On Incest by Giovanna Ambrosio

Author:Giovanna Ambrosio
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Karnac Books
Published: 2011-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

Incest today

Argentieri asks whether the increased tolerance of atypical expressions of sexuality in contemporary society might tend to trivialize the incestuous act. McDougall (1995) speaks not of perversions but of neo-sexualities, that is, the many ways of expressing sexuality that both hetero- and homosexual adults may enjoy. McDougall reserves the term “perversion” for sexual relations that are imposed by one individual on another who does not consent to it or is not able to give consent because of his or her age. To this degree of trivialization, according to Simona Argentieri, we might add a certain deficiency in parenting functions, with the consequent difficulty in imposing norms and limits. Argentieri proposes an attractive hypothesis when she suggests that what is undergoing such radical change is not the oedipal milestone as such but the defences that are employed against its integration. According to Simona Argentieri, in our psychoanalytic practice we are increasingly having to deal with mechanisms of splitting and disavowal, instead of the classic repression, or even with primitive states of mind governed by non-integration, confusion, and ambiguity. Would incest evoke less horror for these reasons? It is difficult to find an unequivocal answer, although I hope that by the end of this symposium we may be more able to answer that question. Simona Argentieri is perfectly justified in questioning the term “abuse”, widely used today. It has come to include incest, thanks to the subtlety of contemporary language, one consequence of which is to lessen the dramatic impact of the term “incest” itself. I would add: if only “abuse” is prohibited, does this imply that “use” is not? An ambiguity that had best be avoided. This is why I agree with Simona Argentieri that we would do well to drop this term whenever we are referring to incest. I prefer to use the term “incestuous sexual violence”, which unambiguously emphasizes its thanatic quality.

Simona Argentieri asks if the cultural and psychological barrier against incest is crumbling in contemporary society. It is not easy to find an answer to that question. I believe that what has occurred, as a consequence of contemporary interest in the human rights of children, is the removal of the taboo of silence. A problem hitherto banished from thought, negated, silenced, has become thinkable; it can be put into words and therefore be thought of as existing. I would say that the apparent increase in frequency is actually an increased capacity to conceive of incest as existing; it therefore becomes able to estimate its prevalence in quantitative terms, something that has been negated until now.

To conclude, I will refer briefly to the myth of Narcissus (Grimal, 1976). There are three versions:

(a) In Ovid, Narcissus is loved by the nymph Echo, who, when Narcissus rejects her, goes off on her own; only a plaintive voice can be heard. Narcissus, after a day’s hunting, goes down to a lake to slake his thirst, falls in love with his own image (which he does not recognize) and, leaning too far over, disappears into the water.

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