Anais Nin: An Incest Between a Father and a Daughter

Abstract

In 1933, Anais Nin thirty years old, meets again with her beloved father, the pianist and composer Joachin Nin. She did not see him since the age of eleven when he left his family for a mistress. She then started to write a diary. I want to show that you can make links and interpret the material and associations of her diary like the material of a psychoanalysis or a psychotherapy. When they meet again, he behaves like an incestual father telling her his love affairs and his sexual life with her mother. Then he relates to her an incestuous dream with her and acts like a lover until the consummate incest. She seems to consent but feels guilty, between fear and desire, and disgust. She will complain of intense heart beats, death anxiety and loss of joy. Through her Journal of Incest (1932-1934) and her Youth Journal (1914-1919), I will try to understand how such an incest can happen. The father is an incestuous father who has no taboo of the incest, does not recognize the difference between generations, does not respect the body intimacy of his daughter and treat her like a narcissistic object. He fluctuates between psychosis without symptoms and narcissistic perversion. Anais has a hysterical personality, with separation anxiety, psychosomatic and pervert symptoms. This patchwork evokes a borderline state. She acts sometimes like a narcissistic pervert.