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Incest, Incestuous Fantasy & Indecency

A Clinical Catchment Area Study of Normal-Weight Bulimic Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

J. Hubert Lacey
J. Hubert Lacey*
Affiliation:
Adult Psychiatry Section, Academic Department of Psychiatry, St George's Hospital Medical School, Jenner Wing, Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 0RE
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Extract

This systematic study of 112 consecutive referrals of normal-weight bulimic women from a circumscribed urban catchment area found that eight patients (7%) reported sexual abuse involving physical contact. Four (3.6%) of these described incest, but only in two cases (1.8%) did the incest occur in childhood. Just over 5% of the sample reported unlawful sexual intercourse in childhood or gross indecency. Eighteen additional patients reported incestuous fantasies and two of these were partly acted out. The study indicates that incest and sexual abuse reported by bulimics is usually in those multi-impulsive patients who also abuse alcohol or drugs as well as food. The reported prevalences of incest and indecency in normal-weight bulimic women are only slightly higher than figures derived from general population surveys.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 157 , Issue 3 , September 1990 , pp. 399 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1990 

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