8. Incest.
(Austrian Statutes, § 132; Abridgment, § 189; German Statutes, § 174.)
The preservation of the moral purity of family life is a product of civilization;[1] and feelings of intense displeasure arise in an ethically intact man at thought of lustful feeling toward a member of the same family. Only great sensuality and defective ideas of laws and morals can lead to incest.
Both conditions may, in tainted families, be operative. Drinking and a state of intoxication in men; weak-mindedness which does not allow the development of the feeling of shame, and which, under certain circumstances, is associated with eroticism in females,—these facilitate the occurrence of incestuous acts. External conditions which facilitate their occurrence are due to defective separation of the sexes among the lower classes.
As a decidedly pathological phenomenon, the author has found incest in states of congenital and acquired mental weakness, and infrequently in cases of epilepsy and paranoia.
In many of the cases, probably a majority, it is not possible, however, to find a pathological basis for the act which so deeply wounds not only the tie of blood, but also the feeling of a civilized people. But in many of the cases reported in literature, to the honor of humanity, the presumption of a psychopathic basis is possible.
In the Feldtmann case (Marc-Ideler, vol. i, p. 18), where a father constantly made immoral attacks on his adult daughter, and finally killed her, the unnatural father was weak-minded and, besides, probably subject to periodical mental disease. In another case of incest between father and daughter (loc. cit., p. 247), the latter, at least, was weak-minded. Lombroso (Archiv. di Psichiatria, viii, p. 519) reports the case of a peasant, aged 42, who practiced incest with his daughters, aged, respectively, 22, 19, and 11; he even forced the youngest to prostitute herself, and then visited her in a brothel. The medico-legal examination showed predisposition, intellectual and moral imbecility, and alcoholism.
There was no mental examination in the case reported by Schürmeyer (Deutsche Zeitschr. für Staatsarzneikunde, xxii, H. 1), in which a- ↑ Vide Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, chap. xiv. McMillan & Co., 1891.
