Violence. Incest. - Hope For A Cure

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

“… I woke up at night, in the dark, and found that my father was having sex with me. I don’t remember how it started, and luckily I don’t remember how it ended. For the second that remained in my memory, I realized the terrible truth and turned off again …"

It is likely that some of them got goosebumps after these words … And someone will scream something like: "Couldn't it have been a softer start?" Someone's hearing "turns off" … But you need to start this way, because numerous taboos interfere with helping and saving a person who finds himself in the above-described situation! This work is devoted to a topic that I encountered in my practice in 2009, when one of my clients, who came to me already in the 11th session, said that in childhood she was raped by her father - incest.

What is incest?

To begin with, let's give a definition: incest (Latin incestus - "criminal, sinful"), incest - sexual intercourse between close blood relatives (parents and children, brothers and sisters). In the American psychological / psychotherapeutic literature, the concepts of "incest" and "molesting" are distinguished: incest mainly refers to sexual relations between siblings, aunts and uncles, while "molesting" refers to a forced sexual relationship between a father / mother and child, uncle / blood aunt and child. In the post-Soviet literature, there are no such distinctions, therefore, sexual intercourse between close blood relatives is usually called incest.

Dry statistics

In modern society, there is still a stereotype that incest is an extremely rare phenomenon. In Ukraine, there are no official statistics on the prevalence of incest, but such studies were carried out abroad. According to various sources, in Europe from 6 to 62% of women and from 1 to 31% of men experienced incestuous relationships before the age of sixteen. From 5 to 50% of children under 6 years old are subject to incest in Europe, and in 90% of cases this is not reported to law enforcement agencies. There is little reason to believe that the situation is different in our country.

Why don't children or adults talk about incest?

In society, the fact of experienced incest is usually perceived as shameful, therefore, a person hides the secret of the experience throughout his life, while he can talk about other types of traumatic situations without shame and get the help of specialists. There are many reasons for the latency of incest. When an adult becomes a victim of any kind of violence, he always understands that what happened to him is wrong and goes beyond normal human relations. The child, due to the lack of life experience, may believe that incestuous relationships are normal. He trusts his relatives and believes that they are fasting correctly. Therefore, he is silent and does not ask for help. In this regard, specialists become aware of only a small fraction of the facts of incest.

It is clear that the experience of incest has a widespread traumatic effect on the psyche of the child. The consequences of incest can be both immediate (actual) and delayed and relate not only to the victim himself, but also to her immediate environment and society as a whole.

The child victim suffers from childhood, he is doomed to carry on his shoulders the burden of the terrible mystery of what happened. According to some psychological studies, incest can cause disturbances in his behavior, emotional-motivational, social and cognitive spheres. The environment of such a child also suffers due to destructive changes in his psyche, but most often no one knows about the nature of such changes.

In addition to its direct impact, incest can also lead to long-term consequences, often affecting the rest of your life. It can contribute to the formation of specific family relationships, special life scenarios. As an example, I will give an example from my own practice: a girl, 5 years old, who was seduced by her father, at a young age begins to get angry with her mother for not doing anything. But because of this anger, she sooner or later found herself in the mother's place - the man whom she took as her husband began to seduce their daughter, and she “had to” (the word used by the client, author's note) to close her eyes. This is how incest can be passed down from generation to generation.

Teenagers affected by incest experience the consequences of the incident especially hard, due to the anatomical, physiological, hormonal, emotional, personal and psychosexual changes that occur during adolescence.

Obviously, it is necessary to diagnose the fact of incest as early as possible and assess its consequences for the psyche. This is important both for the mental health of the child himself, over whom the mystery of incest hangs, and for society as a whole.

Psychologists distinguish 3 types of incest:

1. Incest of the first type is incest between relatives, realized in sexual activities (between mother and son, father and daughter, between a girl and her uncle, etc.).
2. Incest of the second type, when two family members have the same lover. It is incest, manifested in sexual activities, when two relatives have the same sexual partner and sexual rivalry.
3. Psychological, or symbolic (hidden) incest does not imply sexual relations between its participants. In symbolic incestuous relationships in the family, the child can act as a surrogate for a spouse. Quasi-matrimony is expressed in the fact that the parent begins to share information of a deeply personal or even sexual nature with the child, makes the son (daughter) responsible for his own problems. At the same time, the child has ambivalent feelings and experiences: on the one hand, pride in the trust, and on the other, despair because of the impossibility to bear responsibility that does not correspond to age and status. This leads to a role imbalance in the family.

In my practice, there were several clients who were subjected to incest. In all cases, already at the end of the first session, I could determine with an accuracy of 90% whether this person had been subjected to violence or incest. Let's call it intuition, but I'll describe how it "felt" later.

The main characteristics of the behavior of people subjected to incest:

• a feeling of inadequacy, insufficient importance, inferiority, dependence, insignificance;

• feeling of guilt, inability to define one's own needs and expectations, which causes difficulties in self-identification;

• a chronic feeling of shame associated both with the dual ties in the mother-father relationship, and with feelings of inferiority and worthlessness;

• ambivalent feelings of love and hate towards the parent: as for children, on the one hand, the child feels in a special, privileged position, and on the other hand, he constantly feels insecure due to the inability to meet expectations. He may have feelings of rage, anger, despair when he feels the inadequacy of the messages addressed to him;

• unhealthy relationships with partners: the desire to establish superficial and short-term relationships with a large number of people. Such people experience difficulties in creating deep, reciprocal relationships, easily enter into superficial contacts and, not receiving satisfaction, easily interrupt them, which contributes to the development of addictions, sexual dysfunctions, and compulsiveness. This is due to a chronic fear of being abandoned by people who empathize and care for him. Characterized by a constant search for a "perfect" / "ideal" partner, the desire to establish unique relationships based on mutual love. After the termination of another relationship, as a rule, there is a feeling of guilt, regret, remorse and dissatisfaction with oneself, shame. In this case, I'm not talking about the narcissistic feelings that appear in the event of a breakup, the same guilt, regret, dissatisfaction with oneself, shame, but about feelings that are associated with incestuous relationships. Thus, the narcissistic feeling of shame after a breakup is different from the shame of violence.

Strategies for working with victims of violence / incest

During the study of this topic, and in my personal practice, I came across several options for working with clients subjected to incest, which were proposed by various psychological and psychotherapeutic schools. However, getting started was the same. The first step was to acknowledge the fact that the client enjoyed the relationship with the abuser. Moreover, a large number of arguments, conclusions and moralizing on the part of a psychologist / psychotherapist are given why the client should feel pleasure from such a relationship (this is love for the rapist due to the fact that he is a parent, and the absence of a request for help, and repeated repetition of the incest situation without preventing the established relationship). The second point of the proposed work is the recognition and expression of anger at the second family member (the one who did not commit violence, but did not protect from the rapist).

Based on my practice, I want to offer a slightly different option for working with clients who have been subjected to violence. Why can't the first point, so often offered in the psychological literature, be the first? - This is due to the fact that the client, who decided to admit what happened, experiences an endless feeling of shame and guilt, firstly, for the fact that it happened to him, and secondly, for the fact that he did not tell before, in - third, because of the feeling of inferiority, which is acquired as a reaction to the situation of incest. In connection with the latter, feelings are so encapsulated, constricted, that the client becomes, as it were, “insensible,” alexithymic. In some cases, when the fact of violence / incest is revealed much later (after 5 or more years), memory distorts memories so much that the understanding of how the client felt at the time of the violent act is largely distorted. And, thirdly, if we consider working with such a client in a gestalt approach, then the therapist, in principle, has no right to demand from the client a recognition of the pleasure from the relationship with the abuser, due to the fact that the therapist does not know what the client is experiencing, and each client is individual and unique in their range of feelings. Therefore, it is better to keep smart conclusions and knowledge for yourself.

Here are some answers to the question: "How do you feel now when you told me this?"

“I don’t know, I’m as if in prostration. I do not know what to say.

- I'm ashamed now. I am ashamed that this happened to me. I feel guilty that I did not tell about this earlier, so many years have passed …

- I feel devastated, wounded, betrayed … How could this person do this to me?

Thus, the first point in working with an incest victim should be the victim's story about what happened. This is not easy for clients, because often rapists, and especially when it is the mother or father who tells the children: “This is our business,” or “If you say, misfortune will happen to us,” or “If you tell someone, then dad / mom it will be very bad. " Sometimes a person, despite the fact that no one forbade him to talk about incest, inspires himself that it is impossible to speak due to projections about the unwillingness of the rapist or introjects. However, if the client did take the "first step", then we move on to the second strategy of work - the expression of repressed emotions and feelings.

The psychologist / psychotherapist needs to be as non-judgmental as possible at the moment of the victim's story, and sufficiently sensitive. If the therapist allows himself to express feelings after the story (shock, fear, anger, etc.), in this way, he symbolically empowers the client to experience feelings. And at this moment we smoothly move on to the next stage of work - the expression of repressed emotions. I would like to make a reservation about the therapist's sensitivity at the moment of transition from the first stage of work to the second. It is very important not to facilitate the client to experience the same feelings as the therapist. Because due to our individuality, life, professional experience and worldview, each person's reactions and feelings to the current situation may differ. Thus, the therapist may have a dominant feeling of disgust at the story of what happened, but this does not mean that the client will have the same feeling. Therefore, the therapist needs to be very careful and tolerant so as not to replace the client's feelings with his own.

The work becomes more difficult and delicate if the client refuses to admit what happened. And after the client's story, who does not recognize the fact (and with it, the severity and pain) of what happened, the therapist may ask himself the question: “Is this true? Was the client really raped or was it her fantasy? But the real question is not whether this is true or not, but whether it is important for me to know, in particular, in relation to this person (my client), whether this is true or not? The focus of attention is shifting: we are not interested in the Truth, which remains the lot of judges, but in the truth of a given person and how it explains his attitude to what happened.

In the case when the psychologist / psychotherapist is open, maintains the level of his energy and vitality, at the same time is stable, the client feels the support that he does not have, and the therapist's great support in experiencing the pain associated with incest - all this helps the client to express the suppressed emotions that have been blocked. The therapist's job is to help start this process and to embrace these emotions. Emotions can include fear, disgust and anger towards the abuser and others, as well as the same feeling of pleasure that was written about earlier. However, here I will make a reservation that this feeling is most often a substitute for other feelings that are less accepted by society. So, justifying the rapist (and the second parent), feelings of guilt and resentment, is much easier to experience and present in society than anger, anger or disgust - socially unacceptable feelings.

Throughout the work with such clients, the therapist may encounter the client's feelings of shame. This feeling can go through all therapy sessions, and therefore through the entire life of the client. The feeling of shame is experienced in the presence and under the gaze (sometimes imaginary) of another person; it can be difficult to define, define and express. Initially, shame seems toxic, but with the systematic, patient work of a psychologist / psychotherapist, the feeling of shame will become less and less, giving way to other emotions, such as resentment, anger, rage, guilt (work is aimed at the transition from a child's feelings of guilt to an adult state innocence”, giving responsibility to an adult).

And only at this stage there can be a feeling of anger at the second parent, who did not commit violence, but was, as it were, in an invisible presence. However, in my practice, the feeling of anger, anger appeared much later, at the end of the work. This is due to the deep connection between parent and child, and with the pattern of justifying someone who did not intercede earlier, who has long been entrenched in the client's conscious and unconscious world from the moment the abuse was committed.

The final step in working with clients who have experienced incest is taking responsibility for their future lives. The fact is that for a long time the traumatic experience that was received in a situation of incest served as protection from healthy relationships with the opposite sex, from taking responsibility for rebuilding relationships with other people, from looking for their sexuality. Although this is the final step, it is fundamental to the client's recovery.

Using the concept of Brigitte Martel, the client needs to “make amends” on a real or symbolic level. How might it look like? - Everyone has their own way and their own creative way. One of my clients, after a long time without communication with her father, who had been abusive for 7 years, called her father and asked him to apologize to her. Thus, she compensated for the damage caused to her.

“His apology was not sincere. At first I got angry … I hung up and did not call again. Six months later, he called himself and told his dream that he was having sex with me again, and he repented, saying that he could not forget it, that he was sorry and painful to remember … After all, after everything was over, when I was 14 years, I did not communicate with him for 11 years …"

Talking about my experience of how I “feel” already in the first session whether the client has been subjected to incest / violence, the first thing I look at is the relationship that the client creates with me. When considering what kind of relationship a client who has undergone incest invites the therapist into, we can see several options:

• The client can behave like a victim, reproducing a child-parent (abuser) relationship.
• The client reproduces the relationship as with the second adult (who did not commit incest), that is, the client can also, on the one hand, keep a "secret" about what is happening (without telling about what happened several sessions in a row), on the other hand, is angry with the therapist as that adult who didn’t protect and didn’t save.
• The client behaves like a "wounded" person, hoping to receive help, support, confirmation of the significance and self-worth from a third party, who (in the client's hopes) will guess what "actually happened." This is similar to the relationships that the client had with significant people (teachers, coaches, distant relatives, friends), that is, those that were in the background during the incestuous relationship.

When speaking of countertransference tendencies, the therapist may unconsciously symbolically reproduce the incest situation. First, it can be expressed in a desire to get close to the client as soon as possible, to enter into a trusting relationship with him, in the same way as the rapist did when he was sexually “intimate” with the victim. Secondly, the therapist can take responsibility for a certain situation, the life of the client in general, in connection with the desire to support and take care of him, especially at the moment when the client talks about his inferiority, insignificance, about a sense of shame; thus, infantilizing the client and taking responsibility for him, making him dependent, retraumatizing him in a sense of inferiority, just as the rapist took responsibility at the moment and in the process of incestuous relationships, creating a feeling of inferiority and dependence of the client. In this regard, the therapist needs to very delicately and with deep reflection to start working with clients who have been subjected to incest / violence, so as not to retraumatize them and be effective in their work.

In conclusion, I would like to note that incest is one of the most traumatic for an individual violations of contact with the environment. Based on the basic concept of Gestalt therapy - the border, earlier violation of the border of the child's contact with the environment leads to the fact that for the rest of his life he builds relationships with other people in a specific unproductive way. For example, a client dumps the men she loves every time she tries to ditch her father who committed incest. Or she finds men who commit psychological (less often, physical) violence against her, thus, she again and again reproduces the role of the victim.

It is important for the client to develop a true understanding of what happened, to help them go through the full range of experiences associated with incest, and then what happened will become an "invaluable" experience for him. Then a person who has once experienced incest will become free from it, and, taking into account this experience, he will have hope for a full and harmonious life.

“I went to bed and screamed in pain for three days. I felt devastated, wounded, betrayed. How could this person do this to me? I was afraid that if I told about this secret, everyone on the street would point fingers at me and say all sorts of nasty things … But this did not happen. I was shocked. And she soon realized that with the discovery of the secret, the long-awaited liberation came. It turned out that my childhood secret was not at all as shameful as I had imagined …"

List of used literature

1. Kon I. S. A short dictionary of sexopathological terms.
2. Martel Bridget. Sexuality, love and Gestalt. St. Petersburg: Speech. 2006.