Chapter 2
At least one million Americans have participated in a sexual contact with their brother or sister!
Again, by the use of the widely accepted percentages of the Kinsey reports as applied to the population at large, a straight statistical analysis indicates that approximately 975,000 Americans aged 14 and over have engaged in sibling sexual contact at one time or another in childhood.
But since the Kinsey figures were based on a lopsided cross-section of the population (emphasis was on the college-educated segment), and since sibling incest is far more prevalent in lower-in-come families, the actual figure is reliably estimated to be much higher. Nor does the estimate based on the Kinsey findings include those sibling relations that take place after the age of 14.
In European countries sexual experimentation among brothers and sisters is almost a foregone conclusion. A Swedish psychologist making behavioral studies in postwar Germany put it this way:
"I suppose the reason Americans express surprise at this is twofold, don't you think? Firstly, the desire and temptation is so natural a thing, I am of the opinion that much more of this goes on in the United States than anyone realizes. I think much of this form of relation is stuffed back in the subconscious.
"Secondly, it is because of the different attitude, the less inhibited attitude of the European, that he is not so sorely afraid to give in to these relatively harmless desires which opportunity makes so tempting.
"A young boy has a keen rapport with his sister, a peer relation of sympathy and understanding. They have much opportunity of being alone. And in Europe, the families are much closer. A youth's libido, it is sharp and excitable. His sister is a natural object for sex play. They expose the genitals and explore. They like the sensations. Sometimes they kiss or give suck to the organs. Sometimes they make the intercourse. They have a fear of pregnancy, and I. believe they more often bring about orgasm through mouth or hand relations."
When we combine the less strict attitude of the Europeans toward sex in general with the crowded living conditions often comparable to our impoverished areas in the U.S.A., it becomes rather clear that incestuous sibling relations, particularly in childhood, would be much more prevalent in Europe.
Yet right here in our own country, "epidemics" of sibling incest have cropped up in highly un-likely environments, as this short case account demonstrates:
Case History (5):
SIBLING INCEST AS "FAD" WITH GROUP-SEX AND OTHER VARIATIONS
This written report was provided for us by a Washington, D.C. psychologist from the personal experience of his own youth.
"As an adult, and a student of human sexual behavior, I am now well aware that the event in which I was a participant at age 9 was not an isolated case. It has been repeated countless times, to be brought to light only when discovered by parents or authorities.
"I was nearing my tenth birthday in 1936 when I made the yearly summer visit to my grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins in a rugged town of twenty thousand in the American Southwest. There, I naturally migrated to the company of my twin cousins, Ralph and Jack, who were my same age.
" 'Hey, George!' Ralph began excitedly as we clambered over a fence, 'Did you know that Bob and his sister get naked and play with each other's things every Wednesday afternoon?'
" 'Really?' I countered with anxious amazement, recalling Bob's very pretty sister Maxine.
"Naturally, I cannot recall at this late date the precise conversation. However, Ralph and Jack explained that ll-year-old Bob and 9-year-old Maxine were left alone each Wednesday after school, while their mother did the grocery shopping, and the two children had sex relations in their garage.
"Now these were not poor or uneducated people, but very upper middle-class. Their fathers were business and professional men. And, I discovered, neither was the scope of activity restricted to just one case of sibling relations. In all, there were close to a dozen brother-sister 'teams,' all aware of each other's activities. On Saturdays, they would often meet in an abandoned shack beyond the surrounding hills and engage in what might most accurately be termed a 'sister-swap.'
"For those of us without sisters, there was also a way to participate. For ten cents, we could come and watch. For a quarter, we were allowed to 'feel some titty.' And for any of us who had access to a half dollar in those less affluent days, we could have actual copulation with one of the girls, so long as she agreed.
"I shall never forget the sight of that first orgy I attended. At that stage of development, I was keenly aware of the forbidden nature of nudity, specifically as to the female genitalia. To say that I was amazed by seeing half a dozen or so young girls with their dresses hip-high and their panties down, would be quite an understatement.
"I don't recall that any of us ever managed to raise fifty cents to 'go all the way.' However, one of my cousins scraped up a quarter, for which he was allowed to fondle the barely budding breasts of a 12-year-old.
"Most of the activity I saw involved digital masturbation of the young girls and hand manipulation of the boy's membrums. Once or twice, I observed a girl contact a penis orally, but this seemed to be more or less forced upon them. Bob and Maxine were the only ones I actually saw in copulative intercourse. There was some switching around of partners determined by some sort of game they played, but I don't remember any of the details.
"Luckily, for my cousins and myself, we were not present when a group of the parents of those involved swooped down on their hideout one Saturday morning. There was no such thing as a psychiatrist or psychologist in a town of that size in those days, and I assume that most of the participants were punished rather severely and watched closely after that.
"I heard later that some of those involved became juvenile delinquents or had acute emotional problems in adolescence."
PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENT: The important contributory factor here seems to be the awareness by all concerned that they were rebelling against authority. Certainly, the sexual urge was there. Experimentation had probably been going on for years. But the desire to exploit this and impart elements of perverted commercialism to it, appears to be the product of a kind of negative reaction to overly strict and dominating authority, a deliberate attempt to enjoy the forbidden.
The psychologist who recalled this incident gives us an insight into the effect it had on him when he says: "I had always thought of Maxine as a very cute and lovable girl. Being an only child, I had harbored a deep affection for her, looked on her as the kind of girl I would want for my own sister. She was pretty, healthy, vibrant, very well-built, though I did not look at her so much in a sexual way then.
"After the first time I saw her exposed and being enjoyed by her brother as a whole crowd looked on, the effect upon me was quite devastating. Perhaps I was a somewhat sensitive youth. I can honestly tell you that it was a good many years before my faith in the opposite sex was completely restored."
The psychological consequences to many of the actual participants was far greater, of course.
Histories of brother-sister incest have always shown up in a large percentage of cases involving mental illness. As recently as 1924 many physicians and psychologists were of the opinion that epilepsy was a cause of sibling incest, rather than the possibility that it might be the other way around-that idiopathic epilepsy could be a psychosomatic manifestation of repression and guilt resulting from the forbidden incestuous act.
Because of the fact that incestuous sibling marriages and inbreeding was the accepted custom in the royal families of ancient Egypt, Peru and old Hawaii, it is doubtful that a great deal of neurosis resulted from these unions. Cleopatra was married to her younger brother when he was merely 10-years-old, for instance. But in most cases, cohabitation was held off until both parties reached puberty. The main purposes of these marriages was procreation, an attempt to keep the monarch in the same immediate family.
Historians often harp on the subject of the rare qualities of strength and beauty the royal Hawaiians, Incans and Egyptians possessed. And it might be assumed that they were extremely fortunate that no tainted genes were present in the originators of the ruling lines, which could have been responsible for hereditary defects in future generations.
Such, however, was not the case. Many royal births resulted in mental and physical monstrosities, but these were killed in inimagine. There were no scruples present when it came to preserving the perfection of the royal heirs.
With the intervention of Western morality upon these cultures, the picture changed somewhat. One need only recall in Michener's HAWAII that Keoki, who had been educated in the U.S., felt compelled to decree his own death shortly after his marriage to Neolani, partly because of the furious internal conflict that resulted from marital relations with his own sister.
In our own predominantly Judeo-Christian societies of today, we notice that brother-sister incest often results in consciously or subconsciously setting up pleasurable memories. While the adult may often flee from childhood sexual feelings toward his parents, almost the reverse is sometimes the result of sibling incest, as demonstrated in the two case histories to follow from the voluminous files of Dr. Wilhelm Stekel.
Case History (6):
MARITAL IMPOTENCE AS A RESULT OF SIBLING INCEST IN YOUTH
"Mr. H.L., an attorney, 34 years of age, suffers for the past half-year from a rare form of impotence. He has been married 3 years, and at first was able to carry out sexual intercourse without any difficulty. At the beginning of their marital relations his wife was completely anesthetic, so that during sexual intercourse she remained passive. After the birth of the child her attitude changed. She became passionate and began to carry out all the well-known reflex motions during intercourse. Thereupon his erections ceased and he was unable to bring the sexual act to a conclusion. The same experience repeated itself a number of times. Each time, his erection subsided promptly. He requested his wife to remain quiet, but this she could not do.
At last he gave up all attempts because they ended in failure. He came to me for treatment. After a four-week analysis, a surprising fact was brought out which he had heretofore kept from disclosing to me. Between the 16th and 18th year he wandered nearly every night to his sister's bed. Each time he resolved not to repeat this, but unexpectedly found himself in his sister's bed. That is also the way it happened the first time. He had been drinking, and without becoming intoxicated, returned home, went to sleep, and when he woke up he was in his sister's bed. She, apparently, was fast asleep. Unable to resist the temptation, he carried out intercourse with his sleeping sister. This happened a number of times. If she stirred, he kept very quiet, interrupting his attempt at intercourse, or left her bed, because he did not want her to wake up and become cognizant of his crime.
"This experience left him with the feeling-attitude which enabled him to indulge in intercourse only with sleeping persons or with persons who were so quiet during the act as to suggest being asleep. In his fantasy it was always his sister with whom he was having intercourse. Hence the strange form of his relative impotence. While having intercourse with his wife he thought of his sister. When his wife stirred, it seemed as if his sister was waking up."
PSYCHIATRIC COMMENT: "Complete recovery, after disclosure of the determinants.
"Whether his sister was asleep or merely pretending sleep, I was unable to ascertain. Often sleep and noctambulism are stimulated so as to enable one to indulge in acts on the gratification-without-responsibility principle."
Case History (7):
GENITAL-PEDAL FIXATION RESULTING FROM SIBLING INCESTUOUS CONTACT
In this case a 26-year-old technologist related to Dr. Stekel that he was only capable of potency and orgasm in a most unusual fashion. Intercourse at-But when the woman agitated his penis with her tempted in the normal manner was always a failure, foot as they lay in bed together in opposite directions (his head at the foot, hers at the head), he experienced a throbbing erection and resultant orgasm and ejaculation with complete satisfaction.
Recalling a custom at that time where brothers and sisters often slept in the same bed in this position, Dr. Stekel probed his patient further. He was then able to remember that he had indeed slept with his sister in this inverted posture for some years. The man also recalled that she had repeatedly rubbed his organ with her feet.
PSYCHIATRIC COMMENT: It need not surprise us ... that these persons continue to repeat one and the same situation throughout the conduct of their lives. The parapathic simply happens to be the individual who has not overcome his past. The limits between fantasy and reality have become vague to him and the symbol becomes the dominating influence of his life."
While we are still dealing with incestuous determinants in these sibling relations, just as in the cases of parent-child and other incest, there is one vast difference. There is not the same degree of stigma attached. Brother-sister relations, especially short of coitus, may even be laughed off by the relatively unsophisticated individual of average morals as the normal adventures that result from childhood curiosity.
Therefore, the regression to a fantasy-preference in adulthood as a consequence of pleasurable childhood experience is not so tainted. There is not the serious degree of strong repression as with sexual expressions directed at a parent. There is often more a recollection of pleasure, even though the actual recognition may lie just below the level of the conscious mind.
In our contemporary society, we find people are able to dredge up memories of sibling relations with much more willingness and less discomfort than parent-child activities or desires. There is much less sense of guilt involved, and the average person in our broadminded culture of today probably realizes that this form of relation is one of the most common in pre-pubertal youth.
During the course of research for this study, we found that many normal, well-adjusted adults were able to reply in detail to our questionnaires and interviews on this phase of incest, without any hesitation. Some, it is true, appeared to welcome the opportunity it provided to purge themselves of transgressions long since past. Yet there was no visible depression. What guilt-feelings there were the individuals had managed to live with pretty well. And there were some interviewees who recalled these childhood experiences with a distinct sense of pleasure.
Case History (8):
BROTHER-SISTER RELATIONS CULMINATING IN A SINGLE ACT OF COITUS
"I closed my eyes when I saw he was going to put it in me. I wanted it so bad I didn't care. I had been fighting it for years and this time I vowed to relax and enjoy it...."
This was the way a smartly dressed 23-year-old housewife and mother told us of the final phase of a sibling relationship that had built up over a period of years. Marsha, as we shall call her, was almost 16 at the time. Her brother Tom was 14.
Marsha told the story unhesitatingly at first. Gradually, as she seemed to relive the intense and dramatic passion of the event, her eyes came aglow and her speech was tense and excited.
"We lived in a large house in Maryland with a lot of trees and a creek nearby. Daddy was a salesman with a good income and mother had a good job with the government. They were divorced when I was seven. It wasn't a terrible thing to go through, really. There were never any fights or yelling. It was a quiet and civilized thing. I guess they just stopped loving each other.
"The one thing it did was to draw Tom and I closer together. The competition between us was always keen. My being a year and a half older always forced him to show that being a 'man' made up the difference. I always struggled to prove otherwise. When mother went out on a date, we fought like dogs.
"If that sounds contradictory, you just don't understand. We loved each other deeply. If he put so much as a single scratch on me during a fight, he'd repent and treat me like a much-loved baby. It was the same with me.
"My urge to see what boys had between their legs was satisfied easily because Tom had no sense of modesty. I remember how I used to laugh at his little erection when he'd go to the bathroom in the morning and leave the door open. Mother thought we were both terrible and avoided all my questions about why his penis was so hard in the morning but hung loose the rest of the time.
"I don't think Tom knew why then or he would have told me without hesitation. He was very proud of his penis and used to kid me about having twisted mine off or something.
"We must have been about ten and nine when I first learned about sexual intercourse. Tom had me pinned down to the floor one night when mother was out on a date and I felt this hard thing pressing down on my pelvis. I realized right away he was getting a kick out of rubbing against me. I'm not sure ... but I think I liked the feeling too.
"I kidded him about it being hard like that at night. Only it was his turn to laugh this time. He unzipped his trousers and brought it right out, and gave me a complete course on how men and women made love. Oh, I don't mean he did anything to me. He just told me all about it.
"I was filled with wonder, absolutely amazed! It just seemed incredible that a big thing like that could go inside a girl. It seemed awful! But I couldn't put the idea out of my mind. No, indeed. I guess it fascinated me.
"Tom didn't try to do anything but tell me all about sex then, and let me watch him masturbate. I was spellbound watching him. Oh, I kidded him too. I said he wasn't a real man because none of the stuff that makes babies came out. Did he get mad!
"When we were alone after that it was deliberate. I mean, we never said anything about doing it, but we always ended up fighting and him rubbing it into me, and then masturbating while I watched. I like to think he forced me to touch it that first time, but I guess I wanted to do it.
"It was sometime during that first year, anyway, and I'll never forget the feel of it. I was so surprised ... it was like velvet or something, so smooth. I masturbated him like that almost every night for over a year.
"I think the first time he ever became aware of me as a girl, I mean when he found out there was something more interesting I could do for him, was when I was twelve or thirteen. I had just started wearing a bra then. My breasts weren't any bigger than lemons but my legs had a lot of shape to them. He had put ... put his fingers in my vagina before, only the results had been about zero. It felt more funny than sexy. It was more sexy when I masturbated him.
"I was in my bedroom undressing that Saturday night and he walked right in on me naked. I still had a little modesty. I remember grabbing my peejays and holding them in front of me. I guess he'd never really seen my breasts before, because he was like a wild man. He grabbed my peejays away and wrestled me to the bed. He must have been only eleven or twelve.
"He seemed absolutely amazed that I had that much development. He squeezed the life out of them and kissed them like crazy. To be honest, it did nothing for me ... not then. It was over a year later that I secretly loved it every time he felt them.
"One Saturday ... I guess I had just turned fifteen ... he showed me a rubber and explained how it was used. That was when I really got scared. Before that, I always had the excuse of being afraid of getting pregnant when he tried to put it in me. I'm not sure whether I'd ever really had an orgasm by then. I liked it when he played ... and I played with myself sometimes when I was alone.
"We had heard about 'breaking a cherry' and we never could understand why I hadn't bled when he used his fingers. We mistakenly figured that either I didn't have a hymen or that maybe it got broken when I was having a period.
"It was about this time I noticed a funny change in our feelings toward each other. We were growing up in many ways. We didn't fight like we used to. Our feelings were more tender. We were less dependent on each other and we weren't so tense.
"The only thing that really drew us together though was sex. I was dating by then and our Saturday nights alone came only once every month or so. Tom got jealous too. I swore I never did anything but kiss a boy goodnight and maybe let him play with my breasts a little. Only Tom wouldn't completely believe me until we had a chance to be alone and he could finger me again.
"I was telling the truth. I wanted to with one of the boys but I was afraid. I was still afraid with Tom too. I think his jealousy made him all the more insistent.
"It was a week before my sixteenth birthday when mother surprised us by announcing she was going to get married in five days. We were both stunned. I think that was the first time we realized that the Saturday nights alone wouldn't be there forever. He didn't have to ask me to break my date the next night. I did it myself.
"We lay together in bed for over an hour just talking and playing. He still had on his shirt. I was naked. I had masturbated him once. He'd tried to make me have an orgasm. I'd get very passionate and cry almost, but I couldn't quite make it ... I mean to cry or have a climax, either one. I rubbed his penis very tenderly and I felt possessive, like I was really losing something I'd grown to love. I felt like I was in a trance when he got a rubber out of his pants pocket on the floor ... and I helped him put it on.
"I closed my eyes when I saw he was going to put it in me. I wanted it so bad I didn't care. I'd been fighting it for years and this time I vowed to relax and enjoy it.
"There was a sudden sharp pain, but I didn't care! There was blood all over the bed, but I didn't care! He was scared and started to back off, but I threw both arms around him and moved my hips like a nympho!
"When I pulled him ... pulled him so close to me like that ... I started having orgasms ... I know I did! Maybe it was one, maybe it was ten.
He started shaking all over. It was like when he used to tremble when I masturbated him, only ten times more. It was the most ... most wonderful feeling I'd ever had in my life!
"When it was over, I wanted to kill myself. We were both frantic ... scared little babies. We scrubbed the mattress and turned it over. We took the sheets to the laundromat, but it wouldn't wash out and we had to throw them away. I became hysterical. Tom finally straightened up and slapped some sense into me. I've never thought of him as my younger brother since that night.
"Mother thought the sudden change in us was because she had decided to marry. She offered to wait a year, but Tom and I insisted she go right ahead. You see, we both knew that it had to be over between us. The awful truth of what we were doing suddenly came through to us that night. We had to have a wedge between us, something to foul up the Saturday nights alone. We wanted each other ... knew it would have to happen again if we didn't do something.
"I jumped into a mad love affair with this boy I was dating and I let him have intercourse with me. I didn't enjoy it. I was so shook up over the experience with Tom, the only way I ever had an orgasm was by locking myself in my room and masturbating, thinking about that wonderful night. And then I'd be so depressed I couldn't sleep.
"When my boyfriend went in the Army, he asked me to marry him. We waited until I graduated from high school and he got out of basic training. I knew at the time that it was only a means of escape. I had to get away from Tom.
"The first few years were pretty miserable, until I started reading some books from the library on sexology and found out I wasn't the only person in the world with that kind of problem. Over the years now, things have worked themselves out. I loved my husband to start with, I guess. I've grown up a lot the past couple of years. Now, I enjoy sex with him too, especially on Saturday nights. I know that's supposed to mean I'm still mentally having sex with my brother or something. I won't argue with it. I don't suppose it's surprising either that my husband looks a lot like my brother.
"Honestly though, I've gotten over thinking about Tom when I have relations with my husband. I really love it with him and look forward to it. Only ... I don't even write to my brother. We exchange Christmas cards and mother tells me in her letters that he's got a job in California ... or he's working in Florida ... whatever he's doing.
"I guess I'll never be completely over it until I can face him again. I don't have a really terrible fear about it ... I just want to avoid it...."
PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENT: This case is a living example of the fact that all sexual problems of a similar manifestation do not necessarily follow a set syndrome. The accepted theory that sibling incest tends to occur in households without paternal dominance fits the experience of Tom and Marsha quite neatly. Yet the hypothesis that fellatio, cunnilingus and sadomasochistic practices are an integral part of incestuous relations would not apply here.
There was not a single instance of oral-genital contacts in the entire six-year sexual relationship of this brother and sister. The progression followed the pattern of a "normal" love affair.
The loss of the father undoubtedly played a major role in bringing the two closer together, in making it necessary for them to cling to each other in a manner of dependency. It also took away a great amount of authoritarian influence and discipline.
The basic moral teachings they had already absorbed, however, played a large role in warding off more overt acts until the passions of puberty became overwhelming. But with puberty also came maturity. Both Tom and Marsha were fully aware of the dangerous consequences that could ensue as soon as they simultaneously realized the tremendous love-pleasure that resulted from their eventual coitus.
At that point, common sense forced them to do a quick about-face, but the guilt feelings that were a product of their deeply embedded sense of morality also made the aftermath seriously disturbing, depressing.
There is no doubt that Marsha's life is still heavily influenced by this emotional impact. She says that she merely tries to avoid her brother, but she understates her case. Tom, it would appear by his constant changing of jobs, is something of a drifter, and perhaps not as well-adjusted as his sister. Through the medium of her marriage, her love for her husband and children and the responsibility involved, Marsha has had stability almost forced upon her. She has also taken the time and effort to understand herself, to seek out reliable information about her problem as best she can.
Improvement may well continue until she will voluntarily make personal contact with her brother some day and finally overcome the last obstacle. Otherwise, like so many millions in our midst, she may "carry on" the role of life with a mental wound not ever completely healed.
In the above case, we were dealing with a boy and girl from a literate, middle-class family living in a good suburban home of their own. Each child had his own room. The general moral standards were probably average or better, but there was no father image to enforce authority. Childhood sibling incest left a mental scar.
We now have a chance to compare this with the account of a youth from the slums of a large Eastern city in a family where morals were as scarce as money and living space consisted of two shabby rooms.
Case History (9): SIBLING INCEST BOTH HOMOSEXUAL AND HETEROSEXUAL IN AN IMPOVERISHED URBAN ENVIRONMENT
"Hell, a man ain't no man less'n he's s-his sister!" this semi-literate trash collector of 26 boasted without a trace of shame during a behavioral interview, "I got three sisters an' I-'em all 'fore I was ten years old."
In attempting to reconstruct the statements of the man we will call Wallace as accurately as possible, we will be forced to make liberal use of the aposiopetic dash to retain the flavor of his speech without using language that might be offensive to some.
Wallace was not approached directly on this subject, as the technique often backfires in these cases and the interviewee attempts to give an interviewer the answers he feels are desired rather than being completely truthful. In this instance, our researcher gained his confidence over a period of time and brought up the subject one evening in a general dialogue. Only after this, was Wallace informed that his story would contribute to behavioral research.
"You live five, maybe six kids in one lousy room," Wallace continued, "you learn about life early. I seen my big brother givin' it t'Emmalee when I was six an' she was seven. S-, I don' mean jus' playin', I mean he was f-her. She squealed like a animal an' he slapped the soutta her. He say, 'Gal, you gotta learn what that thing's for! Tha's where the soldier puts his gun when he goes t'bed.'
"I like t'watch that. Hell, I had me a hon too, an' I crawls over onto the big bed an' I wanna get me some. Brother, he's a big sombitch. He tells me I'm too little an' he gonna knock my a-off tha bed, an' he does too.
"Nex' mornin' when he goes out, I got in bed with Emmalee an she throws a fit. She yells for mama an' she come in an' raise some real hell, I tell you. I says to Emmalee, 'Girl, I gonna get you when mama go t'work. Hell, man, I fthat girl when I was six year old.
"Maureen was 14 then an' Sarah was two. Brother toP Maureen I'd did it with Emmalee an' she wanta have a look at my p--. She laughs like crazy I'm so damn little. She say that I ain't big enough to do nothin'. Brother, he says he bet I can make Maureen come a coco if'n I try. Hell, I get on top a that girl an' I sweat myself t'death an' she laughin' like hell. Mama come in an' she whip hell outta me an' Maureen. But she didn't touch my brother. He'd knock her on her a--.
"Brother, he says daddy sMaureen when she was 12, but Maureen get mad as hell when he says that. She says daddy only play wif her twhen he was drunk, an' she say it was cousin Bill
her that night. Cousin Bilk he weren't no cousin. He jus' come t'get himself some from mama when daddy was in jail for bein' drunk or humpin' some guy in a toilet. He liked a man now an' then, an' mama, she kept him away from brother an' me.
"Brother, I swear he was bigger'n a horse. Some time when I was seven or eight, I reckon, brother tell me I gotta sthat thing or he gonna tell mama I was doin' it t'Sarah. S-, a man don't hafta be no sissy t'do that. I didn't care. Hell, he done sme off too an' Maureen, she got a kick watchin' it.
"When brother come outta reformatory he was almos' 20 year ol'. He bring back a white man 30 year ol' an' he pay good money to smy p--.
Sarah, she about seven then, an' that man give fi' dollars t'mess aroun' with her p--.
"Emmalee, she get knocked up by somebody when she was 12. S-, it mighta been me or my brother, I don' know. That girl always gettin' pregnant. She had four kids when she was nineteen an' pregnant again. Maureen, she go to the workhouse all a time-six months, three months, they's always gettin' her for rollin' some guy she hustle.
"Them welfare people gimme hell when I knock up Sarah when she 16. They wan' me give money t'support that little bastard. Sarah, she got four or five kids now. I think brother give her one of 'em when he come back home las' year. Me, I ain't messin' with them no more. Hell, I got me plenny a stuff down on that street when I wants it.
"I tell you somethin,' man. That Sarah, she got some good a--. I f-her since't she was six year old, an' that is some kind a good. You don't find no better. But I sure ain' gettin' that girl knocked up again. I swear, she jus' look at a man's p-an' she get a baby..."
PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENT: An honest insight like this into the sordid squalor of American slum life does not present a pretty picture. But the story of Wallace, his brother, and Maureen, Emma-lee and Sarah, is repeated over and over many thousands of times in the big city slums and ghet-toes.
Incest, homosexuality and other rank deviations of the erotic instinct are as commonplace as the nightly family supper in many households. In fact, sex is often one of the few pleasures a poverty-stricken family can afford. The malcontent, the dissatisfied and the unsatisfied often turn to erotic excesses for enjoyment.
And in the uneducated and underprivileged family, where morality is just another incomprehensible four-syllable word, incest takes the place of solitary masturbation to provide escape from life's inequities.
It is well to note that with this extreme lack of repression, Wallace's only fear of continued relations with his sisters was that he might inflict more pregnancies upon them and thus bring on more demands from the authorities that he contribute to their support. His feeling of responsibility and love toward the children he brought into the world was even more callous than that of his own parents.
In one small way, though, we do see his early incestuous experiences as playing a determining role in his adult preferences. At the age of 10, he had relations with his six-year-old sister, Sarah, after having indulged in sex with his older sisters over a period of four years. Sarah alone, among both his homosexual and heterosexual sibling partners, left a lasting impression. The young girl had a baby by him when she was 12, and they had continued having relations until he left the household.
When Wallace goes "down the street" to find his women, he is still searching for one who will bring him the same satisfaction as Sarah. And although he is not neurotic as a result of guilt-feelings or repression, he will no more find his ideal in real life than the bedroom-hopping upper-class Lothario who is fleeing from his Oedipus complex and latent homosexuality.
In the preceding case histories, our attention was focused on the incidents of sibling incest of an overt and prolonged nature where the adult lives of the individuals were affected, mentally and-or physically.
But even among the most normal and well-adjusted adults who were raised with brothers and sisters, those with no outward indications of neurosis or emotional instability, almost everyone questioned recalled one or more sexual approaches or contacts with siblings during childhood.
Case Incidents (10):
CHILDHOOD INCESTUOUS CONTACTS AMONG SIBLINGS OF GOOD EMOTIONAL ADJUSTMENT
I.) "When I was thirteen and used to baby sit for my eight-year-old brother," a thirty-five-year-old married schoolteacher and mother told us, "I would often play with his penis to see it become erect. Julius liked it and I encouraged the practice. I surmised from the limited sex education we had in junior high school that this was not a good thing to be doing, so I stopped it, explaining the situation to Julius. We are both happily married now and visit each other often. We have only repressed it in the sense that we never talk about it."
2.) "My brother was a sex fiend," an attractive twenty-four-year-old government secretary told us, "And he was in a mental institution for two years. The opinion now is that he is cured, and I suppose this is true because he seems normal to me now. I was eleven and he was seventeen when he used to insist that I straddle his face so he could use his mouth on my organs. The sensation was pleasant but not satisfying. It seems grotesque to me in looking back on it, but I don't think I've suffered any ill effects, unless there's something wrong with a girl wanting her lover to go down. I'm certainly not alone in that department."
3.) "It was more curiosity than passion, and I'm being honest about that, really," a thirty-year-old married engineer insisted, "when I tried to have intercourse with my sister. We were ten-year-old twins at the time. We knew we were being sinful as hell, of course. And Mom caught us and blistered the daylights out of us. When Dad got home there was an encore. We both feel it was just a part of growing up. We've even joked about it openly in front of each others' spouses."
4.) "I guess I should have turned out a Lesbian, but nobody loves a man more than I do," an outspokenly great mother of six stated with a laugh, "My fourteen-year-old sister taught me to masturbate when I was nine, and we used to finger each other almost every night sometimes. We kissed too, but only on the mouth. It felt good, but it wasn't what I wanted. I've been married three times now (this woman was widowed twice), and there's nothing I want from a woman but sincere friendship and spiritual love. They'll never replace men in my book-God bless 'em."
5.) "Hellfire!" exclaimed a brashly frank businessman of middle age when approached on the subject. "Kids who never played 'Doctor' aren't normal! My older brother was the con-man of the family. He'd get the rest of us kids in the back bedroom and lay down the rules of the game. He was a rare character, never had to expose himself, oh no! He was the 'doctor.' He'd have each one of my sisters curtsy before him, pull up her dress, drop her panties and spread her legs. I'll bet he could compete with any gynecologist toady in giving a vaginal. Hell, he put my penis in his mouth once or twice too, but nobody turned up a fag in our family, no sir. Kids are curious. They like to play. What's with all this crap about forbidden desires and crazy heads?"
PSYCHOLOGICAL COMMENT: These more-or-less average sibling experimentations could have had far more tragic results. But in these instances the often delicate balance between degree and expression of parental authority on the one hand, and the emotional make-up of the children, had not been upset.
In many cases, the sound whippings meted out to the engineer and his sister could have marked them for life. Yet their constitutions were such that they could accept discipline, not become obsessed with the desire to repeat the act, and look on the whole thing as a part of growing up.
There were many other occasions where instances of sibling homosexual contacts in childhood played a part in the sex life of well-adjusted adults with no trace of homosexual desires in later years. The childhood relations were no more a determinant of adult orientation than the average young teenager's homosexual contacts with playmates.
This chapter has been limited in scope to cases where brother-sister relations took place only during the phases of growing up and did not continue, either occasionally or frequently, in adulthood. In a later chapter, we will study in detail the phenomenon of adult sibling incest, where acts first experienced in childhood were carried over into maturity on a regular or occasional basis, or where these acts were begun after puberty.