NCJ Number
94725
Date Published
1982
Length
73 pages
Annotation
Changes in the understanding of child sexual abuse are reviewed from the early decades of the 20th century to the present.
Abstract
Because Freud and his followers emphasized the incest taboo and viewed incest as an uncommon event, early attention to child sexual abuse was focused outside the family and on the stranger or deviate. Much research sought evidence for a relationship between psychopathology, alcoholism, or pedophilia and incest and other forms of child sexual abuse. Study of the intrafamilial context of child sexual abuse has replaced the emphasis on the deviant nature of the abuser and provides a powerful tool for understanding the causes and immediate consequences of incest. Dysfunctional patterns in the relationship among the mother, father, and child may give rise to father-daughter incest. Three types of such dysfunctional interaction patterns have been delineated by Stern and Mayer (1980): the dependent-domineering, the possessive-passive, and the incestrogenic or dependent-dependent pattern. Dimensions of endogamous incest are considered with respect to character defects, machismo, social isolation, role inversion, and the notion of the bad mother. The family dynamics of father-daughter incest suggest that availability and acquiescence, offender needs for control, the sexualization of children, and social isolation may be factors in child sexual abuse generally. Two theories of the incest taboo, the alliance theory and the neo-Freudian theory, are reviewed in an addendum. About 65 references are included.