Incest

Characterization and definitions vary across cultures, but incest refers to sexual relations between close relatives. Prohibition may be according to custom or morality, and embodied in law. In psychoanalysis, the term is also and especially discussed in terms of fantasy and psychological conflict.

Freud mentioned incest for the first time in his correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess (Draft N, dated May 31, 1897), in which he explained "saintliness" in terms of its impious and anti-social character (1950a). A family primordially...