Quotes by Judith Lewis Herman, Father-Daughter Incest: With a New Afterword

“Father-daughter incest is not only the type of incest most frequently reported but also represents a paradigm of female sexual victimization. The relationship between father and daughter, adult mal...”

“It was Freud's ambition to discover the cause of hysteria, the archetypal female neurosis of his time. In his early investigations, he gained the trust and confidence of many women, who revealed th...”

“The horror of incest is not in the sexual act. but in the exploitation of children and the corruption of parental love. p4”

“The vast majority of incest begins years before the earliest conceivable age of consent. p4”

“In some instances, even when crisis intervention has been intensive and appropriate, the mother and daughter are already so deeply estranged at the time of disclosure that the bond between them see...”

“Implicit [in the psychiatric literature] is a set of normative assumptions regarding the father's prerogatives and the mother's obligations within the family, The father, like the children, is pres...”

“Since most sexual abuse begins well before puberty, preventive education, if it is to have any effect at all, should begin early in grade school.”

“..[The] disclosure of the incest secret initiates a profound crisis for the family usually...the abuse has been going on for a number of years and has become an integral part of family life. Disclo...”

“For many people, the shock of sexual abuse pales before the shock of this mothers statement, I wish the fuck I never had her. So thoroughly is motherhood sentimentalized that the mother who wishes ...”

“Maternal absence, in one form or another, is always found in the background of the incest romance. Womens literature on incest generally treats the theme of maternal absence tragically. Mens litera...”

“As long as fathers rule but do not nurture, as long as mothers nurture but do not rule, the conditions favoring the development of father-daughter incest will prevail.”