Chapter 6
Incest goes back to our primitive beginnings, and society has been quick to find methods of suppressing or controlling its practice, using survival of the species as the main argument. Inbreeding is said by geneticists to retain the undesirable recessive inherited characteristics, that is, when two non-related people produce offspring, their defects neutralize each other. But if brother and sister, father and daughter, mother and son, reproduce, the children tend to have mental and physical defects that have been carried as recessive genes by the parents.
Society also recognizes another problem with incest. Such interpersonal relationships between members of a family unit destroy the image of the traditional head of the household, the father (in the case of father-daughter incest), causing the breakdown of the basic familial setup in society. A father who is sexually familiar with his daughter obviously cannot maintain the respect of his family nor his position as head of the household. According to many psychiatrists and psychologists, there is always a subconscious rivalry between father and son, the so-called Oedipus complex, and between mother and daughter, the Electra complex. Regardless of the validity of these Freudian concepts, incest brings such factors into sometimes violent relief within the family and creates confusion and jealousy among family members.
Incest by its very nature, is difficult to control or legislate against for various reasons. The physical proximity, the basic level of mutual affection that exists within a family unit make it a breeding ground for potential sexual attraction and resultant acts of incest. The laws do exist, however, and for the most part they seem to be unrealistic. They are unique laws, too, unlike most of those modern men have drafted, since the statutes dealing with incest are based on Biblical precepts and are not, as is customary, mindful of the separation between church and state.
The dread of incest is one of the most puzzling phenomena in psychology. Ralph Linton sums it up as well as anyone (Linton, 1936, pp. 125-126) when he states: "The causes which underline such limitations on marriage, technically known as incest regulations, are very imperfectly understood. Since these regulations are of universal occurrence, it seems safe to assume that their causes are everywhere present, but biological factors can be ruled out at once. Close inbreeding is not necessarily injurious....Neither are purely social explanations of incest regulations altogether satisfactory, since the forms which these regulations assume are extremely varied. ... It seems probably that there are certain psychological factors involved, but these can hardly be strong enough or constant enough to account for the institutionalization of incest regulations ... they have probably originated from a combination of all these factors...."
So far, then, we know that somewhere in history the roots of anti-incest regulations exist, but no one has yet found out where or why or how they came into existence. No one has satisfactorily explained the great force of the taboo connected with incest, and until a solution is reached, we remain in the dark ages as far as this aspect of sex is concerned. In this book I have attempted to set forth the facts about incest, reportorially in some cases, and when possible, the effects on the persons involved. I can only delve, report, and theorize, however; I cannot solve nor change.
A note here about this book: While there are innumerable cases of incest among uncles and nieces, between cousins, and so forth, they are not covered here, being superfluous in the light of our richer exploration into the material available among persons more closely related. Our study in this book concerns brother and sister, father and daughter, and mother and son. These are the most common (in that order, it is most widely thought), and form the basis for a closer examination of the phenomenon of incest. Various cases are on record of homosexual incest, too, both male and female, but they are not treated here, as this would broaden the scope of the book so much that our purpose would be defeated by unnecessary diffusion.
A final word, before examining the subject at length, and one to keep in mind while reading this book: the cost of incest is extremely high. Society pays a dear price for its unique taboo (and the even stranger habit of clinging to it), and the individuals who step over the invisible line pay a high price indeed. It would seem that we nuture this dark taboo at all costs, with not very many good reasons why. It is a tragic indictment against our "enlightened" natures that the taboo of incest lingers so unreasonably in its present form.
Let us hope that this further light, then, may help to scrub away some of the shadows. Case History:
"My dad was the designer of most of the churches in our city. I didn't find this out until I was in college. I knew he was a busy man and an architect, but didn't know just how respected he was. He sold and bought real estate, too, and acquired wealth, though he was always fair and not greedy in business dealings. Dad was the top man in his profession and in anything else he tried. He founded some related businesses that are still prospering. He was always looking for new things, new inventions, and when they came out, he investigated them. If they were good, he saw to it that they were introduced to our town first.
"He helped establish a credit bureau; he started a wall-washing machine business, an automatic reducing salon chain, drive-in hamburger places, car-washes, and things like that. He was ahead of a lot of the rest of the country. He had his hands in a great many things and they took up a lot of his time. Dad was also a friend to people in dire circumstances. He never refused a loan, and a lot of times he saved jobs for men and women who had had their wages garnished. He helped people with their budgets, and eventually he founded a service that took charge of such chores for people who couldn't manage their money very well. He did all of these things out of a genuine desire to help people. He helped the individuals close to him first, then reached out to help as many people as he could on a larger scale. He was successful, and he was also revered by just about everyone in our town.
"Dad was affable. He met and made friends easily. He never drank too much, he was never out of line. He was a born leader, and he saw to it that people didn't forget who he was. Theodore F., my father, was a man you couldn't keep in the background. This is why he later got into politics. He may have wanted to, anyway, but at any rate he was asked. He ran for mayor and won easily. Influential people foresaw the governorship for Dad if he wanted it, and the White House even. He was backed by the churches too, and was a deacon in high standing in our own church. His fellow church members all believed him to be an exceptionally religious man.
"To everyone he appears to be the devoted father, the community and business leader, the man who can do no wrong, who is topmost in their hearts. He is an exemplary human being in the eyes of our community. There were four of us children, two boys and two girls, and I am the oldest. None of us ever heard a sour word about our father, and we were all very proud to be his children. He was the Boy Scout Code all wrapped up in one sterling package-and I guess I'm the only one who knows the part I'm about to tell.
"I can remember my father's first sexual interest in me. I was about ten or possibly eleven years old. He was trying to teach me how to shoot a bow and arrow. He stood very close to me, and I felt his sex organ touching me. He made it a point to put his arms around me and hold me close as I held up the bow with my own arms. He stood behind me, a little to the side. I felt his penis get erect and touch my buttocks, I didn't think this was right, in fact I was severely embarrassed, so I tried to pull away. But he made me hold still so he could teach me the proper way to launch the arrow. I thought maybe he didn't know that he aroused organ was touching me, and I made myself believe that, though now when I think about it, I'm not sure I was convinced, even then. I think I didn't want to feel any guilt and didn't want to think my dad was doing anything he shouldn't be doing. But it didn't stop with the archery lessons....
"He tried to teach me how to dance too, and I felt him pressing against me then. At first I thought he must be awful dumb, because I kept moving my body away from his, and he'd pull me in close so I could feel him again. The boys I danced with weren't that way, and I thought Dad was just clumsy and probably a square, too.
"Once, when we were swimming and he was horsing around with me in the pool, I noticed he got an erection and I tried to stay away from him. There were other people around and I was afraid they'd find out, and we'd be embarrassed. Dad had to stay in the pool until he cooled off. I would have laughed if I hadn't been so flustered about it. I got the feeling after several of these incidents, that Dad got that way whenever he was around me. It was a strange feeling, but I didn't try to define it or isolate it at the time. I didn't know enough then.
"Around the house, Dad usually wore only his shorts in summer, and he'd scratch himself in the crotch all the time. They were thin shorts and you could see right through them. I never actually saw him with an erection though. I'm sure Mother would have gotten very angry at him if that had happened. It was odd, I thought, that he should get an erection with his clothes on, and not when he was practically naked. But I was too young to understand what made his penis hard in the first place.
"I do remember that when Dad scratched himself in the crotch, he seemed also to be clutching his organ as though to hide it. In hiding it, though, he was just calling attention to it. It fascinated me, I guess because I wanted to see what it looked like. I had felt it underneath his clothes against my body, but never seen it. I began to have fantasies about men with exposed penises. I even stood up to urinate like men do, sometimes, just to see if I was so much different. I kept trying to forget about these things, but it didn't work. I wanted desperately to see what a penis looked like--I was dying to see Dad's.
"All of these events set me up for what was to come. I had fantasied seeing Dad's penis so often, and touching it with my hand, that when the time came, I was not shocked at all. I had, in fact, a deep sense of relief. This didn't come about for some time, though. I think I was about fourteen when I first had a sex experience with my father.
"It was summertime, and I had flunked algebra in my freshman year at high school. So I had to go to summer school to make up the credit. The rest of the kids were free, and it was my mother's custom to take us all to the beach for two weeks. That summer I couldn't go, so she left with Jimmy, Clare and Dean, and I stayed home with Dad. She cautioned my father to watch me so that I didn't stay out late and goof off while she was away. She was reassured by Dad, who promised to lay down the rules and keep me in line.
"Dad's attitude changed after Mom and my brothers and sister drove off. He seemed happy and gay. It was about an hour later that he asked me to come into the living room for a 'talk'. He started asking me all kinds of personal questions. Did I like boys? Did I ever 'fool' with them' Did I know that boys could get me into trouble? He wanted to know if any boy had ever asked me to 'do things' with him. I got very huffy about that, but he said they probably would, and then he started to talk about sex.
"By this time I knew what sex was. I had talked to a lot of girls and with some who were 'experienced.' But I really hadn't had any experiences of my own. So it was with some real interest that I listened to Dad's lecture. He said that this country was backward about sex, that in other countries they saw to it that young people learned ail about it and that girls knew how to 'protect' themselves. He mentioned Sweden and France and Italy. He told me that sexual intercourse before marriage was all right in some countries, was part of the 'getting acquainted' period of courtship. He asked me if I knew what a condom was.
"He said that was the thing to use so that I wouldn't become pregnant. But he said there were bad boys who wouldn't use them and would deliberately try to make me have a baby. Some of them, he said, even broke these rubbers so that the girl would become pregnant. He said if I was ever raped by a boy or a man, that I should make him put on a rubber first. This sounds silly to me now, but Dad was quite serious and I took it seriously at the time. From his talk, I gathered that all boys and men were out to rape me and that this was a part of life I had to accept as a girl. I wondered why my mother had never told me these things, if they were true, since she was a woman and must have gone through them herself. I also had never heard anything like this from the other girls my own age. Anyway, Dad kept talking about rubbers, describing them, and giving me a full lecture on their use.
"He told me how to test the ends of the rubbers to be sure they were intact, and mentioned that some air should be in them so that they wouldn't break inside me. It was a pretty clinical lecture for a girl of my age, and I was fascinated beyond words. From this discussion of the condoms, he turned to a full description of the penis itself. As I said, I had been fascinated by this aspect of men for some time, so I listened eagerly to what Dad had to say. When he started describing the penis I expressed some disbelief, and the conversation lagged while he groped for words to describe it. He was telling me that the blood made it hard or something like that. This was his chance to show me firsthand what he was describing, and he used the opportunity. He unzipped his trousers and brought out the subject of our conversation.
"I had been feeling strange, hot around the ears, flushed I'm sure with guilt feelings and pleasurable curiosity. I didn't want Dad to stop this fascinating discourse, but at the same time I had mixed emotions. I could tell that Dad was enjoying his role very much, too, and so we were both sharing a large secret. His voice kept getting huskier as he tried to describe his sex organ while it was lying there in full view of both of us. I knew he was getting intense pleasure out of this scene, and it made his conversation sound pretty phony. I knew we were doing wrong, but I had no desire to stop listening to him nor looking at his penis. I still recall those moments and have thought of them often over the years. I used to think of them in my masturbation fantasies, and have relied on them emotionally when having sex with my husbands and with other men.
"Anyway, Dad began describing what happened during sex to his penis. He showed me the foreskin and the head and told how the former rubbed over the latter to cause pleasurable sensations. He described how, after a lot of this pleasure, ejaculation occurred, and told me this was what planted the seed, causing girls and women to have children. While he was talking and describing these things, his penis slowly became erect. He explained this was designed by nature so that penetration inside of a woman could occur. He then demonstrated manually what he had just told me about the foreskin.
"His voice kept getting lower, but he valiantly raised it when it threatened to become a whisper.
"While he was showing me this, he suddenly reached for my hand and put it on his penis. He told me to squeeze hard. I did. Then he moved my hand up and down. He was getting very excited, I could tell, and he kept moving my hand, faster and faster. This was something I had not dreamed of even in my wildest fantasties, and I was experiencing extreme pleasure then, myself. He kept telling me to squeeze harder, and I was afraid I'd hurt him. Somehow his penis looked both formidable and delicate at the same time.
"Just before I thought he was going to ejaculate, he pulled my hand off and leaned back away from me. I felt terribly cheated. He put his penis back inside his pants and shuddered. He mumbled something about that being 'far enough for now.' It was as though he didn't want me to see the rest of it, the best part. He made me feel like a child, and though I was, I remember it made me very angry. Dad didn't say anything for several moments after he had zipped up his pants.
"Then he talked about the weather, the family, hoping they would have a good time, and various other unrelated subjects. I just sat there fuming. I wanted to see what had happened to his penis. Then the conversation dragged again and Dad looked at me a long moment. He grabbed my hand suddenly and put it on his lap. He had lost his erection, I could feel. He pushed my hand hard so that it squeezed his soft penis. While my hand was there, I felt it grow and become erect again. I was disappointed that I couldn't watch this process, but it seemed a miraculous thing to me at the time. It gave me a sense of power. All I had to do, it seemed, was to touch it and it would be ready, would rise up to the hardness I had witnessed with my own eyes moments before. But I still wanted to see more. It was the old attraction of the mysterious, the forbidden.
"When it was fully erect again, Dad took it out of his pants. He made me do the masturbation on him once more, but this time, he reached inside my panties and played with my privates. He told me to spread my legs wider so that he could touch me better. I was feeling kind of dopey by this time. Maybe there was too much for me to concentrate on at once. Anyway, I didn't think as much about his fondling me as I did about masturbating him. I did better this time, and I could see that he was glad I had learned so quickly and so well. After a few moments, he made me pull up my dress so he could see underneath. Then he pulled my panties down past my knees.
"With his hand, he stroked my vagina, matching his rhythm with my own. During this, though I didn't rationalize this way at the time, the things we were doing were mutual and had nothing to do with my education or anything else except pure pleasure. There was no turning back now. We liked each other and we both drew tremendous ecstasy from this mutual masturbation. Dad made me pull my pan tied down further and spread my legs wider apart, as he stroked my privates with his finger and hand, and I rubbed his penis with mine, He started moving his body with my hand, though, and I thought he was going to have an ejaculation. Again, however, he stopped before climax and looked away from me. He quickly put his organ back inside his pants. I really felt bothered then. He was keeping something from me. I didn't want to stop playing with him and I didn't want him to stop touching me, either.
"When he had touched my clitoris I felt good all over, and that feeling of pleasure has stayed with me all these years. When I masturbate I have to touch the clitoris or it doesn't work for me. I concealed my pleasure from my dad, as though I was punishimng him for cheating me of his orgasm. But out of this came another experience which was completely without mixed emotions on my part. That is, I felt no guilt about anything Dad and I did from then on. Dad said he had to leave then, but would see me that night, and I should stay home the rest of the afternoon. I took this as an invitation to more of the same play, and looked forward to more pleasures with my father that night.
"A feeling of warm anticipation began to build up in me toward evening. When Dad came home he didn't mention the late morning's happenings, nor did he talk about sex any more during supper. Not until it was bedtime did I really know that what I wanted to happen was finally going to happen. We both undressed for bed, he in his and Mother's bedroom, and I in mine. I was just getting ready to pull down my covers and get into my bed, when Dad appeared in the doorway.
"He told me to come into his and Mother's bedroom. He took my hand in his and I followed him. I had no bad feelings, no guilt whatsoever. I was surging with excitement inside, yet it all seemed so easy and natural. I would have been disappointed if he hadn't have come for me in this way. I guess I wanted to take my mother's place with Dad, and expected it with a passion at this point.
"I didn't force anything that happened, though. I was completely docile and willing to do all that he told me to do. He pulled down the covers and had me get on Mother's side of the bed. I hopped in fast, in case he was thinking of changing his mind. He lay down next to me, but kept his distance. Then he reached over and put his hand inside my pajamas. I felt a thrill surge through me as he repeated his motions of the morning. I reached over, without his asking me, grabbed his penis and began stroking it. He moved closer to me and began picking up the conversation of before. He wanted to 'teach' me what really happened when a boy and girl or a man and a woman made love, although he called it 'intercourse."
"He told me about the positions of the man and woman during sexual relations. Then he proceeded to show me. He made me spread my legs wide. All this time, he had been instructing me as to what I should do and I had been minding him as though I was a small girl being told how to clean house. But there was a change in me when he got on top of me, because I began to hold back my true feelings of desire and pleasure. I held back at this point, even though I had withheld little when we mutually masturbated.
"Dad was still 'instructing' me. He moved his penis over the lips of my vagina, and he made an up-and-down motion as well, without penetrating me. He said he didn't want to enter me because he didn't want to 'spoil' me for my husband. He said a marriage could be ruined if anyone had previously entered me beyond a certain point. His desire grew in him, though, and he proceeded into the next steps of his instruction.
"He said he would show me a condom and explain how it was used. He went to the bathroom and brought back two rubbers. Then he turned on the light and showed them to me. He took the band off of one of them and sat down on the bed next to me. Then he rolled the condom over his erect penis, leaving air in the tip, so that it looked like a piece of collapsed bubble-gum. He told me this was important so that the rubber wouldn't break and cause me to become pregnant. I was thrilled about this, because I felt that finally he was going to enter me and that I would find out what an ejaculation was like.
"He turned off the light, but he didn't take the condom off. I knew then that he was going to do it to me, and I smiled to myself in the dark. I felt my hopes rise that he would have an ejaculation and that I would feel it. He got right on top of me again, then. I just lay still with my legs straight, though I knew what he wanted me to do. He had to ask me to spread my legs apart again. I spread them only a little at first, so he would have to ask me to spread them wider. I was pushing some of my guilt onto Dad and acting the innocent little girl who was being seduced. Secretly I was wild with desire, and the hot feelings of pleasure inside me threatened to break through. I was so consumed with passion then, that I grabbed his penis and put it against my vagina.
"It seemed as though my whole body was shaking when he started doing it again. I was probably holding myself rigid, though, still holding back from Dad my expressions of pleasure. He started his back-and-forth motion, but was faster this time. Then he told me something I've heard countless times since then from boys in school, and I understand it's classed as one of the biggest and most common lies in the world. He said he was just 'putting the head in'. He asked me if it hurt. It didn't, but he told me to tell him if it hurt the least little bit and he would stop. I think now that that's the second biggest He. I never new a man who could stop once he got past that point with a woman. But anyway, Dad felt underneath me several times to see if there was any bleeding. After each check he would mutter something that showed me he was relieved. Then he would continue his slow and cautions endeavors.
"He kept asking me if it felt good, if I enjoyed it. He was almost begging. I still played the innocent. I was blazing with lust and going out of my mind with pure ecstasy, but I told him I felt nothing at all. I didn't move my hips or anything. I just lay still and let him perform and plead with me for assurance that he was exciting me. He thought there must be something wrong. He was still holding back. He seemed pretty nervous as well as worried about his prowess as a male. He said most women would be begging him to go all the way in by now. He shook his head and seemed puzzled. I didn't like his talking about other women and I knew he meant Mother too, so I took perverse joy in denying him any satisfaction from comparisons. And all the time I was eliminating my own guilt by letting him do everything.
"Dad's desire kept mounting and finally his strokes got closer together and he had an ejaculation, I could feel his body shudder and he gave a great sigh, and said, 'oh, oh, darling!' This was my first such experience with a man's climax, and I had no doubt that's what Dad was having. His excitement built up, then ebbed like a tide. He tensed up after a few moments and rolled away. I just lay there stiffly, my thoughts racing. I was glad I had made him go all the way, and felt I had learned more of the mystery that he had withheld from me before.
"Afterwards, he took me into the bathroom and looked for blood on me. He checked the sheets very carefully. He was visibly relieved when he saw that there was no sign of bleeding. He took the condom off and showed me the fluid in the head of it. He explained that this was the seed that could make me pregnant. He seemed quite proud of his role as lecturer again, as teacher. He washed out the condom with warm water while I watched him. So that's what all the mystery was about, I thought. Then we both went back to bed and he fell asleep right away. I could hear him snoring real low, next to me. I couldn't sleep for a long time, and then my dreams were full of what had happened that day, and they were extremely pleasant.
"I slept with Dad the whole time Mother was gone, right up until the night before she came home. During that time, Dad was very careful not to break my hymen. I believe this would have made his own guilt unbearable and more real to him. Perhaps he thought that if someone was to find out, Mother, for instance, I would be taken to a doctor and examined. If the hymen was intact, his denials of sexual intercourse would stand up. So, he took great care not to break my maidenhead, and this left me frustrated, nervous and angry. Because, while he was protecting himself and perhaps both of us,, his panic at not going inside me any deeper prevented me from experiencing the supreme pleasure, a complete orgasm.
"As a consequence, I was disappointed with sex. I felt that Dad didn't trust me enough to keep our secret. I thought he was afraid I'd tell Mother, and later my husband, who would ask how I'd lost my virginity. Dad's fear also communicated itself to me and built up my own feelings of guilt. It was a very unsatisfactory relationship and of course has colored all my subsequent relations with other men. That I derived pleasure from these relations with my father, I cannot deny, but the pleasure wasn't complete.
"I was making him pay for my frustration by holding back on him, but this injured me too. Now that I'm older, I feel that had I responded as he wanted me to, and as I could have very easily, Dad would have thrown caution to the winds and broken my hymen. At least I would have experienced an orgasm.
"I don't know how the relationship would have gone on, however, had that occurred. When Mother got back, Dad was distant to me-except when Mother was far enough away so that he didn't feel he would be betrayed by any undue demonstration of affection. Then he would 'cop a feel' and sometimes he'd ask me to touch his penis inside his pants. When I did this, he would get an erection. As soon as he did, he got very nervous and left me with a weak smile on his face. One day I told Dad to stop it, and he never came to me again with any of his requests. I regretted it, but thought he should be punished for teasing me.
"This early sex experience had a harmful effect on my own initiative with men. Because I had played such a passive role with my father, I thought this was the way to do with all men. So, while I would be sexually aroused with certain men, I just waited for them to do what Dad had done. I'm sure a lot of them thought I was a stupid cluck. I never discussed sex with these men nor gave them any encouragement. When a man would start his preliminary sex-play I wouldn't stop him. Then he'd go a little further, and it always ended up the same. I let him insert his organ-but only up that point that my father had allowed his own penis to penetrate."
Nancy F.'s case history doesn't end here, although her account of the incest with her father does. She married at sixteen and that marriage was, as could be expected, a dire failure. She had many relations with men, but until analysis aided her in her understanding, they were almost all of them repeats of her first acts with her father. She made her partners perform as her father had, and needless to say, most of her partners refused to put up with her behavior for long.
Nancy's case is notable as being similar to many other cases of father-daughter incest where the daughter is more active in the seduction than the public would like to believe. Nancy feels no animosity towards her father at this time, but she is regretful that he was so weak in their relationship. Her present husband is an opposite type, but she seems to harbor no fears that incest will develop within her own family should she have daughters as a result of this marriage.
It is of importance to note the prominence that ejaculation plays in Nancy's sex relations. She long felt that whatever it took to cause ejaculation in a man was of prime importance, and a singular need within her. Once she herself, as she believed, had caused her male partner to have an orgasm, then she was completely satisfied. She has now gained considerable insight into these dynamics and is more emotional toward her marriage partner, whereas before she had merely taken the role of manipulator.
The case of Terry S. comes up again here, because this neurotic and criminally inclined individual who had incest with his sister (see Part One) as a rebellious act against society, later married and had incest with his stepdaughter. Legally, this is the same as though the daughter were a blood relation, and in Terry's mind was every bit as forbidden. A look at his case history provides a continuing study of incest coupled with general anti-social behavior, that while extreme, probably is not isolated or rare.
To escape his family environment, Terry enlisted in the Army. He served in the Pacific during World War Two and continued his pathological behavior in the service. However, an incident occurred which caused a severe eruption of his neurosis and resulted in his being medically discharged with a code designation of psychoneurotic.
After days and weeks of heavy fighting in the jungles of Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Tarawa, Terry was emotionally overwrought. He describes himself as "ready to fly apart, to kill everyone in sight, not only the enemy." While returning to camp one day from a patrol, the incident which caused him to lose his restraint occurred. A fight broke out in the G.I. prisoners' compound. This was a temporary stockade for cowards, disciplinary cases (insubordination, etc.) and men who had committed one crime or another while at the front. But as Terry walked by, the M.P.'s began firing inside the stockade, most of them with Thompson submachineguns. The screams of the dying men and the sound of gunfire so close were too much for Terry. He went beserk and was very nearly killed, himself. He was forcibly restrained and had to be given strong sedatives by the Army medics.
His violence became so uncontrollable after that, that he was shipped back to the States and given a medical discharge but no pension. This caused Terry to feel quite bitter about the Army in particular and added to his hatred of authority. According to his own testimony, Terry felt physically fine after his discharge and was only haunted by nightmares of the incident which had set him off. Shortly afterwards, he went to a town where his family had migrated, and married a local girl, Deborah, who was a divorcee with two daughters.
Terry's sister Helen had married in the meantime, and this was probably one of the reasons why Terry rushed into marriage with Deborah. Deborah was older than Terry and, unknown to him at the time, was what used to be known as a "loose woman". Deborah's oldest daughter was named Dorothy. She was about sixteen when Terry first had sexual relations with her. He describes this act and his feelings at the time of the incest in an interview:
"I had been drinking in a lot of bars after I got out of the Army. I met Deborah in one of them and found that she was a drinker too. I laid her a few times following these bar sessions, and because I was lonely and wanted to get a family of my own, I asked her to marry me. I liked her kids, her two daughters, and said I'd make a good father to them. Deborah said okay and we got married right away. He still drank a lot and went out to the bars whenever he had money, which was usually on paydays only.
"Naturally, sometimes we'd both get drunk and Deborah got very argumentative after a snootful. We'd have a fight and I'd walk away from it. I'd had a bellyfull of that stuff. I'd go home and she'd come staggering in at some ungodly hour. I was usually passed out and didn't know if she came home with a man or alone in a cab. I had my suspicions though I never brought them up. That would have led to more quarreling and I didn't want any.
"I liked Deborah's oldest girl a lot. She was a sweet thing, Dorothy, about sixteen. Her sister Jennie was about seven and quiet, well-behaved. But Dorothy was like her mother, brazen, sure of her womanness, and obviously had hot pants like her old lady. Something happened when we first looked at each other. We both knew something was going to happen. I wanted to be a father to Dorothy, but from the first, she didn't treat me at all like she should have. She'd give me a wink, slide up to me. It was more than a man could stand.
"But I held out for a long time. I think if Deborah and I had gotten along better I wouldn't have done anything with her daughter. But the fights and the drinking kept getting worse, and one night I just said the hell with it and went ahead full steam. We went out as usual to hit the bars and get plastered, only this time I didn't guzzle the beer down as usual. I paced myself and watched Deborah get drunker and drunker. That alone was a revelation to me. I saw her flirt with the other guys, and they were a hard-drinking crew. She let her skirt ride up over her knees, and there were few who missed her open flirtations. I caught myself looking at her panties underneath her dress, and knew every stiff in the joint was trying to get a better look, too. Well, the usual crap began. The argument. I went along with it and pretended to be stoned and mad. But I was anxious to get away. Yet I didn't want to arouse her suspicions. I wanted to get home and make it with Dorothy. And when I got my chance, that's just what I did.
"I grabbed some bottles of beer at the liquor store on my way home, and some potato chips and dip. I wanted to have a party with Dorothy. I think Dorothy must have known I'd be back early because she had put her sister to bed early and had the radio on. She seemed to be in a party mood. She acted surprised to see me, but glad too. She asked me first what I was doing home so early and where her Mother was. Then I asked her if she wanted to have a party with me, and she giggled and nodded.
"Well, we had a few beers and laughed and talked, and when I saw that she was relaxed enough I said we'd better take a drive. She seemed to understand what I meant and it was as though .she was an adult, not a sixteen-year-old girl at all. I didn't want to stay there in the house, her sis might wake up, Deborah could come home early, or anything. So we took some beer with us and headed out to a lonely road I knew outside of town.
"When we stopped, she giggled some more and we had some more beer. Then I put my arm around her. It was like lightning struck her. She moved over next to me and kissed me. Then I french-kissed her, sticking my tongue deep into her mouth. She came right back with hers. I got an erection and pulled her hand over so she could feel it. I thought she might flinch and pull her hand away, but she didn't. She squeezed me and I kept kissing her. I thought of Deborah back in the bar boozing, and I thought of all the drunken times, the fights, the flirting, and my mind pictured her screwing those other guys, and suddenly I knew I had to take Dorothy and pay Deborah back. I was hot, sure, but I was also thinking of getting even with Dorothy's mother.
"I put my hand on Dorothy's leg and then lifted her skirt and put my hand underneath. Her panties were moist and I knew she wanted me. I just about flipped when she started to pull the zipper down on my fly. Then her hand was inside my pants and around my penis. I almost had an orgasm right then. I squeezed her breasts then, and laid her back on the seat. I pulled my pants down. She was panting and sighing and calling me by name, saying how much she wanted me.
"I pulled her panties down and climbed on top. I didn't care about getting her pregnant or anything else just then. I wanted to take her and get it done with, so that I could sit back and gloat. I wanted to look at Deborah's face every time she gave me some of her crap and think to myself: 'I've been sleeping with your daughter, you bitch!'
"It was quick. And we did it a couple more times before I said we'd better get home. Dorothy was nervous afterwards, but she caressed my penis on the way home. She hadn't been a virgin, and I was grateful for that, though it took some of the steam out of my revenge on Deborah. I had a moment of dread when we drove up to the house. I was afraid Deborah had somehow found out and was waiting for us with a pistol or something. But she wasn't home. I kissed Dorothy good-night, told her I loved her, which I did, and we went to bed. But I couldn't sleep. When Deborah finally staggered in about three that morning I just laughed to myself. She piled into bed and I felt nothing but a sense of revulsion toward her. All I could think of was Dorothy's young and tender body. I've never gotten over that first time, though we made love frequently after that."
The incident of Terry's rebellion involving his step-daughter has eloquently served its purpose here. There are few further points worth mentioning, however, before we leave Terry S. with his shattered life. His wife Deborah never found out about her daughter's sex relations with her husband, or if she did, she never mentioned it to Terry. One day she just walked out, and by this time they had had two daughters and a son of their own. They had been married for eight years. Deborah became a prostitute. She gave Terry no explanation for leaving, although he thinks it was because of his long periods of depresssion, which began shortly after he first indulged in incest with Dorothy.
Terry turned to crime and was involved in a bogus-check-cashing ring. Apparently he never graduated to the more violent manifestations of psychopathy such as armed robbery, muggings or the like. His nature was such that he was incapable of direct action against society, preferring to take out his hostility in more subtle ways. His hatred for his fellow-man of course was also hatred for himself, and accounts for the many periods of depression that Terry had and still has.
He was always involved in sneak attacks on society, rather than open, violent, direct aggression. Psychiatrists recognize this type of criminal as a separate and distinct psychopathic category, but penologists have been slow to catch up with this thinking. At any rate, Terry was convicted and sentenced to prison, but escaped long-term incarceration by manifesting psychotic tendencies. He tried to take his life and was remanded, because of his medical discharge, to psychiatric care through the facilities of the Veteran's Administration. His sullen moodiness and another attempt at suicide caused him to be returned to the custody of state authorities, however, and he was eventually taken to a harsher institution.
That was the general pattern of Terry's behavior, but it was still another incident that caused him to go over the line again. This was an affair with his brother's wife, a thing not usually classed as incestuous. He all but ruined what had been a happy marriage up to that time by this slash at authority and society. His children, by Deborah, were made wards of the court, and have histories of anti-social behavior like their father. At this writing, Terry S. has not solved any of his problems, and now follows a pattern of working sporadically at odd jobs. He works until he is fired for drinking and/or absenteeism, or until he quits. He goes through long periods of isolation, with heavy alcoholism, followed by equally long periods of gloomy depression.
Drinking is one of the symptoms of Terry's illness, but his manifestations of neurosis (if not psychosis at times-always involve sex). He is thought by his analysts to be a repressed homosexual, but he has never faced this directly in analysis. He used his brother's wife, it is felt, as a medium for his homosexual desires for his brother. He knew his wife was a prostitute and yet enjoyed sexual relations with her. These are recognized by many psychiatrists as proxy situations for homosexual outlets.
Terry's is not an easy neurosis to unravel or to cure. As Terry is into middle age now, it is un-likely that he will stay with psychotherapy long enough to understand the dynamics of his illness. He moves around a great deal, changing towns, but not necessarily his type of environment-which is one step above skid road, and sometimes directly on skid road. He considers his life a failure, but prefers to think of himself as a victim of circumstances, and does not feel he had had any direct hand in provoking the ill fortune that has befallen him.
Alcohol seems to have played a role in father-daughter incest for a long time. In the Old Testament, Lot unwittingly lay with his daughters after they had gotten him drunk. I quote the part of Genesis, Chapter 19, that tells this story:
And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a Cave., he and his two daughters.
And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth:
Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve the seed of our father.
And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father: and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my fathers let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve the seed of our father.
And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.
Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.
SUMMARY:
In summing up the foregoing cases of father-daughter incest, we may draw some conclusions. The common denominator among fathers who institute an incestuous relationship with their daughters (or daughters-in-law) seems to be that they all are sexually weak. The evidence points to a psychopathological "endogamic" type of paternal incest offender. He is a weakling in his own family, and hasn't the character strength to find his sexual gratification outside of the family confines.
The mental health of these paternal offenders may or may not be an issue. We know so little about the taboo of incest that we don't know whether the offender is made neurotic by the force of the taboo or whether he was neurotic in the first place. It might make a significant difference if we knew more about the taboo of incest than we now do.
Terry S., we must conclude, is an exceptional case, though we can't vouch for the rarity of such cases. The cultural level of the fathers in these cases seems to be high, while most of the general public's knowledge of incest is gleaned from the cases of those offenders who happen to be arrested. These latter usually are closely questioned by police, social workers and psychiatrists. A pattern of environment emerges from these cases that is quite misleading. All fathers who have incest with their daughters are not necessarily sub-normal human beings, intelligence-wise.
We would hesitate very strongly then, to conclude that all paternal incest offenders come from crowded homes, poor living situations, etc., or even that a majority do. It is much more reasonable to assume that many more cases of incest occur than ever appear in court.
However, the only way society will ever learn about itself, is to question itself, and as of now, incest still involves such a powerful taboo that our records are pathetically inadequate. We have been content to present a wide variety of common types of incest in our present-day literature, without critically examining our present laws regarding it. As it stands now, not many families in our society really have any protection or insurance against incest occurring within their own numbers, this is one of the largest unrecognized paradoxes facing us in our society today.