Introduction
For generations one of the most popular social games has been that of word association. This is a game where a player chooses a word and addresses it to his partner. Without thought and on reaction alone, the partner snaps back a word that is related to the original word selected. For example, fork for knife; ball for bat; camera for pictures; and so on.
If one were to hear the word incest, likely the associated word would be taboo.
With all the countless numbers of books in print on the topic of sex, it borders on the incredible when one realizes the paucity of documentative information regarding the subject of incest. Upon reflection, however, one can begin to understand the reasons for this avoidance of sex's stepchild. It is truly one of society's most notorious taboos a behavior that is extremely difficult to unearth, except under the most professional of standards.
Can any form of human activity be lower on the human barometer than that of a mother having intercourse with her son, a daughter with her father, an aunt with a nephew, an uncle with a niece not to mention the homosexual side of this aberration? Of course, circumstances can alter a flat reply, but very .few people, lay or professional, believe there is anything more despicable than incest.
Bearing this factor in mind, and since much of sexual behavior is a product of person to person investigation (the case history), is it any wonder then that some pathetic, guilt-ridden soul should tremble from head to toe at the very thought of revealing the details of an incestuous relationship? Thus, the scarcity of information.
Incest, by definition, is sexual intercourse or interbreeding between closely related individuals, especially those who are related or regarded as related within those degrees wherein marriage is prohibited by law. It is considered a, crime against the laws of nature, therefore it is a crime throughout most of the world. And because of the very fact that it is legally defined as a crime, we know that incest exists as a probable daily occurrence.
The ratio of its occurrence is something that is not available to the public in general. It is usually lumped under the collective title of crimes against sodomy laws in public reports, hidden among the rapists, pedophiles, and their ilk. Limited reference sources are available to the public, but most of these are harbored in highly technical manuals.
One such publication is the Journal of Sex Research. In its August 1968 issue, there is an article by Joseph J. Berest entitled "Medico-Legal Aspects of Incest." Within the article, the author writes that clinical experience suggests that the actual rate of occurrence is much higher than official public records would indicate. The results of sexual survey research, such as that of Kinsey, reflect the highest incidence of incestuous behavior between siblings. This is in contrast to the overwhelming majority of cases of father-daughter incest which appear in official public records. There has been very little reported in the literature about mother-son incest relationships.
Incest has been reported in every civilized country. It is assumed to occur at a rate of approximately one per one million persons and is formally charged in three percent to five percent of all sexual offenses. The results of this study suggest a much higher rate of occurrence of incest. The statutes in some of the states define incest also as an act of intermarrying, which means the act of marrying a relative within a forbidden degree, regardless of whether there has been an act of copulation. The degree of forbidden intermarriage is defined by the law in all of the states. Every state law prohibits marriage between parents and children, between siblings, between grandparents and grandchildren, uncles and nieces* aunts and nephews. In some states, sex relations between stepfather and stepdaughter are considered as incestuous.
From official records, we are able to piece together a minute statistical sampling of incestous activity in the United States. In a report formulated in 1956, it was revealed that the total number of sex offenders confined in the New Jersey State Prison at Trenton in May 1950 was 300, of which twenty-four were confined for incest constituting eight percent of the sex offenders. During a ten year period (1952-1962) some 3,432 sex offenders were committed to the Lima State Hospital (Ohio) for observation. Of this number, 249 were incest offenders. Although the ratio of incest offenders fluctuated from year to year (never more than ten percent), the average percentage over the ten year period was 7.33; that is to say, of every hundred sex offenders over seven were convicted of incest.
These are just sample figures and do not necessarily reflect a nationwide or worldwide trend. And since they are official figures, they probably do not reflect the true incestuous activity which has taken place in these areas. Substantial information, as has been pointed out earlier, is just not available.
In Patterns of Incest, R.E.L. Masters states: "Quite plainly, there exists no adequate understanding of incest. By and large, sexologists have neglected or avoided, or at any rate, failed to discuss consummated incest. Compared to the great masses of material available on so many other varieties of sexual experience, the writings are slight."
The main cause of contemporary incest is unknown, but in general, it is safe to say that it is the end result of uncontrollable sex drives. They may be triggered by past conditionings, alcohol, mental deficiences, temporary loss of sanity, ignorance, or even by the tempo of our times.
Like most sexual practices condoned or otherwise, incest can be traced back to the farthest reaches of recorded time. There are many writings about it, and one of the most fascinating is the Egyptian cosmological myth of creation.
It tells of incest committed by the first divine couple: Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture. From this union was born Geb, god of the earth, and Nut, goddess of the sky. They, too, wished to have intercourse with each other. Accordingly, Nut mounted the body of her brother, using the inverted position.
But the sexual embrace between brother and \ sister did not last very long. Their father, Shu, intervened, separating them. The sun god, Re, Shu's creator, forbade Geb and Nut any sexual intercourse for three hundred and sixty days, the length of the Egyptian year. It is interesting to note that the edict was not intended as a ban on incest as such, for incest had already been practiced between Shu and Tefnut. It was merely a ban against the earth (Geb) and the sky (Nut) mingling. Thus, the atmosphere (Shu), in his position between sky and earth, was establishing and maintaining cosmic equilibrium.
This ancient decree still survives in Islam where the inverted position is condemned: "Cursed be he who makes the woman the sky and the man the earth." However, Thoth, who was the patron of science, sympathized with the love between Geb and Nut. He invented five days during which, without breaking Re's edict, they could have intercourse together. It was in this way that Osiris, Isis, Seth and Neftis were born.
Thus, the union between Geb and Nut provided the means by which gods and goddesses, brothers and sisters, could commit incest. Osiris copulated with his sister Isis, and Seth with his sister Neftis. The story of these incestuous couples constitutes the earliest adultery myth, and includes jealousy and murder. Seth became jealous of Osiris and plotted to kill him. In order to accomplish his murder, he persuaded his wife-sister, Neftis, to steal the perfumed dress belonging to Isis, and in its guise, to lie with Osiris on the banks of the Nile. After their love-making, Osiris fell asleep. The watching Seth was then able to approach his brother, murder him, dismember him, and scatter his parts along the Nile. From this traitorous union of Osiris and Neftis was born the bastard Anubis. Eventually, Neftis repented her subterfuge, and helped her sister to search for the dismembered parts of Osiris. Anubis also helped to reassemble his father's corpse, thus becoming the patron of embalmers.
One noteworthy sidelight to the story is that Isis did manage to recover all of the parts of the dead Osiris except one: his phallus. It had fallen into the waters of the river and had been swallowed by a fish the oxyrhynchus. Thus, we have the source of the religious taboo forbidding priests to eat fish, considered an unclean food. And most amazing, the oxyrhynchus does, in fact, bear a striking resemblance to a long foreskinned phallus.
Based on present investigations, incest is still found in isolated areas of the world. According to one such source, the region of the Nkomati in South Africa is inhabited by hippopotamus hunters of exceptional skill. At the beginning of the hunting season, the hunter ritually prepares himself for the expedition that will last about a month. With this object in mind, he retreats to his hut with his daughter, and they engage in sexual intercourse. He then leaves and abstains from sexual activity for the entire period of the hunt.
In a few African tribes where the number of women is excessive, when a husband dies the widow is inherited by one of her in-laws, who may be a son by a different wife (under polygamous circumstances), a nephew, or a brother. The custom, known as levirate, consists of the formal obligation on the part of the widow to marry her brother-in-law.
Prohibitions of incest limit a wife's choice on the basis of endogamy or exogamy. Endogamy is when marriage is allowed only between members of a section of a group, marriage between members of different sections being absolutely forbidden. Exogamy is the system where certain tribes consider themselves interlinked through family bonds and, therefore, may marry outside that line.
Endogamy has been observed in such tribes as the Karanga, Masai, and Nkole. However, real incest consists in the union of mother and son, father and daughter, brother and sister, and violations of the taboo are only rarely permitted. Marriage between cousins is also regarded as incest among a few tribes.
Regarding incest, the Koran (IV, 26) says:
And do not marry women your father married except bygones for it is abominable and hateful and an evil way; unlawful for you are your mothers and your daughters, and your sisters, and your paternal aunts and maternal aunts, and your brothers' daughters and your sisters' daughters and your foster-mothers' and your foster-sisters', and your wives' mothers and your step-daughters who are your wards, born of your wives to whom ye have gone in; but if ye have not gone in, unto them, then it is no crime in you; and the lawful spouses of your sons from your own loins.. . .
In addition to the African settings, marriage of close relatives was viewed with favor in other early cultures. Guatemalan history reveals that incest was once openly approved, going so far as to celebrate particular holidays with public orgies that required men to copulate with their daughters and boys to do the same with their mothers. The Hittites considered marital incest a virtue. So did the Egyptians. It was in Egypt where poetry flourished describing certain lovers as "brother" and "sister." Such unions were commonplace, and in some dynasties it was compulsory for the heir to the throne to marry his sister. The Ptolemys, the successors to Alexander the Great, practiced marriage between siblings for three hundred years.
Cleopatra, goddess of the Nile, Queen of Egypt, lover of Mark Anthony, seductress of Caesars and kings, the fascination of history -Cleopatra the woman was the end product of many generations of interbreeding.
Roman nobility, exemplified by a long line of both tyrannical and tolerant rulers, ranks high in the annals of incest. Caligula, murderer and maniac emperor, raped one of his sisters, and eventually committed incest with the remaining two. At the infamous orgies he gave, it was not beyond Caligula's conduct to ravish one of his sisters before the assembled guests. Nero, homosexual and background musician for local fires, was a sex companion for his mother, Agrippina, one of Caligula's sisters. This was a lengthy incestuous affair and ended only when Nero took another woman, Poppaea, to his bed. It is said that Poppaea closely resembled Agrippina, and for what discussional value it may hold, Nero eventually kicked Poppaea to death.
In England, during an age of cultural advance, the poet Lord Byron announced his love for his half-sister through his poems. Some historians claim that Byron's love was twofold; an actual, heartfelt love affection; and the passionately invoked flesh-love of their bodies.
Of course, incest is not relegated to the days of the long past. Today, there are ample cases in police and psychiatric files which tell of fathers training their children from infancy in the ways of sex. Researcher Russell Trainer, in his book The Lolita Complex, reports a case that took place in a Midwestern city. A father, living in ostensible marital harmony, confessed that he had found a total sexual outlet as the lover of his daughter, commencing from the child's eighth year and continuing until she was fifteen. Trainer's investigation revealed that a basic motivation of the adult sexual molester was that he was acting out an unconscious incestuous desire. Case histories indicate that for many adults, their earliest sexual experience was of an incestuous nature. In many such men, the remainder of their lives are devoted to recapturing their first moments of coital awakening. This also applies to the man who exposes himself to women on the street, the exhibitionist. And pertinent to incest, the male molester of a young girl generally proves to be someone she knows and trusts, often a relative or family friend.
"What the facts on the incidence of contemporary incest are," writes Albert Ellis, "no one clearly seems to know, and doubtless even Dr.
Kinsey would have difficulty discovering, since only a fraction of those individuals practicing incest at some time during their lives may ever be expected to admit so doing. Court records, which are quite fragmentary in this respect, would lead us to believe that incest is, in fact, relatively infrequent in this country and is surpassed in infrequency only by very few other sex offenses (such as necrophilia or sexual assault with intent to kill). Moreover, the great majority of incest cases which seem to occur involve a father's taking advantage of his daughter (frequently against her will), while relatively few involve mother-son or sister-brother relations."
It should be pointed out that Dr. Ellis is reporting the findings of court cases and not necessarily a factual poll on the number of brother-sister sex relationships. Recent findings (as in the Berest article) are coming to light and indicate that this type of relationship is engaged in to an extent enough to support an in-depth study of it.
Sexual encounters between brothers and sisters is the theme of this work. But more important, this volume isolates itself on the "circumstances" of a given episode, not just on the "act" itself. As stated earlier, circumstances can alter a flat reply to the question of "can any form of human activity be lower on the human barometer than incest?" And although some people consider "circumstances" a copping out or covering up of an out-and-out crime, the author feels that it is a vital element in understanding the total nature of the subject at hand. If the element of circumstance needs a defense, we need look no further than the daily newspaper. A murder trial is in progress. If guilty, the individual's punishment will be meted out according to the circumstances that precipitated the criminal act.
So we present the tragic picture of that brother and sister who merge sexually, and who are truthfully unaware of the wrongness. Whether they are to be pitied or castigated is left to the discretion of the reader. Whether they or society should be held responsible is a decision left to the impartiality and wisdom of some phantom jury.