CHAPTER 1
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST

PRIMITIVE man is known to us by the stages of develop-
ment 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 |
received either directly or through the medium of
legends, myths, and fairy tales; and through the rem- |
nants of his ways of thinking that survive in our own
manners and customs. Moreover, in a certain sense
he is still our contemporary : there are people whom we
still consider more closely related to primitive man than —
to ourselves, in Whom we therefore recognize the direct
descendants and representatives of earlier man. We
can thus judge the so-called savage and semi-savage |
races; their psychic life assumes а peculiar interest |
| for us, for we can recognize in their psychic life
a well-preserved, early stage of our own develop-
ment.
Jf 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 sub-
jects that are more or less familiar to us. 8
15

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

The aborigines of Australia are looked upon as a
peculiar race which shows neither physical nor
linguistic relationship with its nearest neighbours, the
| Melanesian, Polynesian, and Malayan races. They do |
not build houses or permanent huts; they do not culti-
vate the soil or keep any domestic animals except dogs;
and they do not even know the art of pottery. They
live exclusively on the flesh of all sorts of animals whi
they kill in the chase, and on the roots which they di
Kings or chieftains are unknown among them, and all
communal affairs are decided by the elders in assembly
` It is quite doubtful whether they evince any traces of
_ religion in the form of worship of higher beings. The |
/ tribes living in the interior who have to contend wi
e 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 organization seems to serve |

this object or to have been brought into relation with |

its attainment.
Among the Australians the system of Totemism takes
the place of all religious and social institutions. Aus.

tralian 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 dangerous and feared; more rarely the

totem is a plant or a force of nature (rain, water), which |
= stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan. The |

totem is first of all the tribal ancestor of the clan, as well
as its tutelary spirit and protector; it sends oracles and,
though otherwise dangerous, the totem knows and
spares its children. The members of a totem are there-
fore 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 move-
ments and characteristics of their totems.

The totem is hereditary either through the maternal
or the paternal line; (maternal transmission 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

17

. on the one hand gi the” tribal toi and on
the other hand it supersedes consanguineous relation-
ship?

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

And now, finally, we must consider that peculiarity
of the totemic system which attracts the interest of the
psychoanalyst. Almost everywhere where the totem

1 Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. 1, р. 53. “ The totem.
bond is stronger than the bond of blood or family in the modern
sense.” 4. k

2 This very brief extract of the totemic system cannot be left
without some elucidation and without discussing its limitations.
The name Totem or Totam was first learned from the North
American Indians by the Englishman, J. Long, in 1791. The
subject has gradually acguired great scientific interest and has
called forth a copious literature. I refer especially to Toremism
and Exogamy by 7. 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 Tndians, as well as among the races of
the Polynesian Islands group, in East India, and in a large part of
Africa. Many traces and survivals otherwise hard to interpret
Jead to the conclusion that totemism also once existed among the
aboriginal 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
18

| THE SAVAGES DREAD OF INCEST |
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 asso- —
ciated with the totem.
This sternly maintained prohibition is very remark- —
able. 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

foundation of his social duties and, as we shall hear, of his sexual
restrictions as well? Many different theories have been ad
vanced 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
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,

19

totemism. We are therefore not astonished if some

investigators simply assume that at first exogamy—both

with totemism, but that it was added to it at some time
| without any deeper association, when marriage restric-
| tions proved necessary. However that may be, the
. association of totemism and exogamy exists, and proves
to be very strong.
| Let us elucidate the meaning of this prohibition
| through further discussion.

(a) The violation of the prohibition is not left to what
is, so to speak, an automatic punishment, as is the case
with other violations of the prohibitions of the totem

| (e.g, not to kill the totem animal), but is most ene! :

| gelically avenged by the whole tribe as if it were a ques-
tion of warding off a danger that threatens the com-
munity as a whole or a guilt that weighs upon all. Al
few sentences from Frazer's book * will show how s
ously such trespasses are treated by these sava;
who, according to our standard, are otherwise ver
immoral.

“In Australia the regular penalty for sexual inter-

ourse with a person of a forbidden clan is death. Tt

| 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.

1 Frazer, Lc, p. 54.
20

i the T Ta- Ta-thi tribe, New South Wales, in ques
cases which occur, the man is killed, but the woman
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
(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.

marriage, the results of the prohibition, 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
| marriage.

1 But the father, who is a Kangaroo, is fr 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.

21

| TOTEM AND TABOO | |
(d) But we need only a reminder to realize that the
exogamy connected with the totem accomplishes more;
| that is, aims at more than the prevention of incest with
the mother or the sisters. It also makes it impossible .
for the man to have sexual union with all the women of
"his own group, with a number of females, therefore,
- who are not consanguineously related to him, by treat-
ing all these women like blood relations. The psycho-
| logical justification for this extraordinary restriction,
which far exceeds anything comparable to it among |
civilized races, is not, at first, evident. All we seem to 」
understand is that the rôle of the totem (the animal) as 」
ancestor is taken very seriously. Everybody descended
„from the same totem is consanguineous ; 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 |
grade of incest dread or incest sensitiveness, combined |
with the peculiarity, which we do not very well under- |

. stand, 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 remains a riddle,
the solution of which is perhaps bound up with the ex-
planation of the totem itself. Of course it must be
remembered that with a certain freedom of sexual inter-

- 22

THE SAVAGES DREAD OF INCEST

course, extending beyond the limitations of matrimony,

the blood relationship, and with it also the prevention
of incest, becomes so uncertain that we cannot dispense
with some other basis for the prohibition. It is there-
fore not superfluous to note that the customs of Aus-
tralians recognize 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, reveal a peculiarity which un-
doubtedly is pertinent in this connection. For the
designations of relationship of which they make use do

not take into consideration 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, according to the tribal
regulations, might have married his mother and thus
become his father; he calls “ mother ” not only the
woman who bore him but also every other woman who
might have become his mother without violation of the
tribal laws; he calls “ brothers ” and "sisters ” not
only the children of his real parents, but also the chil-
dren of all the persons named who stand in the parental
group relation with him, and so on. The kinship
names which two Australians give each other do not,
therefore, necessarily point to a blood relationship
between them, as they would have to according to the

custom of our language; they signify much more the
23

E ‘as brothers and sisters although not born of the same.

social than the physical relations. An said to 1
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 marriage 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 | |

mother, and would take all the men of the group for |
their fathers. i
Although a number of authors, as, for instance, В. |
Westermarck in his History of Human Marriage
oppose the conclusions which others have drawn from |
the existence of group-relationship names, the best
authorities on the Australian savages are agreed that
"the classificatory relationship names must be considered
"as survivals from the period of group marriages. And,
according to Spencer and Gillen,? a certain form of
group marriage can be established as still existing
to-day among the tribes of the Urabunna and the
| Dieri. Group marriage therefore preceded individual

1 Second edition, 1902.
* The Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1859).
24

without leaving distinct traces in language and
custom. .-
H"Baum-exeleindividusthisge,wcsn 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. i
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 bewildering complication. For there are |
— only a few tribes in Australia which show no other pro-
hibition besides the totem barrier. Most of them are
_ so organized that they fall into two divisions which
have been called marriage classes, or phratries. Each |
of these marriage groups is exogamious 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 subelasses thus standing between the
phratries and the totem groups.
For the typical and very often intricate scheme of |
| organization of an Australian tribe see diagram on |
page 26. : a
The twelve totem groups are brought under four sub- '
classes and two main classes. All the divisions are |
i 25 :

É
É

A | SUBPHRATRIES

Torem S
な ② ア の e カ

Mia

exogamous The subclass с forms an exogamous unit
with e, and the subclass 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 twelve
totem groups—assuming the same number of people in
each group—every member of a group would have 1!
of all the women of the tribe to choose from. The
existence of the two phratries reduces this number to
+ or 4; a man of the totem a can only marry a woman
from the groups ① to 6. With the introduction of the”
two subclasses the selection sinks to % or 4; 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 arrange-
ments seek to attain the same object as the totem ex-
ogamy, and even strive for more. But whereas the
totem exogamy makes the impression of a sacred statute

1 The number of totems is arbitrarily chosen.
2

marriage classes, with their subdivisions and the con
tions 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 in-

fluence of the totem was on the wane. And while the —

totem system is, as we know, the basis of all other social
obligations and moral restrictions of the tribe, the im-

portance of the phratries generally ceases when the |

regulation of the marriage choice at which they aimed |

has been accomplished.
In the further development of the classification of
the marriage system there seems to be a tendency

. to go beyond the prevention of natural and group
incest, and to prohibit marriage between more

distant group relations, in a manner similar to the
Catholic church, which extended the marriage pro-
hibitions always in force for brother and sisters, to
cousins, and invented for them the grades of spiritual
kinship.:

It would hardly serve our purpose to go into the

extraordinarily intricate and unsettled discussion con- |

cerning the origin and significance of the marriage
classes, or to go more deeply into their relation
to totemism. It is sufficient for our purposes to
point out the great care expended by the Austra-
lians as well as by other savage people to prevent

3 Article Totemism in Encyclopedia Britannica, eleventh edi-

tion, 1911 (A. Lang).
27

incest! We must say that these savages are even
more sensitive to incest than we, perhaps because
they are more subject to temptations than we are,
and hence require more extensive protection against
it.

But the incest dread of these races does not content
. itself with the creation of the institutions described
which, in the main, seem to be directed against group
incest. We must add a series of “ customs ” which
watch over the individual behaviour to near relatives
in our sense, which are maintained with almost relig-
ious 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 there again I must ask
| the reader to be content with a fragmentary excerpt
from the abundant material.

Such restrictive prohibitions are directed in Melanesi
against the relations of boys with their mothers
sisters. Thus, for instance, on Lepers Island, one
the New Hebrides, the boy leaves his maternal home at
— a fixed age and moves to the “ clubhouse,” where he

| there regularly 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

|! 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). s
28

E DRFAD INCE: i
must run away or turn aside and conceal herself. -
ー the boy recognizes certain footprints in the sand |
= as his sisters he is not to follow them, nor is she

to follow his. He will not even mention her name
and will guard against using any current word if
it forms part of her name. This avoidance, which
begins with the ceremony of puberty, is strictly —
observed for life. The reserve between mother and
son increases with age and generally is more obli-
| gatory on the mother's side. If she brings him |
something to eat she does not give it to him herself.
but puts it down before him, nor does she address him
| in the familiar manner of mother and son, but uses
| the formal address. Similar customs obtain in New
. Caledonia. If brother and sister meet, she flees into
| the bush and he passes by without turning his head
toward her
On the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain a sister,
beginning with her marriage, may no longer speak with —
her brother, nor ddes she utter his name but designates
| him by means of a circumlocution.* ⑤
In New Mecklenburg some cousins are subject to |
4

_ such restrictions, which also apply to brothers and sis-

ters. They may neither approach each other, shake
hands, nor give each other presents, though they
| may talk to cach other ata distance of several paces.

3
4
⑧

— R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians; also Frazer, Totemism ||

| and Exogamy, Vol. I, p 77. E

| * Frazer, Le, II, p. 124, according to Kieintischen: The In

habitants of the Coast of the Gazelle Peninsula.
29. ⑧

| The penalty for incest with a sister is death throug
hanging.

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 prohibition instead of being astonished
at it?

Among the Battas of Sumatra these laws of avoid-
ance affect all near relationships. For instance, 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 moré than the mother
with her son. Thé Dutch missionary who reported 。
these customs added that unfortunately he had to |
consider them well founded. Tt is assumed without
question by these races that a man and a woman"
left alone together will indulge in the most extreme

= intimacy, and as they expect all kinds of punish-
ments and cvil consequences from consanguineous

Frazer, Le., IL, p. 131, according to P. С. Peckel in Anthropes,
08. å

2 Frazer, Les, II, p. 147, according to the Rev. L. Fison.
30

THE SAVAGES DREAD OF INCEST

intercourse they do quite right to avoid all temptations |

by means of such prohibitions.*

Among the Barongos in Delagoa Bay, in Africa, the
most rigorous précautions are directed, 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 voice?

Among the Akamba (or Wakamba) in British East
Africa, a law of avoidance is in force which one would
have expected to encounter more frequently. 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 intercourse with
her father:

The most widespread and strictest avoidance, which

is perhaps the most interesting one for civilized races, is —

that which restricts the social relations between a man
and his mother-in-law. It is quite general in Australia,
but it is also in force among the Melanesian, Polynesian
and Negro races of Africa as far as the traces of totem-
ism and group relationship reach, and probably farther

* Frazer, /.c., II, p. 189.
2 Frazer, Le, IL, p. 388, according to Junod,
? Frazer, Le, 11, р. 424.
31 i

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 dis-
semination than in the substance and the purpose of
the mother-in-law avoidance, I will here also limit my-
self 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. I
they meet by chance on a path, the woman steps aside
and turns her back until he is passed or he does the
same. E

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

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

1 Frazer, Le, II, p. 76.
2 Frazer, Le, II, p. 113, according to C. Ribbe: Two Years
among the Cannibals of the Solomon Islands, 1905.
s 32

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. Communication 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 instance, the

enclosure of a kraal. Neither may utter the other's

name.

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

‘Whereas all observers have interpreted the purpose
‘and meaning of the avoidances between near relatives
as protective measures against incest, different inter-
pretations 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

1 Frazer, Lc, II, p. 385.
2 Frazer, Lc, II, p. 461.
в 33

TOTEM AND TABOO

the man for an elderly woman, old enough to be his
mother.)

The same objection was also raised against the con-
ception 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 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 con-
| tinues 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-

? y. Crawley: The Mystic Rose (London, 1902), p. 405.
34

ind n-law and son-in-law, thus Oo the sexual
factor, and that it does not take into account the almost
sacred loathing which finds expression in the laws of
avoidance.

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 should see the breasts
which nursed his wife.” +

It is known that also among civilized races the rela-
tion of son-in-law and mother-in-law belongs to one of
the most difficult sides of family organization,
Although laws of avoidance no longer exist in the
society of the white races of Europe and America, much
quarreling and displeasure would often be avoided if
they did exist and did not have to be 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 between them and renders liv-
ing 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

1 Crawley, Le, p. 407.

* Crawley, Lc., p. 401, according to Leslie: Among the Zulus
and Amatongas, 1875.

35

TOTEM AND TABOO
in sharp contrast to each other. I mean that the rela- |
tion is really “ ambivalent,” that is, it is composed of
conflicting feelings of tenderness and hostility.

A certain part of these feelings is evident. The
mother-in-law is unwilling to give up the possession of
her daughter; she distrusts the stranger to whom her
daughter has been delivered, 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 pre-
ceded him in the possession of his wife’s tenderness
and, last but not least, his aversion to being disturbed
in his illusion of sexual over-valuation. As a rule such
a disturbance 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 spon-
taneity which makes his wife precious to him.

The knowledge of hidden psychic feelings which |
psychoanalytic investigation of individuals has given us -
makes it possible to add other motives to the above.
Where the psychosexual needs of the woman are to be |
satisfied in marriage and family life, there is always the 」
danger of dissatisfaction through the premature ter- |
mination of the conjugal relation, and the monotony in
the wife's emotional life. The ageing mother protects
herself against this by living through the lives of her
children, by identifying herself with them and making
their emotional experiences her own. Parents are said
36

THE SAVAGES DREAD OF INCFS
_ to remain young with their children, and this is, in fact,
one of the most valuable psychic benefits which parents
| derive from their children. Childlessness thus elimin-
ates one of the best means to endure the necessary re-
_ signation imposed upon the individual through mar-
riage. This emotional identification with the daugh-
ter may easily go on 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 ail-
ments 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 con-
tending 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 and perhaps of his sister; in con-
sequence of the incest barriers his preference for these
two beloved persons of his childhood has been de-
flected 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
È 37

É #

bles en
TOTEM AND TABOO
selection, against which everything in him resists. His

incest dread demands that he should not be reminded
of the gencalogy of his love selection; the actuality of
his mother-in-law, whom he has 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 1
inclination is transferred to her daughter. 1
I see no objection to the assumption that it is just this
incestuous factor of the relationship which motivat
the avoidance between son- and mother-in-law ато!
savages. Among the explanations for the “avoi
ances ” which these primitive races observe so strictly,
we would therefore give preference to the opinion origin-
ally expressed by Fison, who sees nothing in these
regulations but a protection against possible incest.
This would also hold good for all the other avoidances
between those related by blood or by marriage. Then
is only one difference, namely, in the first case the inc
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 tempta- |
tion brought about by unconscious intermediary links. |
We have had little opportunity in this exposition to
show that the facts of folk-psychology can be seen in a
new light through the application of the psychoanalytic 」
38

| point of view, for the incest dread of savages has long
| been known as such, and is in need of no further ińter
pretation. What we can add to the further appreci
tion of incest dread is the statement that it is a subtle
infantile trait and is in striking agreement with the
psychic life of the neurotic. Psychoanalysis has taught
us that the first object selection of the boy is of an in-
cestuous nature and that it is directed to the forbidden
objects, the mother and the sister; psychoanalysis has
tanght us also the methods through which the maturing
individual frees himself from these incestuous attrac-
tions. The neurotic, however, regularly presents to us
a piece of psychic infantilism; he has either not been
able to free himself from the childlike conditions of
psychosexuality, or else he has returned to them (in-
hibited development and regression). Hence the in-
cestuous fixations of the libido still play or again are
playing the main rôle in his unconscious. psychic life.
We have gone so far as to declare that the relation to
the parents instigated by incestuous longings is the
_ central complex of the neurosis. This discovery of the
significance of incest for the neurosis 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 distor-
| tions. We are forced to believe that such a rejection is
_ above all the product of man's deep aversion to his
E 39

4

|
a
4

ds It is therefore of importance to us to b
4 able to show that man's incest wishes, which later a
destined to become unconscious, are still felt to be da
| gerous by savage races who consider them worthy o
the most severe defensive measures.