A family therapist looks at the problem of incest.

The judiciary and most psychotherapists handle the problem of incest between father and daughter as a problem arising primarily from the weakness of the father, conventionally considered to be an ego and superego defect. Traditionally, investigations of such cases have included no evaluation of the whole family to rule out disorders of the family system which could lead to incestuous behavior. Under this tradition, after a psychiatric and psychological evaluation of the fathers alone, the courts put the fathers in prison or on probation with or without psychiatric treatment. The view of the father as the only disturbed member of the family in such a situation could go a long way in support of familial distortions. For example, it helps other family members deny their contributions to the problem. It is clear that this view results in a disposition which does not take cognizance of family interactions and dynamics and too often leads to an unnecessary family break-up. Family therapy as a treatment modality was not included in reviews of treatment of sexual offenses in the 1960's. This is surprising, since family therapy had been successfully applied to many behavioral disorders during the two decades of the i950's and the 1960's. Considering that the sexual relationship is an important function of marriage, one should logically expect a look at marriage in cases of manifest sexual disorders. A few general points need to be stated in order to clarify the theoretical position of the family therapist. Family therapy does not consider the behavior of a person as arising primarily from sources within the individual. It contends that forces within the family motivate adaptive and unadaptive behavior on the part of the family member. Developments in the past two decades indicate that a family member may develop a behavioral symptom in order to elicit a supportive response from his spouse, and thereby change their relationship in a direction more desirable to him. The symptom in a family member can also be a product of how he is being involved or used in the conflict of other family members (Ackerman, 1958; Haley, 1963; Sholevar, 1970). In the latter case, a child may develop a symptom as a result of conflict between his parents. These theoretical views carry certain implications for technique. The patterns of interaction within the family are often poorly understood or frequently entirely unrecognized by individual family members. Therefore, to rely exclusively on verbal reports by family members of family interactions is to be too easily misled and deprived of essential data in the treatment process (Ackerman, 1958; Nagy, 1965). Accordingly, it is necessary to work with the whole family to observe interaction and personal transactions in order to evaluate the strengths and conflicts within the family as they unfold in the treatment process. An illustration of dynamics in a family with sexually offensive behavior is given by the late Dr. Nathan Ackerman in his book Treating the Troubled Family (1966). It is a verbatim account of an interview with a young couple after the husband had been arrested for exhibiting himself in public. The wife had responded to the incident with indignation, a feeling of "shock" and a wish to desert her husband.