1

TOTEM AND TABOO

CHAPTER I

THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST

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

2

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

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

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

3

THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST

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

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

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

4

TOTEM AND TABOO

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

The totem is hereditary either through the
maternal or the paternal line; (maternal trans-
mission probably always preceded and was
only later supplanted by the paternal). The
attachment to a totem is the foundation of all
the social obligations of an Australian: it
extends on the one hand beyond the tribal
relationship, and on the other hand it super-
sedes consanguineous relationship¹.

The totem is not limited to district or to
locality; the members of a totem may live
separated from one another and on friendly
terms with adherents of other totems².

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

² This very brief extract of the totemic system cannot be left

5

THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST

And now, finally, we must consider that pe-
culiarity of the totemic system which attracts

without some elucidation and without discussing its limitations.
The name Totem or Totam was first learned from the North
American Indians by the Englishman, J. Long, in 1791. The
subject has gradually acquired great scientific interest and has
called forth a copious literature. I refer especially to Totemism
and Exogamy by J. G. Frazer, 4 vols., 1910, and the books
and articles of Andrew Lang (The Secret of Totem, 1905). The
credit for having recognized the significance of totemism for the
ancient history of man belongs to the Scotchman, J. Ferguson
MacLennan (Fortnightly Review, 1869-70). Exterior to Aus-
tralia, totemic institutions were found and are still observed among
North American Indians, as well as among the races of the Poly-
nesian Islands group, in East India, and in a large part of Africa.
Many traces and survivals otherwise hard to interpret lead to
the conclusion that totemism also once existed among the abori-
ginal Aryan and Semitic races of Europe, so that many investigators
are inclined to recognize in totemism a necessary phase of human
development through which every race has passed.

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

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

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

6

the interest of the psychoanalyst. Almost
everywhere the totem prevails there also exists
the law that the members of the same totem are not
allowed to enter into sexual relations with each
other; that is, that they cannot marry each other.
This represents the exogamy which is associated
with the totem.

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

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

(a) The violation of the prohibition is not left
to what is, so to speak, an automatic punish-
ment, as is the case with other violations of the

the fact that it is not altogether easy to decide what in the actual
conditions is to be taken as a faithful copy of the significant past
and what is to be considered as a secondary distortion of it.

7

prohibitions of the totem (e.g., not to kill the
totem animal), but is most energetically avenged
by the whole tribe as if it were a question of
warding off a danger that threatens the com-
munity as a whole or a guilt that weighs upon
all. A few sentences from Frazer’s book³ will
show how seriously such trespasses are treated
by these savages who, according to our standard
are otherwise very immoral.

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

³ Frazer, l.c., p. 54.

8

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

(c) As the totem is hereditary and is not
changed by marriage, the results of the prohibi-
tion, for instance in the case of maternal
heredity, are easily perceived. If, for example,
the man belongs to a clan with the totem of the
Kangaroo and marries a woman of the Emu
totem, the children, both boys and girls, are all
Emu. According to the totem law incestuous
relations with his mother and his sister, who are
Emu like himself, are therefore made impossible
for a son of this marriage⁴.

(d) But we need only a reminder to realize
that the exogamy connected with the totem ac-
complishes more; that is, aims at more than
the prevention of incest with the mother or the
sisters. It also makes it impossible for the man
to have sexual union with all the women of his

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

9

own group, with a number of females, therefore,
who are not consanguineously related to him, by
treating all these women like blood relations.
The psychological justification for this extra-
ordinary restriction, which far exceeds any-
thing comparable to it among civilized races,
is not, at first, evident. All we seem to under-
stand is that the rôle of the totem (the animal)
as ancestor is taken very seriously. Everybody
descended from the same totem is consanguin-
eous; that is, of one family; and in this family
the most distant grades of relationship are
recognized as an absolute obstacle to sexual
union.

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

In what manner the substitution of the totem
group for the actual family has come about re-
mains a riddle, the solution of which is perhaps
bound up with the explanation of the totem it-
self. Of course it must be remembered that
with a certain freedom of sexual intercourse,

10

extending beyond the limitations of matrimony,
the blood relationship, and with it also the pre-
vention of incest, becomes so uncertain that
we cannot dispense with some other basis for
the prohibition. It is therefore not superfluous
to note that the customs of Australians recog-
nize social conditions and festive occasions at
which the exclusive conjugal right of a man to a
woman is violated.

The linguistic customs of these tribes, as well
as of most totem races, reveals a peculiarity
which undoubtedly is pertinent in this connec-
tion. For the designations of relationship of
which they make use do not take into considera-
tion the relationship between two individuals,
but between an individual and his group; they
belong, according to the expression of L. H.
Morgan, to the ‘classifying’ system. That
means that a man calls not only his begetter
‘father’ but also every other man who, accord-
ing to the tribal regulations, might have married
his mother and thus become his father; he calls
‘mother’ not only the woman who bore him
but also every other woman who might have
become his mother without violation of the
tribal laws; he calls ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’
not only the children of his real parents, but
also the children of all the persons named who
stand in the parental group relation with him,

11

and so on. The kinship names which two
Australians give each other do not, therefore,
necessarily point to a blood relationship be-
tween them, as they would have to according
to the custom of our language; they signify
much more the social than the physical rela-
tions. An approach to this classifying system
is perhaps to be found in our nursery, when the
child is induced to greet every male and female
friend of the parents as ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’,
or it may be found in a transferred sense when
we speak of ‘Brothers in Apollo’, or ‘Sisters
in Christ’.

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

Although a number of authors, as, for instance,
B. Westermarck in his History of Human Mar-
riage⁵, oppose the conclusions which others
have drawn from the existence of group-rela-

⁵ Second edition, 1902.

12

tionship names, the best authorities on the
Australian savages are agreed that the classi-
ficatory relationship names must be considered
as survivals from the period of group marriages.
And, according to Spencer and Gillen⁶, a
certain form of group marriage can be estab-
lished as still existing to-day among the tribes
of the Urabunna and the Dieri. Group marriage
therefore preceded individual marriage among
these races, and did not disappear without leav-
ing distinct traces in language and custom.

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

Although we believe we understand the
motives of the marriage restrictions among the
Australian savages, we have still to learn that
the actual conditions reveal a still more be-
wildering complication. For there are only
few tribes in Australia which show no other
prohibition besides the totem barrier. Most
of them are so organized that they fall into two

⁶ The Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899).

13

divisions which have been called marriage
classes, or phratries. Each of these marriage
groups is exogamous and includes a majority
of totem groups. Usually each marriage group
is again divided into two subclasses (subphra-
tries), and the whole tribe is therefore divided
into four classes; the subclasses thus standing
between the phratries and the totem groups.

The typical and very often intricate scheme
of organization of an Australian tribe therefore
looks as follows:

PHRATRIES

a b

SUBPHRATRIES

c d e f

TOTEM

α β γ δ ε η 1 2 3 4 5 6

The twelve totem groups are brought under
four subclasses and two main classes. All the
divisions are exogamous⁷. The subclass c
forms an exogamous unit with e, and the sub-
class d with f. The success or the tendency of
these arrangements is quite obvious; they serve
as a further restriction on the marriage choice
and on sexual freedom. If there were only these

⁷ The number of totems is arbitrarily chosen.

14

twelve totem groups–assuming the same num-
ber of people in each group–every member
of a group would have ¹/₁₂ of all the women
of the tribe to choose from. The existence of
the two phratries reduces this number to ¹/₆ or
½; a man of the totem “ can only marry a
woman from the groups 1 to 6. With the
introduction of the two subclassess the selection
sinks to ¹/₃ or ¼; a man of the totem “ must
limit his marriage choice to a woman of the
totems 4, 5, 6.

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

15

THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST

generally ceases when the regulation of the
marriage choice at which they aimed has been
accomplished.

In the further development of the classifica-
tion of the marriage system there seems to be a
tendency to go beyond the prevention of natural
and group incest, and to prohibit marriage be-
tween more distant group relations, in a manner
similar to the Catholic church, which extended
the marriage prohibitions always in force for
brother and sisters, to cousins, and invented for
them the grades of spiritual kinship⁸.

It would hardly serve our purpose to go into
the extraordinarily intricate and unsettled dis-
cussion concerning the origin and significance of
the marriage classes, or to go more deeply into
their relation to totemism. It is sufficient for
our purposes to point out the great care ex-
pended by the Australians as well as by other
savage people to prevent incest⁹. We must
say that these savages are even more sensitive
to incest than we, perhaps because they are
more subject to temptations than we are, and
hence require more extensive protection against
it.

⁸ Article Totemism in Encyclopedia Britannica, eleventh edition,
1911 (A. Lang).

⁹ Storfer has recently drawn special attention to this point in
his monograph: Parricide as a Special Case. Papers on Applied
Psychic Investigation, No. 12 (Vienna, 1911).

16

But the incest dread of these races does not
content itself with the creation of the institu-
tions described, which, in the main, seem to be
directed against group incest. We must add
a series of ‘customs’ which watch over the
individual behaviour to near relatives in our
sense, which are maintained with almost religi-
ous severity and of whose object there can
hardly be any doubt. These customs or custom
prohibitions may be called ‘avoidances’. They
spread far beyond the Australian totem races.
But here again I must ask the reader to be
content with a fragmentary excerpt from the
abundant material.

Such restrictive prohibitions are directed in
Melanesia against the relations of boys with their
mothers and sisters. Thus, for instance, on
Lepers Island, one of the New Hebrides, the boy
leaves his maternal home at a fixed age and
moves to the ‘clubhouse’, where he there regu-
larly sleeps and takes his meals. He may still
visit his home to ask for food; but if his sister is
at home he must go away before he has eaten;
if no sister is about he may sit down to eat near
the door. If brother and sister meet by chance
in the open, she must run away or turn aside
and conceal herself. If the boy recognizes
certain footprints in the sand as his sister’s he is
not to follow them, nor is she to follow his. He

17

will not even mention her name and will guard
against using any current word if it forms
part of her name. This avoidance, which
begins with the ceremony of puberty, is strictly
observed for life. The reserve between mother
and son increases with age and generally is
more obligatory on the mother's side. If she
brings him something to eat she does not give
it to him herself but puts it down before him,
nor does she address him in the familiar
manner of mother and son, but uses the formal
address. Similiar customs obtain in New Cale-
donia. If brother and sister meet, she flees
into the bush and he passes by without turning
his head toward her¹⁰.

On the Gazella Peninsula in New Britain a
sister, beginning with her marriage, may no
longer speak with her brother, nor does she
utter his name but designates him by means
of a circumlocution¹¹.

In New Mecklenburg some cousins are subject
to such restrictions, which also apply to
brothers and sisters. They may neither
approach each other, shake hands, nor give each
other presents, though they may talk to each
other at a distance of several paces. The

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

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

18

penalty for incest with a sister is death through
hanging¹².

These rules of avoidance are especially severe
in the Fiji Islands where they concern not only
consanguineous sisters but group sisters as well.

To hear that these savages hold sacred orgies
in which persons of just these forbidden degrees
of kinship seek sexual union would seem still
more peculiar to us, if we did not prefer to make
use of this contradiction to explain the prohibi-
tion instead of being astonished at it¹³.

Among the Battas of Sumatra these laws of
avoidance affect all near relationships. For in-
stance, it would be most offensive for a Battan
to accompany his own sister to an evening
party. A brother will feel most uncomfortable
in the company of his sister even when other
persons are also present. If either comes into
the house, the other prefers to leave. Nor will
a father remain alone in the house with his
daughter any more than the mother with her
son. The Dutch missionary who reported
these customs added that unfortunately he
had to consider them well founded. It is
assumed without question by these races that
a man and a woman left alone together will

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

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

19

indulge in the most extreme intimacy, and as
they expect all kinds of punishments and evil
consequences from consanguineous intercourse
they do quite right to avoid all temptations by
means of such prohibitions¹⁴.

Among the Barongos in Delagoa Bay, in
Africa, the most rigorous precautions are di-
rected, curiously enough, against the sister-in-
law, the wife of the brother of one’s own wife.
If a man meets this person who is so dangerous
to him, he carefully avoids her. He does not
dare to eat out of the same dish with her; he
speaks only timidly to her, does not dare to
enter her hut, and greets her only with a
trembling voice¹⁵.

Among the Akamba (or Wakamba) in British
East Africa, a law of avoidance is in force which
one would have expected to encounter more fre-
quently. A girl must carefully avoid her own
father between the time of her puberty and her
marriage. She hides herself if she meets him
on the street and never attempts to sit down
next to him, behaving in this way right up to her
engagement. But after her marriage no further
obstacle is put in the way of her social inter-
course with her father¹⁶.

The most widespread and strictest avoidance,

¹⁴ Frazer, l.c., II. p. 189.

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

¹⁶ Frazer, l.c., II, p. 424.

20

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

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

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

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

21

nounce the name of his mother-in-law, or she
his¹⁷.

On the Solomon Islands, beginning with his
marriage, a man must neither see nor speak with
his mother-in-law, If he meets her he acts
as if he did not know her and runs away as fast
as he can in order to hide himself¹⁸.

Among the Zulu Kaffirs custom demands that
a man should be ashamed of his mother-in-law
and that he should do everything to avoid her
company. He does not enter a hut in which
she is, and when they meet he or she goes aside,
she perhaps hiding behind a bush while he holds
his shield before his face. If they cannot avoid
each other and the woman has nothing with
which to cover herself, she at least binds a
bunch of grass around her head in order to
satisfy the ceremonial requirements. Com-
munication between them must either be made
through a third person or else they may shout
at each other at a considerable distance if they
have some barrier between them as, for in-
stance, the enclosure of a kraal. Neither may
utter the other's name¹⁹.

Among the Basogas, a negro tribe living in
the region of the Nile sources, a man may talk

¹⁷ Frazer, l.c., II, p. 76.

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

¹⁹ Frazer, l.c., II, p. 385.

22

to his mother-in-law only if she is in another
room of the house and is not visible to him.
Moreover, this race abominates incest to such
an extent as not to let it go unpunished even
among domestic animals²⁰.

Whereas all observers have interpreted the
purpose and meaning of the avoidances between
near relatives as protective measures against in-
cest, different interpretations have been given
for those prohibitions which concern the
relationship with the mother-in-law. It was
quite incomprehensible why all these races
should manifest such great fear of temptation
on the part of the man for an elderly woman,
old enough to be his mother²¹.

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

Sir J. Lubbock, in his book The Origin of
Civilization, traces back the behaviour of the
mother-in-law toward the son-in-law to the
former ‘marriage by capture’. “As long as

²⁰ Frazer, l.c., II, p. 461.

²¹ v. Crawley: The Mystic Rose (London, 1902), p. 405.

23

THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST

the capture of women actually took place, the
indignation of the parents was probably serious
enough. When nothing but symbols of this
form of marriage survived, the indignation of
the parents was also symbolized and this custom
continued after its origin had been forgotten.”
Crawley has found it easy to show how little this
tentative explanation agrees with the details of
actual observation.

E. B. Tylor thinks that the treatment of the
son-in-law on the part of the mother-in-law is
nothing more than a form of ‘cutting’ on the
part of the woman’s family. The man counts
as a stranger, and this continues until the first
child is born. But even if no account is taken
of cases in which this last condition does not
remove the prohibition, this explanation is
subject to the objection that it does not throw
any light on the custom dealing with the
relation between mother-in-law and son-in-law,
thus overlooking the sexual factor, and that it
does not take into account the almost sacred
loathing which finds expression in the laws of
avoidance²².

A Zulu woman who was asked about the basis
for this prohibition showed great delicacy of
feeling in her answer: “It is not right that he

²² Crawley, l.c., p. 407.

24

should see the breasts which nursed his wife ” ²³

It is known that also among civilized races
the relation of son-in-law and mother-in-law
belongs to one of the most difficult sides of
family organization. Although laws of avoid-
ance no longer exist in the society of the white
races of Europe and America, much quarrelling
and displeasure would often be avoided if they
did exist and did not have to be re-established
by individuals. Many a European will see an
act of high wisdom in the laws of avoidance
which savage races have established to preclude
any understanding between two persons who
have become so closely related. There is
hardly any doubt that there is something in
the psychological situation of mother-in-law
and son-in-law which furthers hostilities be-
tween them and renders living together difficult.
The fact that the witticisms of civilized races
show such a preference for this very mother-in-
law theme seems to me to point to the fact that
the emotional relations between mother-in-law
and son-in-law are controlled by components
which stand in sharp contrast to each other.
I mean that the relation is really ‘ambivalent’,
that is, it is composed of conflicting feelings of
tenderness and hostility.

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

25

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

The knowledge of hidden psychic feelings
which psychoanalytic investigation of indi-
viduals has given us, makes it possible to add
other motives to the above. Where the psycho-
sexual needs of the woman are to be satisfied
in marriage and family life, there is always the
danger of dissatisfaction through the premature
termination of the conjugal relation, and the
monotony in the wife's emotional life. The
ageing mother protects herself against this by

26

living through the lives of her children, by
identifying herself with them and making their
emotional experiences her own. Parents are
said to remain young with their children, and
this is, in fact, one of the most valuable psychic
benefits which parents derive from their children.
Childlessness thus eliminates one of the best
means to endure the necessary resignation
imposed upon the individual through marriage.
This emotional indentification with the daugh-
ter may easily go so far with the mother that
she also falls in love with the man her daughter
loves, which leads, in extreme cases, to severe
forms of neurotic ailments on account of the
violent psychic resistance against this emotional
predisposition. At all events the tendency
to such infatuation is very frequent with the
mother-in-law, and either this infatuation itself
or the tendency opposed to it joins the conflict
of contending forces in the psyche of the
mother-in-law. Very often it is just this harsh
and sadistic component of the love emotion
which is turned against the son-in-law in order
better to suppress the forbidden tender feelings.

The relation of the husband to his mother-in-
law is complicated through similar feelings
which, however, spring from other sources. The
path of object selection has normally led him to
his love object through the image of his mother

27

and perhaps of his sister; in consequence of the
incest barriers his preference for these two
beloved persons of his childhood has been
deflected and he is then able to find their image
in strange objects. He now sees the mother-
in-law taking the place of his own mother and
of his sister’s mother, and there develops a
tendency to return to the primitive selection,
against which everything in him resists. His
incest dread demands that he should not be
reminded of the genealogy of his love selection;
the actuality of his mother-in-law, whom he had
not known all his life like his mother so that
her picture can be preserved unchanged in his
unconscious, facilitates this rejection. An
added mixture of irritability and animosity in
his feelings leads us to suspect that the mother-
in-law actually represents an incest temptation
for the son-in-law, just as it not infrequently
happens that a man falls in love with his
subsequent mother-in-law before his inclination
is transferred to her daughter.

I see no objection to the assumption that it is
just this incestuous factor of the relationship
which motivates the avoidance between son-
and mother-in-law among savages. Among the
explanations for the ‘avoidances’ which these
primitive races observe so strictly, we would
therefore give preference to the opinion origin-

28

ally expressed by Fison, who sees nothing in
these regulations but a protection against
possible incest. This would also hold good for
all the other avoidances between those related
by blood or by marriage. There is only one
difference, namely, in the first case the incest
is direct, so that the purpose of the prevention
might be conscious; in the other case, which
includes the mother-in-law relation, the incest
would be a phantasy temptation brought about
by unconscious intermediary links.

We have had little opportunity in this
exposition to show that the facts of folk-psycho-
logy can be seen in a new light through the appli-
cation of the psychoanalytic point of view, for
the incest dread of savages has long been known
as such, and is in need of no further interpreta-
tion. What we can add to the further apprecia-
tion of incest dread is the statement that it is a
subtle infantile trait and is in striking agree-
ment with the psychic life of the neurotic.
Psychoanalysis has taught us that the first
object selection of the boy is of an incestuous
nature and that it is directed to the forbidden
objects, the mother and the sister; pyscho-
analysis has taught us also the methods through
which the maturing individual frees himself
from these incestuous attractions. The neu-
rotic, however, regularly presents to us a piece

29

of psychic infantilism; he has either not been
able to free himself from the childlike conditions
of psychosexuality, or else he has returned to
them (inhibited development and regression).
Hence the incestuous fixations of the libido
still play or again are playing the main rôle
in his unconscious psychic life. We have gone
so far as to declare that the relation to the
parents instigated by incestuous longings is the
central complex of the neurosis. This dis-
covery of the significance of incest for the
neurosis naturally meets with the most general
incredulity on the part of the grown-up, normal
man; a similar rejection will also meet the
researches of Otto Rank, which show in even
larger scope to what extent the incest theme
stands in the centre of poetical interest and
how it forms the material of poetry in countless
variations and distortions. We are forced to
believe that such a rejection is above all
the product of man’s deep aversion to his
former incest wishes which have since suc-
cumbed to repression. It is therefore of im-
portance to us to be able to show that man’s in-
cest wishes, which later are destined to become
unconscious, are still felt to be dangerous by
savage races who consider them worthy of the
most severe defensive measures.