From a contextual perspective, incest is viewed as a loyalty conflict (Gelinas, 1986). It is a triangular configuration in which the relationship to the victim is a substitutive context for rebalancing relational injuries or losses in the perpetrator's family of origin. In addition, there is evidence of a symbiotic relationship between mother and daughter that involves the mother's rebalancing of injuries and losses that occurred in her own family of origin. Victims are thus held captive in a situation of competing or split loyalties in which the well-being of the self is subordinated to the well-being of significant others. Moreover, the victim actually absorbs parental hurts, disappointments, and failures as if they were his or her own. As a manifestation of loyalty, incest maintains the family as a unit and regulates behavior having to do with closeness and distance in the marital couple and in the parent-child relationship. Contextual theory and therapy provides a useful method of eliciting loyalty conflicts and making them explicit in a way that supports the victim, holds the perpetrator accountable, and preserves needed relationship resources. 2 tables and 22 references