Claire Adrian - Incest, A Way Of Life

Consciously knowing that he was an "accident" baby, Billy immediately confused this with being unloved and or unwanted-but whether he was or wasn't loved is not the point; what is important is that this feeling of being unloved served to intensify the unconscious incestuous desire that Billy had for his mother, his want and need to have sexual intercourse with her, by permitting it to grow in strength, its only enemy being the superego (or conscience)- which was not too strong in Billy to begin with.

This desire for expression by the incest wish received tremendous reinforcement when Billy first saw his other sex acts, specifically his father cunnilinguing his mother, this latter also triggering Billy's own desire for oral acts, which in themselves are normal enough; however, in Billy's case this desire was exaggerated to a degree that bordered on an out-and-out paresthesia. Still, at this point the incest wish was not dominant in the ego of Billy LB, and was more or less content to express itself via masturbation fantasies. This, too, was normal enough-in ail boys, but only before the Oedipus complex resolves itself at about the age of puberty (earlier in some boys, later in others- in some cases, never, as with Billy L. H-).

At this point, some review of the Oedipus process might assist us in analyzing the case of B.L.H. Generally speaking, the Freudian psychoanalysts have shown the influence of incest upon fantasy and dreams and upon vicarious expressions and choices. However, their most sustained efforts have been in applying the mechanism of the Oedipus complex to the analysis of motivation. This complex is an unrealized instinctual wish for the parent of the opposite sex coupled with a rivalry for the parent of the same sex, which concept Freud derived from a Greek myth in the play Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles. The motif of this play is that the son unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. Different psychiatrists hold different views regarding the Oedipus complex.

Karen Horney regards the Oedipus complex as an inevitable phase of child development, feeling it to be of prime importance; and so she writes, in Neurotic Personality of Our Time: "It may very well be that the Oedipus complex is the 'mother' of the incest wish in males, just as the Electra complex gives birth to the desire for incest in the female."

Disagreeing slightly with Horney, Alfred Adler believed that the components of the Oedipus complex were to be found as a function of the individual's life style. Adler was convinced that the Oedipus complex is a product of the individual's disinterest in social affairs outside the family circle, a disinterest that is created by his fears and insecurities and by his attachment to his mother. As his fears and insecurities grow, the individual begins to desire to return to the hub of all security, the womb; yet even the id knows this can never be, the result being that overcompensation takes place: the individual cannot return to the womb, but he can get close to it through sexual intercourse.

On the other hand, Jung considers the Oedipus complex to be figurative and a concept "that should never be mistaken for a scientific term." He believes that though children may have incestuous tendencies for their parents, and vice versa, he does not feel that the child will have any serious difficulties with the complex, except in cases that are psychosexual pathological.

Billy L. H- is such a case.

There is further evidence that Billy L.'s incestuous desire for his mother was motivated by the Oedipus complex-the words and phrases Billy used when describing the relationship, such as "slut," "dirty old whore" etc., all of which would tend to make one feel that he hated Sylvia, or at least had no love for her. Such vulgarisms and Billy's apparently cold-hearted attitude are merely a disguise for his love for his mother, as well as being a part of the process of rationalization, so vital and necessary to the superego. In short, the libido must pass the conscience with an "excuse," in order to smash the barrier imposed by the cultural taboo prohibiting incest, the perverse rationale being somewhat as follows: I don't love my mother. Therefore, if I do not love her, I must hate her. This is only a short step to: Therefore, it is not really incest to have sex with a mother I do not love. It is not incest at all for me to have sex with a mother I hate.

We see how circumstances were against Billy L. Coupled with the feeling that he was unloved and unwanted (because he was an "accident" baby, as he put it) is the fact that Sylvia, his mother, while good to the boy, often ignored him. Recall Billy's words: "To her [his mother], I was just there.' "

It would be superfluous to say that a child needs a mother's love if he is to develop normally. Joseph A. Winter explains, in The Origins of Illness amp; Anxiety, that:

it appears as if many parents hesitated to show affection to a child because they have confused affection with sexual desire. Let's not be afraid of a word-there is probably a sexual aspect in every demonstration of love, but every demonstration of love does not lead to sexual intercourse. The quality of sex that is in a mother's love for her child is completely-different from the quality of sex that is in the love she feels for her husband. In order for a chilled to grow to be an adult, capable of love, the inspiration which comes from the warmth and vitality of the sex quality in the parent's love must be known. Parents need not worry that this might lead to incest; it cannot.

Billy's story and actions reveal the birth of still another sexual abnormality: fetishism, i.e., sexual devotion or preference directed at some particular part of the body or to some object; it is usually associated with a part of the body or with some particular person or type of person. In Billy's case this fetishism is evidenced by his chewing on his mother's hose and putting a pair of her panties over his head while masturbating, as well as his indulging in copulatory movements in the panties, these acts constituting a clothing fetish.

There is also the possibility that Billy may have a body fetish, considering his preoccupation with his mother's genitals, and particularly, her buttocks, the latter of which may have been triggered by his early witnessing of his father inserting a finger into Sylvia's rectum during their lovemaking. However, we cannot be sure that a body fetish exists in Billy. Many boys his age have an intensified interest in the genitals of the opposite sex (as well as the buttocks), an interest that moderates as the individual matures.

Fetishism is sexual symbolism. The fetishist proper experiences a sexual emotion on seeing the object, though there is no precise association of ideas in his mind.

Says Havelock Ellis, in his Studies of the Psychology of Sea;: "This tendency becomes abnormal if it is exclusive and general, and it constitutes a characteristic deviation when the fetish itself, in the absence of the person, suffices entirely to provoke not only tumescence, but also detumescence, so that it suppresses all desire for sexual intercourse.*'

Viewed in this light, we can state that Billy L.'s fetishism (for clothing) was a mild and harmless one, since it was secondary to his greater desire to experience intercourse with his mother and did not replace actual coitus.

This leads us to distinguish two kinds of fetishism. In the first, the object merely plays the part of a stimulant (as in the case of Billy L.), an indispensable prelude to coitus (which some sexologists include as a characteristic perversion); in the second, the object becomes in some way the corollary of the normal sexual act, the individual either accompanying that act with an evocation of the person desired, or finding in the fetish a perfect stimulant and form of satisfaction, this latter being the complete form of the perversion.