Father-daughter incest: 25 years of experience of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with the victims.

This study deals with the immediate and long lasting effects of father-daughter incest through the psychoanalytic-psychotherapeutic investigation of, firstly, a group of 12 adolescent girls during the violent crisis created by the sudden revelation of incest and, secondly, a group of 12 adult former victims with no apparent crisis in their development, the incest having remained unrevealed. Having been a practitioner of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with the victims of paternal incest for the last 25 years the author's main concern in this study is to try to establish the basic theoretical issues that would favour a better understanding of incestuous trauma and a more effective approach to its treatment.