Volume 33, Number 19 · December 4, 1986
All in the Family
By Rosemary Dinnage
The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women
by Diana E.H. Russell
Basic Books, 426 pp., $24.95
The Original Sin: Incest and Its Meaning
by W. Arens
Oxford University Press, 190 pp., $19.95
Forbidden Partners: The Incest Taboo in Modern Culture
by James B. Twitchell
Columbia University Press, 311 pp., $24.95
Incest is a strangely fashionable subject, as the number of articles, novels, research surveys, films, books, and television programs cited in these three books demonstrates. Partly, perhaps, it is just that the jaded press is on the lookout for anything that still shocks. Partly it is the outraged reaction of women writers to some comments on the subject that declare that incest or pedophilia can be harmless and, if left in peace, guilt-free. And social surveys are for the first time substituting facts and statistics for previous guesswork about the subject. Another dimension has been added by the controversy over Freud's early change of heart about the reality of incestuous abuse in childhood. Meanwhile anthropology, in uneasy alliance with the new discipline of sociobiology, has continued to puzzle over the contradictions implied by the primal taboo.
Review, 2144 words
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