30

CHAPTER II

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

1

TABOO is a Polynesian word, the translation
of which provides difficulties for us because we
no longer possess the idea which it connotes. It
was still current with the ancient Romans: their
word “sacer” was the same as the taboo of the
Polynesians. The “ayos” of the Greeks and the
“Kodaush” of the Hebrews must also have sig-
nified the same thing which the Polynesians ex-
press through their word taboo and what many
races in America, Africa (Madagascar), North
and Central Asia express through analogous
designations.

For us the meaning of taboo branches off into
two opposite directions. On the one hand it
means to us sacred, consecrated: but on the other
hand it means, uncanny, dangerous, forbidden,
and unclean. The opposite for taboo is desig-
nated in Polynesian by the word noa and sig-
nifies something ordinary and generally accessi-
ble. Thus something like the concept of re-
serve inheres in taboo; taboo expresses itself es-
sentially in prohibitions and restrictions. Our

31

combination of “holy dread” would often ex-
press the meaning of taboo.

The taboo restrictions are different from re-
ligious or moral prohibitions. They are not
traced to a commandment of a god but really they
themselves impose their own prohibitions; they
are differentiated from moral prohibitions by
failing to be included in a system which declares
abstinences in general to be necessary and gives
reasons for this necessity. The taboo prohibi-
tions lack all justification and are of unknown
origin. Though incomprehensible to us they are
taken as a matter of course by those who are un-
der their dominance.

Wundt¹ calls taboo the oldest unwritten code
of law of humanity. It is generally assumed
that taboo is older than the gods and goes back
to the pre-religious age.

As we are in need of an impartial presentation
of the subject of taboo before subjecting it to
psychoanalytic consideration I shall now cite
an excerpt from the article “Taboo” in the En-
cyclopedia Britannica written by the anthro-
pologist Northcote W. Thomas,²

“Properly speaking taboo includes only a) the
sacred (or unclean) character of persons or

¹Völkerpsychologie, II Band, “Mythos und Religion,” 1906, II
p. 308.

²Eleventh Edition, this article also gives the most important
references.

32

things, b) the kind of prohibition which results
from this character, and c) the sanctity (or un-
cleanliness) which results from a violation of the
prohibition. The converse of taboo in Polynesia
is ‘noa’ and allied forms which mean ‘general’ or
‘common’ …

“Various classes of taboo in the wider sense
may be distinguished: 1. natural or direct, the
result of ‘mana’ (mysterious power) inherent in
a person or thing; 2. communicated or indirect,
equally the result of ‘mana’ but (a) acquired or
(b) imposed by a priest, chief or other person;
3. intermediate, where both factors are present,
as in the appropriation of a wife to her husband.
The term taboo is also applied to ritual prohibi-
tions of a different nature; but its use in these
senses is better avoided. It might be argued
that the term should be extended to embrace
cases in which the sanction of the prohibition is
the creation of a god or spirit, i.e., to religious
interdictions as distinguished from magical, but
there is neither automatic action nor contagion
in such a case, and a better term for it is religious
interdiction.

“The objects of taboo are many: 1. direct
taboos aim at (a) protection of important per-
sons–chiefs, priests, etc.–and things against
harm; (b) safeguarding of the weak–women,
children and common people generally–from the

33

powerful mana (magical influence) of chiefs and
priests; (c) providing against the dangers in-
curred by handling or coming in contact with
corpses, by eating certain food, etc.; (d) guard-
ing the chief acts of life—births, initiation, mar-
riage and sexual functions—against interference;
(e) securing human beings against the wrath or
power of gods and spirits;³ (f) securing unborn
infants and young children, who stand in a spe-
cially sympathetic relation with their parents,
from the consequence of certain actions, and more
especially from the communication of qualities
supposed to be derived from certain foods. 2.
Taboos are imposed in order to secure against
thieves the property of an individual, his fields,
tools, etc.”

Other parts of the article may be summarized
as follows. Originally the punishment for the
violation of a taboo was probably left to an
inner, automatic arrangement. The violated
taboo avenged itself. Wherever the taboo was
related to ideas of gods and demons an auto-
matic punishment was expected from the power
of the godhead. In other cases, probably as a
result of a further development of the idea, so-
ciety took over the punishment of the offender,
whose action has endangered his companions.

³This application of the taboo can be omitted as not originally
belonging in this connection.

34

Thus man’s first systems of punishment are also
connected with taboo.

“The violation of a taboo makes the offender
himself taboo.” The author goes on to say that
certain dangers resulting from the violation of
a taboo may be exercised through acts of pen-
ance and ceremonies of purification.

A peculiar power inherent in persons and
ghosts, which can be transmitted from them to
inanimate objects is regarded as the source of
the taboo. This part of the article reads as fol-
lows: “Persons or things which are regarded as
taboo may be compared to objects charged with
electricity; they are the seat of tremendous power
which is transmissible by contact, and may be
liberated with destructive effect if the organisms
which provoke its discharge are too weak to re-
sist it; the result of a violation of a taboo de-
pends partly on the strength of the magical in-
fluence inherent in the taboo object or person,
partly on the strength of the opposing mana of
the violator of the taboo. Thus, kings and chiefs
are possessed of great power, and it is death for
their subjects to address them directly; but a
minister or other person of greater mana than
common, can approach them unharmed, and can
in turn be approached by their inferiors without
risk. … So, too, indirect taboos depend for
their strength on the mana of him who opposes

35

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

them; if it is a chief or a priest, they are more
powerful than those imposed by a common per-
son.”

The fact that a taboo is transmissible has surely
given rise to the effort of removing it through
expiatory ceremonies.

The author states that there are permanent
and temporary taboos. The former comprise
priest and chiefs as well as the dead and every-
thing that has belonged to them. Temporary
taboos attach themselves to certain conditions
such as menstruation and child-bed, the status
of the warrior before and after the expedition,
the activities of fishing and of the chase, and
similar activities. A general taboo may also be
imposed upon a large district like an ecclesias-
tical interdict, and may then last for years.

If I judge my readers’ impressions correctly
I dare say that after hearing all that was said
about taboo they are far from knowing what to
understand by it and where to store it in their
minds. This is surely due to the insufficient in-
formation I have given and to the omission of
all discussions concerning the relation of taboo
to superstition, to belief in the soul, and to re-
ligion. On the other hand, I fear that a more
detailed description of what is known about taboo
would be still more confusing; I can therefore
assure the reader that the state of affairs is really

36

far from clear. We may say, however, that we
deal with a series of restrictions which these
primitive races impose upon themselves; this and
that is forbidden without any apparent reason;
nor does it occur to them to question this matter,
for they subject themselves to these restrictions
as a matter of course and are convinced that any
transgression will be punished automatically in
the most severe manner. There are reliable re-
ports that innocent transgressions of such pro-
hibitions have actually been punished automatic-
ally. For instance, the innocent offender who
had eaten from a forbidden animal became deeply
depressed, expected his death and then actually
died. The prohibitions mostly concern matters
which are capable of enjoyment such as freedom
of movement and unrestrained intercourse; in
some cases they appear very ingenious, evidently
representing abstinences and renunciations; in
other cases their content is quite incomprehen-
sible, they seem to concern themselves with trifles
and give the impression of ceremonials. Some-
thing like a theory seems to underlie all these
prohibitions, it seems as if these prohibitions are
necessary because some persons and objects
possess a dangerous power which is transmitted
by contact with the object so charged, almost like
a contagion. The quantity of this dangerous
property is also taken into consideration. Some

37

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

persons or things have more of it than others
and the danger is precisely in accordance with the
charge. The most peculiar part of it is that any
one who has violated such a prohibition assumes
the nature of the forbidden object as if he had
absorbed the whole dangerous charge. This
power is inherent in all persons who are more or
less prominent, such as kings, priests and the
newly born, in all exceptional physical states such
as menstruation, puberty and birth, in everything
sinister like illness and death and in everything
connected with these conditions by virtue of con-
tagion or dissemination.

However, the term “taboo” includes all per-
sons localities, objects and temporary conditions
which are carriers or sources of this mysterious
attribute. The prohibition derived from this at-
tribute is also designated as taboo, and lastly
taboo, in the literal sense, includes everything
that is sacred, above the ordinary, and at the
same time dangerous, unclean and mysterious.

Both this word and the system corresponding
to it express a fragment of psychic life which
really is not comprehensible to us. And indeed it
would seem that no understanding of it could be
possible without entering into the study of the
belief in spirits and demons which is so charac-
teristic of these low grades of culture.

Now why should we take any interest at all in

38

TOTEM AND TABOO

the riddle of taboo? Not only, I think, because
every psychological problem is well worth the
effort of investigation for its own sake, but for
other reasons as well. It may be surmised that
the taboo of Polynesian savages is after all not
so remote from us as we were at first inclined to
believe; the moral and customary prohibitions
which we ourselves obey may have some essen-
tial relation to this primitive taboo the explana-
tion of which may in the end throw light upon
the dark origin of our own “categorical impera-
tive.”
We are therefore inclined to listen with keen
expectations when an investigator like W.
Wundt gives his interpretation of taboo, espe-
cially as he promises to “go back to the very roots
of the taboo concepts.”⁴
Wundt states that the idea of taboo “includes
all customs which express dread of particular ob-
jects connected with cultic ideas or of actions hav-
ing reference to them.”⁵
On another occasion he says: “In accordance
with the general sense of the word we under-
stand by taboo every prohibition laid down in
customs or manners or in expressly formulated
laws, not to touch an object or to take it for one’s
own use, or to make use of certain proscribed

⁴Völkerpsychologie, Vol. II, Religion und Mythus, p. 300.

⁵l. c. p. 237.

39

words. . . .” Accordingly there would not be
a single race or stage of culture which had es-
caped the injurious effects of taboo.

Wundt then shows why he finds it more prac-
tical to study the nature of taboo in the primi-
tive states of Australian savages rather than in
the higher culture of the Polynesian races. In
the case of the Australians he divides taboo pro-
hibitions into three classes according as they con-
cern animals, persons or other objects. The ani-
mal taboo, which consists essentially of the taboo
against killing and eating, forms the nucleus of
Totemism.⁶ The taboo of the second class,
which has human beings for its object, is of an
essentially different nature. To begin with it
is restricted to conditions which bring about an
unusual situation in life for the person tabooed.
Thus young men at the feast of initiation, women
during menstruation and immediately after de-
livery, newly born children, the diseased and es-
pecially the dead, are all taboo. The constantly
used property of any person, such as his clothes,
tools and weapons, is permanently taboo for
everybody else. In Australia the new name
which a youth receives at his initiation into man-
hood becomes part of his most personal property,
it is taboo and must be kept secret. The taboos
of the third class, which apply to trees, plants,

⁶ Comp. Chapter I.

40

TOTEM AND TABOO

houses and localities, are more variable and seem
only to follow the rule that anything which for
any reason arouses dread or is mysterious, be-
comes subject to taboo.

Wundt himself has to acknowledge that the
changes which taboo undergoes in the richer cul-
ture of the Polynesians and in the Malayan
Archipelago are not very profound. The
greater social differentiation of these races mani-
fests itself in the fact that chiefs, kings and
priests exercise an especially effective taboo and
are themselves exposed to the strongest taboo
compulsion.

But the real sources of taboo lie deeper than
in the interests of the privileged classes: “They
begin where the most primitive and at the same
time the most enduring human impulses have
their origin, namely, in the fear of the effect of
demonic powers.”¹⁾ “The taboo, which origin-
ally was nothing more than the objectified fear
of the demonic power thought to be concealed
in the tabooed object, forbids the irritation of
this power and demands the placation of the
demon whenever the taboo has been knowingly or
unknowingly violated.”

The taboo then gradually became an autonom-
ous power which has detached itself from demon-
ism. It becomes the compulsion of custom and

¹⁾c. p. 307.

41

tradition and finally of the law. “But the com-
mandment concealed behind taboo prohibitions
which differ materially according to place and
time, had originally the meaning: Beware of
the wrath of the demons.”
Wundt therefore teaches that taboo is the ex-
pression and evolution of the belief of primi-
tive races in demonic powers, and that later
taboo has dissociated itself from this origin and
has remained a power simply because it was one
by virtue of a kind of a psychic persistence and
in this manner it became the root of our customs
and laws. As little as one can object to the first
part of this statement I feel, however, that I am
only voicing the impression of many of my read-
ers if I call Wundt’s explanation disappointing.
Wundt’s explanation is far from going back to
the sources of taboo concepts or to their deepest
roots. For neither fear nor demons can be ac-
cepted in psychology as finalities defying any
further deduction. It would be different if
demons really existed; but we know that, like
gods, they are only the product of the psychic
powers of man; they have been created from and
out of something.
Wundt also expresses a number of important
though not altogether clear opinions about the
double meaning of taboo. According to him the
division between sacred and unclean does not yet

42

exist in the first primitive stages of taboo. For
this reason these conceptions entirely lack the
significance which they could only acquire later
on when they came to be contrasted. The ani-
mal, person, or place on which there is a taboo is
demonic, that is, not sacred and therefore not yet,
in the later sense, unclean. The expression
taboo is particularly suitable for this undifferen-
tiated and intermediate meaning of the demonic,
in the sense of something which may not be
touched, since it emphasizes a characteristic which
finally adheres both to what is sacred and to
the unclean, namely, the dread of contact. But
the fact that this important characteristic is
permanently held in common points to the exist-
ence of an original agreement here between these
two spheres which gave way to a differentia-
tion only as the result of further conditions
through which both finally developed into op-
posites.

The belief associated with the original taboo,
according to which a demonic power concealed
in the object avenges the touching of it or its for-
bidden use by bewitching the offender was still
an entirely objectified fear. This had not yet
separated into the two forms which it assumed at
a more developed stage, namely, awe and aver-
sion.

How did this separation come about? Ac-

43

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

cording to Wundt, this was done through the
transference of taboo prohibitions from the
sphere of demons to that of theistic conceptions.
The antithesis of sacred and unclean coincides
with the succession of two mythological stages the
first of which did not entirely disappear when
the second was reached but continued in a state
of greatly lowered esteem which gradually turned
into contempt. It is a general law in mythology
that a preceding stage, just because it has been
overcome and pushed back by a higher stage,
maintains itself next to it in a debased form so
that the objects of its veneration become objects
of aversion.⁸

Wundt’s further elucidations refer to the re-
lation of taboo to lustration and sacrifice.

2

He who approaches the problem of taboo from
the field of psychoanalysis, which is concerned
with the study of the unconscious part of the
individual’s psychic life, needs but a moment’s
reflection to realize that these phenomena are by
no means foreign to him. He knows people who
have individually created such taboo prohibi-
tions for themselves, which they follow as strictly
as savages observe the taboos common to their
tribe or society. If he were not accustomed to

⁸l. c. p. 313.

44

call these individuals “compulsion neurotics” he-
would find the term “taboo disease” quite ap-
propriate for their malady. Psychoanalytic in-
vestigation has taught him the clinical etiology
and the essential part of the psychological
mechanism of this compulsion disease, so that
he cannot resist applying what he has learnt
there to explain corresponding manifestations in
folk psychology.

There is one warning to which we shall have to
give heed in making this attempt. The similar-
ity between taboo and compulsion disease may
be purely superficial, holding good only for the
manifestations of both without extending into
their deeper characteristics. Nature loves to
use identical forms in the most widely different
biological connections, as, for instance, for coral
stems and plants and even for certain crystals
or for the formation of certain chemical precipi-
tates. It would certainly be both premature and
unprofitable to base conclusions relating to in-
ner relationships upon the correspondence of
merely mechanical conditions. We shall bear
this warning in mind without, however, giving up
our intended comparison on account of the pos-
sibility of such confusions.

The first and most striking correspondence be-
tween the compulsion prohibitions of neurotics
and taboo lies in the fact that the origin of these

45

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

prohibitions is just as unmotivated and enigma-
tic. They have appeared at some time or other
and must now be retained on account of an un-
conquerable anxiety. An external threat of
punishment is superfluous, because an inner cer- tainty (a conscience) exists that violation will
be followed by unbearable disaster. The very
most that compulsion patients can tell us is the
vague premonition that some person of their
environment will suffer harm if they should vio-
late the prohibition. Of what the harm is to
consist is not known, and this inadequate in-
formation is more likely to be obtained during the
later discussions of the expiatory and defensive
actions than when the prohibitions themselves
are being discussed.

As in the case of taboo the nucleus of the neu-
rotic prohibition is the act of touching, whence
we derive the name touching phobia, or délire de
toucher. The prohibition extends not only to
direct contact with the body but also to the fig-
urative use of the phrase as “to come into con-
tact,” or “be in touch with some one or some-
thing.” Anything that leads the thoughts to
what is prohibited and thus calls forth mental
contact is just as much prohibited as immediate
bodily contact; this same extension is also found
in taboo.

Some prohibitions are easily understood from

46

their purpose but others strike us as incompre-
hensible, foolish and senseless. We designate
such commands as “ceremonials” and we find that
taboo customs show the same variations.

Obsessive prohibitions possess an extraordi-
nary capacity for displacement; they make use
of almost any form of connection to extend from
one object to another and then in turn make this
new object “impossible,” as one of my patients
aptly puts it. This impossibility finally lays an
embargo upon the whole world. The compul-
sion neurotics act as if the “impossible” persons
and things were the carriers of a dangerous con-
tagion which is ready to displace itself through
contact to all neighboring things. We have al-
ready emphasized the same characteristics of con-
tagion and transference in the description of
taboo prohibitions. We also know that any one
who has violated a taboo by touching something
which is taboo becomes taboo himself, and no one
may come into contact with him.

I shall put side by side two examples of trans-
ference or, to use a better term, displacement, one
from the life of the Maori, and the other from my
observation of a woman suffering from a com-
pulsion neurosis:

“For a similar reason a Maori chief would not
blow on a fire with his mouth; for his sacred
breath would communicate its sanctity to the

47

fire, which would pass it on to the meat in the
pot, which would pass it on to the man who ate
the meat, which was in the pot, which stood on
the fire, which was breathed on by the chief; so
that the eater, infected by the chief’s breath con-
veyed through these intermediaries, would surely
die.”⁹⁾

My patient demanded that a utensil which her
husband had purchased and brought home should
be removed lest it make the place where she lives
impossible. For she has heard that this object
was bought in a store which is situated, let us
say, in Stag Street. But as the word stag is
the name of a friend now in a distant city, whom
she has known in her youth under her maiden
name and whom she now finds “impossible,” that
is taboo, the object bought in Vienna is just as
taboo as this friend with whom she does not want
to come into contact.

Compulsion prohibitions, like taboo prohibi-
tions, entail the most extraordinary renuncia-
tions and restrictions of life, but a part of these
can be removed by carrying out certain acts which
now also must be done because they have acquired
a compulsive character (obsessive acts); there is
no doubt that these acts are in the nature of
penances, expiations, defense reactions, and puri-

⁹⁾Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” II, “Taboo and the Perils of the
Soul,” 1911, p. 136.

48

TOTEM AND TABOO

fications. The most common of these obsessive
acts is washing with water (washing obsession).
A part of the taboo prohibitions can also be re-
placed in this way, that is to say, their violation
can be made good through such a “ceremonial,”
and here too lustration through water is the pre-
ferred way.

Let us now summarize the points in which the
correspondence between taboo customs and the
symptoms of compulsion neurosis are most
clearly manifested: 1. In the lack of motiva-
tion of the commandments, 2. in their enforce-
ment through an inner need, 3. in their capacity
of displacement and in the danger of contagion
from what is prohibited, 4. and in the causation
of ceremonial actions and commandments which
emanate from the forbidden.

However, psychoanalysis has made us familiar
with the clinical history as well as the psychic
mechanism of compulsion neurosis. Thus the
history of a typical case of touching phobia reads
as follows: In the very beginning, during the
early period of childhood, the person manifested
a strong pleasure in touching himself, the object
of which was much more specialized than one
would be inclined to expect. Presently the
carrying out of this very pleasurable act of
touching was opposed by a prohibition from

49

without.¹⁰ The prohibition was accepted be
cause it was supported by strong inner forces;¹¹
it proved to be stronger than the impulse which
wanted to manifest itself through this act of
touching. But due to the primitive psychic con-
stitution of the child this prohibition did not suc-
ceed in abolishing the impulse. Its only suc-
cess lay in repressing the impulse (the pleasure of
touching) and banishing it into the unconscious.
Both the prohibition and the impulse remained;
the impulse because it had only been repressed
and not abolished, the prohibition, because if it
had ceased the impulse would have broken
through into consciousness and would have been
carried out. An unsolved situation, a psychic
fixation, had thus been created and now every-
thing else emanated from the continued conflict
between prohibition and impulse.

The main characteristic of the psychic con-
stellation which has thus undergone fixation lies
in what one might call the ambivalent behavior ¹²
of the individual to the object, or rather to an
action regarding it. The individual constantly
wants to carry out this action (the act of touch-
ing), he sees in it the highest pleasure, but he

¹⁰Both the pleasure and the prohibition referred to touching
one’s own genitals.

¹¹The relation to beloved persons who impose the prohibition.

¹²To use an excellent term coined by Bleuler.

50

may not carry it out, and he even abominates it.
The opposition between these two streams can-
not be easily adjusted because–there is no other
way to express it–they are so localized in the
psychic life that they cannot meet. The pro-
hibition becomes fully conscious, while the sur-
viving pleasure of touching remains unconscious,
the person knowing nothing about it. If this
psychological factor did not exist the ambival-
ence could neither maintain itself so long nor
lead to such subsequent manifestations.

In the clinical history of the case we have em-
phasized the appearance of the prohibition in
early childhood as the determining factor; but for
the further elaboration of the neurosis this rôle is
played by the repression which appears at this
age. On account of the repression which has
taken place, which is connected with forgetting
(amnesia), the motivation of the prohibition that
has become conscious remains unknown, and all
attempts to unravel it intellectually must fail,
as the point of attack cannot be found. The pro-
hibition owes its strength–its compulsive char-
acter–to its association with its unknown coun-
terpart, the hidden and unabated pleasure, that
is to say, to an inner need into which conscious in-
sight is lacking. The transferability and repro-
ductive power of the prohibition reflect a process
which harmonizes with the unconscious pleasure

51

and is very much facilitated through the psy-
chological determinants of the unconscious. The
pleasure of the impulse constantly undergoes dis-
placement in order to escape the blocking which
it encounters and seeks to acquire surrogates for
the forbidden in the form of substitutive objects
and actions. For the same reason the prohibi-
tion also wanders and spreads to the new aims of
the proscribed impulse. Every new advance of
the repressed libido is answered by the prohibi-
tion with a new severity. The mutual inhibi-
tion of these two contending forces creates a
need for discharge and for lessening the existing
tension, in which we may recognize the motivation
for the compulsive acts. In the neurosis there
are distinctly acts of compromise which on the one
hand may be regarded as proofs of remorse and
efforts to expiate and similar actions; but on the
other hand they are at the same time substitutive
actions which recompense the impulse for what
has been forbidden. It is a law of neurotic dis-
eases that these obsessive acts serve the impulse
more and more and come nearer and nearer to the
original forbidden act.
We may now make the attempt to study taboo
as if it were of the same nature as the compulsive
prohibitions of our patients. It must naturally
be clearly understood that many of the taboo pro-
hibitions which we shall study are already second-
 

52

ary, displaced and distorted, so that we shall have
to be satisfied if we can shed some light upon the
earliest and most important taboo prohibitions.
We must also remember that the differences in
the situation of the savage and of the neurotic
may be important enough to exclude complete
correspondence and prevent a point by point
transfer from one to the other such as would be
possible if we were dealing with exact copies.
First of all it must be said that it is useless to
question savages as to the real motivation of their
prohibitions or as to the genesis of taboo. Ac-
cording to our assumption they must be incapable
of telling us anything about it since this motiva-
tion is “unconscious” to them. But following the
model of the compulsive prohibition we shall con-
struct the history of taboo as follows: Taboos
are very ancient prohibitions which at one time
were forced upon a generation of primitive
people from without, that is, they probably were
forcibly impressed upon them by an earlier gen-
eration. These prohibitions concerned actions
for which there existed a strong desire. The pro-
hibitions maintained themselves from generation
to generation, perhaps only as the result of a tra-
dition set up by paternal and social authority.
But in later generations they have perhaps al-
ready become “organized” as a piece of inherited
psychic property. Whether there are such
 

53

“innate ideas” or whether these have brought
about the fixation of the taboo by themselves or
by coöperating with education no one could de-
cide in the particular case in question. The per-
sistence of taboo teaches, however, one thing,
namely, that the original pleasure to do the for-
bidden still continues among taboo races. They
therefore assume an ambivalent attitude toward
their taboo prohibitions; in their unconscious they
would like nothing better than to transgress them
but they are also afraid to do it; they are afraid
just because they would like to transgress, and
the fear is stronger than the pleasure. But in
every individual of the race the desire for it is
unconscious, just as in the neurotic.
The oldest and most important taboo prohi-
bitions are the two basic laws of totemism: namely
not to kill the totem animal and to avoid sexual
intercourse with totem companions of the other
sex.
It would therefore seem that these must have
been the oldest and strongest desires of mankind.
We cannot understand this and therefore we can-
not use these examples to test our assumptions as
long as the meaning and the origin of the totemic
system is so wholly unknown to us. But the very
wording of these taboos and the fact that they
occur together will remind any one who knows the
results of the psychoanalytic investigation of in-
 

54

dividuals, of something quite definite which psy-
choanalysts call the central point of the infantile
wish life and the nucleus of the later neurosis.¹³

All other varieties of taboo phenomena which
have led to the attempted classifications noted
above become unified if we sum them up in the
following sentence: The basis of taboo is a for-
bidden action for which there exists a strong incli-
nation in the unconscious.

We know, without understanding it, that who-
ever does what is prohibited and violates the
taboo, becomes himself taboo. But how can we
connect this fact with the other, namely that the
taboo adheres not only to persons who have done
what is prohibited but also to persons who are in
exceptional circumstances, to these circumstances
themselves, and to impersonal things? What
can this dangerous attribute be, which always re-
mains the same under all these different con-
ditions? Only one thing, namely, the propensity
to arouse the ambivalence of man and to tempt
him to violate the prohibition.

An individual who has violated a taboo becomes
himself taboo because he has the dangerous prop-
erty of tempting others to follow his example.
He arouses envy; why should he be allowed to do
what is prohibited to others? He is therefore
really contagious, in so far as every example in-
 

¹³ See Chapter IV Totemism, etc.

55

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

cites to imitation, and therefore he himself must
be avoided.

But a person may become permanently or tem-
porarily taboo without having violated any
taboos, for the simple reason that he is in a con-
dition which has the property of inciting the for-
bidden desires of others and of awakening the
ambivalent conflict in them. Most of the excep-
tional positions and conditions have this character
and possess this dangerous power. The king or
chieftain rouses envy of his prerogatives; every-
body would perhaps like to be king. The dead,
the newly born, and women when they are in-
capacitated, all act as incitements on account of
their peculiar helplessness, while the individual
who has just reached sexual maturity tempts
through the promise of a new pleasure. There-
fore all these persons and all these conditions are
taboo, for one must not yield to the temptations
which they offer.

Now, too, we understand why the forces inher-
ent in the “mana” of various persons can neutral-
ize one another so that the mana of one individual
can partly cancel that of the other. The taboo of
a king is too strong for his subject because the
social difference between them is too great. But
a minister, for example, can become the harmless
mediator between them. Translated from the
language of taboo into the language of normal

56

psychology this means: the subject who shrinks
from the tremendous temptation which contact
with the king creates for him can brook the inter-
course of an official, whom he does not have to
envy so much and whose position perhaps seems
attainable to him. The minister, on his part, can
moderate his envy of the king by taking into con-
sideration the power that has been granted to him.
Thus smaller differences in the magic power that
lead to temptation are less to be feared than ex-
ceptionally big differences.

It is equally clear how the violation of certain
taboo prohibitions becomes a social danger which
must be punished or expiated by all the members
of society lest it harm them all. This danger
really exists if we substitute the known impulses
for the unconscious desires. It consists in the
possibility of imitation, as a result of which
society would soon be dissolved. If the others
did not punish the violation they would perforce
become aware that they want to imitate the evil
doer.

Though the secret meaning of a taboo prohi-
bition cannot possibly be of so special a nature as
in the case of a neurosis, we must not be aston-
ished to find that touching plays a similar rôle in
taboo prohibition as in the délire de toucher. To
touch is the beginning of every act of possession,

57

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

of every attempt to make use of a person or thing.
We have interpreted the power of contagion
which inheres in the taboo as the property of lead-
ing into temptation, and of inciting to imitation.
This does not seem to be in accord with the fact
that the contagiousness of the taboo is above all
manifested in the transference to objects which
thus themselves become carriers of the taboo.

This transferability of the taboo reflects what
is found in the neurosis, namely, the constant
tendency of the unconscious impulse to become
displaced through associative channels upon new
objects. Our attention is thus drawn to the fact
that the dangerous magic power of the “mana”
corresponds to two real faculties, the capacity of
reminding man of his forbidden wishes, and the
apparently more important one of tempting him
to violate the prohibition in the service of these
wishes. Both functions reunite into one, how-
ever, if we assume it to be in accord with a primi-
tive psychic life that with the awakening of a
memory of a forbidden action there should also be
combined the awakening of the tendency to carry
out the action. Memory and temptation then
again coincide. We must also admit that if the
example of a person who has violated a prohi-
bition leads another to the same action, the dis-
obedience of the prohibition has been transmitted

58

like a contagion, just as the taboo is transferred
from a person to an object, and from this to
another.

If the violation of a taboo can be condoned
through expiation or penance, which means, of
course, a renunciation of a possession or a liberty,
we have the proof that the observance of a taboo
regulation was itself a renunciation of something
really wished for. The omission of one renuncia-
tion is cancelled through a renunciation at some
other point. This would lead us to conclude that,
as far as taboo ceremonials are concerned, pen-
ance is more primitive than purification.

Let us now summarize what understanding we
have gained of taboo through its comparison with
the compulsive prohibition of the neurotic.
Taboo is a very primitive prohibition imposed
from without (by an authority) and directed
against the strongest desires of man. The desire
to violate it continues in the unconscious; per-
sons who obey the taboo have an ambivalent feel-
ing toward what is affected by the taboo. The
magic power attributed to taboo goes back to its
ability to lead man into temptation; it behaves
like a contagion, because the example is con-
tagious, and because the prohibited desire be-
comes displacing in the unconscious upon some-
thing else. The expiation for the violation of a
taboo through a renunciation proves that a renun-
 

59

ciation is at the basis of the observance of the
taboo.

C
3

We may ask what we have gained from the
comparison of taboo with compulsion neurosis
and what value can be claimed for the interpre-
tation we have given on the basis of this compari-
son? Our interpretation is evidently of no value
unless it offers an advantage not to be had in
any other way and unless it affords a better un-
derstanding of taboo than was otherwise possible.
We might claim that we have already given proof
of its usefulness in what has been said above; but
we shall have to try to strengthen our proof by
continuing the explanation of taboo prohibitions
and customs in detail.

But we can avail ourselves of another method.
We can shape our investigation so as to ascertain
whether a part of the assumptions which we have
transferred from the neurosis to the taboo, or the
conclusions at which we have thereby arrived can
be demonstrated directly in the phenomena of
taboo. We must decide, however, what we want
to look for. The assertion concerning the gene-
sis of taboo, namely, that it was derived from a
primitive prohibition which was once imposed
from without, cannot, of course, be proved. We
shall therefore seek to confirm those psycholog-

60

ical conditions for taboo with which we have
become acquainted in the case of compulsion neu-
rosis. How did we gain our knowledge of these
psychological factors in the case of neurosis?
Through the analytical study of the symptoms,
especially the compulsive actions, the defense re-
actions and the obsessive commands. These
mechanisms gave every indication of having been
derived from ambivalent impulses or tendencies,
they either represented simultaneously the wish
and counter-wish or they served preponderantly
one of the two contrary tendencies. If we should
now succeed in showing that ambivalence, i. e., the
sway of contrary tendencies, exists also in the
case of taboo regulations or if we should find
among the taboo mechanisms some which like
neurotic obsessions give simultaneous expression
to both currents, we would have established what
is practically the most important point in the
psychological correspondence between taboo and
compulsion neurosis.

We have already mentioned that the two fun-
damental taboo prohibitions are inaccessible to
our analysis because they belong to totemism; an-
other part of the taboo rules is of secondary origin
and cannot be used for our purpose. For among
these races taboo has become the general form of
law giving and has helped to promote social ten-

61

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

dencies which are certainly younger than taboo
itself, as for instance, the taboos imposed by
chiefs and priests to insure their property and
privileges. But there still remains a large group
of laws which we may undertake to investigate.
Among these I lay stress on those taboos which
are attached a) to enemies, b) to chiefs, and c)
to the dead; the material for our investigation is
taken from the excellent collection of J. G.
Frazer in his great work, “The Golden
Bough.”¹⁴

A) THE TREATMENT OF ENEMIES

Inclined as we may have been to ascribe to
savage and semi-savage races uninhibited and re-
morseless cruelty towards their enemies, it is of
great interest to us to learn that with them, too,
the killing of a person compels the observation of
a series of rules which are associated with taboo
customs. These rules are easily brought under
four groups; they demand 1. reconciliation with
the slain enemy, 2. restrictions, 3. acts of expia-
tion, and purifications of the manslayer, and 4.
certain ceremonial rites. The incomplete reports
do not allow us to decide with certainty how gen-
eral or how isolated such taboo customs may be

¹⁴Third Edition, Part II, “Taboo and the Perils of the Soul,”
1911.

62

among these races, but this is a matter of indiffer-
ence as far as our interest in these occurrences is
concerned. Still, it may be assumed that we are
dealing with widespread customs and not with
isolated peculiarities.

The reconciliation customs practiced on the
island of Timor, after a victorious band of war-
riors has returned with the severed heads of the
vanquished enemy, are especially significant be-
cause the leader of the expedition is subject to
heavy additional restrictions. “At the solemn
entry of the victors, sacrifices are made to con-
ciliate the souls of the enemy; otherwise one
would have to expect harm to come to the vic-
tors. A dance is given and a song is sung in
which the slain enemy is mourned and his for-
giveness is implored: ‘Be not angry,’ they say,
‘because your head is here with us; had we been
less lucky, our heads might have been exposed in
your village. We have offered the sacrifice to
appease you. Your spirit may now rest and
leave us at peace. Why were you our enemy?
Would it not have been better that we should re-
main friends? Then your blood would not have
been spilt and your head would not have been
cut off.’ ” ¹⁵

Similar customs are found among the Palu in
Celebes; the Gallas sacrifice to the spirits of their

¹⁵Frazer, l. c. p. 166.

63

dead enemies before they return to their home
villages.¹⁶

Other races have found methods of making
friends, guardians and protectors out of their for-
mer enemies after they are dead. This consists
in the tender treatment of the severed heads, of
which many wild tribes of Borneo boast. When
the See-Dayaks of Sarawak bring home a head
from a war expedition, they treat it for months
with the greatest kindness and courtesy and ad-
dress it with the most endearing names in their
language. The best morsels from their meals are
put into its mouth, together with titbits and
cigars. The dead enemy is repeatedly entreated
to hate his former friends and to bestow his love
upon his new hosts because he has now become
one of them. It would be a great mistake to
think that any derision is attached to this treat-
ment, horrible though it may seem to us.¹⁷

Observers have been struck by the mourning
for the enemy after he is slain and scalped, among
several of the wild tribes of North America.
When a Choctaw had killed an enemy he began a
month’s mourning during which he submitted
himself to serious restrictions. The Dakota In-
dians mourned in the same way. One authority

¹⁶Paulitschke, “Ethnography of Northeast Africa.”

¹⁷Frazer, “Adonis, Attis, Osiris,” p. 248, 1907. According to
Hugh Low, Sarawak, London, 1848.

64

mentions that the Osaga Indians after mourning
for their own dead mourned for their foes as if
they had been friends.¹⁸

Before proceeding to the other classes of taboo
customs for the treatment of enemies, we must
define our position in regard to a pertinent objec-
tion. Both Frazer as well as other authorities
may well be quoted against us to show that the
motive for these rules of reconciliation is quite
simple and has nothing to do with “ambivalence.”
These races are dominated by a superstitious fear
of the spirits of the slain, a fear which was also
familiar to classical antiquity, and which the
great British dramatist brought upon the stage
in the hallucinations of Macbeth and Richard the
Third. From this superstition all the reconcilia-
tion rules as well as the restrictions and expia-
tions which we shall discuss later can be logically
deduced; moreover, the ceremonies included in
the fourth group also argue for this interpreta-
tion, since the only explanation of which they
admit is the effort to drive away the spirits of the
slain which pursue the manslayers.¹⁹ Besides,
the savages themselves directly admit their fear
of the spirits of their slain foes and trace back
the taboo customs under discussion to this fear.

¹⁸J. O. Dorsay, see Frazer, “Toboo, etc.,” p. 181.

¹⁹Frazer, “Taboo,” p. 166 to 174. These ceremonies consist of
hitting shields, shouting, bellowing and making noises with various
instruments, etc.

65

This objection is certainly pertinent and if it
were adequate as well we would gladly spare our-
selves the trouble of our attempt to find a further
explanation. We postpone the consideration of
this objection until later and for the present
merely contrast it to the interpretation derived
from our previous discussion of taboo. All these
rules of taboo lead us to conclude that other im-
pulses besides those that are merely hostile find
expression in the behavior towards enemies. We
see in them manifestations of repentance, of re-
gard for the enemy, and of a bad conscience
for having slain him. It seems that the com-
mandment, Thou shalt not slay, which could
not be violated without punishment, existed
also among these savages, long before any
legislation was received from the hands of a
god.

We now return to the remaining classes of
taboo rules. The restrictions laid upon the vic-
torious manslayer are unusually frequent and
are mostly of a serious nature. In Timor (com-
pare the reconciliation customs mentioned above)
the leader of the expedition cannot return to his
house under any circumstances. A special hut
is erected for him in which he spends two months
engaged in the observance of various rules of
purification. During this period he may not see
his wife or nourish himself; another person must

66

put his food into his mouth.²⁰ Among some
Dayak tribes warriors returning from a success-
ful expedition must remain sequestered for sev-
eral days and abstain from certain foods; they
may not touch iron and must remain away from
their wives. In Logea, an island near New
Guinea, men who have killed an enemy or have
taken part in the killing, lock themselves up in
their houses for a week. They avoid every inter-
course with their wives and friends, they do not
touch their victuals with their hands and live on
nothing but vegetable foods which are cooked
for them in special dishes. As a reason for this
last restriction it is alleged that they must smell
the blood of the slain, otherwise they would sicken
and die. Among the Toaripi- or Motumotu-
tribes in New Guinea a manslayer must not ap-
proach his wife and must not touch his food with
his fingers. A second person must feed him with
special food. This continues until the next new
moon.

I avoid the complete enumeration of all the
cases of restrictions of the victorious slayer men-
tioned by Frazer, and emphasize only such cases
in which the character of taboo is especially no-
ticeable or where the restriction appears in con-
 

²⁰Frazer, “Taboo,” p. 166, according to S. Mueller, “Reisen en
Onderzoekingen in den Indischen Archipel,” Amsterdam, 1857.

67

nection with expiation, purification and cere-
monial.

Among the Monumbos in German New
Guinea a man who has killed an enemy in combat
becomes “unclean,” the same word being em-
ployed which is applied to women during men-
struation or confinement. For a considerable
period he is not allowed to leave the men’s club-
house, while the inhabitants of his village gather
about him and celebrate his victory with songs
and dances. He must not touch any one, not
even his wife and children; if he did so they would
be afflicted with boils. He finally becomes clean
through washing and other ceremonies.

Among the Natchez in North America young
warriors who had procured their first scalp were
bound for six months to the observance of certain
renunciations. They were not allowed to sleep
with their wives or to eat meat, and received only
fish and maize pudding as nourishment. When a
Choctaw had killed and scalped an enemy he
began a period of mourning for one month, dur-
ing which he was not allowed to comb his hair.
When his head hitched he was not allowed to
scratch it with his hand but used a small stick for
this purpose.

After a Pima Indian had killed an Apache he
had to submit himself to severe ceremonies of

68

purification and expiation. During a fasting
period of sixteen days he was not allowed to touch
meat or salt, to look at a fire or to speak to any
one. He lived alone in the woods, where he was
waited upon by an old woman who brought him a
small allowance of food; he often bathed in the
nearest river, and carried a lump of clay on his
head as a sign of mourning. On the seventeenth
day there took place a public ceremony through
which he and his weapons were solemnly purified.
As the Pima Indians took the manslayer taboo
much more seriously than their enemies and, un-
like them, did not postpone expiation and purifi-
cation until the end of the expedition, their
prowess in war suffered very much through their
moral severity or what might be called their piety.
In spite of their extraordinary bravery they
proved to be unsatisfactory allies to the Ameri-
cans in their wars against the Apaches.

The detail and variations of these expiatory
and purifying ceremonies after the killing of an
enemy would be most interesting for purposes of
a more searching study but I need not enumerate
any more of them here because they cannot fur-
nish us with any new points of view. I might
mention that the temporary or permanent isola-
tion of the professional executioner, which was
maintained up to our time, is a case in point.
The position of the “free-
holder” in mediæval

69

society really conveys a good idea of the “taboo”
of savages.²¹

The current explanation of all these rules of
reconciliation, restriction, expiation and purifica-
tion, combines two principles, namely, the exten-
sion of the taboo of the dead to everything that
has come into contact with him, and the fear of
the spirit of the slain. In what combination
these two elements are to explain the ceremonial,
whether they are to be considered as of equal
value or whether one of them is primary and the
other secondary, and which one, is nowhere stated,
nor would this be an easy matter to decide. In
contradistinction to all this we emphasize the
unity which our interpretation gains by deducing
all these rules from the ambivalence of the emo-
tion of savages towards their enemies.

B) THE TABOO OF RULERS

The behavior of primitive races towards their
chiefs, kings, and priests, is controlled by two
principles which seem rather to supplement than
to contradict each other. They must both be
guarded and be guarded against.²²

Both objects are accomplished through in-
numerable rules of taboo. Why one must guard

²¹For these examples see Frazer, “Taboo,” p. 165–170, “Man-
slayers Tabooed.”

²²Frazer, “Taboo,” p. 132. “He must not only be guarded, he
must also be guarded against.”

70

against rulers is already known to us; because
they are the bearers of that mysterious and dan-
gerous magic power which communicates itself
by contact, like an electric charge, bringing death
and destruction to any one not protected by a
similar charge. All direct or indirect contact
with this dangerous sacredness is therefore
avoided, and where it cannot be avoided a cere-
monial has been found to ward off the dreaded
consequences. The Nubas in East Africa, for
instance, believe that they must die if they enter
the house of their priest-king, but that they
escape this danger if, on entering, they bare the
left shoulder and induce the king to touch it with
his hand. Thus we have the remarkable case of
the king’s touch becoming the healing and protec-
tive measure against the very dangers that arise
from contact with the king; but it is probably a
question of the healing power of the intentional
touching on the king’s part in contradistinction
to the danger of touching him, in other words, of
the opposition between passivity and activity
towards the king.

Where the healing power of the royal touch is
concerned we do not have to look for examples
among savages. In comparatively recent times
the kings of England exercised this power upon
scrofula, whence it was called “The King’s Evil.”
Neither Queen Elizabeth nor any of her suc-
 

71

cessors renounced this part of the royal preroga-
tive. Charles I is said to have healed a hundred
sufferers at one time, in the year 1633. Under
his dissolute son Charles II, after the great
English revolution had passed, royal healings of
scrofula attained their greatest vogue.

This king is said to have touched close to a
hundred thousand victims of scrofula in the
course of his reign. The crush of those seeking
to be cured used to be so great that on one occa-
sion six or seven patients suffered death by suffo-
cation instead of being healed. The skeptical
king of Orange, William III, who became king
of England after the banishment of the Stuarts,
refused to exercise the spell; on the one occasion
when he consented to practice the touch, he did
so with the words: “May God give you better
health and more sense.”²³

The following account will bear witness to the
terrible effect of touching by virtue of which a
person, even though unintentionally, becomes
active against his king or against what belongs to
him. A chief of high rank and great holiness in
New Zealand happened to leave the remains of
his meal by the roadside. A young slave came
along, a strong, healthy fellow, who saw what
was left over and started to eat it. Hardly had
he finished when a horrified spectator informed

²³Frazer, The Magic Art I, p. 368.

72

him of his offense in eating the meal of the chief.
The man had been a strong, brave, warrior, but
as soon as he heard this he collapsed and was
afflicted by terrible convulsions, from which he
died towards sunset of the following day.²⁴ A
Maori woman ate a certain fruit and then learned
that it came from a place on which there was a
taboo. She cried out that the spirit of the chief
whom she had thus offended would surely kill
her. This incident occurred in the afternoon and
on the next day at twelve o’clock she was dead.²⁵
The tinder box of a Maori chief once cost several
persons their lives. The chief had lost it and
those who found it used it to light their pipes.
When they learned whose property the tinder
box was they all died of fright.²⁶

It is hardly astonishing that the need was felt
to isolate dangerous persons like chiefs and
priests, by building a wall around them which
made them inaccessible to others. We surmise
that this wall, which originally was constructed
out of taboo rules, still exists to-day in the form
of court ceremony.

But probably the greater part of this taboo of
the rulers cannot be traced back to the need of

²⁴⁾“Old New Zealand,” by a Pakeha Maori (London, 1884), see
Frazer, “Taboo,” p. 135.

²⁵⁾W. Brown, “New Zealand and Its Aborigines” (London,
1845), Frazer, ibid.

²⁶⁾Frazer, l. c.

73

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

guarding against them. The other point of view
in the treatment of privileged persons, the need
of guarding them from dangers with which they
are threatened, has had a distinct share in the
creation of taboo and therefore of the origin of
court etiquette.

The necessity of guarding the king from every
conceivable danger arises from his great impor-
tance for the weal and woe of his subjects.
Strictly speaking, he is a person who regulates
the course of the world; his people have to thank
him not only for rain and sunshine, which allow
the fruits of the earth to grow, but also for the
wind which brings the ships to their shores and for
the solid ground on which they set their feet.²⁷

These savage kings are endowed with a wealth
of power and an ability to bestow happiness
which only gods possess; certainly in later
stages of civilization none but the most servile
courtiers would play the hypocrite to the extent
of crediting their sovereigns with the possession
of attributes similar to these.

It seems like an obvious contradiction that per-
sons of such perfection of power should them-
selves require the greatest care to guard them
against threatening dangers, but this is not the
only contradiction revealed in the treatment of
royal persons on the part of savages. These

²⁷Frazer, “Taboo.” “The Burden of Royalty,” p. 7.

74

races consider it necessary to watch over their
kings to see that they use their powers in the right
way; they are by no means sure of their good in-
tentions or of their conscientiousness. A strain
of mistrust is mingled with the motivation of the
taboo rules for the king. “The idea that early
‘kingdoms are despotisms,” says Frazer,²⁸ “in
which the people exist only for the sovereign, is
wholly inapplicable to the monarchies we are con-
sidering. On the contrary, the sovereign in them
exists only for his subjects; his life is only valu-
able so long as he discharges the duties of his
position by ordering the course of nature for his
people’s benefit. So soon as he fails to do so,
the care, the devotion, the religious homage which
they had hitherto lavished on him cease and are
changed into hatred and contempt; he is igno-
miniously dismissed and may be thankful if he
escapes with his life. Worshiped as a god one
day, he is killed as a criminal the next. But in
this changed behavior of the people there is noth-
ing capricious or inconsistent. On the contrary,
their conduct is quite consistent. If their king
is their god he is, or should be, also their pre-
server; and if he will not preserve them he must
make room for another who will. So long, how-
ever, as he answers their expectations, there is no
limit to the care which they take of him, and which

²⁸ l. c., p. 7.

75

they compel him to take of himself. A king of
this sort lives hedged in by ceremonious etiquette,
a network of prohibitions and observances, of
which the intention is not to contribute to his dig-
nity, much less to his comfort, but to restrain him
from conduct which, by disturbing the harmony
of nature, might involve himself, his people, and
the universe in one common catastrophe. Far
from adding to his comfort, these observances,
by trammeling his every act, annihilate his free-
dom and often render the very life, which it is
their object to preserve, a burden and sorrow to
him.”

One of the most glaring examples of thus fet-
tering and paralyzing a holy ruler through taboo
ceremonial seems to have been reached in the life
routine of the Mikado of Japan, as it existed in
earlier centuries. A description which is now over
two hundred years old ²⁹ relates: “He thinks
that it would be very prejudicial to his dignity
and holiness to touch the ground with his feet;
for this reason when he intends to go anywhere,
he must be carried thither on men’s shoulders.
Much less will they suffer that he should expose
his sacred person to the open air, and the sun is
not thought worthy to shine on his head. There
is such a holiness ascribed to all the parts of his
body that he dares to cut off neither his hair,

²⁹ Kaempfer, “History of Japan,” see in Frazer, l. c., p. 3.

76

nor his beard, nor his nails. However, lest he
should grow too dirty, they may clean him in the
night when he is asleep; because they say that
what is taken from his body at that time, hath
been stolen from him, and that such a theft does
not prejudice his holiness or dignity. In ancient
times, he was obliged to sit on the throne for some
hours every morning, with the imperial crown on
his head; but to sit altogether like a statue with-
out stirring either hands or feet, head or eyes, nor
indeed any part of his body, because by this
means, it was thought that he could preserve
peace and tranquility in his empire; for if un-
fortunately, he turned himself on one side or
other, or if he looked a good while towards any
part of his dominion, it was apprehended that
war, famine, fire or some other great misfortune
was near at hand to desolate the country.”

Some of the taboos to which barbarian kings
are subject vividly recall the restrictions placed
on murderers. On Shark Point at Cape Padron
in Lower Guinea (West Africa), a priest-king
called Kukulu lives alone in a woods. He is not
allowed to touch a woman or to leave his house
and cannot even rise out of his chair, in which he
must sleep in a sitting position. If he should lie
down the wind would cease and shipping would
be disturbed. It is his function to keep storms in
check and, in general, to see to an even, healthy

77

condition of the atmosphere.³⁰ The more pow-
erful a king of Loango is, says Bastian, the more
taboos he must observe. The heir to the throne
is also bound to them from childhood on; they
accumulate about him while he is growing up, and
by the time of his accession he is suffocated by
them.

Our interest in the matter does not require us
to take up more space to describe more fully the
taboos that cling to royal and priestly dignity.
We merely add that restrictions as to freedom of
movement and diet play the main rôle among
them. But two examples of taboo ceremonial
taken from civilized nations, and therefore from
much higher stages of culture, will indicate to
what an extent association with these privileged
persons tends to preserve ancient customs.

The Flamen Dialis, the high-
priest of Jupiter
in Rome, had to observe an extraordinarily large
number of taboo rules. He was not allowed to
ride, to see a horse or an armed man, to wear a
ring that was not broken, to have a knot in his
garments, to touch wheat flour or leaven, or even
to mention by name a goat, a dog, raw meat,
beans and ivy; his hair could only be cut by a free
man and with a bronze knife, his hair combings
and nail parings had to be buried under a lucky

³⁰Bastian, “The German Expedition to the Coast of Loango.”
Jena 1874, cited by Frazer, l. c., p. 5.

78

tree; he could not touch the dead, go into the
open with bare head, and similar prohibitions.
His wife, the Flaminica, also had her own pro-
hibitions: she was not allowed to ascend more
than three steps on a certain kind of stairs and
on certain holidays she could not comb her hair;
the leather for her shoes could not be taken from
any animal that had died a natural death but only
from one that had been slaughtered or sacrificed;
when she heard thunder she was unclean until she
had made an expiatory sacrifice.³¹

The old kings of Ireland were subject to a
series of very curious restrictions, the observance
of which was expected to bring every blessing to
the country while their violation entailed every
form of evil. The complete description of these
taboos is given in the Book of Rights, of which
the oldest manuscript copies bear the dates 1390
and 1418. The prohibitions are very detailed
and concern certain activities at specified places
and times; in some cities, for instance, the king
cannot stay on a certain day of the week, while
at some specified hour this or that river may not
be crossed, or again there is a plane on which he
cannot camp a full nine days, etc.³²

Among many savage races the severity of the
taboo restrictions for the priest-kings has had re-
sults of historic importance which are especially

³¹Frazer, l. c., p. 13.

³²Frazer, l.c., p. 11.

79

interesting from our point of view. The honor
of being a priest-king ceased to be desirable; the
person in line for the succession often used every
means to escape it. Thus in Combodscha, where
there is a fire and water king, it is often necessary
to use force to compel the successor to accept the
honor. On Nine or Savage Island, a coral
island in the Pacific Ocean, monarchy actually
came to an end because nobody was willing to un-
dertake the responsible and dangerous office. In
some parts of West Africa a general council is
held after the death of the king to determine upon
the successor. The man on whom the choice
falls is seized, tied and kept in custody in the
fetich house until he has declared himself willing
to accept the crown. Sometimes the presump-
tive successor to the throne finds ways and means
to avoid the intended honor; thus it is related of
a certain chief that he used to go armed day and
night and resist by force every attempt to place
him on the throne.³³ Among the negroes of
Sierra Leone the resistance against accepting the
kingly honor was so great that most of the tribes
were compelled to make strangers their kings.

Frazer makes these conditions responsible for
the fact that in the development of history a sep-
aration of the original priest-kingship into a spir-

³³A. Bastian, “The German Expedition on the Coast of
Lonago,” cited by Frazer, l. c., p. 18.

80

itual and a secular power finally took place.
Kings, crushed by the burden of their holiness,
became incapable of exercising their power over
real things and had to leave this to inferior but
executive persons who were willing to renounce
the honors of royal dignity. From these there
grew up the secular rulers, while the spiritual
over-
lordship, which was now of no practical im-
portance, was left to the former taboo kings. It
is well known to what extent this hypothesis finds
confirmation in the history of old Japan.

A survey of the picture of the relations of
primitive peoples to their rulers gives rise to the
expectation that our advance from description
to psychoanalytic understanding will not be
difficult. These relations are of an involved
nature and are not free from contradictions.
Rulers are granted great privileges which are
practically cancelled by taboo prohibitions in
regard to other privileges. They are privileged
persons, they can do or enjoy what is withheld
from the rest through taboo. But in contrast
to this freedom they are restricted by other taboos
which do not affect the ordinary individual.
Here, therefore, is the first contrast, which
amounts almost to a contradiction, between an
excess of freedom and an excess of restriction as
applied to the same persons. They are credited
with extraordinary magic powers and contact

81

with their person or their property is therefore
feared, while on the other hand the most bene-
ficial effect is expected from these contacts.
This seems to be a second and an especially glar-
ing contradiction; but we have already learned
that it is only apparent. The king’s touch, exer-
cised by him with benevolent intention, heals and
protects; it is only when a common man touches
the king or his royal effects that the contact be-
comes dangerous, and this is probably because
the act may recall aggressive tendencies. An-
other contradiction which is not so easily solved
is expressed in the fact that great power over the
processes of nature is ascribed to the ruler and
yet the obligation is felt to guard him with espe-
cial care against threatening dangers, as if his
own power, which can do so much, were incapa-
ble of accomplishing this. A further difficulty
in the relation arises because there is no confi-
dence that the ruler will use his tremendous
power to the advantage of his subjects as well
as for his own protection; he is therefore dis-
trusted and surveillance over him is considered to
be justified. The taboo etiquette, to which the
life of the king is subject, simultaneously serves
all these objects of exercising a tutelage over the
king, of guarding him against dangers, and of
guarding his subjects against danger which he
brings to them.

82

We are inclined to give the following explana-
tion of the complicated and contradictory rela-
tion of primitive peoples to their rulers.
Through superstition as well as through other
motives, various tendencies find expression in
the treatment of kings, each of which is devel-
oped to the extreme without regard to the others.
As a result of this, contradictions arise at which
the intellect of savages takes no more offense
than a highly civilized person would, as long as
it is only a question of religious matters or of
“loyalty.”

That would be so far so good; but the psycho-
analytic technique may enable us to penetrate
more deeply into the matter and to add some-
thing about the nature of these various tenden-
cies. If we subject the facts as stated to analy-
sis, just as if they formed the symptoms of a
neurosis, our first attention would be directed
to the excess of anxious worry which is said to be
the cause of the taboo ceremonial. The occur-
rence of such excessive tenderness is very com-
mon in the neurosis and especially in the
compulsion neurosis upon which we are draw-
ing primarily for our comparison. We now
thoroughly understand the origin of this tender-
ness. It occurs wherever, besides the predomi-
nant tenderness, there exists a contrary but un-
conscious stream of hostility, that is to say, wher-
 

83

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

ever the typical case of an ambivalent affective
attitude is realized. The hostility is then cried
down by an excessive increase of tenderness
which is expressed as anxiety and becomes com-
pulsive because otherwise it would not suffice for
its task of keeping the unconscious opposition
in a state of repression. Every psychoanalyst
knows how infallibly this anxious excess of ten-
derness can be resolved even under the most im-
probable circumstances, as for instance, when it
appears between mother and child, or in the case
of affectionate married people. Applied to the
treatment of privileged persons this theory of an
ambivalent feeling would reveal that their ven-
eration, their very deification, is opposed in the
unconscious by an intense hostile tendency, so
that, as we had expected, the situation of an
ambivalent feeling is here realized. The dis-
trust which certainly seems to contribute to the
motivation of the royal taboo, would be another
direct manifestation of the same unconscious hos-
tility. Indeed the ultimate issues of this con-
flict show such a diversity among different races
that we would not be at a loss for examples in
which the proof of such hostility would be much
easier. We learn from Frazer ³⁴ that the savage
Timmes of Sierra Leona reserve the right to ad-

³⁴l. c. p. 18. According to Zweifel et Monstier, “Voyage aux
Sources du Niger,” 1880.

84

minister a beating to their elected king on the
evening before his coronation, and that they
make use of this constitutional right with such
thoroughness that the unhappy ruler sometimes
does not long survive his accession to the throne;
for this reason the leaders of the race have made
it a rule to elect some man against whom they
have a particular grudge. Nevertheless, even in
such glaring cases the hostility is not acknowl-
edged as such, but is expressed as if it were a
ceremonial.

Another trait in the attitude of primitive races
towards their rulers recalls a mechanism which is
universally present in mental disturbances, and
is openly revealed in the so-called delusions of
persecution. Here the importance of a particu-
lar person is extraordinarily heightened and his
omnipotence is raised to the improbable in order
to make it easier to attribute to him the responsi-
bility for everything painful which happens to
the patient. Savages really do not act differ-
ently towards their rulers when they ascribe to
them power over rain and shine, wind and
weather, and then dethrone or kill them because
nature has disappointed their expectation of a
good hunt or a ripe harvest. The prototype
which the paranoiac reconstructs in his persecu-
tion mania, is found in the relation of the child
to its father. Such omnipotence is regularly at-

85

tributed to the father in the imagination of the
son, and distrust of the father has been shown
to be intimately connected with the highest es-
teem for him. When a paranoiac names a per-
son of his acquaintance as his “persecutor,” he
thereby elevates him to the paternal succession
and brings him under conditions which enable him
to make him responsible for all the misfortune
which he experiences. Thus this second analogy
between the savage and the neurotic may allow
us to surmise how much in the relation of the sav-
age to his ruler arises from the infantile attitude
of the child to its father.

But the strongest support for our point of
view, which seeks to compare taboo prohibitions
with neurotic symptoms, is to be found in the
taboo ceremonial itself, the significance of which
for the status of kinship has already been the sub-
ject of our previous discussion. This ceremonial
unmistakably reveals its double meaning and its
origin from ambivalent tendencies if only we are
willing to assume that the effects it produces are
those which it intended from the very beginning.
It not only distinguishes kings and elevates them
above all ordinary mortals, but it also makes
their life a torture and an unbearable burden and
forces them into a thraldom which is far worse
than that of their subjects. It would thus be
the correct counterpart to the compulsive ac-

86

tion of the neurosis, in which the suppressed im-
pulse and the impulse which suppresses it meet
in mutual and simultaneous satisfaction. The
compulsive action is nominally a protection
against the forbidden action; but we would say
that actually it is a repetition of what is for-
bidden. The word “nominally” is here applied
to the conscious whereas the word “actually”
applies to the unconscious instance of the psychic
life. Thus also the taboo ceremonial of kings
is nominally an expression of the highest venera-
tion and a means of guarding them; actually it
is the punishment for their elevation, the revenge
which their subjects take upon them. The ex-
periences which Cervantes makes Sancho Panza
undergo as governor on his island have evidently
made him recognize this interpretation of courtly
ceremonial as the only correct one. It is very
possible that this point would be corroborated if
we could induce kings and rulers of to-day to
express themselves on this point.

Why the emotional attitude towards rulers
should contain such a strong unconscious share of
hostility is a very interesting problem which, how-
ever, exceeds the scope of this book. We have
already referred to the infantile father-complex;
we may add that an investigation of the early
history of kingship would bring the decisive ex-
planations. Frazer has an impressive discus-
 

87

sion of the theory that the first kings were
strangers who, after a short reign, were destined
to be sacrificed at solemn festivals as representa-
tives of the deity; but Frazer himself does not
consider his facts altogether convincing.³⁵
Christian myths are said to have been still in-
fluenced by the after-effects of this evolution of
kings.

c) THE TABOO OF THE DEAD

We know that the dead are mighty rulers: we
may be surprised to learn that they are regarded
as enemies.

Among most primitive people the taboo of the
dead displays, if we may keep to our infection
analogy, a peculiar virulence. It manifests it-
self in the first place, in the consequences which
result from contact with the dead, and in the
treatment of the mourners for the dead. Among
the Maori any one who had touched a corpse or
who had taken part in its interment, became ex-
tremely unclean and was almost cut off from in-
tercourse with his fellow beings; he was, as we
say, boycotted. He could not enter a house, or
approach persons or objects without infecting
them with the same properties. He could not
even touch his food with his own hands, which

³⁵Frazer, “The Magic Act and the Evolution of Kings,” 2 vols.,
1911. (The Golden Bough.)

88

were now unclean and therefore quite useless to
him. His food was put on the ground and he
had no alternative except to seize it as best he
could, with his lips and teeth, while he held his
hands behind on his back. Occasionally he could
be fed by another person who helped him to his
food with outstretched arms so as not to touch the
unfortunate one himself, but this assistant was
then in turn subjected to almost equally oppres-
sive restrictions. Almost every village con-
tained some altogether disreputable individual,
ostracised by society, whose wretched existence
depended upon people’s charity. This creature
alone was allowed within arm’s length of a per-
son who had fulfilled the last duty towards the
deceased. But as soon as the period of segrega-
tion was over and the person rendered unclean
through the corpse could again mingle with his
fellow-beings, all the dishes which he had used
during the dangerous period were broken and all
his clothing was thrown away.

The taboo customs after bodily contact with
the dead are the same all over Polynesia, in
Melanesia, and in a part of Africa; their most
constant feature is the prohibition against han-
dling one’s food and the consequent necessity of
being fed by somebody else. It is noteworthy
that in Polynesia, or perhaps only in Hawaii,³⁶

³⁶Frazer, “Taboo,” p. 138, etc.

89

priest-kings were subject to the same restrictions
during the exercise of holy functions. In the
taboo of the dead on the Island of Tonga the
abatement and gradual abolition of the prohibi-
tions through the individual’s own taboo power
are clearly shown. A person who touched the
corpse of a dead chieftain was unclean for ten
months; but if he was himself a chief, he was un-
clean for only three, four, or five months, accord-
ing to the rank of the deceased; if it was the
corpse of the idolized head-chief even the greatest
chiefs became taboo for ten months. These sav-
ages are so certain that any one who violates these
taboo rules must become seriously ill and die, that
according to the opinion of an observer, they have
never yet dared to convince themselves of the con-
trary.³⁷

The taboo restrictions imposed upon persons
whose contact with the dead is to be understood
in the transferred sense, namely the mourning
relatives such as widows and widowers, are es-
sentially the same as those mentioned above, but
they are of greater interest for the point we are
trying to make. In the rules hitherto men-
tioned we see only the typical expression of the
virulence and power of diffusion of the taboo;
in those about to be cited we catch a gleam of

³⁷W. Mariner, “The Natives of the Tonga Islands,” 1818, see
Frazer, l. c., p. 140.

90

the motives, including both the ostensible ones
and those which may be regarded as the underly-
ing and genuine motives.

Among the Shuswap in British-Columbia wid-
ows and widowers have to remain segregated dur-
ing their period of mourning; they must not use
their hands to touch the body or the head and
all utensils used by them must not be used by
any one else. No hunter will want to approach
the hut in which such mourners live, for that
would bring misfortune; if the shadow of one
of the mourners should fall on him he would be-
come ill. The mourners sleep on thorn bushes,
with which they also surround their beds. This
last precaution is meant to keep off the spirit
of the deceased; plainer still is the reported
custom of other North American tribes where
the widow, after the death of her husband, has
to wear a kind of trousers of dried grass in or-
der to make herself inaccessible to the approach
of the spirit. Thus it is quite obvious that touch-
ing “in the transferred sense” is after all un-
derstood only as bodily contact, since the spirit
of the deceased does not leave his kin and does
not desist from “hovering about them” during
the period of mourning.

Among the Agutainos, who live on Palawan,
one of the Philippine Islands, a widow may not
leave her hut for the first seven or eight days

91

after her husband’s death, except at night, when
she need not expect encounters. Whoever sees
her is in danger of immediate death and there-
fore she herself warns others of her approach by
hitting the trees with a wooden stick with every
step she takes; these trees all wither. Another
observation explains the nature of the danger in-
herent in a widow. In the district of Mekeo,
British New Guinea, a widower forfeits all civil
rights and lives like an outlaw. He may not tend
a garden, or show himself in public, or enter the
village or go on the street. He slinks about like
an animal, in the high grass or in the bushes, and
must hide in a thicket if he sees anybody, espe-
cially a woman, approaching. This last hint
makes it easy for us to trace back the danger of
the widower or widow to the danger of tempta-
tion. The husband who has lost his wife must
evade the desire for a substitute; the widow has
to contend with the same wish and beside this, she
may arouse the desire of other men because she
is without a master. Every such satisfaction
through a substitute runs contrary to the inten-
tion of mourning and would cause the anger of
the spirit to flare up.³⁸

³⁸The same patient whose “impossibilities” I have correlated
with taboo, (see above, p. 47) acknowledged that she always
became indignant when she met anybody on the street who was
dressed in mourning. “Such people should be forbidden to go
out!” she said.

92

One of the most surprising, but at the same
time one of the most instructive taboo customs
of mourning among primitive races is the prohi-
bition against pronouncing the name of the de-
ceased. This is very widespread, and has been
subjected to many modifications with important
consequences.

Aside from the Australians and the Polynes-
ians, who usually show us taboo customs in their
best state of preservation, we also find this pro-
hibition among races so far apart and unrelated
to each other as the Samojedes in Siberia and
the Todas in South India, the Mongolians of
Tartary and the Tuaregs of the Sahara, the Aino
of Japan and the Akamba and Nandi in Central
Africa, the Tinguanes in the Philippines and the
inhabitants of the Nikobari Islands and of Mada-
gascar and Borneo.³⁹ Among some of these
races the prohibition and its consequences hold
good only for the period of mourning while in
others it remains permanent; but in all cases it
seems to diminish with the lapse of time after the
death.

The avoidance of the name of the deceased is
as a rule kept up with extraordinary severity.
Thus, among many South American tribes, it is
considered the gravest insult to the survivors to
pronounce the name of the deceased in their pres-

³⁹Frazer, l. c., p. 353.

93

ence, and the penalty set for it is no less than
that for the slaying itself.⁴⁰ At first it is not easy
to guess why the mention of the name should be
so abominated, but the dangers associated with
it have called into being a whole series of inter-
esting and important expedients to avoid this.
Thus the Masai in Africa have hit upon the eva-
sion of changing the name of the deceased imme-
diately upon his death; he may now be men-
tioned without dread by this new name, while all
the prohibitions remain attached to the old name.
It seems to be assumed that the ghost does not
know his new name and will not find it out. The
Australian tribes on Adelaide and Encounter
Bay are so consistently cautious that when a
death occurs almost every person who has the
same name as the deceased or a very similar one,
exchanges it for another. Sometimes by a fur-
ther extension of the same idea as seen among
several tribes in Victoria and in North America
all the relatives of the deceased change their
names regardless of whether their names resemble
the name of the deceased in sound. Among the
Guaycuru in Paraguay the chief used to give
new names to all the members of the tribe, on
such sad occasions, which they then remembered
as if they had always had them.⁴¹

⁴⁰Frazer, l. c., p. 352, etc.

⁴¹Frazer, l. c., p. 357, according to an old Spanish observer,
1732.

94

Furthermore, if the deceased had the same
name as an animal or object, etc. some of the
races just enumerated thought it necessary to
give these animals and objects new names, in
order not to be reminded of the deceased when
they mentioned them. Through this there must
have resulted a never ceasing change of vocabul-
ary, which caused a good deal of difficulty for
the missionaries, especially where the interdiction
upon a name was permanent. In the seven years
which the missionary Dobrizhofer spent among
the Abipons in Paraguay, the name for jaguar
was changed three times and the words for croco
dile, thorns and animal slaughter underwent a
similar fate.⁴² But the dread of pronouncing a
name which has belonged to a deceased person
extends also to the mention of everything in
which the deceased had any part, and a further
important result of this process of suppression is
that these races have no tradition or any histor-
ical reminiscences, so that we encounter the great
est difficulties in investigating their past history.
Among a number of these primitive races com-
pensating customs have also been established in
order to re-awaken the names of the deceased
after a long period of mourning; they are be-
stowed upon children, who were regarded as re-
incarnations of the dead.

⁴² Frazer, l. c., p. 360.

95

The strangeness of this taboo on names dimin-
ishes if we bear in mind that the savage looks
upon his name as an essential part and an impor-
tant possession of his personality, and that he
ascribes the full significance of things to words.
Our children do the same, as I have shown else-
where, and therefore they are never satisfied with
accepting a meaningless verbal similarity, but
consistently conclude that when two things have
identical names a deeper correspondence between
them must exist. Numerous peculiarities of
normal behavior may lead civilized man to con-
clude that he too is not yet as far removed as he
thinks from attributing the importance of things
to mere names and feeling that his name has be-
come peculiarly identified with his person. This
is corroborated by psychoanalytic experiences,
where there is much occasion to point out the im-
portance of names in unconscious thought activ-
ity.⁴³ As was to be expected, the compulsion
neurotics behave just like savages in regard to
names. They show the full “complex sensitive-
ness” towards the utterance and hearing of spe-
cial words (as do also other neurotics) and de-
rive a good many, often serious, inhibitions from
their treatment of their own name. One of these
taboo patients, whom I knew, had adopted the
avoidance of writing down her name for fear that

⁴³Stekel, Abraham.

96

it might get into somebody’s hands who thus
would come into possession of a piece of her per-
sonality. In her frenzied faithfulness, which
she needed to protect herself against the tempta-
tions of her phantasy, she had created for herself
the commandment, “not to give away anything
of her personality.” To this belonged first of all
her name, then by further application her hand-
writing, so that she finally gave up writing.

Thus it no longer seems strange to us that sav-
ages should consider a dead person’s name as a
part of his personality and that it should be sub-
jected to the same taboo as the deceased. Call-
ing a dead person by name can also be traced back
to contact with him, so that we can turn our at-
tention to the more inclusive problem of why this
contact is visited with such a severe taboo.

The nearest explanation would point to the
natural horror which a corpse inspires, especially
in view of the changes so soon noticeable after
death. Mourning for a dead person must also
be considered as a sufficient motive for everything
which has reference to him. But horror of the
corpse evidently does not cover all the details of
taboo rules, and mourning can never explain to
us why the mention of the dead is a severe insult
to his survivors. On the contrary, mourning
loves to preoccupy itself with the deceased, to
elaborate his memory, and preserve it for

97

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

the longest possible time. Something besides
mourning must be made responsible for the pecu-
liarities of taboo customs, something which evi-
dently serves a different purpose. It is this very
taboo on names which reveals this still unknown
motive, and if the customs did not tell us about
it we would find it out from the statements of
the mourning savages themselves.

For they do not conceal the fact that they fear
the presence and the return of the spirit of a
dead person; they practice a host of ceremonies
to keep him off and banish him.⁴⁴ They look
upon the mention of his name as a conjuration
which must result in his immediate presence.⁴⁵
They therefore consistently do everything to
avoid conjuring and awakening a dead person.
They disguise themselves in order that the spirit
may not recognize them,⁴⁶ they distort either his
name or their own, and become infuriated when
a ruthless stranger incites the spirit against his
survivors by mentioning his name. We can
hardly avoid the conclusion that they suffer, ac-
cording to Wundt’s expression, from the fear
of “his soul now turned into a demon.”⁴⁷

⁴⁴⁾ Frazer, l. c., p. 353, cites the Tuaregs of the Sahara as an
example of such an acknowledgment.

⁴⁵⁾ Perhaps this condition is to be added: as long as any part of
his physical remains exist. Frazer, l. c., p. 372.

⁴⁶⁾ “On the Nikobar Islands,” Frazer, l. c., p. 382.

⁴⁷⁾ Wundt, “Religion and Myth,” Vol. II, p. 49.

98

With this understanding we approach Wundt’s
conception who, as we have heard, sees the nature
of taboo in the fear of demons.

The assumption which this theory makes,
namely, that immediately after death the be-
loved member of a family becomes a demon, from
whom the survivors have nothing but hostility to
expect, so that they must protect themselves by
every means from his evil desires, is so peculiar
that our first impulse is not to believe it. Yet
almost all competent authors agree as to this in-
terpretation of primitive races. Westermarck,⁴⁸
who, in my opinion, gives altogether too little
consideration to taboo, makes this statement:
“On the whole facts lead me to conclude that the
dead are more frequently regarded as enemies
than as friends and that Jevons and Grant Allen
are wrong in their assertion that it was formerly
believed that the malevolence of the dead was as
a rule directed only against strangers, while they
were paternally concerned about the life and

⁴⁸ “The Origin and Development of Moral Conceptions,” see sec-
tion entitled “Attitude Towards the Dead,” Vol. II, p. 424. Both
the notes and the text show an abundance of corroborating, and
often very characteristic testimony, e. g., the Maori believed that
“the nearest and most beloved relatives changed their nature after
death and bore ill-will even to their former favorites.” The Aus-
tral negroes believe that every dead person is for a long time
malevolent; the closer the relationship the greater the fear. The
Central Eskimos are dominated by the idea that the dead come to
rest very late and that at first they are to be feared as mis-
chievous spirits who frequently hover about the village to spread
illness, death and other evils. (Boas.)

99

welfare of their descendants and the members
of their clan.”

R. Kleinpaul has written an impressive book
in which he makes use of the remnants of the old
belief in souls among civilized races to show the
relation between the living and the dead.⁴⁹ Ac-
cording to him too, this relation culminates in the
conviction that the dead, thirsting for blood,
draw the living after them. The living did not
feel themselves safe from the persecutions of
the dead until a body of water had been put
between them. That is why it was preferred
to bury the dead on islands or to bring them
to the other side of a river, the expressions “here”
and “beyond” originated in this way. Later
moderation has restricted the malevolence of
the dead to those categories where a peculiar
right to feel rancor had to be admitted, such as
the murdered who pursue their murderer as evil
spirits, and those who, like brides, had died with
their longings unsatisfied. Kleinpaul believes
that originally, however, the dead were all vam-
pires, who bore ill-will to the living, and strove
to harm them and deprive them of life. It was
the corpse that first furnished the conception of
an evil spirit.

The hypothesis that those whom we love best

⁴⁹R. Kleinpaul: “The Living and the Dead in Folklore, Re-
ligion and Myth,” 1898.

100

turn into demons after death obviously allows us
to put a further question. What prompted
primitive races to ascribe such a change of senti-
ment to the beloved dead? Why did they make
demons out of them? According to Wester-
marck this question is easily answered.⁵⁰ “As
death is usually considered the worst calamity
that can overtake man, it is believed that the
deceased are very dissatisfied with their lot.
Primitive races believe that death comes only
through being slain, whether by violence or by
magic, and this is considered already sufficient
reason for the soul to be vindictive and irritable.
The soul presumably envies the living and longs
for the company of its former kin; we can there-
fore understand that the soul should seek to kill
them with diseases in order to be re-united with
them. …

“ … A further explanation of the malevo-
lence ascribed to souls lies in the instinctive fear
of them, which is itself the result of the fear of
death.”

Our study of psychoneurotic disturbances
points to a more comprehensive explanation
which includes that of Westermarck.

When a wife loses her husband, or a daughter
her mother, it not infrequently happens that the
survivor is afflicted with tormenting scruples,

⁵⁰l. c., p. 426.

101

called “obsessive reproaches” which raise the
question whether she herself has not been guilty
through carelessness or neglect, of the death of
the beloved person. No recalling of the care
with which she nursed the invalid, or direct refu-
tation of the asserted guilt can put an end to
the torture, which is the pathological expression
of mourning and which in time slowly subsides.
Psychoanalytic investigation of such cases has
made us acquainted with the secret mainsprings
of this affliction. We have ascertained that these
obsessive reproaches are in a certain sense justi-
fied and therefore are immune to refutation or
objections. Not that the mourner has really
been guilty of the death or that she has really
been careless, as the obsessive reproach asserts;
but still there was something in her, a wish of
which she herself was unaware, which was not dis-
pleased with the fact that death came, and which
would have brought it about sooner had it been
strong enough. The reproach now reacts
against this unconscious wish after the death of
the beloved person. Such hostility, hidden in
the unconscious behind tender love, exists in al-
most all cases of intensive emotional allegiance
to a particular person, indeed it represents the
classic case, the prototype of the ambivalence of
human emotions. There is always more or less
of this ambivalence in everybody’s disposition;

102

normally it is not strong enough to give rise to
the obsessive reproaches we have described.
But where there is abundant predisposition for
it, it manifests itself in the relation to those we
love most, precisely where you would least ex-
pect it. The disposition to compulsion neurosis,
which we have so often taken for comparison with
taboo problems, is distinguished by a particularly
high degree of this original ambivalence of emo-
tion.

We now know how to explain the supposed
demonism of recently departed souls and the
necessity of being protected against their hostil-
ity through taboo rules. By assuming a similar
high degree of ambivalence in the emotional life
of primitive races such as psychoanalysis ascribes
to persons suffering from compulsion neurosis,
it becomes comprehensible that the same kind of
reaction against the hostility latent in the uncon-
scious behind the obsessive reproaches of the
neurotic should also be necessary here after the
painful loss has occurred. But this hostility,
which is painfully felt in the unconscious in the
form of satisfaction with the demise, experiences
a different fate in the case of primitive man: the
defense against it is accomplished by displace-
ment upon the object of hostility, namely the
dead. We call this defense process, frequent
both in normal and diseased psychic life, a pro--

103

jection. The survivor will deny that he has ever
entertained hostile impulses toward the beloved
dead; but now the soul of the deceased enter-
tains them and will try to give vent to them dur-
ing the entire period of mourning. In spite of
the successful defense through projection, the
punitive and remorseful character of this emo-
tional reaction manifests itself in being afraid,
in self-imposed renunciations and in subjection
to restrictions which are partly disguised as pro-
tective measures against the hostile demon.
Thus we find again that taboo has grown out of
the soil of an ambivalent emotional attitude.
The taboo of the dead also originates from the
opposition between the conscious grief and the
unconscious satisfaction at death. If this is the
origin of the resentment of spirits it is self-evi-
dent that just the nearest and formerly most be-
loved survivors have to fear it most.
As in neurotic symptoms, the taboo regulations
also evince opposite feelings. Their restrictive
character expresses mourning, while they also
betray very clearly what they are trying to con-
ceal, namely, the hostility towards the dead,
which is now motivated as self-defense. We
have learnt to understand part of the taboo regu-
lations as temptation fears. A dead person is
defenseless, which must act as an incitement to
satisfy hostile desires entertained against him;

104

this temptation has to be opposed by the prohi-
bition.

But Westermarck is right in not admitting any
difference in the savage’s conception between
those who have died by violence and those who
have died a natural death. As will be shown
later,⁵¹ in the unconscious mode of thinking even
a natural death is perceived as murder; the per-
son was killed by evil wishes. Any one inter-
ested in the origin and meaning of dreams deal-
ing with the death of dear relatives such as par-
ents and brothers and sisters will find that the
same feeling of ambivalence is responsible for the
fact that the dreamer, the child, and the savage
all have the same attitude towards the dead.⁵²

A little while ago we challenged Wundt’s con-
ception, who explains the nature of taboo through
the fear of demons, and yet we have just agreed
with the explanation which traces back the taboo
of the dead to a fear of the soul of the dead after
it has turned into a demon. This seems like a
contradiction, but it will not be difficult for us to
explain it. It is true that we have accepted the
idea of demons, but we know that this assump-
tion is not something final which psychology can-
not resolve into further elements. We have, as
it were, exposed the demons by recognizing them

⁵¹ Cf. Chap. III.

⁵² Freud, “The Interpretation of Dreams.”

105

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

as mere projections of hostile feelings which the
survivor entertains towards the dead.

The double feeling–tenderness and hostility
–against the deceased, which we consider well
founded, endeavors to assert itself at the time
of bereavement as mourning and satisfaction. A
conflict must ensue between these contrary feel-
ings and as one of them, namely the hostility, is
altogether or for the greater part unconscious,
the conflict cannot result in a conscious difference
in the form of hostility or tenderness as, for in-
stance, when we forgive an injury inflicted upon
us by some one we love. The process usually ad-
justs itself through a special psychic mechanism,
which is designated in psychoanalysis as projec-
tion. This unknown hostility, of which we are
ignorant and of which we do not wish to know, is
projected from our inner perception into the
outer world and is thereby detached from our
own person and attributed to the other. Not we,
the survivors, rejoice because we are rid of the de-
ceased, on the contrary, we mourn for him; but
now, curiously enough, he has become an evil
demon who would rejoice in our misfortune and
who seeks our death. The survivors must now
defend themselves against this evil enemy; they
are freed from inner oppression, but they have
only succeeded in exchanging it for an affliction
from without.

106

It is not to be denied that this process of pro-
jection, which turns the dead into malevolent
enemies, finds some support in the real hostilities
of the dead which the survivors remember and
with which they really can reproach the dead.
These hostilities are harshness, the desire to dom-
inate, injustice, and whatever else forms the back-
ground of even the most tender relations between
men. But the process cannot be so simple that
this factor alone could explain the origin of
demons by projection. The offenses of the dead
certainly motivate in part the hostility of the sur-
vivors, but they would have been ineffective if
they had not given rise to this hostility and the
occasion of death would surely be the least suit-
able occasion for awakening the memory of the
reproaches which justly could have been brought
against the deceased. We cannot dispense with
the unconscious hostility as the constant and
really impelling motive. This hostile tendency
towards those nearest and dearest could remain
latent during their lifetime, that is to say, it could
avoid betraying itself to consciousness either
directly or indirectly through any substitutive
formation. However, when the person who was
simultaneously loved and hated died, this was no
longer possible, and the conflict became acute.
The mourning originating from the enhanced
tenderness, became on the one hand more intol--

107

erant of the latent hostility, while on the other
hand it could not tolerate that the latter should
not give origin to a feeling of pure gratification.
Thus there came about the repression of the un-
conscious hostility through projection, and the
formation of the ceremonial in which fear of pun-
ishment by demons finds expression. With the
termination of the period of mourning, the con-
flict also loses its acuteness so that the taboo of
the dead can be abated or sink into oblivion.

4

Having thus explained the basis on which the
very instructive taboo of the dead has grown up,
we must not miss the opportunity of adding a few
observations which may become important for the
understanding of taboo in general.
The projection of unconscious hostility upon
demons in the taboo of the dead is only a single
example from a whole series of processes to which
we must grant the greatest influence in the form-
ation of primitive psychic life. In the foregoing
case the mechanism of projection is used to settle
an emotional conflict; it serves the same purpose
in a large number of psychic situations which lead
to neuroses. But projection is not specially cre-
ated for the purpose of defense, it also comes into
being where there are no conflicts. The projec-
tion of inner perceptions to the outside is a primi-

108

tive mechanism which, for instance, also influ-
ences our sense perceptions, so that it normally
has the greatest share in shaping our outer world.
Under conditions that have not yet been suf-
ficiently determined even inner perceptions of
ideational and emotional processes are projected
outwardly, like sense perceptions, and are used
to shape the outer world, whereas they ought to
remain in the inner world. This is perhaps
genetically connected with the fact that the func-
tion of attention was originally directed not
towards the inner world, but to the stimuli
streaming in from the outer world, and only re-
ceived reports of pleasure and pain from the
endopsychic processes. Only with the develop-
ment of the language of abstract thought
through the association of sensory remnants of
word representations with inner processes, did the
latter gradually become capable of perception.
Before this took place primitive man had devel-
oped a picture of the outer world through the out-
ward projection of inner perceptions, which we,
with our reënforced conscious perception, must
now translate back into psychology.

The projection of their own evil impulses upon
demons is only a part of what has become the
world system (“Weltanschauung”) of primitive
man which we shall discuss later as “animism.”
We shall then have to ascertain the psychological

109

nature of such a system formation and the points
of support which we shall find in the analysis
of these system formations will again bring us
face to face with the neurosis. For the present
we merely wish to suggest that the “secondary
elaboration” of the dream content is the proto-
type of all these system formations.⁵³ And let
us not forget that beginning at the stage of sys-
tem formation there are two origins for every act
judged by consciousness, namely the systematic,
and the real but unconscious origin.⁵⁴
Wundt⁵⁵ remarks that “among the influences
which myth everywhere ascribes to demons the
evil ones preponderate, so that according to the
religions of races evil demons are evidently older
than good demons.” Now it is quite possible
that the whole conception of demons was derived
from the extremely important relation to the
dead. In the further course of human develop-
ment the ambivalence inherent in this relation
then manifested itself by allowing two altogether
contrary psychic formations to issue from the
same root, namely, the fear of demons and of
ghosts, and the reverence for ancestors.⁵⁶ Noth-
 

⁵³Freud, “The Interpretation of Dreams.”

⁵⁴The projection creations of primitive man resemble the per
sonifications through which the poet projects his warring impulses
out of himself, as separated individuals.

⁵⁵“Myth and Religion,” p. 129.

⁵⁶In the psychoanalysis of neurotic persons who suffer, or have
suffered, in their childhood from the fear of ghosts, it is often not

110

ing testifies so much to the influence of mourning
on the origin of belief in demons as the fact that
demons were always taken to be the spirits of
persons not long dead. Mourning has a very dis-
tinct psychic task to perform, namely, to detach
the memories and expectations of the survivors
from the dead. When this work is accomplished
the grief, and with it the remorse and reproach,
lessens, and therefore also the fear of the demon.
But the very spirits which at first were feared as
demons now serve a friendlier purpose; they are
revered as ancestors and appealed to for help in
times of distress.

If we survey the relation of survivors to the
dead through the course of the ages, it is very evi-
dent that the ambivalent feeling has extraordi-
narily abated. We now find it easy to suppress
whatever unconscious hostility towards the dead
there may still exist without any special psychic
effort on our part. Where formerly satisfied
hate and painful tenderness struggled with each
other, we now find piety, which appears like a
cicatrice and demands: De mortuis nil nisi bene.
Only neurotics still blur the mourning for the loss
of their dear ones with attacks of compulsive re-

difficult to expose these ghosts as the parents. Compare also in
this connection the communication of P. Haeberlin, “Sexual
Ghosts” (“Sexual Problems,” Feb., 1912), where it is a question
of another erotically accentuated person, but where the father was
dead,

111

proaches which psychoanalysis reveals as the old
ambivalent emotional feeling. How this change
was brought about, and to what extent constitu-
tional changes and real improvement of familiar
relations share in causing the abatement of the
ambivalent feeling, need not be discussed here.
But this example would lead us to assume that
the psychic impulses of primitive man possessed
a higher degree of ambivalence than is found at
present among civilized human beings. With
the decline of this ambivalence the taboo, as the
compromise symptom of the ambivalent conflict,
also slowly disappeared. Neurotics who are
compelled to reproduce this conflict, together with
the taboo resulting from it, may be said to have
brought with them an atavistic remnant in the
form of an archaic constitution the compensation
of which in the interest of cultural demands en-
tails the most prodigious psychic efforts on their
part.

At this point we may recall the confusing in-
formation which Wundt offered us about the
double meaning of the word taboo, namely, holy
and unclean. (See above.) It was supposed
that originally the word taboo did not yet mean
holy and unclean but signified something de-
monic, something which may not be touched, thus
emphasizing a characteristic common to both ex-
tremes of the later conception; this persistent

112

common trait proves, however, that an original
correspondence existed between what was holy
and what was unclean, which only later became
differentiated.

In contrast to this, our discussions readily show
that the double meaning in question belonged to
the word taboo from the very beginning and that
it serves to designate a definite ambivalence as
well as everything which has come into existence
on the basis of this ambivalence. Taboo is itself
an ambivalent word and by way of supplement,
we may add that the established meaning of this
word might of itself have allowed us to guess
what we have found as the result of extensive in-
vestigation, namely, that the taboo prohibition is
to be explained as the result of an emotional
ambivalence. A study of the oldest languages
has taught us that at one time there were many
such words which included their own contrasts
so that they were in a certain sense ambivalent,
though perhaps not exactly in the same sense as
the word taboo.⁵⁷ Slight vocal modifications of
this primitive word containing two opposite
meanings later served to create a separate lin-
guistic expression for the two opposites originally
united in one word.

⁵⁷Compare my article on Abel’s “Gegensinn des Urworte” in
the “Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische
Forschungen,” Bd. II, 1910.

113

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

The word taboo has had a different fate; with
the diminished importance of the ambivalence
which it connotes it has itself disappeared, or
rather, the words analogous to it have vanished
from the vocabulary. In a later connection I
hope to be able to show that a tangible historic
change is probably concealed behind the fate of
this conception; that the word at first was asso-
ciated with definite human relations which were
characterized by great emotional ambivalence
from which it expanded to other analogous re-
lations.

Unless we are mistaken, the understanding of
taboo also throws light upon the nature and
origin of conscience. Without stretching ideas
we can speak of a taboo conscience and a taboo
sense of guilt after the violation of a taboo.
Taboo conscience is probably the oldest form in
which we meet the phenomenon of conscience.

For what is “conscience”? According to
linguistic testimony it belongs to what we know
most surely; in some languages its meaning is
hardly to be distinguished from consciousness.

Conscience is the inner perception of objections
to definite wish impulses that exist in us; but the
emphasis is put upon the fact that this rejection
does not have to depend on anything else, that it
is sure of itself. This becomes even plainer in
the case of a guilty conscience, where we become

114

aware of the inner condemnation of such acts
which realized some of our definite wish impulses.
Confirmation seems superfluous here; whoever
has a conscience must feel in himself the justifica-
tion of the condemnation, and the reproach for
the accomplished action. But this same charac-
ter is evinced by the attitude of savages towards
taboo. Taboo is a command of conscience, the
violation of which causes a terrible sense of guilt
which is as self-evident as its origin is unknown.⁵⁸

It is therefore probable that conscience also
originates on the basis of an ambivalent feeling
from quite definite human relations which contain
this ambivalence. It probably originates under
conditions which are in force both for taboo and
the compulsion neurosis, that is, one component
of the two contrasting feelings is unconscious and
is kept repressed by the compulsive domination
of the other component. This is confirmed by
many things which we have learned from our
analysis of neuroses. In the first place the char
acter of compulsion neurotics shows a predomi
nant trait of painful conscientiousness which is a
symptom of reaction against the temptation

⁵⁸It is an interesting parallel that the sense of guilt resulting
from the violation of a taboo is in no way diminished if the viola-
tion took place unwittingly (see examples above), and that even in
the Greek myth the guilt of Oedipus is not cancelled by the fact
that it was incurred without his knowledge and will and even
against them.

115

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

which lurks in the unconscious, and which de-
velops into the highest degrees of guilty con-
science as their illness grows worse. Indeed, one
may venture the assertion that if the origin of
guilty conscience could not be discovered through
compulsion neurotic patients, there would be no
prospect of ever discovering it. This task is suc-
cessfully solved in the case of the individual neu-
rotic, and we are confident of finding a similar so-
lution in the case of races.

In the second place we cannot help noticing
that the sense of guilt contains much of the nature
of anxiety; without hesitation it may be described
as “conscience phobia.” But fear points to un-
conscious sources; The psychology of the neu-
roses taught us that when wish feelings undergo
repression their libido becomes transformed into
anxiety. In addition we must bear in mind that
the sense of guilt also contains something un-
known and unconscious, namely the motivation
for the rejection. The character of anxiety in
the sense of guilt corresponds to this unknown
quantity.

If taboo expresses itself mainly in prohibitions
it may well be considered self-evident, without
remote proof from the analogy with neurosis
that it is based on a positive, desireful impulse.
For what nobody desires to do does not have to
be forbidden, and certainly whatever is expressly

116

forbidden must be an object of desire. If we
applied this plausible theory to primitive races
we would have to conclude that among their
strongest temptations were desires to kill their
kings and priests, to commit incest, to abuse their
dead and the like. That is not very prob-
able. And if we should apply the same theory to
those cases in which we ourselves seem to hear the
voice of conscience most clearly we would arouse
the greatest contradiction. For there we would
assert with the utmost certainty that we did not
feel the slightest temptation to violate any of
these commandments, as for example, the com-
mandment: Thou shalt not kill, and that we felt
nothing but repugnance at the very idea.

But if we grant the testimony of our conscience
the importance it claims, then the prohibition–
the taboo as well as our moral prohibitions–be-
comes superfluous, while the existence of a con-
science, in turn, remains unexplained and the con-
nection between conscience, taboo and neurosis
disappears. The net result of this would then
be our present state of understanding unless we
view the problem psychoanalytically.

But if we take into account the following re-
sults of psychoanalysis, our understanding of the
problem is greatly advanced. The analysis of
dreams of normal individuals has shown that our
own temptation to kill others is stronger and more

117

frequent than we had suspected and that it pro-
duces psychic effects even where it does not reveal
itself to our consciousness. And when we have
learnt that the obsessive rules of certain neurotics
are nothing but measures of self-reassurance and
self-punishment erected against the reënforced
impulse to commit murder, we can return with
fresh appreciation to our previous hypothesis that
every prohibition must conceal a desire. We can
then assume that this desire to murder actually
exists and that the taboo as well as the moral pro-
hibition are psychologically by no means super-
fluous but are, on the contrary, explained and
justified through our ambivalent attitude towards
the impulse to slay.

The nature of this ambivalent relation so often
emphasized as fundamental, namely, that the
positive underlying desire is unconscious, opens
the possibility of showing further connections and
explaining further problems. The psychic
processes in the unconscious are not entirely iden-
tical with those known to us from our conscious
psychic life, but have the benefit of certain notable
liberties of which the latter are deprived. An
unconscious impulse need not have originated
where we find it expressed, it can spring from an
entirely different place and may originally have
referred to other persons and relations, but
through the mechanism of displacement, it

118

reaches the point where it comes to our notice.
Thanks to the indestructibility of unconscious
processes and their inaccessibility to correction,
the impulse may be saved over from earlier times
to which it was adapted to later periods and con-
ditions in which its manifestations must neces-
sarily seem foreign. These are all only hints, but
a careful elaboration of them would show how
important they may become for the understand-
ing of the development of civilization.

In closing these discussions we do not want to
neglect to make an observation that will be of use
for later investigations. Even if we insist upon
the essential similarity between taboo and moral
prohibitions we do not dispute that a psycholog-
ical difference must exist between them. A
change in the relations of the fundamental am-
bivalence can be the only reason why the prohi-
bition no longer appears in the form of a taboo.

In the analytical consideration of taboo phe-
nomena we have hitherto allowed ourselves to be
guided by their demonstrable agreements with
compulsion neurosis; but as taboo is not a neuro-
sis but a social creation we are also confronted
with the task of showing wherein lies the essential
difference between the neurosis and a product of
culture like the taboo.

Here again I will take a single fact as my start-
ing point. Primitive races fear a punishment for

119

the violation of a taboo, usually a serious disease
or death. This punishment threatens only him
who has been guilty of the violation. It is differ-
ent with the compulsion neurosis. If the patient
wants to do something that is forbidden to him
he does not fear punishment for himself, but for
another person. This person is usually indefi-
nite, but, by means of analysis, is easily recog-
nized as some one very near and dear to the pa-
tient. The neurotic therefore acts as if he were
altruistic, while primitive man seems egotistical.
Only if retribution fails to overtake the taboo vio-
lator spontaneously does a collective feeling
awaken among savages that they are all threat-
ened through the sacrilege, and they hasten to in-
flict the omitted punishment themselves. It is
easy for us to explain the mechanism of this
solidarity. It is a question of fear of the con-
tagious example, the temptation to imitate, that is
to say, of the capacity of the taboo to infect. If
some one has succeeded in satisfying the repressed
desire, the same desire must manifest itself in all
his companions; hence, in order to keep down this
temptation, this envied individual must be de-
spoiled of the fruit of his daring. Not infre-
quently the punishment gives the executors them-
selves an opportunity to commit the same sacri-
legious act by justifying it as an expiation. This
is really one of the fundamentals of the human

120

code of punishment which rightly presumes the
same forbidden impulses in the criminal and in
the members of society who avenge his offense.
Psychoanalysis here confirms what the pious
were wont to say, that we are all miserable sin-
ners. How then shall we explain the unexpected
nobility of the neurosis which fears nothing for
itself and everything for the beloved person?
Psychoanalytic investigation shows that this no-
bility is not primary. Originally, that is to say
at the beginning of the disease, the threat of pun-
ishment pertained to one’s own person; in every
case the fear was for one’s own life; the fear of
death being only later displaced upon another
beloved person. The process is somewhat com-
plicated but we have a complete grasp of it. An
evil impulse—a death wish—towards the beloved
person is always at the basis of the formation of
a prohibition. This is repressed through a pro-
hibition, and the prohibition is connected with a
certain act which by displacement usually substi-
tutes the hostile for the beloved person, and the
execution of this act is threatened with the pen-
alty of death. But the process goes further and
the original wish for the death of the beloved
other person is then replaced by fear for his death.
The tender altruistic trait of the neurosis there-
fore merely compensates for the opposite attitude
of brutal egotism which is at the basis of it. If

121

we designate as social those emotional impulses
which are determined through regard for another
person who is not taken as a sexual object, we can
emphasize the withdrawal of these social factors
as an essential feature of the neurosis, which is
later disguised through over-
compensation.

Without lingering over the origin of these
social impulses and their relation to other funda-
mental impulses of man, we will bring out the sec-
ond main characteristic of the neurosis by means
of another example. The form in which taboo
manifests itself has the greatest similarity to the
touching phobia of neurotics, the Délire de
toucher. As a matter of fact this neurosis is reg-
ularly concerned with the prohibition of sexual
touching and psychoanalysis has quite generally
shown that the motive power which is deflected
and displaced in the neurosis is of sexual origin.
In taboo the forbidden contact has evidently not
only sexual significance but rather the more gen-
eral one of attack, of acquisition and of personal
assertion. If it is prohibited to touch the chief
or something that was in contact with him it
means that an inhibition should be imposed upon
the same impulse which on other occasions ex-
presses itself in suspicious surveillance of the
chief and even in physical ill-treatment of him
before his coronation. (See above.) Thus the
preponderance of sexual components of the im-
 

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TOTEM AND TABOO

pulse over the social components is the determin-
ing factor of the neurosis. But the social im-
pulses themselves came into being through the
union of egotistical and erotic components into
special entities.

From this single example of a comparison be-
tween taboo and compulsion neurosis it is already
possible to guess the relation between individual
forms of the neurosis and the creations of culture,
and in what respect the study of the psychology
of the neurosis is important for the understanding
of the development of culture.

In one way the neuroses show a striking and
far-reaching correspondence with the great social
productions of art, religion and philosophy, while
again they seem like distortions of them. We
may say that hysteria is a caricature of an artistic
creation, a compulsion neurosis, a caricature of a
religion, and a paranoic delusion a caricature of a
philosophic system. In the last analysis this
deviation goes back to the fact that the neuroses
are asocial formations; they seek to accomplish by
private means what arose in society through col-
lective labor. In analyzing the impulse of the
neuroses one learns that motive powers of sexual
origin exercise the determining influence in them,
while the corresponding cultural creations rest
upon social impulses and on such as have issued
from the combination of egotistical and sexual

123

components. It seems that the sexual need is not
capable of uniting men in the same way as the
demands of self preservation; sexual satisfaction
is in the first place the private concern of the
individual.

Genetically the asocial nature of the neurosis
springs from its original tendency to flee from a
dissatisfying reality to a more pleasurable world
of phantasy. This real world which neurotics
shun is dominated by the society of human beings
and by the institutions created by them; the
estrangement from reality is at the same time a
withdrawal from human companionship.