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 ἄγος 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, for-
bidden, and unclean. The opposite for taboo is
designated in Polynesian by the word noa and
signifies something ordinary and generally
accessible. Thus something like the concept

31

of reserve inheres in taboo; taboo expresses
itself essentially in prohibitions and restrictions.
Our combination of ‘holy dread’ would often
express the meaning of taboo.

The taboo restrictions are different from
religious 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
prohibitions lack all justification and are of
unknown origin. Though incomprehensible to
us they are taken as a matter of course by those
who are under 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-
cyclopædia Britannica written by the anthro-
pologist Northcote W. Thomas²:

¹ Voelkerpsychologie, II. Band: Mythus und Religion, 1906, II,
p. 308.

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

32

“Properly speaking taboo includes only (a)
the sacred (or unclean) character of persons or
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 Poly-
nesia 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 religi-
ous interdiction.

“The objects of the taboo are many: 1. direct
taboos aim at (a) protection of important per-
sons–chiefs, priests, etc.–and things against

33

harm; (b) safeguarding of the weak–women
children and common people generally–from
the powerful mana (magical influence) of chiefs
and priests; (c) providing against the dangers
incurred 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 interfer-
ence; (e) securing human beings against the
wrath or power of gods and spirits³; (f) secur-
ing unborn infants and young children who
stand in a specially sympathetic relation with
their parents, from the consequence of certain
actions, and more especially from the communi-
cation 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-
 

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

34

ciety took over the punishment of the offender,
whose action has endangered his companions.
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
penance 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 resist it; the result of a violation of a
taboo depends partly on the strength of the
magical influence 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

35

their inferiors without risk. . . So, too, in-
direct taboos depend for their strength on the
mana of him who opposes them; if it is a
chief or a priest, they are more powerful than
those imposed by a common person.”

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
priests 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

36

taboo would be still more confusing; I can
therefore assure the reader that the state of
affairs is really far from clear. We may say,
however, that we deal with a series of restric-
tions 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 them-
selves 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 reports that
innocent transgressions of such prohibitions
have actually been punished automatically.
For instance, the innocent offender who had
eaten from a forbidden animal became deep-
ly 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 inter-
course; in some cases they appear very in-
genious, evidently representing abstinences and
renunciations; in other cases their content is
quite incomprehensible, they seem to concern
themselves with trifles and give the impression
of ceremonials. Something 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

37

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 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 contagion or dissemination.

However, the term ‘taboo’ includes all per-
sons, localities, objects and temporary condi-
tions which are carriers or sources of this
mysterious attribute. The prohibition derived
from this attribute 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

38

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
characteristic of these low grades of culture.

Now why should we take any interest at all in
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
objects connected with cultic ideas or of actions
having reference to them”⁵.

On another occasion he says: “In accord-
 

⁴Voelkerpsychologie, Vol. II: Religion und Mythus, p. 300.

⁵l.c., p. 237.

39

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

ance with the general sense of the word we
understand 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 words. …” Accordingly there
would not be a single race or stage of culture
which had escaped 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
prohibitions into three classes according as they
concern animals, persons or other objects. The
animal taboo, which consists essentially of the
taboo against killing and eating, forms the
nucleus of Totemism⁶. 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 delivery, newly born children,
the deceased and especially the dead, are all
taboo. The constantly used property of any
person, such as his clothes, tools and weapons,

⁶Comp. Chapter I.

40

is permanently taboo for everybody else. In
Australia the new name which a youth receives
at his initiation into manhood 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, houses and
localities, are more variable and seem only to
follow the rule that anything which for any
reason arouses dread or is mysterious, becomes
subject to taboo.

Wundt himself has to acknowledge that the
changes which taboo undergoes in the richer
culture 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”⁷. “The taboo,
which originally was nothing more than the
objectified fear of the demonic power thought
to be concealed in the tabooed object, forbids

⁷l.c., p. 307.

41

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 auto-
nomous power which has detached itself from
demonism. It becomes the compulsion of
custom and tradition and finally of the law.
 

“But the commandment concealed behind
taboo prohibitions which differ materially ac-
cording 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 primitive
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 readers if I call Wundt’s explanation dis-
appointing. 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 accepted in psychology as final-
ities defying any further deduction. It would
be different if demons really existed; but we
know that, like gods, they are only the product
 

42

of the psychic powers of man; they have been
created from and out of somethin .

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 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 con-
trasted. The animal, 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 undifferentiated and intermediate
meaning of the demonic, in the sense of some-
thing which may not be touched, since it empha-
sizes 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 existence of an original
agreement here between these two spheres
which gave way to a differentiation only as the
result of further conditions through which both
finally developed into opposites.

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-
 

43

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
aversion.

How did this separation come about? Ac-
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 be-
come objects of aversion ⁸.

Wundt's further elucidations refer to the
relation 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

⁸ l.c., p. 313.

44

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 accus-
tomed to call these individuals ‘compulsion
neurotics’ he would find the term ‘taboo
disease’ quite appropriate for their malady.
Psychoanalytic investigation 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
inner relationships upon the correspondence of
merely mechanical conditions. We shall bear

45

this warning in mind without, however, giving
up our intended comparison on account of the
possibility of such confusions.

The first and most striking correspondence
between the compulsion prohibitions of neu-
rotics and taboo lies in the fact that the origin
of these prohibitions is just as unmotivated and
enigmatic. They have appeared at some time
or other and must now be retained on account
of an unconquerable anxiety. An external
threat of punishment is superfluous, because an
inner certainty (a conscience) exists that viola-
tion 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 violate the prohibition. Of what the
harm is to consist is not known, and this inade-
quate information 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-
 

46

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
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 neighbouring things. We have
already emphasized the same characteristics of
contagion and transference in the description of
taboo prohibitions. We also know that any
one who has violated a taboo by touching some-
thing 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,

47

one from the life of the Maori, and the other from
my observation of a woman suffering from a
compulsion 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
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
conveyed 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 situ-
ated, 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-

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

48

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, defence reactions, and
purifications. The most common of these
obsessive acts is washing with water (washing
obsession). A part of the taboo prohibitions
can also be replaced 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 preferred 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 familar
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 mani-
 

49

fested a strong pleasure in touching himself, the
object of which was much more specialized than
one would be inclined to suspect. Presently
the carrying out of this very pleasurable act of
touching was opposed by a prohibition from
without¹⁰. The prohibition was accepted be-
cause it was supported by strong inner forces¹¹;
it proved to be stronger than the impulse which
wanted to manifest itself through this act of
touching. But due to the primitive psychic
constitution of the child this prohibition did not
succeed in abolishing the impulse. Its only suc-
cess lay in repressing the impulse (the pleasure
of touching) and banishing it into the uncon-
scious. Both the prohibition and the impulse
remained; the impulse because it had only
been repressed and not abolished, the prohibi-
tion, 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 everything else emanated
from the continued conflict between prohibition
and impulse.

The main characteristic of the psychic con-
stellation which has thus gone under fixation lies

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

¹¹The relation to beloved persons who impose the prohibition.

50

in what one might call the ambivalent behav-
iour ¹² of the individual to the object, or rather
to an action regarding it. The individual con-
stantly wants to carry out this action (the act
of touching), he sees in it the highest pleasure,
but he may not carry it out, and he even abom-
inates it. The opposition between these two
streams cannot 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 prohibition becomes fully conscious,
while the surviving pleasure of touching remains
unconscious, the person knowing nothing about
it. If this psychological factor did not exist the
ambivalence 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 forget-
ting (amnesia), the motivation of the prohibi-
tion that has become conscious remains un-
known, and all attempts to unravel it intellec-
tually must fail, as the point of attack cannot be
found. The prohibition owes its strength–its

¹²To use an excellent term coined by Bleuler,

51

compulsive character–to its association with
its unknown counterpart, the hidden and
unabated pleasure, that is to say, to an inner
need into which conscious insight is lacking.
The transferability and reproductive power of
the prohibition reflect a process which harmon-
izes with the unconscious pleasure and is very
much facilitated through the psychological
determinants of the unconscious. The pleasure
of the impulse constantly undergoes displace-
ment 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 pro-
hibition 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 motiva-
tion 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 similiar
actions; but on the other hand they are at the
same time substitutive actions which recom-
pense the impulse for what has been forbidden.
It is a law of neurotic diseases that these obses-
ses

52

sive acts serve the impulse more and more and
come nearer and nearer to the original and for-
bidden act.

We may now make the attempt to study
taboo as if it were of the same nature as the com-
pulsive prohibitions of our patients. It must
naturally be clearly understood that many of
the taboo prohibitions which we shall study are
already secondary, 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.
According to our assumption they must be
incapable of telling us anything about it since
this motivation is ‘unconscious’ to them. But
following the model of the compulsive prohibi-
tion we shall construct 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

53

probably were forcibly impressed upon them by
an earlier generation. These prohibitions con-
cerned actions for which there existed a strong
desire. The prohibitions maintained them-
selves from generation to generation, perhaps
only as the result of a tradition set up by
paternal and social authority. But in later
generations they have perhaps already become
‘organized’ as a piece of inherited psychic
property. Whether there are such ‘innate
ideas’ or whether these have brought about the
fixation of the taboo by themselves or by co-
operating with education no one could decide
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 un-
conscious 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

54

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
cannot use these examples to test our assump-
tions 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 individuals, of something quite
definite which psychoanalysts call the central
point of the infantile wish life and the nucleus
of the later neurosis¹³.

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
inclination in the unconscious.

We know, without understanding it, that
whoever 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

¹³ See Chapter IV: Totemism, etc.

55

circumstances themselves, and to impersonal
things? What can this dangerous attribute be
which always remains the same under all these
different conditions? 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 be-
comes himself taboo because he has the danger-
ous property 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 incites to imitation, and there-
fore he himself must be avoided.

But a person may become permanently or
temporarily taboo without having violated any
taboos, for the simple reason that he is in a con-
dition which has the property of inciting the
forbidden desires of others and of awakening
the ambivalent conflict in them. Most of the
exceptional positions and conditions have this
character and possess this dangerous power.

The king or chieftain rouses envy of his pre-
rogatives; everybody would perhaps like to
be king. The dead, the newly born, and women
when they are incapacitated, all act as incite-
ments on account of their peculiar helpless-
ness, while the individual who has just reached
sexual maturity tempts through the promise of

56

a new pleasure. Therefore 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
inherent in the ‘mana’ of various persons can
neutralize 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. Trans-
lated from the language of taboo into the lan-
guage of normal psychology this means: the
subject who shrinks from the tremendous
temptation which contact with the king creates
for him can brook the intercourse 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 consideration 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

57

impulses for the unconscious desires. It con-
sists 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
astonished 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, 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
leading into temptation, and of inciting to imita-
tion. 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

58

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, however, if we assume it to be in
accord with a primitive psychic life that with
the awakening of a memory of a forbidden
action there should also be combined the awaken-
ing 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 prohibition leads
another to the same action, the disobedience
of the prohibition has been transmitted 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 renunciation is cancelled through a
renunciation at some other point. This would
lead us to conclude that, as far as taboo cere-
monials are concerned, penance is more primi-
tive than purification.

Let us now summarize what understanding
we have gained of taboo through its comparison

59

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;
persons who obey the taboo have an ambivalent
feeling 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
contagious, and because the prohibited desire
becomes displacing in the unconscious upon
something else. The expiation for the violation
of a taboo through a renunciation proves that a
renunciation is at the basis of the observance of
the taboo.

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 com-
parison? Our intrepretation is evidently of
no value unless it affords an advantage not to be
had in any other way and unless it affords a better
understanding 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

60

strengthen our proof by continuing the explana-
tion of taboo prohibitions and customs in detail.
But we can avail ourselves of another method.
We can shape our investigation so as to ascer-
tain 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 asser-
tion concerning the genesis 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 psychological conditions for
taboo with which we have become acquainted
in the case of compulsion neurosis. 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 defence reactions
and the obsessive commands. These mechan-
isms gave every indication of having been
derived from ambivalent impulses or tendencies,
they either represented simultaneously the wish
and counter-wish or they served preponder-
antly one of the two contrary tendencies. If we
should now succeed in showing that ambivalence,
i.e., the sway of contrary tendencies, exists

61

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

also in the case of taboo regulations or if we
should find among taboo mechanisms some
which like neurotic obsessions give simultaneous
expression to both currents, we would have
established what is practically the most import-
ant 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;
another 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 tendencies 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 Bough¹⁴.

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

62

(4) THE TREATMENT OF ENEMIES

Inclined as we may have been to ascribe to
savage and semi-savage races uninhibited and
remorseless cruelty towards their enemies, it is
of great interest to us to learn that with them,
too, the killing of a person compels the observa-
tion of a series of rules which are associated with
taboo customs. These rules are easily brought
under four groups; they demand 1. reconcilia-
tion with the slain enemy, 2. restrictions, 3. acts
of expiation, and purifications of the manslayer,
and 4. certain ceremonial rites. The incom-
plete reports do not allow us to decide with
certainty how general or how isolated such
taboo customs may be among these races, but
this is a matter of indifference as far as our
interest in these occurences is concerned. Still,
it may be assumed that we are dealing with
widespread customs and not with isolated
peculiarities.

The reconciliation customs practised 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-
 

63

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 peacc. Why were you our
enemy ? Would it not have been better that
we should remain 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 dead enemies before they return to their
home villages ¹⁶.

Other races have found methods of making
friends, guardians and protectors out of their
former enemies after they are dead. This con-
sists 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 address it with the most endearing
names in their language. The best morsels
from their meals are put into its mouth, to-
 

¹⁵ Frazer, l.c., p. 166.

¹⁶ Paulitschke, Ethnography of North-east Africa.

64

gether 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 treatment, horrible
though it may seem to us¹⁷.

Observers have been struck by the mourning
for the enemy after he is slain and scalped,
among several of the wild tribe 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 Indians mourned in the same way.
One authority mentions that the Osaga Indians
after mourning for their own dead mourned for
their foes as if they had been friends¹⁸.

Before proceeding to the other classes of
taboo customs for the treatment of enemies, we
must define our position in regard to a pertinent
objection. Both Frazer as well as other author-
ities 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 ‘ambi-
valence.’ These races are dominated by a
superstitious fear of the spirits of the slain, a
fear which was also familiar to classical an-
 

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

¹⁸ J. O. Dorsey, see Frazer, Taboo, etc., p. 181.

65

tiquity, and which the great British dramatist
brought upon the stage in the hallucinations
of Macbeth and Richard the Third. From this
superstition all the reconciliation rules as well
as the restrictions and expiations which we shall
discuss later can be logically deduced; more-
over, the ceremonies included in the fourth
group also argue for this interpretation, since
the only explanation of which they admit is the
effort to drive away the spirits of the slain
which pursue the manslayers¹⁹. Besides, the
savages themselves directly admit their fear
for the spirits of their slain foes and trace back
the taboo customs under discussion to this fear.

This objection is certainly pertinent and if it
were adequate as well we would gladly spare
ourselves the trouble of our attempt to find a
further explanation. We postpone the consid-
eration 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 impulses besides those that are merely
hostile find expression in the behaviour towards
enemies. We see in them manifestations of
repentance, of regard for the enemy, and of a
bad conscience for having slain him. It seems

¹⁹ Frazer, Taboo, pp. 166-174. These ceremonies consist of
hitting shields, shouting, bellowing and making noises with various
instruments, etc.

66

that the commandment, Thou shalt not slay,
which could not be violated without punish-
ment, 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 var-
ious rules of purification. During this period he
may not see his wife or nourish himself;
another person must put his food in his mouth.²⁰
Among some Dayak tribes warriors returning
from a successful expedition must remain seques-
tered for several 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 intercourse with their wives
and friends, they do not touch their victuals

²⁰ Frazer, Taboo, p. 166, according to S. Mueller, Reisen en Onder-
zoekingen in den Indischen Archipel. (Amsterdam, 1887).

67

with their hands and live on nothing but veget-
able 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 approach
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
noticeable or where the restriction appears in
connection with expiation, purification and
ceremonial.

Among the Monumbos in German New
Guinea a man who has killed an enemy in com-
bat becomes ‘unclean’, the same word being
employed which is applied to women during
menstruation or confinement. For a consider-
able 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 be-
 

68

comes clean through washing and other cere-
monies.

Among the Natchez in North America young
warriors who had procured their first scalp were
bound for six months to the observance of cer-
tain 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, during which he was not allowed to
comb his hair. When his head itched 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
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, unlike them, did not

69

postpone expiation and purification 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 unsatis-
factory allies to the Americans 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
society really conveys a good idea of the ‘taboo’
of savages²¹.

The current explanation of all these rules of
reconciliation, restriction, expiation and purifica-
tion, combines two principles, namely, the ex-
tension 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 combina-
tion these two elements are to explain the cere-
monial, whether they are to be considered as of

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

70

equal value or whether one of them is primary
and the other secondary, and which one, is no-
where stated, nor would this be an easy matter to
decide. In contradistinction to all this we em-
phasize the unity which our interpretation gains
by deducing all these rules from the ambivalence
of the emotion of savages towards their enemies.

(B) THE TABOO OF RULERS

The behaviour 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 against²².

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

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

71

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
protective 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 con-
tradistinction 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-
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-
 

72

cation instead of being healed. The sceptical
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 practise the touch, he did
so with 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 in-
formed him of his offence 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
day²⁴. 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

²³ Frazer, The Magic Art, I, p. 368.

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

73

surely kill her. This incident occurred in the
afternoon, and on the next day at twelve o'clock
she was dead²⁵. The tinder box of a Māori 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
fright²⁶.

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
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

²⁵ W. Brown, New Zealand and Its Aborigines (London, 1845)

²⁶ Frazer, l.c.

74

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
feet²⁷.

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
persons 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
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 intentions or of their conscientiousness.
A strain of mistrust is mingled with the motiva-
tion of the taboo rules for the king. “The idea
that early kingdoms are despotisms”, says
Frazer²⁸, “in which the people exist only for the

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

²⁸ l.c., p. 7.

75

sovereign, is wholly inapplicable to the mon-
archies we are considering. On the contrary, the
sovereign in them exists only for his subjects:
his life is only valuable 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 con-
tempt; he is ignominiously dismissed and may
be thankful if he escapes with his life. Wor-
shipped as a god one day, he is killed as a
criminal the next. But in this changed behavi-
our of the people there is nothing capricious or
inconsistent. On the contrary, their conduct is
quite consistent. If their king is their god he is,
or should be, also their preserver; and if he will
not preserve them he must make room for another
who will. So long, however, as he answers their
expectations, there is no limit to the care which
they take of him, and which 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 dignity,
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

76

from adding to his comfort, these observances,
by trammelling 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 paralysing 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 old²⁹ 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, 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,

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

77

with the imperial crown on his head ; but to sit
altogether like a statue without 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 tranquillity in
his empire ; for if unfortunately, he turned him-
self 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
condition of the atmosphere³⁰. The more power-
ful 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,

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

78

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 comb-
ings and nail parings had to be buried under a
lucky tree; he could not touch the dead, go into
the open with bare head, and similar prohibi-
tions. His wife, the Flaminica, also had her
own prohibitions: 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

79

taken from any animal that had died a natural
death but only from one that had been slaugh-
tered or sacrificed; when she heard thunder she
was unclean until she had made an expiatory
sacrifice³¹.

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
interesting from our point of view. The honour
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

³¹ Frazer, l.c., p. 13. ³² Frazer, l.c., p. 11.

80

honour. On Niue or Savage Island, a coral
island in the Pacific Ocean, monarchy actually
came to an end because nobody was willing to
undertake 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 fetish house until he has declared himself
willing to accept the crown. Sometimes the
presumptive successor to the throne finds ways
and means to avoid the intended honour; 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 throne³³. Among
the negroes of Sierra Leone the resistance against
accepting the kingly honour 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
separation of the original priest-kingship into a
spiritual 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

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

81

the honours of royal dignity. From these there
grew up the secular rulers, while the spiritual
over-lordship, which was now of no practical
importance, 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
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

82

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 becomes dangerous, and this is probably
because the act may recall aggressive tendencies.
Another 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 especial care against threatening dangers,
as if his own power, which can do so much, were
incapable of accomplishing this. A further diffi-
culty in the relation arises because there is no
confidence 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.

We are inclined to give the following explana-
tion of the complicated and contradictory rela-
tion of the primitive peoples to their rulers.
Through superstition as well as through other
motives, various tendencies find expression in

83

the treatment of kings, each of which is devel-
oped to the extreme without regard to the other.
As a result of this, contradictions arise at which
the intellect of savages takes no more offence
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
occurrence of such excessive tenderness is very
common 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-
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

84

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
veneration, 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
hostility. Indeed the ultimate issues of this
conflict 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 Frazer³⁴ that the
savage Timmes of Sierra Leone reserve the right
to administer 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;

³⁴ L.c., p. 18. According to Zweifel et Moustier, Voyage aux
Sources du Niger, 1880.

85

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 acknow-
ledged 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 par-
ticular person is extraordinarily heightened and
his omnipotence is raised to the improbable in
order to make it easier to attribute to him the
responsibility for everything painful which hap-
pens to the patient. Savages really do not act
differently 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-
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

86

thereby elevates him to the paternal succession
and brings him under conditions which enable
him to make him responsible for all the misfor-
tune which he experiences. Thus this second
analogy between the savage and the neurotic
may allow us to surmise how much in the rela-
tion of the savage 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
subject of our previous discussion. This cere-
monial unmistakably reveals its double meaning
and its origin from ambivalent tendencies if only
we are willing to assume that the effects it pro-
duces 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 action of the neurosis, in which the
suppressed impulse and the impulse which sup-
presses it meet in mutual and simultaneous
satisfaction. The compulsive action is nominally
a protection against the forbidden action; but

87

we would say that actually it is a repetition of
what is forbidden. 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 cere-
monial of kings is nominally an expression of the
highest veneration and a means of guarding
them; actually it is the punishment for their
elevation, the revenge which their subjects take
upon them. The experiences 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,
however, 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 explanations. Frazer has an impressive
discussion 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

88

consider his facts altogether convincing²⁵.
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
extremely unclean and was almost cut off from
intercourse 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
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

²⁵ Frazer, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, 2 vols.,
1911 (The Golden Bough).

89

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 oppressive restrictions. Almost every
village contained some altogether disreputable
individual, ostracized by society, whose wretched
existence depended upon people's charity. This
creature alone was allowed within arm's length
of a person who had fulfilled the last duty to-
wards the deceased. But as soon as the period
of segregation 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 hand-
ling one's food and the consequent necessity of
being fed by somebody else. It is noteworthy
that in Polynesia, or perhaps only in Hawaii³⁶,
priest-kings were subject to the same restrictions
during the exercise of holy functons. In the
taboo of the dead on the Island of Tonga the
abatement and gradual abolition of the prohibi-
 

³⁶ Frazer, Taboo, p. 148, etc.

90

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
unclean for only three, four, or five months,
according 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 savages 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 contrary³⁷.

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

Among the Shuswap in British-Columbia wid-
 

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

91

ows and widowers have to remain segregated
during 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 become 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 re-
ported 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
order to make herself inaccessible to the ap-
proach of the spirit. Thus it is quite obvious
that touching ‘in the transferred sense’ is after
all understood 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
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

92 TOTEM AND TABOO

hitting the trees with a wooden stick with every
step she takes ; these trees all wither. Another
observation explains the nature of the danger
inherent 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 publie, 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,
especially a woman,-approaching. This last
hint makes it easy for us to trace back the dan-
ger of the widower or widow to the danger of
temptation. 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 amaster. Every such
satisfaction through a substitute runs contrary
to the intention of mourning and would cause
the anger of the spirit to flare up **.

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-

%8 ‘The 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 monrning. “Such people should be forbidden to go out!”

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 98

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 Madagascar and Borneo**. 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
presence, and the penalty set for it is no less than
that for the slaying itself**, At first it is not
easy to guess why the mention of the name

20 Brazer,
« Frazer,

p. 353,
> Br 852, eto,

9 TOTEM AND TABOO

should be so abominated, but the dangers associ-
ated with it have called into being a whole series
of interesting and important expedients to avoid
this. Thus the Masai in Africa have hit upon
the evasion of changing the name of the deccased
immediately upon his death; he may now be
mentioned 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 Adclaide
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. Some-
times by a further 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 #,

Furthermore, if the deceased had the same
name as an animal or object, ete., some of the

4 Frazer, Ic, p. 357, avording to an old Spanish observor
1732.

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 95

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 vocabu-
lary, 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
aniong the Abipons in Paraguay, the name for
jaguar was changed three times and the words
for erocodile, thorns and animal slaughter under-
went a similar fate. But the dread of pro-
nouncing a name which has belonged to a de-
ceased 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 historical reminiscences, so that we en-
counter the greatest difficulties in investigating
their past history. Among a number of these
primitive races compensating customs have also
been established in order to re-awaken the
names of the deceased after a long period of
mourning ; they are bestowed upon children
who were regarded as reincarnations of the dead.
‘The strangeness of this taboo on names dimin-
ishes if we bear in mind that the sayage looks
© Frazer, Le, p. 360.

96 TOTEM AND TABOO

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 clse-
where, and therefore they are never satisficd
with accepting a meaningless verbal similarity,
but consistently conclude that when two things
have identical names a deeper correspondence
between them must exist. Numerous peculiar-
ities of normal behaviour may lead civilized
man to conclude that he too is not yet as far
removed as he thinks from attributing the im-
portance of things to mere names and feeling
that his name has become peculiarly identified
with his person. This is corroborated by psy-
choanalytic experiences, where there is much
oceasion to point out the importance of names
in unconscious thought activity. As was to
be expected, the compulsion neurotics behave
just like savages in regard to names. They show
the full ‘complex sensitiveness’ towards the
utterance and hearing of special words (as do
also other neurotics) and derive 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 it might get
into_somebody’s hands who thus would come
* Stokel, Abraham, =

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 9

into possession of a piece of her personality. In
her frenzied faithfulness, which she needed to
protect herself against the temptations of her
phantasy, she had created for herself the com-
mandment, ‘ 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 attention 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 the

a

98 TOTEM AND TABOO

longest possible time. Something besides mourn-
ing 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 practise a host of ceremonies
to keep him off and banish him“, They look
upon the mention of his name as a conjuration
which must result in his immediate presence **.
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 **, they distort cither 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”.

With this understanding we approach Wundt’s

4 Frazer, 1c, p. 358, cites the Tuaregs of the Sahara as an
example of such an acknowledgment.

4 Perhaps this condition is to be added: as long as any part of
his physical remains exist. Frazer, Lc, p. 972

48 On the Nikobar Islands, Vrazet, Lc., p. 382.

= Wundt, Religion and Myth, Vol. 1, p. 49.

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 99

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 hos-
tility to expect, so that they must protect them-
selves 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 interpretation of primitive races. West-
ermarck “, 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 asser-
tion that it was formerly believed that the male-
volence of the dead was as a rule directed only
against strangers, while they were paternally

#8 The Origin and Development of Moral Conceptions, seo sec-
tion entitled “Attitude Towards the Dead,” Vol. IT, p. 424. Both
the notes and the text show an abundanco of corroborating, and
often very characteristic testimony, o.g., the Maori believed that
“the nearest and most beloved relatives changed their nature after
death an bore ill-will even to their former favourites.” "The Aus-
tral negroes believe that every dead person is for a long time malo-
volent; 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 thoy are to be fearod ag mischievous

spirits who frequently hover about the village to spread illness,
death and other evils, (Boas,)

100 TOTEM AND TABOO

concerned about the life and 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 thedead**, 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 ariver: 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 rancour 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
4° R. Kleinpaul: The Living and the Dead in Folklore, Religion
and Myth, 1898,

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 101

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 tothe beloved dead? Why did they make
demons out of them? According to Wester-
marck this question is easily answered °°. “ As
death is usually considered the worst calamity
that ean 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
therefore understand that the soul should seck
to kill with them 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 psychoneurotie 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,

¥ ho, p. 426,

102 TOTEM AND TABOO

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 seeret mainsprings
of this affliction. We have ascertained that
these obsessive reproaches are in a certain sense
justified 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
displeased 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 ev -rybody’s disposition ;

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 108

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 ambi-
valence of emotions.

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 mai
the defence against it is accomplished by di
placement upon the object of hostility, namely
thedead. We call this defence process, frequent
both in normal and diseased psychic life, a pro-

104 TOTEM AND TABOO

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 defence 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-
teelive 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
beloved survivors have to fear it most.

As in neurotic symptoms, the taboo regula-
tions also evince opposite feelings. Their restric-
tive character expresses mourning, while they
also betray very clearly what they are trying to
conceal, namely, the hostility towards the dead,
which is now motivated as self-defence. We
have learnt to understand part of the taboo regu-
lations as temptation fears. A dead person is
defenceless, which must act as an incitement to
satisfy hostile desires entertained against him’;

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 105

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*!, in the unconscious mode of
thinking even a natural death is perceived as
murder ; the person was killed by evil wishes.
Any one interested in the origin and meaning of
dreams dealing with the death of dear relatives
such as parents and brothers and sisters will find
that the same fecling of ambivalence is respon-
sible for the fact that the dreamer, the child, and
the savage all have the same attitude towards
the dead *.

A little while ago we challenged Wundt’s con-
ception, whoexplains thenature 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
"C8 Chap, IM, ®= Froud, The Interpretation of Dreams,

106 TOTEM AND TABOO

them 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, endeavours to assert itself at the time
of bereavement as mourning and satisfaction.
A conflict must ensue between these contrary
feclings, 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
adjusts itself through a special psychic mechan-
ism, which is designated in psychoanalysis as
projection. This unknown hostility, of which
we are ignorant and of which we do not wish to
know, is projected from our inner pereeption
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 deceased, on the contrary, we mourn for
him ; but now, curiously enough, he has become
an evil demon who would rejoice in our misfor-
tune 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.

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 107

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
dominate, injustice, and whatever else forms the
background 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 offences of
the dead certainly motivate in part the hostility
of the survivors, but they would have been in-
effective if they had not given rise to this hos-
tility and the occasion of death would surely be
the least suitable 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 origina-
ting from the enhanced tenderness, became on

108 TOTEM AND TABOO

the one hand more intolerant 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 unconscious hostility
through projection, and the formation of the
ceremonial in which fear of punishment by de-
mons finds expression. With the termination
of the period of mourning, the conflict also loses
its acuteness sothat the taboo of the dead canbe
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 gencral.

The projection of unconscious hostility upon
demons in the taboo of the dead is only a single
example from awhole seriesof processes towhich
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 created for the purpose of defence, it
also comes into being where there are no con-

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 109

flicts. The projection of inner perceptions to
the outside is a primitive mechanism which, for
instance, also influences our sense-perceptions,
so that it normally has the greatest share in
shaping our outer world. Under conditions that
have not yet been sufficiently 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 funetion of attention was
originally directed not towards the inner world,
but to the stimuli streaming in from the outer
world, and only received reports of pleasure and
pain from the endopsychie processes. Only
with the development of the language of abstract
thought through the association of sensory rem-
nants of word representations with inner pro-
cesses, did the latter gradually become capable
of perception. Before this took place primitive
man had developed a picture of the outer world
through the outward projection of inner percep-
tions, which we, with our reinforced 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

110 TOTEM AND TABOO

man which we shall discuss later as ‘ animism *.
Weshall then have toascertain the psychological
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®. 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 *.
Wundt ** remarks that “among the influences
which myth everywhere ascribes to demons the
evil ones preponderate, so that according to the
xcligions of races evil demons are evidently older
than good demons.” Now it is quite possible
that the whole conception of demons wasderived
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
% Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
% ‘Tho projection creations of primitive man resemble the per-
sonifieations through which the poct projects his warring impulsos

out of himself, as separated individuals,
% Myth and Religion, p. 129,

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 111

ghosts, and the reverence for ancestors **. Noth-
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-
tinet 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
evident that the ambivalent feeling has extra-
ordinarily abated. We now find it easy to sup-
press whatever unconscious hostility towards the
dead there may still exist without any special
psychic effort on our part. Where formerly sat-
isfied hate and painful tenderness struggled with
each other, we now find piety, which appears
like a cicatrice and demands : De mortuis nil nisi

28 Tn the psychoanalysis of neurotio persons who suffer, or have
suffered, in their childhood from the fear of ghosts, it is often not
difficult to expose these ghosts as the parents. Compare also in
this connection the communication of P. Haeberlin, Sexwal Ghosts
(Sexual Problems, Feb, 1912), where it is a question of another
erotically accentuated person, but where the father was dead,

112 TOTEM AND TABOO

bene. Only neuroties still blur the mourning for
the loss of their dear ones with attacks of com-
pulsive reproaches which psychoanalysis reveals
as the old ambivalent emotional feeling. How
this change was brought about, and to what
extent constitutional changes and real improve-
ment of familiar relations share in causing the
abatement of the ambivalent feeling, need not
be discussed here. But this examplé would lead
us to assume that the psychic impulses of primi-
tive man possessed a higher degree of ambivalence
than is found at present among civilized human
beings. With the decline of this ambivalence the
taboo, asthe 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 com-
pensation of which in the interest of cultural
demands entails 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 world taboo did not yet mean holy
and unclean but signified something demonic,
something which may not be touched, thus em-

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 113

phasizing a characteristic common to both ex-
tremes of the later conception ; this persistent
common trait proves, however, that an original
correspondence existed between what was holy
and what was unclean, which only later became
differentiated.

Incontrast to this, our discussion readily shows
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**. Slight vocal modifications of
this primitive word containing two opposite
meanings later served to create a separate lin-

#" Compare my article on Abel's Gegensinn der Urworte in the
Jahrbuch für Poychoanalytische und Paychopathoogsche Forschungen,
Bd. II, 1910,

114 TOTEM AND TABOO

guistic expression for the two opposites origin-
ally united in one word.

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
relations.
~ 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.

Conscienceis the innerperception 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

(

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 115

it is sure of itself. This becomes even plainer in
the case of a guilty conscience, where we become
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,

It is therefore probable that conscience also
originates on the basis of an ambivalent feeling
from quite definite human relations which con-
tain 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 feclings is un-
conscious and is kept repressed by the compul-
sive domination of the other component. This
is confirmed by many things which we have
learned from our analysis of neurosis. In the

5 It is an intoresting 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 Greck myth the guilt of Oedipus is not cancelled by the fact
that it was incurred without his knowledge and will and even
against them, ,

116 TOTEM AND TABOO

first place the character of compulsion neurotics
shows a predominant trait of painful conscien-
tiousness which is a symptom of reaction against
the temptation which lurks in the unconscious,
and which develops into the highest degrees of
guilty conscience as their illness grows worse.
Indeed, one may venture the assertion that if
the origin of guilty conscience could not be dis-
covered through compulsion neurotic patients,
there would be no prospect of ever discovering
it. This task is successfully solved in the case
of the individual neurotic, and we are confident
of finding a similar solution in the case of races,

In the second place we cannot help noticing
that the sense of guilt containsmuch of thenature
of anxiety ; without hesitation it may be des-
eribed as ‘ conscience phobia’. But fear points
to unconscious sources. The psychology of the
neuroses taughtus that when wish feelings under-
go repression their libido becomes transformed
into anxiety. In addition we must bear in mind
that the sense of guilt also contains something
unknown and unconscious, namcly the motiva-
tion 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

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 117

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
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
kingsand priests, to commit incest, to abuse their
dead and the like. That.is not very probable.
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 thetestimony of ourconscience
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
connection between conscience, taboo and neu-
rosis disappears. The net result of this would
then be our present state of understanding un-
less we view the problem psychoanalytically.

But if we take into account the following re-
sults of psychoanalysis, our understanding of the »

118 TOTEM AND TABOO

problem is greatly advanced. The analysis of
dreams of normal individuals has shown that our
own temptation to kill others is stronger and
more frequent than we had suspected and that it
produces psychic effects even where it does not
reveal itself to our consciousness. And when we
have learnt that the obsessive rules of certain
neuroties are nothing but measures of self-reas-
surance and self-punishment erected against the
reinforced 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 prohibition are psychologically
by no means superfluous but are, on the con-
trary, explained and justified through our ambi-
valent 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 pyschic
processes in theunconsciousare not entirely iden-
tical with those known to us from our conscious
psychic life, but have the benefit of certain not-
able liberties of which the latter are deprived.
An unconscious impulse need not have origi-
‘hated where we find it expressed, it can“spring

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 119

from an entirely different place and may origin-
ally have referred to other persons and relations,
but through the mechanism of displacement, it
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 under-
standing 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
psychological difference must exist between
them. A change in the relations of the funda-
mental ambivalence can be the only reason
why the prohibition 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 neu-
rosis but a social creation we are also confronted
withthe task of showing wherein lies the

120 TOTEM AND TABOO

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 the violation of a taboo, usually a scrious
disease or death. _This punishment threatens
only him who has been guilty of the violation.
It is different with the compulsion neurosis. If
the patient wants to do something that is for-
bidden to him he does not fear punishment for
himself, but for another person. This person is
usually indefinite, but, by means of analysis, is
easily recognized as some one very near and dear
to the patient. The neurotic therefore acts as
vere altruistic, while primitive man scems

stical. Only if retribution fails to overtake
the taboo violator spontaneously does a collee-
tive feeling awaken among savages that they are
all threatened through the sacrilege, and they
hasten to inflict the omitted punishment them-
selves. It is easy for us to explain the mechan-
ism of this solidarity. It is.a question of fear of
the contagious example, the temptation to imi-
tate, that is to say, of the capacity of the taboo
to infect. Ifsome one has succeeded in satisfy-
ing the repressed desire, the same desire must
manifest itsclf in all his companions ; hence, in
order to keep down this temptation, this envied
individual must be despoiled of the fruit of his

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 121

daring. Not infrequently the punishment gives
the executors themselves an opportunity to com=
mit the same sacrilegious act by justifying it as
an expiation. This is really one of the funda-
mentals of the human code of punishment which
rightly presumes the same forbidden {impulses
in the criminal and in the members of society
who avenge his offence.

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 ?
Psyehoanalytie 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
evilimpulse—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 sub-
stitutes the hostile for the beloyed person, and
the execution of this act is threatened with the
penalty of death. But the process goes further

122 TOTEM AND TABOO

andthe 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
therefore merely compensates for the opposite
attitude of brutal egotism which is at the basis
of it. If 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
second 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 neuroties, the Délire de
toucher. Asa 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

THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 123

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 seaual components of the im-
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
specal 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 understand-
ing of the development of eulture.

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 artis-
tic creation, a compulsion neurosis, a caricature
of a religion, and a paranoic delusion a carica-
ture of a philosophic system. In the last analy-
sis this deviation goes back to the fact that the
neuroses are asocial formations; they seek to
accomplish by private means what arose in

124 TOTEM AND TABOO

society through collective labour. In analysing
the impulse of the neuroses one learns that motive
powers of sexual origin exercise the determining
influence in them, while the corresponding cul-
tural creations rest upon social impulses and on
such as have issued from the combination of
egotistical and sexual components. It seems
that the sexual need is not capable of uniting
men in the same way as the demands of sclf
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.