Mackenzi Phillips, daughter of The Mamas & the Papas’ John Phillips, recently published her own personal story of sex, drugs and rock & roll. Like many, it’s a sad one, filled with addiction and even a sexual relationship with her own father.

SRI director and sex addiction expert, Robert Weiss, recently went on Behavioral Health Central Radio for an interview on “a clinical look at childhood narcissism and ‘consensual incest’ revealed in actress Mackenzie Phillips Book High on Arrival.”  During the interview, Weiss discussed the issue of incest with regards to sexual recovery in addition to the idea of “consensual incest” and childhood narcissism:

“Any social worker knows that if you’re working with an abused child who has a file an inch thick of physical abuse and they come into the clinic with bruises, they’re going to say they fell down. Part of our development in childhood narcissism is the protection of our parents; we have to protect our caretakers emotionally, that’s part of our survival. We don’t survive as a species if we believe and live in the fear at 6 or 5 that our parents are unavailable or they might harm us. We don’t have the ability to think that way. So that’s part of our development is the ability to see others as good even in the worst of circumstances because we need to see them as good.”

Many are questioning Mackenzie Phillips’ motives in writing and releasing her revealing book.  Some argue that this can be a very “therapeutic” experience–to finally “get it all out.” Despite her family’s objections, Mackenzie has been very open and even appeared on Oprah and made several public announcements about her past:

“I don’t know her; I don’t know this woman, so I can’t say what her motivations were. We live in a world where, let’s face it, people will put their kids up in balloons to get them on TV, or say they did, so if that’s the criteria, ‘I slept with Tiger Woods’ in order to get myself on television, if that’s their criteria to get into public rather then earning it through some skill in the public mind, then it’s hard for me to say whether she’s someone who needed to up the sales of her book. I mean, it could be a very personal issue about success and Hollywood; it could also be something very personal. Maybe one too many people had idealized her parents to her and she had to tell the truth in a public way so that this illusion of who her parents were in the public eye would change. There any many reasons why someone would choose to do that at some point. Does going public with your most personal violations help you? I don’t know how that would help anyone. In some ways, it creates a public conversation, but I cannot imagine that could be healing for anyone. I don’t know that being so public with such private and such hurtful matters really can help anyone.”

In regards to childhood abuse and trauma, Rob paraphrased psychologist John Briere:

“…it isn’t really any specific trauma that causes the long term outcome of a child’s adult life, it isn’t whether they were rapped or violated or snatched or whatever happened to them. The real long-term outcome of how that child is going to develop into an adult has to do with how that trauma was handled. If someone is abused or violated in an environment where they can then stand up and talk about it and get help at that time, and they can be believed and accepted and supported and what they’re going through normalized, not what happened to them but their emotional life, then they’re going to have a lot better opportunity to be able to deal with what happened to them as an adult.”