Resisting the stigma of incest: an experiment in personal construct psychotherapy

This paper describes a psychotherapeutic attempt to help an adolescent girl, incestuously assaulted by her father for over a decade, rebuild a satisfactory sense of self and escape to some degree the debilitating and stigmatizing effects of her experience. The course of events described was primarily determined by the young woman's own sense of what she needed from psychotherapy but was also informed by the theoretical framework of Personal Construct Theory. In terms of methodology the paper is a personal account of a personal experience and draws on a narrative rather than experimental tradition in clinical psychology. The paper ends with an uncertain picture of outcome and prognosis with which most clinicians will be familiar.