Mother-child incest, psychosis, and the dynamics of relatedness

Sexual abuse perpetrated by a parent particularly the mother creates turmoil in the child who has to depend on the very person who betrays their trust. A review of the literature confirms that there are only a few case studies of mother-child incest reported in the psychoanalytic literature; the incidence of such incest, however, is unknown. Considerably, more information is available in the forensic and child abuse literatures along with an increase in research; yet, there is a paucity of data. Child sexual abuse by women as highly prevalent is described in early societies, and that there is a bias in peoples' minds about the capacity of females to sexually abuse children is raised by many writers. The fact of being abused by one's mother brings up specific issues for survivors of maternal incest. Shame and the fear of not being believed, which was the experience of my female patient and a sense of specialness and failure of recognition of incest by the males, created particular difficulties which had to be dealt with in psychotherapy. This paper describes three teenagers, one female and two males who were sexually abused by their mothers. I have condensed several years of treatment to provide an account of the female patient and a summary of each of the males, and I attempt to explore the dynamics of relatedness in the abused and the abuser.