CONSUMMATED MOTHER-SON INCEST IN LATENCY:

Reported cases of mother-son incest are very rare in the psychoanalytic literature; the fact of such incest, however, may not be so rare as has generally been believed. A detailed case report of the analysis of an adult with a history of severe physical, sexual, and verbal abuse, including consummated incest with his mother during latency, is considered in the context of other reported studies. The author raises some issues of resistance and countertransference that may influence the reporting, treatment, and perhaps even recognition of cases of mother-son incest. Consummated mother-son incest is very rare. Even by Kramer’sbroad def inition—“deliberate and repetitive over-stimulation... of genitals, anus, or breasts... [or] as mutual sex play which the mother instigates ” (1985, p. 328; emphasis Kramer’s)—it is still known to be an uncommon clinical event, although some analysts (Dietrich, personal communication; Margolis 1991) are convinced that it is more prevalent than is generally believed. Published reports of the psychoanalytic treatment of children and adults who experienced incest in childhood or adolescence has increased over the past twenty-f ive years, but only a handful of authors have written detailed studies of cases of mother-son incest, even as Kramer def ines it: these are Shengold (1980, 1989), Margolis (1977