1

TOTEM AND TABOO

CHAPTER I

THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST

PRIMITIVE man is known to us by the stages of
development through which he has passed: that
is, through the inanimate monuments and imple-
ments which he has left behind for us, through
our knowledge of his art, his religion and his at-
titude towards life, which we have received either
directly or through the medium of legends, myths
and fairy-tales; and through the remnants of his
ways of thinking that survive in our own manners
and customs. Moreover, in a certain sense he
is still our contemporary: there are people whom
we still consider more closely related to primitive
man than to ourselves, in whom we therefore
recognize the direct descendants and representa-
tives of earlier man. We can thus judge the
so-called savage and semi-savage races; their
psychic life assumes a peculiar interest for us, for
we can recognize in their psychic life a well-pre-
served, early stage of our own development.

2

If this assumption is correct, a comparison of
the “Psychology of Primitive Races” as taught
by folklore, with the psychology of the neurotic
as it has become known through psychoanalysis,
will reveal numerous points of correspondence
and throw new light on subjects that are more
or less familiar to us.

For outer as well as for inner reasons, I am
choosing for this comparison those tribes which
have been described by ethnographists as being
most backward and wretched: the aborigines of
the youngest continent, namely Australia, whose
fauna has also preserved for us so much that is
archaic and no longer to be found elsewhere.

The aborigines of Australia are looked upon
as a peculiar race which shows neither physical
nor linguistic relationship with its nearest neigh-
bors, the Melanesian, Polynesian and Malayan
races. They do not build houses or permanent
huts; they do not cultivate the soil or keep any
domestic animals except dogs; and they do not
even know the art of pottery. They live exclu-
sively on the flesh of all sorts of animals which
they kill in the chase, and on the roots which they
dig. Kings or chieftains are unknown among
them, and all communal affairs are decided by
the elders in assembly. It is quite doubtful
whether they evince any traces of religion in the
form of worship of higher beings. The tribes

3

living in the interior who have to contend with
the greatest vicissitudes of life owing to a scarcity
of water, seem in every way more primitive than
those who live near the coast.

We surely would not expect that these poor,
naked cannibals should be moral in their sex life
according to our ideas, or that they should have
imposed a high degree of restriction upon their
sexual impulses. And yet we learn that they
have considered it their duty to exercise the most
searching care and the most painful rigor in
guarding against incestuous sexual relations.
In fact their whole social organization seems to
serve this object or to have been brought into re-
lation with its attainment.

Among the Australians the system of Totem-
ism takes the place of all religious and social in-
stitutions. Australian tribes are divided into
smaller septs or clans, each taking the name of
its totem. Now what is a totem? As a rule it is
an animal, either edible and harmless, or danger-
ous and feared; more rarely the totem is a plant
or a force of nature (rain, water), which stands
in a peculiar relation to the whole clan. The
totem is first of all the tribal ancestor of the clan,
as well as its tutelary spirit and protector; it
sends oracles and, though otherwise dangerous,
the totem knows and spares its children. The
members of a totem are therefore under a sacred

4

obligation not to kill (destroy) their totem, to
abstain from eating its meat or from any other
enjoyment of it. Any violation of these prohibi-
tions is automatically punished. The character
of a totem is inherent not only in a single animal
or a single being but in all the members of the
species. From time to time festivals are held
at which the members of a totem represent or
imitate, in ceremonial dances, the movements and
characteristics of their totems.

The totem is hereditary either through the ma-
ternal or the paternal line; (maternal transmis-
sion probably always preceded and was only later
supplanted by the paternal). The attachment to
a totem is the foundation of all the social obliga-
tions of an Australian: it extends on the one hand
beyond the tribal relationship, and on the other
hand it supersedes consanguinous relationship.¹

The totem is not limited to district or to lo-
cality; the members of a totem may live sepa-
rated from one another and on friendly terms
with adherents of other totems.²

¹Frazer, “Totemism and Exogamy,” Vol. I, p. 53. “The
totem bond is stronger than the bond of blood or family in the
modern sense.”

²This very brief extract of the totemic system cannot be left
without some elucidation and without discussing its limitations.
The name Totem or Totam was first learned from the North
American Indians by the Englishman, J. Long, in 1791. The
subject has gradually acquired great scientific interest and has
called forth a copious literature. I refer especially to “Totemism
and Exogamy” by J. G. Frazer, 4 vols., 1910, and the books

5

THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST

And now, finally, we must consider that pe-
culiarity of the totemic system which attracts
the interest of the psychoanalyst. Almost every-
where the totem prevails there also exists the

and articles of Andrew Lang (“The Secret of Totem,” 1905).
The credit for having recognized the significance of totemism for
the ancient history of man belongs to the Scotchman, J. Ferguson
MacLennan (Fortnightly Review, 1869–70). Exterior to Aus-
tralia, totemic institutions were found and are still observed
among North American Indians, as well as among the races of
the Polynesian Islands group, in East India, and in a large part
of Africa. Many traces and survivals otherwise hard to interpret
lead to the conclusion that totemism also once existed among the
aboriginal Aryan and Semitic races of Europe, so that many in-
vestigators are inclined to recognize in totemism a necessary phase
of human development through which every race has passed.

How then did prehistoric man come to acquire a totem; that
is, how did he come to make his descent from this or that animal
foundation of his social duties and, as we shall hear, of his sexual
restrictions as well? Many different theories have been advanced
to explain this, a review of which the reader may find in Wundt’s
“Völkerpsychologie” (Vol. II, Mythus und Religion).

I promise soon to make the problem of totemism a subject of
special study in which an effort will be made to solve it by apply-
ing the psychoanalytic method. (Cf. The fourth chapter of this
work.)

Not only is the theory of totemism controversial, but the very
facts concerning it are hardly to be expressed in such general
statements as were attempted above. There is hardly an asser-
tion to which one would not have to add exceptions and contra-
dictions. But it must not be forgotten that even the most prim-
itive and conservative races are, in a certain sense, old, and have
a long period behind them during which whatsoever was aborig-
inal with them has undergone much development and distortion.
Thus among those races who still evince it, we find totemism to-
day in the most manifold states of decay and disintegration; we
observe that fragments of it have passed over to other social and
religious institutions; or it may exist in fixed forms but far re-
moved from its original nature. The difficulty then consists in
the fact that it is not altogether easy to decide what in the actual
conditions is to be taken as a faithful copy of the significant past
and what is to be considered as a secondary distortion of it.

6

law that the members of the same totem are not
allowed to enter into sexual relations with each
other; that is, that they cannot marry each other.
This represents the exogamy which is associated
with the totem.

This sternly maintained prohibition is very re-
markable. There is nothing to account for it in
anything that we have hitherto learned from the
conception of the totem or from any of its at-
tributes; that is, we do not understand how it
happened to enter the system of totemism. We
are therefore not astonished if some investigators
simply assume that at first exogamy–both as to
its origin and to its meaning–had nothing to do
with totemism, but that it was added to it at
some time without any deeper association, when
marriage restrictions proved necessary. How-
ever that may be, the association of totemism
and exogamy exists, and proves to be very strong.

Let us elucidate the meaning of this prohibi-
tion through further discussion.

a) The violation of the prohibition is not left
to what is, so to speak, an automatic punishment,
as is the case with other violations of the prohibi-
tions of the totem (e.g., not to kill the totem
animal), but is most energetically avenged by
the whole tribe as if it were a question of warding
off a danger that threatens the community as a
whole or a guilt that weighs upon all. A few

7

THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST

sentences from Frazer’s book³ will show how
seriously such trespasses are treated by these
savages who, according to our standard, are
otherwise very immoral.

“In Australia the regular penalty for sexual
intercourse with a person of a forbidden clan is
death. It matters not whether the woman is
of the same local group or has been captured in
war from another tribe; a man of the wrong clan
who uses her as his wife is hunted down and
killed by his clansmen, and so is the woman;
though in some cases, if they succeed in eluding
capture for a certain time, the offense may be
condoned. In the Ta-Ta-
thi tribe, New South
Wales, in the rare cases which occur, the man is
killed, but the woman is only beaten or speared,
or both, till she is nearly dead; the reason given
for not actually killing her being that she was
probably coerced. Even in casual amours the
clan prohibitions are strictly observed; any viola-
tions of these prohibitions ‘are regarded with
the utmost abhorrence and are punished by
death’ (Howitt).”

b) As the same severe punishment is also
meted out for temporary love affairs which have
not resulted in childbirth, the assumption of
other motives, perhaps of a practical nature, be-
comes improbable.

³Frazer, l. c. p. 54.

8

c) As the totem is hereditary and is not
changed by marriage, the results of the prohibi-
tion, for instance in the case of maternal heredity,
are easily perceived. If, for example, the man
belongs to a clan with the totem of the Kangaroo
and marries a woman of the Emu totem, the chil-
dren, both boys and girls, are all Emu. Accord-
ing to the totem law incestuous relations with his
mother and his sister, who are Emu like himself,
are therefore made impossible for a son of this
marriage.⁴

d) But we need only a reminder to realize
that the exogamy connected with the totem ac-
complishes more; that is, aims at more than the
prevention of incest with the mother or the sisters.
It also makes it impossible for the man to have
sexual union with all the women of his own group,
with a number of females, therefore, who are not
consanguinously related to him, by treating all
these women like blood relations. The psycho-
logical justification for this extraordinary restric-
tion, which far exceeds anything comparable to

⁴But the father, who is a Kangaroo, is free—at least under this
prohibition—to commit incest with his daughters, who are Emu.
In the case of paternal inheritance of the totem the father would
be Kangaroo as well as the children; then incest with the daugh-
ters would be forbidden to the father and incest with the mother
would be left open to the son. These consequences of the totem
prohibition seem to indicate that the maternal inheritance is older
than the paternal one, for there are grounds for assuming that the
totem prohibitions are directed first of all against the incestuous
desires of the son.

9

THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST

it among civilized races, is not, at first, evident.
All we seem to understand is that the rôle of the
totem (the animal) as ancestor is taken very seri-
ously. Everybody descended from the same
totem is consanguinous; that is, of one family;
and in this family the most distant grades of re-
lationship are recognized as an absolute obstacle
to sexual union.

Thus these savages reveal to us an unusually
high grade of incest dread or incest sensitiveness,
combined with the peculiarity, which we do not
very well understand, of substituting the totem
relationship for the real blood relationship. But
we must not exaggerate this contradiction too
much, and let us bear in mind that the totem
prohibitions include real incest as a special case.

In what manner the substitution of the totem
group for the actual family has come about re-
mains a riddle, the solution of which is perhaps
bound up with the explanation of the totem it-
self. Of course it must be remembered that with
a certain freedom of sexual intercourse, extend-
ing beyond the limitations of matrimony, the
blood relationship, and with it also the prevention
of incest, becomes so uncertain that we cannot
dispense with some other basis for the prohibition.
It is therefore not superfluous to note that the
customs of Australians recognize social condi-
tions and festive occasions at which the exclusive

10

conjugal right of a man to a woman is violated.
The linguistic custom of these tribes, as well
as of most totem races, reveals a peculiarity which
undoubtedly is pertinent in this connection. For
the designations of relationship of which they
make use do not take into consideration the rela-
tion between two individuals, but between an
individual and his group; they belong, according
to the expression of L. H. Morgan, to the “class-
ifying” system. That means that a man calls
not only his begetter “father” but also every other
man who, according to the tribal regulations,
might have married his mother and thus become
his father; he calls “mother” not only the woman
who bore him but also every other woman who
might have become his mother without violation
of the tribal laws; he calls “brothers” and “sis-
ters” not only the children of his real parents,
but also the children of all the persons named
who stand in the parental group relation with
him, and so on. The kinship names which two
Australians give each other do not, therefore,
necessarily point to a blood relationship between
them, as they would have to according to the
custom of our language; they signify much more
the social than the physical relations. An ap-
proach to this classifying system is perhaps to be
found in our nursery, when the child is induced to
greet every male and female friend of the parents

11

THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST

as “uncle” and “aunt,” or it may be found in a
transferred sense when we speak of “Brothers
in Apollo,” or “Sisters in Christ.”

The explanation of this linguistic custom,
which seems so strange to us, is simple if looked
upon as a remnant and indication of those mar-
riage institutions which the Rev. L. Fison has
called “group marriage,” characterized by a num-
ber of men exercising conjugal rights over a
number of women. The children of this group
marriage would then rightly look upon each other
as brothers and sisters although not born of the
same mother, and would take all the men of the
group for their fathers.

Although a number of authors, as, for instance,
B. Westermarck in his “History of Human Mar-
riage,”⁵ oppose the conclusions which others have
drawn from the existence of group-relationship
names, the best authorities on the Australian
savages are agreed that the classificatory rela-
tionship names must be considered as survivals
from the period of group marriages. And, ac-
cording to Spencer and Gillen,⁶ a certain form of
group marriage can be established as still exist-
ing to-day among the tribes of the Urabunna
and the Dieri. Group marriage therefore pre-
ceded individual marriage among these races

⁵Second edition, 1902.

⁶“The Native Tribes of Central Australia,” London, 1899,

12

and did not disappear without leaving distinct
traces in language and custom.

But if we replace individual marriage, we can
then grasp the apparent excess of cases of incest
shunning which we have met among these same
races. The totem exogamy, or prohibition of
sexual intercourse between members of the same
clan, seemed the most appropriate means for the
prevention of group incest; and this totem exog-
amy then became fixed and long survived its
original motivation.

Although we believe that we understand the
motives of the marriage restrictions among the
Australian savages, we have still to learn that
the actual conditions reveal a still more bewilder-
ing complication. For there are only few tribes
in Australia which show no other prohibition be-
sides the totem barrier. Most of them are so
organized that they fall into two divisions which
have been called marriage classes, or phratries.
Each of these marriage groups is exogamous and
includes a majority of totem groups. Usually
each marriage group is again divided into two
sub-classes (sub-phratries), and the whole tribe
is therefore divided into four classes; the sub-
classes thus standing between the phratries and
the totem groups.

The typical and often very intricate scheme

13

THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST

of organization of an Australian tribe therefore
looks as follows:

PHRATRIES

a

b

SUBPHRATRIES

c

d

e

f

TOTEM

α β γ

δ ε η

1 2 3

4 5 6

The twelve totem groups are brought under
four subclasses and two main classes. All the
divisions are exogamous.⁷ The subclass c forms
an exogamous unit with e, and the subclass d
with f. The success or the tendency of these ar-
rangements is quite obvious; they serve as a fur-
ther restriction on the marriage choice and on
sexual freedom. If there were only these twelve
totem groups—assuming the same number of
people in each group—every member of a group
would have ¹⁄₁₂ of all the women of the tribe to
choose from. The existence of the two phratries
reduces this number to ⁶⁄₁₂ or ¹⁄₂; a man of the
totem a can only marry a woman from the groups
1 to 6. With the introduction of the two sub-
classes the selection sinks to ³⁄₁₂ or ¹⁄₄; a man of

⁷ The number of totems is arbitrarily chosen.

14

the totem a must limit his marriage choice to
the woman of the totems 4, 5, 6.

The historical relations of the marriage classes
–of which there are found as many as eight in
some tribes–are quite unexplained. We only
see that these arrangements seek to attain the
same object as the totem exogamy, and even
strive for more. But whereas the totem exog-
amy makes the impression of a sacred statute
which sprang into existence, no one knows how,
and is therefore a custom, the complicated insti-
tutions of the marriage classes, with their sub-
divisions and the conditions attached to them,
seem to spring from legislation with a definite
aim in view. They have perhaps taken up afresh
the task of incest prohibition because the influ-
ence of the totem was on the wane. And while
the totem system is, as we know, the basis of all
other social obligations and moral restrictions of
the tribe, the importance of the phratries gener-
ally ceases when the regulation of the marriage
choice at which they aimed has been accom-
plished.

In the further development of the classifica-
tion of the marriage system there seems to be a
tendency to go beyond the prevention of natural
and group incest, and to prohibit marriage be-
tween more distant group relations, in a manner
similar to the Catholic church, which extended

15

the marriage prohibitions always in force for
brother and sisters, to cousins, and invented for
them the grades of spiritual kinship.⁸

It would hardly serve our purpose to go into
the extraordinarily intricate and unsettled dis-
cussion concerning the origin and significance of
the marriage classes, or to go more deeply into
their relation to totemism. It is sufficient for our
purposes to point out the great care expended
by the Australians as well as by other savage
people to prevent incest.⁹ We must say that
these savages are even more sensitive to incest
than we, perhaps because they are more subject
to temptations than we are, and hence require
more extensive protection against it.

But the incest dread of these races does not
content itself with the creation of the institutions
described, which, in the main, seem to be directed
against group incest. We must add a series of
“customs” which watch over the individual be-
havior to near relatives in our sense, which are
maintained with almost religious severity and of
whose object there can hardly be any doubt.
These customs or custom prohibitions may be
called “avoidances.” They spread far beyond

⁸Article “Totemism” in Encyclopedia Britannica, eleventh edi-
tion, 1911 (A. Lang).

⁹Storfer has recently drawn special attention to this point in
his monograph: “Parricide as a Special Case. Papers on Ap-
plied Psychic Investigation,” No. 12, Vienna, 1911.

16

the Australian totem races. But here again I
must ask the reader to be content with a frag-
mentary excerpt from the abundant material.
Such restrictive prohibitions are directed in
Melanesia against the relations of boys with their
mothers and sisters. Thus, for instance, on
Lepers Island, one of the New Hebrides, the boy
leaves his maternal home at a fixed age and
moves to the “clubhouse,” where he then regu-
larly sleeps and takes his meals. He may still
visit his home to ask for food; but if his sister is
at home he must go away before he has eaten; if
no sister is about he may sit down to eat near the
door. If brother and sister meet by chance in
the open, she must run away or turn aside and
conceal herself. If the boy recognizes certain
footprints in the sand as his sister’s he is not to
follow them, nor is she to follow his. He will
not even mention her name and will guard against
using any current word if it forms part of her
name. This avoidance, which begins with the
ceremony of puberty, is strictly observed for life.
The reserve between mother and son increases
with age and generally is more obligatory on the
mother’s side. If she brings him something to
eat she does not give it to him herself but puts it
down before him, nor does she address him in the
familiar manner of mother and son, but uses the
formal address. Similar customs obtain in New

17

THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST

Caledonia. If brother and sister meet, she flees
into the bush and he passes by without turning
his head toward her.¹⁰

On the Gazella Peninsula in New Britain a
sister, beginning with her marriage, may no
longer speak with her brother, nor does she utter
his name but designates him by means of a cir-
cumlocution.¹¹

In New Mecklenburg some cousins are subject
to such restrictions, which also apply to brothers
and sisters. They may neither approach each
other, shake hands, nor give each other presents,
though they may talk to each other at a distance
of several paces. The penalty for incest with a
sister is death through hanging.¹²

These rules of avoidance are especially severe
in the Fiji Islands where they concern not only
consanguinous sisters but group sisters as well.
To hear that these savages hold sacred orgies in
which persons of just these forbidden degrees
of kinship seek sexual union would seem still
more peculiar to us, if we did not prefer to make
use of this contradiction to explain the prohibi-
tion instead of being astonished at it.¹³

¹⁰ R. H. Codrington, “The Melanesians,” also Frazer: “Totemism
and Exogamy,” Vol. I, p. 77.

¹¹ Frazer, l. c. II, p. 124, according to Kleintischen: The In-
habitants of the Coast of the Gazelle Peninsula.

¹² Frazer, l. c. II, p. 131, according to P. G. Peckel in An-
thropes, 1908.

¹³ Frazer, l. c. II, p. 147, according to the Rev. L. Fison.

18

Among the Battas of Sumatra these laws of
avoidance affect all near relationships. For in-
stance, it would be most offensive for a Battan
to accompany his own sister to an evening party.
A brother will feel most uncomfortable in the
company of his sister even when other persons are
also present. If either comes into the house, the
other prefers to leave. Nor will a father remain
alone in the house with his daughter any more
than the mother with her son. The Dutch mis-
sionary who reported these customs added that
unfortunately he had to consider them well
founded. It is assumed without question by
these races that a man and a woman left
alone together will indulge in the most ex-
treme intimacy, and as they expect all kinds
of punishments and evil consequences from
consanguinous intercourse they do quite right
to avoid all temptations by means of such pro-
hibitions.¹⁴

Among the Barongos in Delagoa Bay, in
Africa, the most rigorous precautions are di-
rected, curiously enough, against the sister-in-
law, the wife of the brother of one’s own wife.
If a man meets this person who is so dangerous
to him, he carefully avoids her. He does not
dare to eat out of the same dish with her; he
speaks only timidly to her, does not dare to enter

¹⁴Frazer, l. c. II, p. 189.

19

her hut, and greets her only with a trembling
voice.¹⁵

Among the Akamba (or Wakamba) in British
East Africa, a law of avoidance is in force which
one would have expected to encounter more fre-
quently. A girl must carefully avoid her own
father between the time of her puberty and her
marriage. She hides herself if she meets him
on the street and never attempts to sit down next
to him, behaving in this way right up to her en-
gagement. But after her marriage no further
obstacle is put in the way of her social intercourse
with her father.¹⁶

The most widespread and strictest avoidance,
which is perhaps the most interesting one for
civilized races, is that which restricts the social
relations between a man and his mother-in-law.
It is quite general in Australia, but it is also in
force among the Melanesian, Polynesian and
Negro races of Africa as far as the traces of
totemism and group relationship reach, and prob-
ably further still. Among some of these races
similar prohibitions exist against the harmless
social intercourse of a wife with her father-in-law,
but these are by far not so constant or so serious.
In a few cases both parents-in-law become ob-
jects of avoidance.

¹⁵Frazer, l. c. II, p. 388, according to Junod.

¹⁶Frazer, l. c. II, p. 424.

20

As we are less interested in the ethnographic
dissemination than in the substance and the pur-
pose of the mother-in-law avoidance, I will here
also limit myself to a few examples.

On the Banks Island these prohibitions are
very severe and painfully exact. A man will
avoid the proximity of his mother-in-law as she
avoids his. If they meet by chance on a path,
the woman steps aside and turns her back until
he is passed, or he does the same.

In Vanna Lava (Port Patterson) a man will
not even walk behind his mother-in-law along the
beach until the rising tide has washed away the
trace of her foot-steps. But they may talk to
each other at a certain distance. It is quite out
of the question that he should ever pronounce
the name of his mother-in-law, or she his.¹⁷

On the Solomon Islands, beginning with his
marriage, a man must neither see nor speak with
his mother-in-law. If he meets her he acts as if
he did not know her and runs away as fast as he
can in order to hide himself.¹⁸

Among the Zulu Kaffirs custom demands that
a man should be ashamed of his mother-in-law
and that he should do everything to avoid her
company. He does not enter a hut in which she

¹⁷Frazer, l. c. II, p. 76.

¹⁸Frazer, l. c. II, p. 113, according to C. Ribbe: “Two Years
among the Cannibals of the Solomon Islands,” 1905.

21

is, and when they meet he or she goes aside, she
perhaps hiding behind a bush while he holds his
shield before his face. If they cannot avoid each
other and the woman has nothing with which to
cover herself, she at least binds a bunch of grass
around her head in order to satisfy the ceremon-
ial requirements. Communication between them
must either be made through a third person or
else they may shout at each other at a consider-
able distance if they have some barrier between
them as, for instance, the enclosure of a kraal.
Neither may utter the other’s name.¹⁹

Among the Basogas, a negro tribe living in the
region of the Nile sources, a man may talk to his
mother-in-law only if she is in another room of
the house and is not visible to him. Moreover,
this race abominates incest to such an extent as
not to let it go unpunished even among domestic
animals.²⁰

Whereas all observers have interpreted the
purpose and meaning of the avoidances between
near relatives as protective measures against in-
cest, different interpretations have been given for
those prohibitions which concern the relationship
with the mother-in-law. It was quite incompre-
hensible why all these races should manifest such
great fear of temptation on the part of the man

¹⁹Frazer, l. c. II, p. 385.

²⁰Frazer, l. c. II, p. 461.

22

for an elderly woman, old enough to be his
mother.²¹

The same objection was also raised against the
conception of Fison who called attention to the
fact that certain marriage class systems show
a gap in that they make marriage between a man
and his mother-in-law theoretically not impossi-
ble and that a special guarantee was therefore
necessary to guard against this possibility.

Sir J. Lubbock, in his book “The Origin of
Civilization,” traces back the behavior of the
mother-in-law toward the son-in-law to the
former “marriage by capture.” “As long as the
capture of women actually took place, the in-
dignation of the parents was probably serious
enough. When nothing but symbols of this
form of marriage survived, the indignation of
the parents was also symbolized and this custom
continued after its origin had been forgotten.”
Crawley has found it easy to show how little this
tentative explanation agrees with the details of
actual observation.

E. B. Tylor thinks that the treatment of the
son-in-law on the part of the mother-in-law is
nothing more than a form of “cutting” on the
part of the woman’s family. The man counts as
a stranger, and this continues until the first child
is born. But even if no account is taken of cases

²¹ V. Crawley: “The Mystic Rose,” London, 1902, p. 405.

23

in which this last condition does not remove the
prohibition, this explanation is subject to the ob-
jection that it does not throw any light on the
custom dealing with the relation between mother-
in-law and son-in-law, thus overlooking the sex-
ual factor, and that it does not take into account
the almost sacred loathing which finds expres-
sion in the laws of avoidance.²²

A Zulu woman who was asked about the basis
for this prohibition showed great delicacy of feel-
ing in her answer: “It is not right that he should
see the breasts which nursed his wife.”²³

It is known that also among civilized races the
relation of son-in-law and mother-in-law belongs
to one of the most difficult sides of family organ-
ization. Although laws of avoidance no longer
exist in the society of the white races of Europe
and America, much quarreling and displeasure
would often be avoided if they did exist and did
not have to be reëstablished by individuals.
Many a European will see an act of high wis-
dom in the laws of avoidance which savage races
have established to preclude any understanding
between two persons who who have become so closely
related. There is hardly any doubt that there
is something in the psychological situation of

²²Crawley, l. c. p. 407.

²³Crawley, l. c. p. 401, according to Leslie: “Among the Zulus
and Amatongas,” 1875.

24

mother-in-law and son-in-law which furthers hos-
tilities between them and renders living together
difficult. The fact that the witticisms of civil-
ized races show such a preference for this very
mother-in-law theme seems to me to point to
the fact that the emotional relations between
mother-in-law and son-in-law are controlled by
components which stand in sharp contrast to each
other. I mean that the relation is really “ambi-
valent,” that is, it is composed of conflicting feel-
ings of tenderness and hostility.

A certain part of these feelings is evident.
The mother-in-law is unwilling to give up the
possession of her daughter; she distrusts the
stranger to whom her daughter has been deliv-
ered, and shows a tendency to maintain the dom-
inating position, to which she became accustomed
at home. On the part of the man, there is the
determination not to subject himself any longer
to any foreign will, his jealousy of all persons
who preceded him in the possession of his wife’s
tenderness, and, last but not least, his aversion
to being disturbed in his illusion of sexual over-
valuation. As a rule such a disturbance eman-
ates for the most part from his mother-in-law
who reminds him of her daughter through so
many common traits but who lacks all the charm
of youth, such as beauty and that psychic spon-
taneity which makes his wife precious to him.

25

THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST

The knowledge of hidden psychic feelings
which psychoanalytic investigation of individuals
has given us, makes it possible to add other mo-
tives to the above. Where the psychosexual
needs of the woman are to be satisfied in marriage
and family life, there is always the danger of dis-
satisfaction through the premature termination
of the conjugal relation, and the monotony in the
wife’s emotional life. The ageing mother pro-
tects herself against this by living through the
lives of her children by identifying herself with
them and making their emotional experiences her
own. Parents are said to remain young with
their children, and this is, in fact, one of the most
valuable psychic benefits which parents derive
from their children. Childlessness thus elimin-
ates one of the best means to endure the neces-
sary resignation imposed upon the individual
through marriage. This emotional identifica-
tion with the daughter may easily go so far with
the mother that she also falls in love with the man
her daughter loves, which leads, in extreme cases,
to severe forms of neurotic ailments on account
of the violent psychic resistance against this emo-
tional predisposition. At all events the tendency
to such infatuation is very frequent with the
mother-in-law, and either this infatuation itself
or the tendency opposed to it joins the conflict
of contending forces in the psyche of the mother-
 

26

in-
law. Very often it is just this harsh and sad-
istic component of the love emotion which is
turned against the son-in-law in order better to
suppress the forbidden tender feelings.
The relation of the husband to his mother-in-
law is complicated through similar feelings which,
however, spring from other sources. The path
of object selection has normally led him to his
love object through the image of his mother and
perhaps of his sister; in consequence of the incest
barriers his preference for these two beloved per-
sons of his childhood has been deflected and he
is then able to find their image in strange objects.
He now sees the mother-in-law taking the place
of his own mother and of his sister’s mother, and
there develops a tendency to return to the primi-
tive selection, against which everything in him re-
sists. His incest dread demands that he should
not be reminded of the genealogy of his love
selection; the actuality of his mother-in-law,
whom he had not known all his life like his mother
so that her picture can be preserved unchanged
in his unconscious, facilitates this rejection. An
added mixture of irritability and animosity in his
feelings leads us to suspect that the mother-in-
law actually represents an incest temptation for
the son-in-law, just as it not infrequently hap-
pens that a man falls in love with his subsequent

27

mother-in-law before his inclination is trans-
ferred to her daughter.

I see no objection to the assumption that it is
just this incestuous factor of the relationship
which motivates the avoidance between son- and
mother-in-law among savages. Among the ex-
planations for the “avoidances” which these
primitive races observe so strictly, we would
therefore give preference to the opinion origin-
ally expressed by Fison, who sees nothing in these
regulations but a protection against possible in-
cest. This would also hold good for all the
other avoidances between those related by blood
or by marriage. There is only one difference,
namely, in the first case the incest is direct, so
that the purpose of the prevention might be con-
scious; in the other case, which includes the
mother-in-law relation, the incest would be a
phantasy temptation brought about by unconsci-
ous intermediary links.

We have had little opportunity in this exposi-
tion to show that the facts of folk psychology can
be seen in a new light through the application
of the psychoanalytic point of view, for the in-
cest dread of savages has long been known as
such, and is in need of no further interpreta-
tion. What we can add to the further apprecia-
tion of incest dread is the statement that it is a

28

subtle infantile trait and is in striking agreement
with the psychic life of the neurotic. Psycho-
analysis has taught us that the first object selec-
tion of the boy is of an incestuous nature and that
it is directed to the forbidden objects, the mother
and the sister; psychoanalysis has taught us also
the methods through which the maturing indi-
vidual frees himself from these incestuous at-
tractions. The neurotic, however, regularly
presents to us a piece of psychic infantilism; he
has either not been able to free himself from the
childlike conditions of psychosexuality, or else he
has returned to them (inhibited development and
regression). Hence the incestuous fixations of
the libido still play or again are playing the main
rôle in his unconscious psychic life. We have
gone so far as to declare that the relation to the
parents instigated by incestuous longings, is the
central complex of the neurosis. This discovery
of the significance of incest for the neurosis nat-
urally meets with the most general incredulity
on the part of the grown-up, normal man; a
similar rejection will also meet the researches
of Otto Rank, which show in even larger scope to
what extent the incest theme stands in the center
of poetical interest and how it forms the material
of poetry in countless variations and distortions.
We are forced to believe that such a rejection
is above all the product of man’s deep aversion

29

to his former incest wishes which have since suc-
cumbed to repression. It is therefore of im-
portance to us to be able to show that man’s in-
cest wishes, which later are destined to become
unconscious, are still felt to be dangerous by sav-
age races who consider them worthy of the most
severe defensive measures.