THE CORE TRAUMA OF INCEST - AN OBJECT RELATIONS VIEW

Many of the mysteries of the incest experience revolve around the perp lexing nature of the attachment between victim and perpetrator. One pu rpose of this article is to further professional understanding of the internal psychological experience of the incest survivor. Another purp ose is to elucidate the meaning of the incest survivors' attachment an d/or passivity with the perpetrator in an effort to liberate victims f rom society's ''blame the victim'' attitude. It needs to be understood that much of the incest victims behavior is a desperate effort to rem ain attached to her caretakers. The psychoanalytic developmental persp ective used here draws from the British Object Relations school, speci fically, the work of Winnicott, Fairbairn, Guntrip, and Ogden. The pos ition advanced here is that there is a common core to the trauma of in cest for all victims.