ABSTRACT
A psychoanalytical classification of the kinds of incest should include patterns as sublimated incest and consented incest. In any case, people must pay close attention to the many psychic effects and to the weight of culture, traditions, and habits on the mind at different periods of history. The notion of sacrifice is close: the adult uses the young person’s psychic flesh as if it were his or her own to possess, indifferent to the subsequent effect on the victim. To actual incest, performed on the body, whether with full completion of the sexual act or with sexual commerce without actual penetration of the erogenous zones, more subtle forms of incest must be added such as verbal incest and incestuous stimulation. Incest of mythical origin, this is one example among many of the recurrence, throughout the centuries, of incestuous drives in the collective imagination of human beings.
