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In the mere 11-year span between 1979 and the present, there has been a virtual explosion into public and professional consciousness of the frequency and devastating impact of sexual abuse within the family. The sheer force of recent words and images on the subject of incest, including extensive clinical studies (Finkelhor, 1984; Briere, 1988), and carefully researched incidence and prevalence surveys (Russell, 1986), as well as popular television, theater, and documentary dramatizations, is testimony both to the enormity of the problem and to the weight of factors—cultural and familial—which had hitherto kept this broken taboo shrouded in silence.
Presently, we see coming together important streams of study that, it is interesting to note, ran their own relatively separate courses for a number of years. Flowing through one corner of the field of psychology and psychiatry has been a current of data on trauma and its characteristic response patterns. From the pioneering work of Horowitz (1976) to the more recent contributions of van der Kolk (1987) and others, study of the somatic, affective, and cognitive disturbances wrought by overwhelming life experiences has led clinicians to a much fuller appreciation of the therapeutic needs of such disparate groups as combat veterans, victims of violent crime, and holocaust and disaster survivors.