sexual abuse--sometimes using terms like intrafamilial child sexual abuse--and argued that family members and known others, not strangers, committed most abuse. In the ensuing years, research studies, surveys, and increased reporting have confirmed that incest is far more prevalent than previously assumed.

The extent of incest behavior, however, has eluded careful measurement. Studies of such highly stigmatized behavior are notoriously difficult to conduct, and under-reporting is a serious methodological problem. So too is the lack of consensus among researchers about what behaviors and what degrees of kinship define the experience of incest. Some employ narrow definitions of sexual contact--touching or penetration--whereas others use broad definitions that span a wide range of sexual and sexualized activities from penetration to such non-touch behavior as exhibitionism and sexual propositions. There is also wide latitude in what relatives are included, with some researchers adding "father figures" and other unrelated persons. Discrepancies like these have led to great inconsistency in the estimates of the prevalence of incest.

Further, in large-scale studies of sexual offenses and sexual behavior, incest between adults is not separately reported and incest involving a child is counted as a form of sexual abuse. The latter development is also reflected in some state penal codes, where sexual offenses against children by relatives are prosecuted under sexual abuse laws rather than incest statutes. The most comprehensive sources of information on sexual abuse in the United States, for example, come from the Department of Health and Human Services. Mandated studies, including the annual Child Maltreatment reports, based on compilations of data from child protective service agencies in individual states, and the periodic National Incidence Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect, based on large nationally representative samples of community professionals, provide the best estimates available on the incidence of sexual abuse. Although these studies offer some breakdown of victimization incidents by the type of perpetrator (e.g., parents, other family members), they do not discuss incest.

With heightened public and professional concern in recent decades, an immense body of research has emerged on the psychological effects of incest, on the dynamics of families in which incest takes place, and on the psychology of offenders. Studies have found that incest can have a wide variety of negative consequences for the victim, in both the immediate and longer term, depending on the frequency, duration, and type of sexual contact; age of the child; relationship to the offender; and other factors. For children, these consequences can include delinquency, anxiety, poor self-esteem, sexual acting out, and other problems. For adult survivors, issues include depression, self-destructive behaviors, and post-traumatic symptoms. Research on families in which incest occurs has centered on complex interaction dynamics and disturbances--intrapsychic, relational, and circumstantial. Men appear responsible for the majority of incest offenses, and much of the research on offenders focuses on various personality types and their conscious and unconscious motivations.

Public controversy and legal battles have erupted periodically since the 1980s over social problem claims of false reports of incest. Parent groups have organized to defend themselves against alleged false reports with respect to children, especially in divorcecustody cases, and by adult daughters or sons claiming trauma-induced amnesia for incestuous victimization as a child. In the latter case, parents criticize psychotherapists for using hypnosis and other "memory enhancement" techniques to induce a condition they call "false memory syndrome." Psychologists in the trauma field remain divided over these claims.

Bibliography:

1) Davis, Joseph E. 2005. Accounts of Innocence: Sexual Abuse, Trauma, and the Self. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

2) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families. 2007. "Child Maltreatment 2005." Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

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