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Father-Daughter Incest and its Treatment
The topic of incest has become an increasingly more legitimate research subject in the mental health profession within the last ten years. ... With the admission that solely presenting a stereotypical incestuous family would be as detrimental to the search for more effective treatment approaches as not researching the problem at all, this paper presents a distillation of the commonalities among incest victims and their families in an attempt to dispel some common myths and provide the uninformed with a baseline of information upon which to build. A view of the preferred treatment approach is given and points out why it is the preferred approach.
PREVALENCE OF INCEST
Determining the prevalence of incest is difficult for several reasons including its non standard definition and the lack of reliable reporting. The definition of incest used by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect is "contacts or interaction between a child and an adult in which the child is used for sexual stimulation of the perpetrator or another person" (Vander Mey & Neff, 1982, p. ... The perpetrator in incest cases is defined as "anyone who victimizes a child and is a parental figure or a significant other in the childs intra-family life. ... This definition is considerably broader than the statutory definitions in many states, yet it is (if not verbatim, at least in theme) the definition used in doing research on incest (Herman, 1983; Zimpfer, 1987). However, national reporting of numbers of incest cases is dependent on the legal definitions employed by the state. ...
Another factor confounding the accuracy of reported prevalence rates is the incidence of retracted claims of incest. ... who are involved with the family tend to accept the false denial, discontinue the investigation or treatment, and not report the case (Herman, 1983; Swanson & Biaggio, 1985). Another obscuring influence on the reported prevalence rates is the fact that many cases of incest are not discovered until the victims adolescence (Hoorwitz, 1983; Alter-Reid, Gibbs, Lachenmeyer, Sigal, & Massoth, 1986). ...
Much of the available research has been on father (or stepfather, for the purpose of this paper, stepfathers are included in the category of fathers) daughter incest. Many professionals believe that this type of incest is the most damaging to the victim (Eisenberg, Owens, & Dewey, 1987; Giarretto, 1982; Vander Mey & Neff, 1982). Studies have consistently found the victims of incest are females 83% (Alter-Reid et al. ... Furthermore, prevalence rates of previous incest victimization in adult women have been stated to be 10% (Herman, 1983). Therefore, this paper will focus on families in which father-daughter incest has been discovered and the preferred treatment approach to use with the family.
PROFILE OF AN INCESTUOUS FAMILY
A profile of the most common characteristics of the offending father, the female victim, and the mother will provide a baseline description of these incest participators. The overwhelmingly invariable attribute of the perpetrating father is his dominance (Alter-Reid et al. ... He may distribute it evenly among all the family members, or he may physically abuse everyone except the daughter with whom he has the incestuous relationship, or there may be no real pattern to the physical abuse. The fathers dominance within the family may be sharply contrasted with his demeanor during initial clinical interviews once the incest has been reported. ... It is speculated that when facing an adult with equal or greater power than himself, the incest perpetrator does not attempt to dominate, and instead he seeks to gain sympathy and deny his incestuous behavior (Herman, 1983). Other characteristics of the incestuous father often are: devout moralistic religious beliefs (Hoorwitz, 1983), alcoholism (Herman, 1983; Hoorwitz, 1983; Lanyon, 1986; Swanson & Biaggio, 1985; Vander Mey & Neff, 1982), lack of impulse control (Vander Mey & Neff, 1982), and previous victimization as a child (Alter-Reid et al. ...
The female child victimized by her father is most often the eldest female child in the family (Swanson & Biaggio, 1985; Vander Mey & Neff, 1982), and she is likely to be older than 12 when and if she reports the incest (Alter-Reid et al. ... This special position is usually one of increased power and responsibility seen as a role reversal where the daughter takes on the maternal role with her siblings and the spousal role with her father. ... The daughter must maintain secrecy in order for her family to survive (Alter-Reid et al.
Approximate Word count = 3593
Approximate Pages = 14.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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