Penis Envy and Incest: A Case Report

A search of the English literature reveals very few reported cases which involve actual incestuous experiences on the part of the patient. Since parent-child relationships are of such obvious psychiatric importance, and since psychoanalysts have shown the universality of the choice of a parent as the original love object during the infantile period of sexuality, a case in which overt activity occurred in early life should be of special interest. This case in particular has been of peculiar interest to the writer because of the direction given the development of the personality of the patient by these sexual experiences, for similar traits are found frequently amongst women who produce no evidence of such experience and who, under ordinary methods of investigation, are unable to recall even fantasies of such situations.

Of course the question whether what this patient reports are fantasies must be considered. She has always been a reliable and capable person. She states that her account can be verified by a sibling who received similar advances from the father but it was not felt prudent and it was not expedient to investigate this. However, there is general agreement that the father was a peculiar and unusual personality who made many unreasonable demands on his family and kept them in a constant state of turmoil. An in-law even volunteered that there had been some reference made in family conversations to incestuous practices by the father, but whether these comments had been provoked by the patient alone could not be learned.

Perhaps the sequence of events in the story of the patient's life is the best verification that the story is not all fantasy.

The patient was a middle-aged single woman, physically healthy. There had been slight menstrual irregularity on one occasion some months previous to admission. She came to the hospital voluntarily at the suggestion of a psychiatrist as the result of alarming behavior she had exhibited after about three sessions of treatme