Beyond the Taboo: Imagining Incest

Abstract

This article provides an overview of anthropology's 150‐year discussion of the incest taboo in light of the last 30 years of feminist and psychoanalytic discoveries about the incestuous abuse of children, it invites anthropologists to explore incest ethnographically and offers three suggested ways: one biosocial, a second social relational, and a third psychoanalytic, focusing on a connection between what psychologists call dissociation and what anthropologists call trance or possession. [Key words: incest taboo, childhood sexual abuse, dissociation, trance/possession, innate avoidance mechanism]