Incest in psychiatric practice: a description of patients and incestuous relationships.

Patients reporting incest resembled the author's other patients in age, sex marital status, education, residence and social class. Both initiating and receptive partners were represented among these patients. In two-thirds of 32 patients, incest had occurred more than 1 year previously. No one clinical picture predominated. Thirty-two patients had been involved in 42 incestuous relationships. Initiating partners, always older, included 32 men and 10 women. Coitus was the most frequent sexual activity; homosexual relations were present in 4 instances. Adults initiating incest had usually lost access to adult sexual partners by death, divorce, illness, or marital partners' refusal to cohabit.