Always daddy’s little girl: Incestuous abuse during adulthood
The research and clinical experience of the author working long-term with patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder is that at the time of presentation as adults approximately one in eight report incestuous abuse continuing into the adult years and in this group for many, the abuse is current and ongoing. Such patients typically have been sexually abused from a very early age, with the manipulation of their sexual response a key component in building an enduring sexualized attachment, at the same time as using shame as a key component in maintaining compliance and silence. Although rarely a focus of clinical enquiry, typically such women, when able to speak of it will describe the induction by their paternal abuser of orgasm at a very young age, typically around the age of six.
Such women have high indices of self-harm and suicidality and are prone to place themselves in dangerous reenactment scenarios. Detailed data relating to a series of 10 such incestuously abused women is presented. Generally their mother was also sexually abused as a child and/or has actively participated in the sexual abuse or at least has done nothing to protect their daughter despite seeing ongoing obvious evidence of incestuous abuse. The fathers, despite a propensity to use or threaten violence to their daughters are generally outwardly productively employed, financially comfortable, stably married and many have close involvement with a church. The attachment dynamics associated with such troubled father-daughter relationships are discussed as are the particular challenges of treatment.
