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More than any other trauma, incest, whether fully or partly actualized, has specific pathogenic malignancy, because it uniquely intensifies the neurosogenic power of repressed elements of the child's Oedipus complex, the generative source of neurotic pathology. While I believe this to be an obvious assumption, it is one that I have often found to be unstated or insufficiently emphasized in psychoanalytic considerations of the treatment of sexually abused individuals. In the presentation that follows, I will elaborate on this assumption, describing aspects of the Oedipus complex that are especially liable to derail a normal oedipal evolution and lead instead to the pathogenic adaptations that we are likely to find in patients who experienced childhood incest.
In addition, I will update the timetable—some proposals of which I believe are misrepresentative—and the multifaceted evolution of the Oedipus complex in order to highlight some potential consequences of incestuous transgression upon the development of the child. This in turn will serve to support my assertion that, in regard to treatment, assuming that a sufficiently positive transference is achieved to begin with, there are specific tasks that need to be undertaken in order to effect a good outcome from psychoanalysis: (1) the patient must first come to tolerate her own transgressive wishes toward the oedipal father and her rivalrous wishes toward her mother and then, by the