My husband and I recently finished reading Kathryn
Harrison's memoir, The Kiss, which describes an affair she had with her
father, from whom she was estranged until about age 20. He then pursued an
affair with her and she found herself helpless to resist for several
years. (I know it sounds very bizarre, but Harrison is a wonderful author,
and she tells this story with restraint and a strong literary style for which
she's also known in The Binding Chair, Poison, the beautifully
written Seeking Rapture, and others.) She was a deeply
troubled young woman before, with an unsupportive mother and lots of other messy
things in her childhood and adolescence. She did manage to withdraw from
him, but it took its toll.
My question for the theoreticians out there:
Is our aversion to incest purely a social product, or is there anything
biological about it? I opt for the former, my husband for the
latter.
I argue that there's no incest taboo in the animal
kingdom. He counters that there are lots of biological differences that
have evolved in humans that don't appear in humans.
From an evolutionary psychology standpoint, this
seems understandable. The biological penalties for incest, though recently
discovered to be less severe than originally thought, are still worthy of
consideration.
What think you, TIPSters?
Beth Benoit
University System of New
Hampshire
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