ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysts speak a great deal about the Oedipus complex and the prohibition of incest, but rarely of incest that has actually been carried out, perhaps echoing the paradoxical silence forced upon the child victim. The transgression of incest implicitly carries its own denial, to the point that it is trivialized as if it were simply a particular form of family communication. The incestuous sexual relationship is necessarily a form of masturbation, because sexuality remains auto-erotic in the sense that it is played out as though the other person had no existence. The desperate quest of incestuous parents is often motivated—as Simona Argentieri emphasizes—by confusion between masculine and feminine, and the impossibility to mourn the loss of androgyny. Unlike the Oedipus situation, which integrates desire into the law, thereby allowing the emergence of otherness, incest blurs the limits between the members of a family and introduces confusion.
