M.H. Some experiences are so traumatic that approaching them directly can cause more harm. For a survivor of incest, pain does not come only from the abuse itself; it also comes from other people’s reactions—disbelief, intrusive questions, or a curiosity that feels like spying. When people focus solely on the victim and the perpetrator, replaying fear and horror over and over, the survivor remains trapped in that dark scene. Understanding becomes possible only through distance—not coldness, but a way of looking at the experience from the outside. This angle allows the survivor’s story to be seen not as an isolated act of violence, but as part of a wider social pattern. [“Moreover, I agree with Dorothée Dussy… the right way to approach these stories is not head-on, but from the side.”]*

From the perspective of survival, incest is never a single event. It is a system. It organises families through silence, denial, loyalty, fear, and assigned roles. It is not limited to two people alone; it includes parents who do not see, relatives who suspect but remain silent, institutions that overlook what is visible, and communities that punish disclosure rather than violence. For the survivor, this produces a devastating clarity: protection failed everywhere. Not once, but repeatedly. [“In this way, she explains their great importance… these publications made it possible to speak about incest, its mechanisms, and silence…”]; [“My mother… for her, the central question… what she saw in him. He was not the rapist, but the liar.”]; [“Neither my aunts nor my uncles, neither my teachers nor my middle school professors… no one protected me.”]

This is why survivors often appear “functional”, “articulate”, and even calm. Dissociation is not a sign of weakness; it is a sophisticated survival strategy. It makes bearable what cannot be escaped. It also explains why survivors speak in fragments, metaphors, and detours—why memory is uneven and emotions appear delayed or displaced. This is not avoidance. It is how the nervous system learned to survive. [“Maybe I focused on external details… the part that dissociates from the body… records random elements.”]; [“I can live through anything… and still walk inside my inner world.”]; [“I have a very large capacity for dissociation.”]

One of the deepest wounds is humiliation. Not pain alone, but degradation. Being reduced to an object, stripped of filiation, forced into a knowledge no child should ever have. This is why certain questions—especially about pleasure, sensation, or ambiguity—are experienced as renewed violence. They repeat the original logic of domination. Survivors do not need curiosity; they need recognition. [“Do we ask a beaten child whether it hurt?… incest is a denial of filiation…”]; [“Knowing that they are enslaved and humiliated… what pleasure could a child possibly take in that?“]

Another lasting harm lies in what follows disclosure: the reversal of right and wrong. When the survivor speaks, it is often the survivor who is judged, while shame and condemnation are redirected toward them. Survivors quickly learn that speaking costs more than silence. Families break apart, communities withdraw, reputations are reassigned. The crime fades into the background; the accusation becomes the scandal. This teaches survivors a brutal and precise lesson: truth does not guarantee protection. More often, it guarantees loss. [“People stopped greeting me in the village… it is the denunciation that brings shame.”]; [“When you decide to speak, you must be ready to lose many things… your family… your village… your childhood.”]

For those who have not lived this, approaching survivors with care begins by understanding that survival does not mean recovery. There is no return to innocence. Even when life goes on—work, love, creativity—something has been permanently altered: trust in the world, confidence in bodily boundaries, the certainty of fully existing. Success does not erase the damage; it often conceals it. [“Even if they are given papers, even if they succeed… they remain forever prisoners of what they have seen.”]; [“If I had spoken… we would have been less alone.”]

And yet, survivors are not shaped only by what was done to them. They also carry a sharp ethical knowledge. They know how violence is made possible. They know how silence operates. They know how easily cruelty becomes normalised when it is permitted. This knowledge is heavy, but it is also crystal clear. [“They rape because they can… society gives them this possibility…”]; [“As Hannah Arendt showed, perpetrators forbid themselves from thinking about their own acts…”]

Approaching survivors with care means giving up the need for simplified narratives: no heroes, no redemption stories, no demand that they prove their resilience. It means listening without forcing coherence, believing without interrogation, and understanding that what is called “private,” when it happens on a massive scale, is no longer private—it is a collective responsibility. [“We do not dare let rape victims speak… when in reality this is a systemic crime…”]

The goal is not to extract stories.
The goal is to create a world in which fewer people are forced to survive such experiences. [“How can evil be transcended through gentleness, without creating new evil?”]

*The parts in brackets come from the book itself