ABSTRACT
Family therapists first began to deal with incestuous families in the late 1960s and to observe their structures and interactional styles. This chapter presents a brief historical overview of theoretical work on incest families, data on the prevalence and type of incest, studies of perpetrators and their families of origin, and studies of families in which incest takes place. It also presents the most commonly occurring types of incestuous relationships with females. In describing the families in which father-daughter incest took place, the early family therapists pointed out that incest had to be considered a “family affair.” In the male-dominant family, the women are more distant from their spouses primarily because they are devalued in the relationship. Some survivors from mother-dominant families have reported to us that they voluntarily engaged in sex with their fathers. The family then becomes a more chaotic type since neither parent seems to want or is able to run the family.
