ABSTRACT
The phenomenal growth of incest treatment programs in recent years has made it apparent that professionals working with family sexual abuse may have very different underlying assumptions about the nature of the problem. These differences appear most dramatically between professional groups, for example, between attorneys, child protection workers and psychotherapists. These variations promote a lack of coordination in the identification of sexual abuse and its aftermath; sometimes, the professionals involved even polarize into opposing “camps.” Workers in child protective services and correctional institutions typically emphasize victim advocacy, external control of incestuous families and an individual approach to treatment. Therapists with a family orientation often argue that incest is best understood and treated from a systems perspective, that is, as a symptom of distorted elements in family process. However, even therapists who are concerned about the entire incest family differ in their theoretical orientations, have varying therapuetic skills, operate in diverse contexts and therefore develop treatment programs which are differentially effective with the incest family population.
