Conclusion
A careful analysis of the preceding cases points to the overwhelming importance of the incest taboo in our culture. There is, perhaps no other single factor which explains so much of the prohibitive conditioning of our unconscious as well as conscious lives. Clellen Ford and Frank Beach summarize this phenomenon in their book, Patterns of Sexual Behavior:
It is clear that social rules against intercourse between close relatives reflect cultural rather than physiological or biological tendencies. Close genetic relationship is no barrier to erotic attractiveness. Analysis of the fantasy and dream lives of members of our own and many other societies often reveals strong sexual attraction between parents and offspring as well as between siblings. In the vast majority of cases such incestuous tendencies are not recognized by the individual because of the powerfully inhibiting effects of early training.
Although, technically speaking, sexual relations between foster parents and children are not incestuous from a physiological standpoint, they do, nevertheless, exert the same psychological influence on the individuals involved. As Freud and Ferenczi have shown, foster mothers and fathers, as well as wet nurses, older men, distant relatives, and friends of the family, often symbolize actual parental relationships in the minds of both the child and adult. In one case, involving psychical impotence, the foster mother was seen by Ferenczi as the symbolic agent for the sexual weakness in the son:
The libidinous thoughts repressed in childhood, which condition psychical impotence, need not refer to nearest relatives; it is enough that the infantile sexual object has been a so-called "respected person," demanding in one way or another high consideration.
According to classic psychoanalytic theory, the incest taboo in our culture gives rise to what Freud calls the Oedipus complex, functioning in both sexes. The way in which the individual comes to terms with this conditioning during his formative years may well determine his future happiness and mature sexual development. All of our subjects have in varying degrees struggled with the incest barrier. Some have overcome the problems and have already made the adjustments necessary for adult relationships. In other cases an unsuccessful struggle has resulted in neurosis.
In the case of Susan, we saw how a sexually frustrated father induced sexual guilt in his adolescent daughter by poisoning her mind against all women. Especially significant was her painful memory of his graveside pronouncement that her mother was "a whore," and that all women were sexually filthy. Traumatic experiences such as these often cause a flight from heterosexuality in adolescent girls. This kind of conditioning element can, in conjunction with other factors, bring about inversion with regard to sexual development. In other words, instead of seeking a normal heterosexual outlet, the child can be frightened into overt lesbianism, or, the equally disturbing problem of sexual frigidity.
In all the cases brought forth in this study, the element of fear has played an enormous part in the distortion of child-adult relations. This fear, whether it be of the incest taboo, or, as in the case history of Clay, a fear of authority, tends to prevent the attainment of a stable adult relationship, with sex merely an aspect. Unfortunately, the cycle, as we have seen, is ever repeating itself; for the fear of the child is soon to be passed on to the next generation.
In The Art Of Loving, Erich Fromm best sums up the problem of fear in human relationships, tracing its origins to those familiar but inscrutable childhood dilemmas:
The basic condition for neurotic love lies in the fact that one or both of the "lovers" have remained attached to the figure of a parent, and transfer the feelings, expectations and fear one once had toward father or mother to the loved person in adult life; the persons involved have never emerged from a pattern of infantile relatedness, and seek for this pattern in their affective demands in adult life. In these cases, the person has remained, affectively, a child of two, or of five, or of twelve, while intellectually and socially he is on the level of his chronological age. In the more severe cases, this emotional immaturity leads to disturbances in his social effectiveness; in the less severe ones, the conflict is limited to the sphere of intimate personal relationships.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beach, Frank A., and Ford, Clellan S. Patterns of Sexual Behavior. New York: Ace Books, Inc., 1951.
Berne, Eric, M.D. Games People Play. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1964.
Caprio, Frank S., M.D. Female Homosexuality. New York: The Citadel Press, 1954.
De River, Paul J. The Sexual Criminal. Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1956.
Ferenczi, Sandor. Sex in Psychoanalysis. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1956.
Freud, Sigmund. Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. New York: Random House, Inc., 1938.
Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. New York: Harper & Row, Inc. 1956.
Janov, Arthur. The Primal Scream. New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1971.
Kinsey, Alfred C, Gebhard, Paul H., Martin, Clyde E., and Pomeroy, Wardell B. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia and London: W. B. Saunders Company, 1953.
Kinsey, Alfred C, Martin, Clyde E., and Pomeroy, Wardell B. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia and London: W. B. Saunders and Company, 1948.
Mead, Margaret. Male and Female. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1967.
Storr, Anthony. Sexual Deviation. Baltimore: Penguin Books, Inc., 1964.