Incest and Sexuality: A Guide to Understanding and Healing

This book has been written for survivors of incest who want to explore both how the sexual abuse may have affected their sexuality and what they can do about it. Intimate partners of survivors and therapists who have clients who are survivors may also find this book useful in developing a supportive and understanding approach to sexual concerns. Special sections have been written with partners and therapists in mind. We have chosen to use the term “survivor” instead of “victim” because it better communicates the ability people have to recover from abuse.
This book has been written from the perspective of female incest survivors because most incest survivors are female, current research has focused almost exclusively on females, and our contact has primarily been with female survivors. However, a male perspective is important and we have consequently devoted an appendix to addressing sexuality concerns of male survivors [See Appendix A]. We believe that male survivors as well as female survivors of types of sexual abuse other than those we have discussed will find useful information in this book. We hope they will be able to adapt the content and treatment approaches to their own situations.