This problem is examined from the viewpoint of both psychoanalytic and more broadly based systems theory, as well as from the perspective of actual clinical examples. Several common elements emerging from the clinical material are discussed. The clinical examples reveal that (1) incest trauma confirms deep distrust for women in men, resulting in highly conflicted and fragile relationships; and (2) a powerful repetition compulsion operates with daughters of incest resulting in a search for new male objects as substitutes for the father and the quest for punishment for the incestuous crime itself; additional effects of incest are a turning away from mother as an object of identification, creating an internal distortion of self-representation and a marked impairment in the ability to give and to receive love and to sustain intimate adult heterosexual relationships. 47 references.