Jack Benjamin - The Paths Of Incest

It was a friend of ours who first noticed that little Debbie wasn't exactly "right" for a child her age. We'd never noticed, but she was slow in learning to do simple things, and she wasn't talking yet at age two. Baby sounds-dada and mama-see-things like that. I thought Gail would lose her mind when the specialists told us she was mentally retarded. We tried therapy at home and in special clinics, but nothing worked. Debbie was in a little world all her own, from which she would never emerge. Maybe, if there is a God, it was his way of punishing us and protecting Debbie from the frightful knowledge that she was the product of incest. I don't believe in that kind of a God, but-who knows? Anyhow, Gail and I were driven even closer together by the tragedy that we'd engineered. Only now, I began to feel guilty.

When Debbie had to be placed in a home for retarded children, I quit the band and opened a record and music store, so we could see Debbie often.

Then Gail met this fellow-and you know something interesting? The guy could have been my older brother, we looked that much alike. I was like any other lover-outraged, miserable, lonely. Gail never lied to me about it. She said from the start, this had to be the answer she'd prayed for, out of our situation-that she'd fall in love with a decent man, and I would meet a woman, love and wed.

When she married him, I went wild-stayed drunk for a week. But I got hold of myself, moved to another city, and began to build a life for myself. I had a bad hang-up for a long time. Believe it or not, I couldn't even masturbate while fantasizing about anyone but Gail. Even after I started to date women, I couldn't be stimulated by anyone who wasn't built like Gail and had red hair, like she has!

Then came Jane. She was a child psychologist, maybe that's what I needed all along, who was working with retarded children. I'd begun working at the studios then, writing the scores and background music for movies and TV, and Jane was serving as technical advisor on a film-a documentary for one of the TV shows-on mentally disturbed and retarded children. Naturally, I wanted to talk to her about Debbie. Before I knew it, I was head over heels in love with her, and we began to talk marriage.

But the fly in the ointment was-I couldn't get sexually aroused over her, much as I loved her. When I'd told her about Debbie, I'd referred to Gail as my wife. I decided that, if we were to have a real marriage, Jane had to know the truth. When I told her, she amazed me. She talked at length about what causes sex hang-ups, and even made a regular record of my answers as to why I felt certain things about Gail, about fellatio, analingus, and so on.

Then, she set out to prove, with her body and mine, that sex really is all in the head! She proved that any woman a man loves, and who loves him, can be all things to him, in bed and out.

Guilt feelings? I had them. Still have "Freudian scars", as some call the emotional wounds that heal. But not to the degree that I let them spoil my life. Gail, oddly enough, seemed completely cured of me, the moment she married. When we meet now, there's no sexual arousement in me, and I'm sure not in her.

Jane has checked with the best authorities available about Debbie, and the prognosis is that she's better off where she is, getting care and attention. She will probably never develop much beyond the age of a seven-year-old. You face things and do what is best for all concerned, and that's how you live life at its best.

Having had the same parents, and therefore, being by nature somewhat alike, it was quite natural that Les and Gail would be mutually attracted. They were also united further by their mutual coldness to their mother, and dislike for the stepfather who was having relations with Gail.

In later experiments, with a professional hypno-therapist, Les underwent the regression technique. Because he was an exceptional subject, he was able to go back to his birth, and he revealed that many of the sex acts which he indulged in with Gail, had been indulged in by his father and mother. Psychiatrists, of course, are not in agreement as to the effects of early environment on the sex attitudes and appetites, but the case of Les and his sister is enlightening, in many ways.

However, so the reader may not suffer from fear that sex relations between brother and sister are harmful in later life-and more important, so adult readers who are parents may not be overly fearful of sex play between siblings, let it be firmly stated that psychiatrists are unanimous in their feeling that some sex experimentation between brothers and sisters is natural, normal and part of the growing up period. The Freudian theory (still basically accepted by most psychiatrists) is that any human, male or female, will make his first pleasurable (life-sustaining) contacts through the mouth by tasting, sucking and swallowing. Usually, somewhere between the ages of three and six, a child turns from autoeroticism (masturbation and self-excitement) to a usually mild form of homosexuality, in that he becomes aware of sexual sensations from contacts with his own gentler. From five to 12 years, his sex interests take a turn and he becomes heterosexual. What more natural subject for exploratory purposes, than the one most available-a sister or brother?

Under normal circumstances, when the child is removed from the home contacts exclusively (as when starting school) his sex interests quite automatically transfer to other males and females of his own age.

An interesting sidelight to these studies was revealed in a series of articles by a prominent child psychologist who made a close study of relationships between brothers and sisters brought up in an institutional environment, as opposed to those in normal homes. In an institution, where the children did not enter the outer world, but attended school in the institution, relationships like that of Les and Gail were much more pronounced. It was believed that this resulted because of the lack of opportunity to enter into other heterosexual relationships, and also, that the siblings were closer than they would normally be because of a feeling of having to

"stick together" against a hostile, cold and distant world.

Incest between the closely related numbers of the family, who are confined to the same household, is not necessarily rarer than that on the outer fringes of the family structure; but it is most often hushed up. Incest between uncle-niece and aunt-nephew, however, comes to light more often, because of the tendency to punish by publicity-including bringing legal charges against the offenders. Researchers and psycho-therapists have found also, that when a person does talk about incestuous relationships, they usually start by admitting the cousin-cousin incest, and next in the ease of admission is that of the uncle and aunt, niece and nephew sex acts. An important finding is that in the past decade, with prosperity at a high pitch, one contributing factor to the high incidence of this type incest has been alleviated and abated, simply because few families are now forced to live together in the same household, for economic reasons. Thus, records reveal that much of this "fringe incest" now occurs when the aunt or uncle act as baby-sitters, or when children of the brothers and sisters are visiting, or when an aunt or uncle become part of the close family unit, due to the death of one of the parents of the child.

In the chapter concerning father-daughter incest, we learned of one such incident that came about with the death of the brother of the man who was having incestuous relations with his daughter. When his niece came to live with him, he had the one important element of this type of incest: proximity, which in itself provided opportunity. Natural inclination enters into the picture here, for often, a small girl, for instance, starved for male affection, will respond avidly to any attention she receives from one she-likes and does not fear, such as an uncle.