CHAPTER IV

THE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM

THE reader need not fear that psychoanalysis, which
first revealed the regular over-determination of psychic
acts and formations, will be tempted to derive anything
so complicated as religion from a single source. If it

necessarily seeks, as in duty bound, to gain recognition
for one of the sources of this institution, it by no means
claims exclusiveness for this source or even first rank
among the concurring factors. Only a synthesis from
various fields of research can decide what relative
importance in the genesis of religion is to be assigned
to the mechanism which we are to discuss; but such a
task exceeds the means as well as the intentions of the
psychoanalyst.

1

The first chapter of this book made us acquainted
with the conception of totemism. We heard that
totemism is a system which takes the place of religion
among certain primitive races in Australia, America,
and Africa, and furnishes the basis of social organiza-
tion. We know that in 1869 the Scotchman MacLen-
nan attracted general interest to the phenomena of
totemism, which until then had been considered merely
as curiosities, by his conjecture that a large number of

158

THE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM
customs and usages in various old as well as modern .
societies were to be taken as remnants of a totemic
epoch. Science has since then fully recognized this
significance of totemism. I quote a passage from the
Elements of the Psychology of Races by W. Wundt
(1912), as the latest utterance on this question: + “ Tak-
ing all this together it becomes highly probable that a
totemic culture was at one time the preliminary stage
of every later evolution as well as a transition stage
between the state of primitive man and the age of gods
and heroes.”

It is necessary for the purposes of this chapter to go
more deeply into the nature of totemism. For reasons
that will be evident later I here give preference to an
outline by S. Reinach, who in the year 1900 sketched
the following Code du Totémisme in twelve articles, like
a catechism of the totemic religion: * 4

1. Certain animals must not be killed or eaten, but |
men bring up individual animals of these species and
take care of them.

2. An animal that dies accidentally is mourned and
buried with the same honours as a member of the tribe.

3. The prohibition as to eating sometimes refers only
to a certain part of the animal.

4. If pressure of necessity compels the killing of an
animal usually spared, it is done with excuses to the

* p.139,

* Revue Scientifique, October, 1900, reprinted in the four-
volume work of the author, Cultes, Mythes et Religions, 1908,
Tome I, p. 17.

159

Boi

TOTEM AND TABOO

animal and the attempt is made to mitigate the violation
of the taboo, namely the killing, through various tricks
and evasions.

5. If the animal is sacrificed by ritual, it is solemnly
mourned.
| ⑥ At specified solemn occasions, like religious cere-
monies, the skins of certain animals are donned.
Where totemism still exists, these are totem animals.

7. Tribes and individuals assume the names of totem
animals,

8. Many tribes use pictures of animals as coats of
arms and decorate their weapons with them ; the men
paint animal pictures on their bodies or have them
tattooed.

9. If the totem is one of the feared and dangerous
animals it is assumed that the animal will spare the
members of the tribe named after it.

10. The totem animal protects and warns the mem-
bers of the tribe.

11. The totem animal foretells the future to those
faithful to it and serves as their leader.

12. The members of a totem tribe often believe that
they are connected with the totem animal by the bond
of common origin.

The value of this catechism of the totem religion can

be more appreciated if one bears in mind that Reinach
| has here also incorporated all the signs and clews which
lead to the conclusion that the totemic system had once
existed. The peculiar attitude of this author to the
| problem is shown by the fact that to some extent he
160

neglects the essential traits of totemism, and we shall
see that of the two main tenets of the totemistic cate-
chism he has forced one into the background and com-
pletely lost sight of the other.

Tn order to get a more correct picture of the character-
istics of totemism we turn to an author who has devoted
four volumes to the theme, combining the most com-
plete collection of the observations in question with the
most thorough discussion of the problems they raise.
We shall remain indebted to J. G. Frazer; the author of
Totemism and Exogamy, for the pleasure and informa-
tion he affords, even though psychoanalytic investiga- "
tion may lead us to results which differ widely from his?

2 1910.

* But it may be well to show the reader beforehand how diffi-
cult it is to establish the facts in this field.

In the first place those who collect the observations are not
identical with those who digest and discuss them; the first are
travellers and missionaries, while the others are scientific men
who perhaps have never seen the objects of their research. —It is
not easy to establish an understanding with savages, Not all the
observers were familiar with the languages but had to use the
assistance of interpreters or else had to communicate with the
people they questioned in the auxiliary language of pidgin-Eng-
lish. Savages are not communicative about the most intimate
affairs of their culture and unburden themselves onlyto those for-
cigners who have passed many years in their midst. From
various motives they often give wrong or misleading informa-
tion (Compare Frazer, The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism
Among the Australian Aborigines; Fortnightly Review, 1905;
Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. 1, p. 150).—It must not be for-
gotten that primitive races are not young races but really are as
old as the most civilized, and that we have no right to expect that
they have preserved their original ideas and institutions for our
information without any evolution or distortion. It is certain,

F 161

TOTEM AND TABOO

“A totem,” wrote Frazer in his first essay; “is a
class of material objects which a savage regards with
superstitious respect, believing that there exists between
him and every member of the class an intimate and
altogether special relation. The connection between à
person and his totem is mutually beneficent ; the totem
protects the man and the man shows his respect for the
totem in various ways, by not killing it if it be an animal,
and not cutting or gathering it if it be a plant. As dis-
tinguished from a fetich, a totem is never an isolated
individual but always a class of objects, generally à
species of animals or of plants, more rarely a class of
inanimate natural objects, very rarely a class of artificial
objects.” j

At least three kinds of totem can be distinguished :

1. The tribal totem which a whole tribe shares and |
which is hereditary from generation to generation; |

on the contrary, that far-reaching changes in all directions have
taken place among primitive races, so that we can never un-
hesitatingly decide which of their present conditions and opinions
have preserved the original past, having remained petrified, as it
were, and which represent a distortion and change of the original.
It is due to this that one meets the many disputes among authors
as to what proportion of the peculiarities of a primitive culture is
to be taken as a primary, and what as a later and secondary
manifestation. To establish the original conditions, therefore,
always remains a matter of construction. Finally, it is not easy
to adapt oneself to the ways of thinking of primitive races. For
like children, we easily misunderstand them, and are always in-
clined to interpret their acts and feelings according to our own
psychic constellations.

‎Totemism (Edinburgh, 1887), reprinted in the first volume of‏ ג
‎his great study, Totemism and Exogamy.‏

‎162

TNA
"НЕ INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM

2. The sex totem which belongs to all the masculine
or feminine members of a tribe to the exclusion of the
opposite sex; and

3. The individual totem which belongs to the indivi-
dual and does not descend to his successors.

The last two kinds of totem are comparatively of little
importance compared to the tribal totem, Unless we
are mistaken they are recent formations and of little
importance as far as the nature of the taboo is con-
cerned.

The tribal totem (clan totem) is the object of venera-
tion of a group of men and women who take their name
from the totem and consider themselves consanguineous
offspring of a common ancestor, and who are firmly
associated with each other through common obligations
towards each other as well as by the belief in their totem. .

Totemism is a religious as well as a social system.

_ On its religious side it consists of the relations of mutual
respect and consideration between a person and his
totem, and on its social side it is composed of obliga-
tions of the members of the clan towards cach other
and towards other tribes. In the later history of totem-
ism these two sides show a tendency to part company;
the social system often survives the religious, and con-
versely, remnants of totemism remain in the religion of
countries in which the social system based upon totem ,
ism had disappeared. In the present state of our ignor-
ance about the origin of totemism we cannot say with
certainty how these two sides were originally combined.

But there is on the whole a strong probability that in

163 j

TOTEM AND TABOO
the beginning the two sides of totemism were indistin-
guishable from each other. In other words, the farther.
we go back the clearer it becomes that a member of a _
tribe looks upon himself as being of the same genus as
his totem and makes no distinction betwcen his attitude
towards the totem and his attitude towards his tribal
companions.

In the special description of totemism as a religious
system, Frazer lays stress on the fact that the members
of a tribe assume the name of their totem and also asa 」
rule believe that they are descended from it. It is due |
to this belief that they do not hunt the totem animal or 」
kill or eat it, and that they deny themselves every other |
use of the totem if it is not an animal. The prohibitions |
against killing or cating the totem are not the only |

i

. taboos affecting it; sometimes it is also forbidden to |

touch it and even to look at it; in a number of cases the
totem must not be called by its right name. Violation
of the taboo prohibitions which protect the totem is
punished automatically by serious disease or death.

Specimens of the totem animals are sometimes raised |
by the clan and taken care of in captivity. A totem |
animal found dead is mourned and buried like a member
of the clan. If a totem animal had to be killed it was
done with a prescribed ritual of excuses and ceremonies
of expiation.

The tribe expected protection and forbearance from

1 Compare the chapter on Taboo.
5 Just as to-day we still have the wolves in a cage at the steps
of the Capitol in Rome and the bears in the pit at Berne.
164

mo

THE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTE

ts totem. If it was a dangerous animal (a beast of prey
‘or a poisonous snake), it was assumed that it would not
harm, and where this assumption did not come true the
person attacked was expelled from the tribe. Frazer
thinks that oaths were originally ordeals, many tests as
to descent and genuineness being in this way left to the
decision of the totem. The totem helps in case of ill-
ness and gives the tribe premonitions and warnings.
The appearance of the totem animal near a house was
often looked upon as an announcement of death. The
totem had come to get its relative.

A member of a clan seeks to emphasize his relation-
ship to the totem in various significant ways; he imi-
tates an exterior similarity by dressing himself in the
skin of the totem animal, by having the picture of it
tattooed upon himself, and in other ways. On the
solemn occasions of birth, initiation into manhood or
funeral obsequies this identification with the totem is
carried out in deeds and words. Dances in which all
the members of the tribe disguise themselves as their
totem and act like it serve various magic and religious
purposes. Finally there are the ceremonies at which
the totem animal is killed in a solemn manner.*

The social side of totemism is primarily expressed
in a sternly observed commandment and in a tremen-
dous restriction. The members of a totem clan are
brothers and sisters, pledged to help and protect each
other; if a member of the clan is slain by a stranger the

* Like the legend of the white woman in many noble families.

5 Le, р. 35.—See the discussion of sacrifice farther on.
165

TOTEM AND TABOO m
whole tribe of the slayer must answer for the murder.
and the clan of the slain man shows its solidarity in the
demand for expiation for the blood that has been shed.
The ties of the totem are stronger than our ideas of
family ties, with which they do not altogether coincide,
since the transfer of the totem takes place as a rule
through maternal inheritance, paternal inheritance pos-
sibly not counting at all in the beginning.

But the corresponding taboo restriction consists in
the prohibition against members of the same clan
marrying each other or having any kind of sexual inter- |
course whatsoever with cach other. This is the famous
and enigmatic exogamy connection with totemism.
We have devoted the whole first chapter of this book to |
it, and therefore need only mention here that this
exogamy springs from the intensified incest dread of
primitive races, that it becomes entirely comprehensible
as a security against incest in group marriages, and that
at first it accomplishes the avoidance of incest for the |
younger generation and only in the course of further
development becomes a hindrance to the older genera-
tion as well.

To this presentation of totemism by Frazer, one of
the earliest in the literature on the subject, I will now
add a few excerpts from one of the latest summaries.
In the Elements of the Psychology of Races, which
appeared in 1912, W. Wundt says :* “ The totem animal
is considered the ancestral animal. * Totem * is there-
fore both a group name and a birth name and in the

2 See Chapter I. * р. 116.
166

| gical meaning. But all these uses of the conception

play into cach other and the particular meanings may
recede so that in some cases the totems have become
almost a mere nomenclature of the tribal divisions,
while in others the idea of the descent or else the cultic
meaning of the totem remains in the foreground. . . .
The conception of the totem determines the tribal
arrangement and the tribal organization. These norms
and their establishment in the belief and feelings of the
members of the tribe account for the fact that originally
. the totem animal was certainly not considered merely a
name for à group division but that it usually was con-
sidered the progenitor of the corresponding division.
|. . This accounted for the fact that these animal
ancestors enjoyed a cult. . . . This animal cult ex-
presses itself primarily in the attitude towards the totem
animal, quite aside from special ceremonies and cere-
_ monial festivities: not only each individual animal but
_ every representative of the same species was to a certain
_ degree a sanctified animal; the member of the totem was
forbidden to eat the flesh of the totem animal or he was
allowed to eat it only under special circumstances.
This is in accord with the significant contradictory
phenomenon found in this connection, namely, that
under certain conditions there was a kind of ceremonial
consumption of the totem flesh. . . .”
= . . . But the most important social side of this
totemic tribal arrangement consists in the fact that it
was connected with certain rules of conduct for the
| 167

F TOTEM AND TABOO "
relations of the groups with each other. The most
important of these were the rules of conjugal relations.
This tribal division is thus connected with an important
phenomenon which first made its appearance in the
totemic age, namely with exogamy.”

If we wish to arrive at the characteristics of the
original totemism by sifting through everything that
may correspond to later development or decline, we
find the following essential facts: The totems were
originally only animals and were considered the ancestors
of single tribes. The totem was hereditary only through
the female line ; it was forbidden to kill the totem (or to
eat it, which under primitive conditions amounts to the
same thing) ; members of a totem were forbidden to have
sexual intercourse with each other.

It may now seem strange to us that in the Code du
totémisme which Reinach has drawn up the one princi-

+ The conclusion which Frazer draws about totemism in his
second work on the subject (The Origin of Totemism ; Fortnightly
Review, 1899) agrees with this text: " Thus, totemism has com-
monly been treated as a primitive system both of religion and
of society. As a system of religion it embraces the mystic union
of the savage with his totem; as a system of society it comprises
the relations in which men and women of the same totem stand
10 each other and to the members of other totemic groups. And
corresponding to these two sides of the system are two rough-
and-ready tests or canons of totemism : first, the rule that a man
may not kill or cat his totem animal or plant, and second, the
rule that he may not marry or cohabit with a woman of the same
totem ” (p. 101). Frazer then adds something which takes us
into the midst of the discussion about totemism: ‘ Whether the
two sides—the religious and the social—have always coexisted

or are essentially independent, is a question which has been
variously answered.”

168

pal taboo, namely exogamy, does not appear at all, å
while the assumption of the second taboo, namely the
descent from the totem animal, is only casually men- |
tioned. Yet Reinach is an author to whose work in
this field we owe much, and I have chosen his presenta-
tion in order to prepare us for the differences of opinion |
among the authors, which will now occupy our atien- _
tion.

②

The more convinced we became that totemism had.
regularly formed a phase of every culture, the more
urgent became the necessity of arriving at an under- |
standing of it and of casting light upon the riddle of its —
nature. To be sure, everything about totemism is in -
the nature of a riddle; the decisive questions are the —
origin of the totem, the motivation of cxogamy (or —
rather of the incest taboo which it represents) and the —
relation between the two, the totem organization and
the incest prohibition. The understanding should be —
at once historical and psychological ; it should inform
us under what conditions this peculiar institution de-
veloped and to what psychic needs of man it has given —
expression.

The reader will certainly be astonished to hear from
how many different points of view the answer to these
questions has been attempted and how far the opinions
of expert investigators vary. Almost everything that -
might be asserted in general about totemism is doubt-
ful; even the above statement of it, taken from an article

D 169

4 OTEM AND TABOO | TT
‘by Frazer in 1887, cannot escape the criticism that it
expresses an arbitrary preference of the author and
= would be challenged to-day by Frazer himself, who has
| repeatedly changed his view on the subject.
Tt is quite obvious that the nature of totemism and
exogamy could be most readily grasped if we could get
into closer touch with the origin of both institutions.
| But in judging the state of affairs we must not forget
the remark of Andrew Lang, that even primitive races
_ have not preserved these original forms and the condi-
tions of their origin, so that we are altogether dependent
upon hypotheses to take the place of the obscrvation
we lack? Among the attempted explanations some
seem inadequate from the very beginning in the judg-
- ment of the psychologist. They are altogether too
_ rational and do not take into consideration the effective
| character of what they are to explain. Others rest on
assumptions which observation fails to verify; while
still others appeal to facts which could better be sub-
| * In connection with such a change of opinion Frazer mado this
excellent statement: * That my conclusions on these difficult
questions arc final, I am not so foolish as to pretend. I have
hanged my views repeatedly, and I am resolved to change them
with every change of the evidence, for like a chameleon
| the inquirer should shift his colours with the shifting colours
of the ground he treads.” Preface to Vol. 1, Totemism and
ogamy, 1910.
, * By the nature of the case, as the origin of totemism lies far
beyond our powers of historical examination or of experiment,
we must have recourse, as regards this matter, to conjecture.”
ndrew Lang, Secret of the Totem, p. 27.—" Nowhere do we see
solutely primitive man, and a totemic system in the making,”

170

jected to another interpretation. The refutation of
these various opinions as a rule hardly presents any
difficulties; the authors are, as usual, stronger in the |
criticism which they practise on each other than in their
own work. The final result as regards most of the |
points treated is a non liquet. It is therefore not sur- |
prising that most of the new literature on the subject, |
which we have largely omitted here, shows the unmis- —
takable effort to reject a general solution of totemic
problems as unfeasible. (See, for instance, B. Golden- _
weiser in the Journal of American Folklore, xxiii, 1910. |
Reviewed in the Britannica Year Book, 1913) I have |
taken the liberty of disregarding the chronological
order in stating these contradictory hypotheses.

(a) THE ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM E

The question of the origin of totemism can also be |
formulated as follows: How did primitive people come
to select the names of animals, plants and inanimate
objects for themselves and their tribes ? *

The Scotchman, MacLennan, who discovered totem-
ism and exogamy for science,? refrained from publishing
his views of the origin of totemism. According to a
communication of Andrew Lang? he was for a time |
inclined to trace totemism back to the custom of |

1 At first probably only animals.

2 The Worship of Animals and Plants (Fortnightly Review,
1869-1870). Primitive Marriage, 1865 ; both works reprint
in Studies in Ancient History, 1876 ; second edition, 1386.

* The Secret of the Totem, 1905, p. 34.

171

E TOTEM AND TABOO *
tattooing. I shall divide the accepted theories of the
derivation of totemism into three groups, (x) nominalis-

| tic, (В) sociological, (y) psychological.

(x) The Nominalistic Theories
The information about these theories will justify their
| summation under the headings I have used. *
Garcilaso de La Vega, a descendant of the Peruvian
Inkas, who wrote the history of his race in the seven-
teenth century, is already said tå have traced back what
was known to him about totemic phenomena to the
need of the tribes to differentiate themselves from each
other by means of names! The same idea appears
| centuries later in the Ethnology of А. K. Keane, where
| totems are said to be derived from heraldic badges
through which individuals, families and tribes wanted
to differentiate themselves.*
Max Müller expresses the same opinion about the
- meaning of the totem in his Contributions to the Science
of Mythology: A totem is said to be, 1. a mark of the
| clan, 2. a clan name, 3. the name of the ancestor of the
| clan, 4. the name of the object which the clan reveres.
| J. Pikler wrote later, in 1899, that men needed a per-
. manent name for communities and individuals that
— could be preserved in writing. . . . Thus totemism
arises, not from a religious, but from a prosaic everyday
- need of mankind. The giving of names, which is the
essence of totemism, is a result of the technique of
1 e Secret of the Totem, 1905, p. 34.

5 Ge e to Andrew Lang.
172

THE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF Te
primitive writing. The totem is of the nature of a
easily represented writing symbol. But if savages firs

relationship from this animal.

Herbert Spencer, also, thought that the origin
totemism was to be found in the giving of names.
attributes of certain individuals, he showed, had brought
about their being named after animals so that they
come to have names of honour or nicknames whi
continued in their descendants. As a result of the in-
definiteness and incomprehensibility of primitive lan-
guages, these names are said to have been taken by
later generations as proof of their descent from
animals themselves. Totemism would thus be the
result of a mistaken reverence for ancestors. E

Lord Avebury (better known under his former name, |
Sir John Lubbock) has expressed himself quite similarly.
about the origin of totemism, though without emphasiz- |
ing the misunderstanding. If we want to explain the.
veneration of animals we must not forget how often
human names are borrowed from animals. The chi |
dren and followers of a man who was called bear or lion |
naturally made this their ancestral name. In this way
it came about that the animal itself came to be oe
and finally venerated.

Fison has advanced what seems an irrefutable obj

2 Pikler and Somló, The Origin of Totemism, 1901.
authors rightly call their attempt at explanation a “ Contribution
to the materialistic theory of History.”

* The Origin of Animal Worship (Fortnightly Review, 187
Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, 83 169 to 176.

173

TOTEM AND TABOO
tion to such a derivation of the totem name from the
names of individuals? He shows from conditions in
Australia that the totem is always the mark of a group
of people and never of an individual. But if it were
otherwise, if the totem was originally the name of a
single individual, it could never, with the system of
maternal inheritance, descend to his children.

The theories thus far stated are evidently inadequate.
"They may explain how animal names came to be applied
primitive tribes, but they can never explain the im-
portance attached to the giving of names which con-
stitutes the totemic system. The most noteworthy
theory of this group has been developed by Andrew
Lang in his books, Social Origins, 1903, and The Secret
of the Totem, 1905. This theory still makes naming
the centre of the problem, but it uses two interesting
psychological factors and thus may claim to have con-
tributed to the final solution of the riddle of totemism.

Andrew Lang holds that it does not make any differ-
ence how clans acquired their animal names. Tt might
| be assumed that one day they awoke to the conscious-
_ ness that they had them without being able to account
from where they came. The origin of these names had
been forgotten. In that case they would seek to acquire
more information by pondering over their names, and
with their conviction of the importance of names they

jecessarily came to all the ideas that are contained in
the totemic system. For primitive men, as for savages

3 Kamilaroi and Kurmai, p 165, 1880 (Lang, Secret of the

174

THE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISI
of to-day and even for our children, a name is not in-
different and conventional as it seems to us, but is some- -
thing important and essential. A man’s name is one
of the main constituents of his person and perhaps a
part of his psyche. The fact that they had the same
names as animals must have led primitive men to
assume a secret and important bond between their
persons and the particular animal species. What other
bond than consanguinity could it be? But if the simi-
larity of names once led to this assumption it could also
account directly for all the totemic prohibitions of the |
blood taboo, including exogamy. Å

“ No more than these three things—a group animal
name of unknownorigin ; belicf in å transcendental con-
nection between all bearers, human and bestial, of the |
same name; and belief in the blood superstitions—wer
needed to give rise to all the totemic creeds and ргас |
tices, including exogamy ” (Secret of the Totem, p. 126).

Lang's explanation extends over two periods. 1
derives the totemic system of psychological necessity.
from the totem names, on the assumption that the origin.
of the naming has been forgotten. The other part of
the theory now seeks to clear up the origin of these |
names. We shall see that it bears an entirely different =
stamp. | ⑤

This other part of the Lang theory is not markedly
different from those which I have called “ nominalistic.
The practical need of differentiation compelled the i
dividual tribes to assume names and therefore they

See the chapter on Taboo, p. 96. å
175

"TOTEM AND TABOO

tolerated the names which every tribe ascribed to R
other. This “ naming from without ” is the peculiarity
of Lang’s construction. The fact that the names which
thus originated were borrowed from animals is not
further remarkable and need not have been felt by
| primitive men as abuse or derision. Besides, Lang has
cited numerous cases from later epochs of history in
which names given from without that were first meant
| to be derisive were accepted by those nicknamed and
voluntarily borne (The Guises, Whigs and Tories).
The assumption that the origin of these names was for-
_ gotten in the course of time connects this second part
of the Lang theory with the first one just mentioned.

(8) The Sociological Theories

5. Reinach, who successfully traced the relics of the
totemic system in the cult and customs of later periods,
| though attaching from the very beginning only slight
value to the factor of descent from the totem animal,
nce made the casual remark that totemism seemed to
to be nothing but “ une hypertrophie de l'instinct.
social” +

The same interpretation seems to permeate the new
"work of E. Durkheim, Les Formes Elémentaires de la
Vie Religieuse; Le Système Totémique en Australie,
1912. The totem is the visible representative of the
social religion of these races. It embodies the com-
munity, which is the real object of veneration.

1 Le, Vol. I, p. 41.
176

i

Ne

THE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM
Other authors have sought a more intimate reason
for the share which social impulses have played in the
formation of totemic institutions, Thus A. C. Haddon
has assumed that every primitive tribe originally lived
on a particular plant or animal species and perhaps
also traded with this food and exchanged it with
other tribes. It then was inevitable that a tribe
Should become known to other tribes by the name
of the animal which played such weighty róle with it.

= At the same time this tribe would develop a special

familiarity with this animal, and a kind of interest
for it which, however, was based upon the psychic
motive of man's most elementary and pressing need,
namely, hunger.

The objections against this most rational of all the
totem theories are that such a state of the food supply is
never found among primitive men and probably never
existed. Savages are the more omnivorous the lower
they stand in the social scale. Besides, it is incom-
prehensible how such an exclusive dict could have de-
veloped an almost religious relation to the totem, cul-
minating in an absolute abstention from the referred
food.

The first of the three theories about the origin of
totemism which Frazer stated was a psychological one.
We shall report it elsewhere.

Frazer's second theory, which we will discuss here,
originated under the influence of an important publica-

+ Address to the Anthropological Section, British Association,

(Belfast, 1902. According to Frazer, Lc., Vol, IV, p. 50,
177

TOTEM AND TABOO
tion by two investigators of the inhabitants of Central
Australia)

Spencer and Gillen describe a series of peculiar in-
stitutions, customs, and opinions of a group of tribes,
the so-called Arunta nation, and Frazer subscribes to
their opinion that these peculiarities are to be looked
upon as characteristics of a primary state and that they
can explain the first and real meaning of totemism.

In the Arunta tribe itself (a part of the Arunta nation)
these peculiarities are as follows: s

1. They have the division into totem clans but the
totem is not hereditary but is individually determined
(as will be shown later).

2. The totem clans are not exogamous, and the mar-
riage restrictions are brought about by a highly de- |
veloped division into marriage classes which have
nothing to do with the totems. |

3. The function of the totem clan consists of carrying
out a ceremony which in a subtle magic manner brings |
about an increase of the edible totem. (This ceremony |
is called Intichiuma.)

4. The Aruntas have a peculiar theory about con- |
ception and re-birth. They assume that the spirits of |
the dead who belong to their totem wait for their re-
birth in definite localities and penetrate into the bodies
of the women who pass such a spot. When a child is
born the mother states at which spirit abode she thinks -
she conceived her child. This determines the totem of

1 The Native Tribes of Central Australia, by Baldwin Spencer
and H. J. Gillen, London, 1891.
178

i HE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM
the child. It is further assumed that the spirits (of the
dead as well as of the re-born) are bound to peculiar
stone amulets, called Churinga, which are found in these
places.

Two factors seem to have induced Frazer to believe
that the oldest form of totemism had been found in the
institution of the Aruntas. In the first place the exist-
ence of certain myths which assert that the ancestors of
the Aruntas always lived on their totem animal, and
that they married no other women except those of their
own totem. Secondly, the apparent disregard of the
sexual act in their theory of conception. People who
have not yet realized that conception was the result of
the sexual act might well be considered the most back-
ward and primitive people living to-day.

Frazer, in having recourse to the Intichiuma cere-
mony to explain totemism, suddenly saw the totemic
system in a totally different light as a thoroughly
practical organization for accomplishing the most
natural needs of man. (Compare Haddon above.)
The system was simply an extraordinary piece of “ co-
operative magic.” Primitive men formed what might
be called a magic production and consumption club.
Each totem clan undertook to see to the cleanliness of
a certain article of food. If it were a question of in-
edible totems like harmful animals, rain, wind, or

1 There is nothing vague or mystical about it, nothing of that
‘metaphysical haze which some writers love to conjure up over
the humblest beginnings of human speculation but which is
utterly foreign to the simple, sensuous, and concrete modes of
the savage, (Totemism and Еховату, L., p. 117.)

179

TOTEM AND TABOO

similar objects, it was the duty of the totem clan to
dominate this part of nature and to ward off its in-
juriousness. The efforts of each clan were for the good |
of all the others. As the clan could not eat its totem
or could eat only a very little of it, it furnished this
valuable product for the rest and was in turn furnished
with what these had to take care of as their social totem
duty. Tn the light of this interpretation furnished by
the Intichiuma ceremony, it appeared to Frazer as if the
prohibition against eating the totem had misled
observers to neglect the more important side of the
relation, namely the commandment to supply as much
as possible of the edible totem for the needs of others.

Frazer accepted the tradition of the Aruntas that
cach totem clan had originally lived on its totem with-
out any restriction. It then became difficult to under- |
stand the evolution that followed through which
savages were satisfied to ensure the totem for others
while they themselves abstained from cating it. He
then assumed that this restriction was by no means the
result of a kind of religious respect, but came about
through the observation that no animal devoured its
own kind, so that this break in the identification with
the totem was injurious to the power which savages
sought to acquire over the totem. Or else it resulted
from the endeavour to make the being favourably dis-
posed by sparing it. Frazer did not conceal the diffi-
culties of this explanation from himself; nor did he dare
to indicate in what way the habit of marrying within the

3 Le, p. 120.
180

É. 4

tem, which the myths of the Aruntas proclaimed, was
converted into cxogamy.

Frazer's theory based on the Intichiuma, stands or
falls with the recognition of the primitive nature of the
Arunta institutions. But it seems impossible to hold
to this in the face of the objections advanced by
Durkheim and Lang? The Aruntas seem on the
contrary to be the most developed of the Australian
tribes and to represent rather a dissolution stage of
totemism than its beginning. The myths that made
such an impression on Frazer because they emphasize,
in contrast to prevailing institutions of to-day, that the
‘Aruntas are free to eat the totem and to marry within
it, easily explain themselves to us as wish phantasies,
which are projected into the past, like the myths of the
Golden Age.

(y) The Psychological Theories

| Frazer's first psychological theories, formed before
his acquaintance with the observations of Spencer and
Gillen, were based upon the belief in an “ outward
soul.” ? The totem was meant to represent a safe place
of refuge where the soul is deposited in order to avoid
the dangers which threaten it. After primitive man had
housed his soul in his totem he himself became invulner-
able and he naturally took care himself not to harm the

3 L'année Sociologique, Vol. I, V, VIII, and elsewhere, See
especially the chapter, Sur le Totémisme, Vol. V, 1901,
* Social Origins and the Secret of the Totem.
* The Golden Bough, II, p. 332.
181

bearer of his soul. But as he did not know which
individual of the species in question was the bearer of
his soul he was concerned in sparing the whole species.
Frazer himself later gave up this derivation of totemism
from the belief in souls.

When he became acquainted with the observations of
Spencer and Gillen he set up the other social theory
which has just been stated, but he himself then saw that
the motive from which he had derived totemism was
altogether too “ rational ” and that he had assumed a
social organization for it which was altogether too com-
plicated to be called primitive. The magic co-opera-
tive companies now appeared to him rather as the fruit
than as the germ of totemism. He sought a simpler
factor for the derivation of totemism in the shape of a

= primitive superstition behind these forms. He then
found this original factor in the remarkable conception
theory of the Aruntas.

As already stated, the Aruntas establish no con-
nection between conception and the sexual act. If a
woman feels herself to be a mother it means that at that
moment one of the spirits from the nearest spirit abode,
who has been watching for a re-birth, has penetrated |
into her body and is born as her child. This child has
the same totem as all the spirits that lurk in that par-
ticular locality. But if we are willing to go back ₪

1 “ It is unlikely that a community of savages should deliber-
ately parcel out the realm of nature into provinces, assign each
province to a particular band of magicians, and bid all the bands
to work their magic and weave their spells for the common
good." Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. IV, p. 57.

182 а

d

ieved that the animal, plant, stone, or other object
which occupied her fancy at the moment when she first |
felt herself pregnant had really penetrated into her and |
was being born through her in human form, then the
identity of a human being with his totem would really
be founded on the belief of the mother, and all the
other totem commandments (with the exception of
exogamy) could easily be derived from this belief. Men
would refuse to eat the particular animal or plant
because it would be just like eating themselves. But
occasionally they would be impelled to eat some of
their totem in a ceremonial manner because they could —
thus strengthen their identification with the totem,
which is the essential part of totemism. W. Н. R.
Rivers’ observations among the inhabitants of the Bank
Islands seemed to prove men's direct identification |
with their totems on the basis of such a conception
theory.

The ultimate sources of totemism would then be the
ignorance of savages as to the process of procreation
among human beings and animals; especially their
ignorance as to the rôle which the male plays in fertiliza-
tion. This ignorance must be facilitated by the long
interval which is interposed between the fertilizing act
and the birth of the child or the sensation of the child’s
first movements. Totemism is therefore a creation of
the feminine mind and not of the masculine. The sick
fancies of the pregnant woman are the roots of it.

1 Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. II, p. 89, and IV, p. 59.
183

IND TABOO

Anything indeed that struck a woman at that mysterious

moment of her life when she first knows herself to be

a mother might easily be identified by her with the child

in her womb. Such maternal fancies, so natural and
seemingly so universal, appear to be the root of
totemism.!

The main objection to this third theory of Frazer's is
the same which has already been advanced against his
second, sociological theory. The Aruntas seem to be
far removed from the beginnings of totemism. Their
denial of fatherhood does not apparently rest upon
primitive ignorance; in many cases they even have
paternal inheritance. They seem to have sacrificed
fatherhood to a kind of a speculation which strives to
honour the ancestral spirits? Though they raise the
myth of immaculate conception through a spirit to a
general theory of conception, we cannot for that reason
credit them with ignorance as to the conditions of pro-
creation any more than we could the old races who
lived during the rise of the Christian myths.

Another psychological theory of the origin of totem-
ism has been formulated by the Dutch writer, G. A.
Wilcken. It establishes a connection between totemism
and the migration of souls. * The animal into which,
according to general belief, the souls of the dead passed,
became a blood relative, an ancestor, and was revered
as such." But the belief in the souls migration to

‎Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. IV, p. 63.‏ ג
‎That belief is a philosophy far from primitive." Andrew‏ “ 2
‎Lang, Secret of the Totem, p. 192. -‏
184

animals is more read
inversely.)

Still another theory of totemism is advanced by |
excellent American ethnologists, Franz Boas, Hil
Tout, and others. It is based on observations.
totemic Indian tribes and asserts that the totem
originally the guardian spirit of an ancestor who

descendants. We have already heard the difficulties.

"which the derivation of totemism through inheritance
from a single individual offers; besides, the Aust
Observations seem by no means to support the
back of the totem to the guardian spirit.*

. Two facts have become decisive for the last of the
psychological theories as stated by Wundt; in the first.
place, that the original and most widely known totem
object was an animal, and secondly, that the carliest
totem animals corresponded to animals which had a
soul? Such animals as birds, snakes, lizards, mice are |
fitted by their extreme mobility, their flight through the
air, and by other characteristics which arouse surprise
and fear, to become the bearers of souls which leave —
their bodies. The totem animal is a descendant of the —
animal transformations of the spirit-soul. Thus with —
Wundt totemism is directly connected with the belief —
in souls or with animism.

‎Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. IV, p. 45.‏ ג
‎Frazer, Lc., p. 48.‏ 2
‎Wundt, Elemente der Vólker-Psychologie, p. 190.‏ *

‎185

TO TOTEMISM

I have put forth the theories of totemism with con-
iderable detail and yet I am afraid that I have not made

am taking the liberty of further condensing the other
estions that arise. The discussions about the
exogamy of totem races become especially complicated
and untractable, one might even say confused, on
| account of the nature of the material used. Fortun-
/ ately the object of this treatise permits me to limit my-
self to pointing out several guide-posts and referring to
the frequently quoted writings of experts in the field
- for a more thorough pursuit of the subject.

The attitude of an author to the problems of exogamy
is of course not independent of the stand he has taken
toward one or the other of the totem theories. Some
— of these explanations of totemism lack all connection
with exogamy so that the two institutions are entirely
separated. Thus we find here two opposing views,
one of which clings to the original likelihood that
| exogamy is an essential part of the totemic system
- while the other disputes such a connection and believes
in an accidental combination of these two traits of the
most ancient cultures. In his later works Frazer has
emphatically stood for this latter point of view.

“T must request the reader to bear constantly in
mind that the two institutions of totemism and exo-
⑧ 186

«stekuadamemznydisximtaokigivsack
though they have accidentally crossed and blende
many tribes.” (Totemism and Exogamy 1, Pre
xu.) ·
He warns directly against the opposite view as being
a source of endless difficulties and misunderstanding
Tn contrast to this, many authors have found a way o
conceiving exogamy as a necessary consequence of t
basic views on totemism. Durkheim * has shown in
his writings how the taboo, which is attached to the |
totem, must have entailed the prohibition agains
putting a woman of the same totem to sexual uses. The
totem is of the same blood as the human being and fo
this reason the blood ban (in reference to defloration
and menstruation) forbids sexual intercourse with a
woman of the same totem.* Andrew Lang, who here
agrees with Durkheim, goes so far as to believe that the
blood taboo was not necessary to bring about the pro- =
hibition in regard to the women of the same tribe.
The general totem taboo which, for instance, forbids
any one to sit in the shadow of the totem tree, would |
have sufficed. Andrew Lang also contends for another -
derivation of exogamy (see below) and leaves it in
doubt how these two explanations are related to eacl
other.
As regards the temporal relations, the majority of

1 L'année Sociologique, 1898-1904.
2 See Frazer's Criticism of Durkheim, Totemism and Exogamy, |
p. 101.
3 Secret, etc., p. 125.
187

/ authors subscribe to the opinion that totemism is the
— older institution and that exogamy came later."
| Among the theories which seek to explain exogamy
. independently of totemism only a few need be men-
| tioned in so far as they illustrate different attitudes of
the authors towards the problem of incest.
| MacLennan had ingeniously guessed that exogamy
resulted from the remnants of customs pointing to
earlier forms of female rape. He assumed that it was
the general custom in ancient times to procure women
from strange tribes so that marriage with a woman
from the same tribe gradually became “improper
because it was unusual.” He sought the motive for the
exogamous habit in the scarcity of women among these
tribes, which had resulted from the custom of killing
most female children at birth. We are not concerned
| here with investigation whether actual conditions corro-
borate MacLennan’s assumptions. We are more in-
| terested in the argument that these premises still leave
- it unexplained why the male members of the tribe
should have made these few women of their blood
inaccessible to themselves, as well as in the manner in
| which the incest problem is here entirely neglected."
Other writers have on the contrary assumed, and
evidently with more right, that exogamy is to be inter-
preted as an institution for the prevention of incest.

1 See Frazer, /.c., Vol. IV, p. 75: “ The totemic clan is a totally
| different social organism from the exogamous class, and we have
good grounds for thinking that it is far older.”
2 Primitive Marriage, 1865.
3 Frazer, Le, p. 73 to 92. * Compare Chapter I.
188

If we survey the gradually increasing compli
of Australian marriage restrictions we can hardly
agreeing with the opinion of Morgan, Frazer, Hev
and Baldwin Spencer,! that these institutions bear the
stamp of “ deliberate design,” as Frazer puts it,
that they were meant to do what they have actually
accomplished. “ In no other way does it seem possib
to explain in all its details a system at once so compl
and so regular.” *
It is of interest to point out that the first restrictios
which the introduction of marriage classes brougł
about affected the scxual freedom of the young
generation, in other words, incest between brothers an
sisters and between sons and mothers, while incest
between father and daughter was only abrogated by
more sweeping measures,
However, to trace back exogamous sexual restrictions
to legal intentions does not add anything to the under
standing of the motive which created these institution
From what source, in the final analysis, springs the
dread of incest which must be recognized as the root of
exogamy ? It evidently does not suffice to appeal to
an instinctive aversion against scxual intercourse with
blood relatives, that is to say, to the fact of incest
dread, in order to explain the dread of incest, if social |
experience shows that, in spite of this instinct, incest
is not a rare occurrence even in our society, and if the

1 Morgan, Ancient Society, 1877.—Frazer, Toteniism and
Exogamy, Vol. IV, p. 105. è
5 Frazer, Lc., p. 106.
189

which incestuous marriage of privileged persons was
made the rule.
| Westermarck ? advanced the following to explain the
| dread of incest: “that an innate aversion against
- sexual intercourse exists between persons who live
together from childhood and that this feeling, since
such persons are as a rule consanguineous, finds a
natural expression in custom and law through the
abhorrence of sexual intercourse between those closely
| related.” Though Havelock Ellis. disputed the in-
= stinctive character of this aversion in the Studies in the
| Psychology of Sex, he otherwise supported the same
explanation in its essentials by declaring: “ The normal
bsence of the manifestation of the pairing instinct
where brothers and sisters or boys and girls living
together from childhood are concerned, is a purely
| negative phenomenon due to the fact that under these
circumstances the antecedent conditions for arousing -
| the mating instinct must be entirely lacking. For
persons who have grown up together from childhood
| habit has dulled the sensual attraction of seeing, hearing
and touching and has led it into a channel of quiet
attachment, robbing it of its power to call forth the
jecessary erethistic excitement required to produce
sexual tumescence.”
It seems to me very remarkable that Westermarck

| 1 Origin and Development of Moral Conceptions, Vol, II:
| Marriage (1909). See also there the author's defence against
familiar objections.
į 190

looks upon this innate aversion to sexual interc
with persons with whom we have shared childhood.
being at the same time a psychic representative of th
biological fact that inbreeding means injury to
species. Such a biological instinct would hardly go so |
far astray in its psychological manifestation as to affec
the companions of home and hearth which in thi
respect are quite harmless, instead of the blood relatives -
which alone are injurious to procreation. And I can-
not resist citing the excellent criticism which Frazer |
opposes to Westermarck's assertion. Frazer finds 1
incomprehensible that sexual sensibility to-day is not
at all opposed to sexual intercourse with companions
of the hearth and home while the dread of incest, which
is said to be nothing but an offshoot of this reluctance, |
has nowadays grown to be so overpowering. But
other remarks of Frazer's go deeper, and I set them
down here in unabbreviated form because they are ii
essential agreement with the arguments developed i
my chapter on taboo.

* It is not easy to see why any deep human instinct -
should need reinforcement through law. There is по l
law commanding men to eat and drink, or forbidding |
them to put their hands in the fire, Men eat and drink
and keep their hands out of the fire instinctively, for
fear of natural, not legal penalties, which would be |
entailed by violence done to these instincts. The law |
only forbids men to do what their instincts incline them —
to do; what nature itself prohibits and punishes it —
would be superfluous for the law to prohibit and punish. |
191.

TOTEM AND TABOO
Accordingly we may always safely assume that crimes
forbidden by law are crimes which many men have a
— natural propensity to commit. If there were no such
propensity there would be no such crimes, and if no
such crimes were committed, what need to forbid
them? Instead of assuming therefore, from the
legal prohibition of incest, that there is a natural
aversion to incest we ought rather to assume that
there is a natural instinct in favour of it, and that
if the law represses it, it does so because civilized men
| have come to the conclusion that the satisfaction
of thesc natural instincts is detrimental to the Te
interests of society.” +

To this valuable argument of Frazer's I can add that
| the experiences of psychoanalysis make the assumption
of such an innate aversion to incestuous relations
altogether impossible. They have taught, on the con-
trary, that the first sexual impulses of the young are
regularly of an incestuous nature and that such re-
- pressed impulses play a role which can hardly be over-

= estimated as the motive power of later neuroses.
The interpretation of incest dread as an innate instinct
— must therefore be abandoned. The same holds true of
| another derivation of the incest prohibition which
counts many supporters, namely, the assumption that
. primitive races very soon observed the dangers with
which inbreeding threatened their race and that they
therefore had decreed the incest prohibition with a
| conscious purpose. The objections to this attempted

1 Les p. 97.
192

explanation crowd upon each other! Not only must

the prohibition of incest be older than all breeding of

pe

domestic animals from which men could derive experi-
ence of the effect of inbreeding upon the characteristics

‘of the breed, but the harmful consequences of inbreed- |

ing are not established beyond all doubt even to-day,
and in man they can be shown only with difficulty.
Besides, everything that we know about contempo-
raneous savages makes it very improbable that the
thoughts of their far-removed ancestors should already
have been occupied with preventing injury to their
later descendants. It sounds almost ridiculous to
attribute hygienic and eugenic motives, such as have
hardly yet found consideration in our culture, to these
children of the race who lived without thought of the
morrow.

And finally it must be pointed out that a prohibition
against inbreeding as an element weakening to the
race, which is imposed from practical hygienic motives,
seems quite inadequate to explain the deep abhorrence
which our society feels against incest. This dread of
incest, as I have shown elsewhere, seems to be even
more active and stronger among primitive races living
to-day than among the civilized.

In inquiring into the origin of incest dread it could
be expected that here also there is the choice between

* Compare Durkheim, La Prohibition de l'Inceste (L'année
Sociologique, I, 1896-7).

2 Charles Darwin says about savages: “ They are not likely to
reflect on distant evils to their progeny.”

3 See Chapter I,

G 193

TOTEM AND TABOO

possible explanations of a sociological, biological, and

psychological nature in which the psychological motives

. might have to be considered as representative of bio-
logical forces. Still, in the end, one is compelled to
subscribe to Frazer's resigned statement, namely, that
we do not know the origin of incest dread and do not
even know how to guess at it. None of the solutions
of the riddle thus far advanced seems satisfactory
to us.

1 must mention another attempt to explain the origin
of incest dread which is of an entirely different nature
from those considered up to now. It might be called
an historic explanation.

. This attempt is associated with a hypothesis of
Charles Darwin about the primal social state of man.
From the habits of the higher apes Darwin concluded
that man, too, lived originally in small hordes in which
the jealousy of the oldest and strongest male prevented
sexual promiscuity. “ We may indeed conclude from
what we know of the jealousy of all male quadrupeds,
armed, as many of them are, with special weapons for
battling with their rivals, that promiscuous intercourse
in a state of nature is extremely improbable. . . . If
we therefore look back far enough into the stream of
time and judging from the social habits of a man as he
now cxists, the most probable view is that he originally
lived in small communities, each with a single wife, or

+ “ Thus the ultimate origin of exogamy and with it the law of
incest—since exogamy was devised to prevent incest—remains a
problemnearlyasdarkasever.”— Totemismand Exogamy,I, p. 165.

194

if powerful with several, whom he jealously defended.
against all other men. Or he may not have been à
social animal and yet have lived with several wives,
like the gorilla; for all the natives agree that only the
adult male is seen in a band; when the young male
grows up a contest takes place for mastery, and the
strongest, by killing and driving out the others, estab-
lishes himself as the head of the community (Dr.
Savage in the Boston Journal of Natural History, Vol. V,
1845-7) The younger males being thus driven out
and wandering about would also, when at last success-
ful in finding a partner, prevent too close breeding
within the limits of the same family.” +

Atkinson * seems to have been the first to recognize
that these conditions. of the Darwinian primal horde
would in practice bring about the exogamy of the
young men. Each one of those driven away could
found a similar horde in which, thanks to jealousy of

the chief, the same prohibition as to sexual intercourse

obtained, and in the course of time these conditions
would have brought about the rule which is now known
as law: no sexual intercourse with the members of the
horde. After the advent of totemism the rule would
have changed into a different form: no sexual inter-
course within the totem.

Andrew Lang? declared himself in agreement with

‎The Origin of Man, Vol. U, Chap. 20, pp. 603-4.‏ ג
‎Primal Law, London, 1903 (with Andrew Lang, Social‏ *
‎Origins).‏
‎Secret of the Totem, pp. 114, 143,‏ 3
195

CTN EN

TOTEM AND TABOO TA
this explanation of exogamy. But in the same book
he advocates the other theory of Durkheim which
explains exogamy as a consequence of the totem laws.
It is not altogether easy to combine the two interpreta-
tions; in the first case exogamy would have existed
before totemism; in the second case it would be a
consequence of it.

3 |

Into this darkness psychoanalytic experience throws
one single ray of light,

The relation of the child to animals has much in
common with that of primitive man. The. child does
not yet show any trace of the pride which afterwards
moves the adult civilized man to set a sharp dividing
line between his own naturc and that of all other
animals, The child unhesitatingly attributes full

1 “If it be granted that exogamy existed in practice, on the |
lines of Mr. Darwin's theory, before the totem beliefs lent to the
practice a sacred sanction, our task is relatively easy. The first
practical rule would be that of the jealous sire: * No males to
touch the females in my camp,” with expulsion of adolescent sons.
In efflux of time that rule, becoming habitual, would be, * No mar-
riages within the local group.” Next let the local groups receive
names such as Emus, Crows, Opossums, Snipes, and the rule
becomes, * No marriage within the local group of animal name; |
no Snipe to marry a Snipe. But, if the primal groups were not |
exogamous they would become so as soon as totemic myths and |
taboos were developed out of the animal, vegetable, and other
names of small local groups.”—Secret of the Totem, p 143.
(The italics above are mine.)—In his last expression on the sub-
ject (Folklore, December, 1911), Andrew Lang states, however,
that he has given up the derivation of exogamy out of the
* general totemic ” taboo.

196

equality to animals; he roba feels himself more

. closely related to the animal than to the undoubtedly |

mysterious adult, in the freedom with which he acknow-
Tedges his needs.

Not infrequently a curious disturbance manifests
itself in this excellent understanding between child and

animal. The child suddenly begins to fear a certain —

animal species and to protect himself against seeing or
touching any individual of this species. There results

the clinical picture of an animal phobia, which is one of —
the most frequent among the psychoneurotic diseases
of this age and perhaps the carliest form of such am |

—ailment. The phobia is as a rule in regard to animals

for which the child has until then shown the liveliest —

interest and has nothing to do with the individual
animal. In cities the choice of animals which can
become the object of phobia is not great. They are
horses, dogs, cats, more seldom birds, and strikingly
often very small animals like bugs and butterflies.
Sometimes animals which are known to the child only
from picture books and fairy stories become objects of
the senseless and inordinate anxiety which is manifested
with these phobias; it is seldom possible to learn the

manner in which such an unusual choice of anxiety has —

been brought about. I am indebted to Dr. Karl
Abraham for the report of a case in which the child
itself explained its fear of wasps by saying that the
colour and the stripes of the body of the wasp had
made it think of the tiger of which, from all that it had
heard, it might well be afraid.

197

šić .

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2 TOTEM AND “TABOO

The animal phobias have not yet been made the
object of careful analytical investigation, although they
very much merit it. The difficulties of analysing
children of so tender an age have probably been the
motive of such neglect. It cannot therefore be asserted
that the general meaning of these illnesses is known, and
I myself do not think that it would turn out to be the
same in all cases. But a number of such phobias
directed against larger animals have proved accessible
to analysis and have thus betrayed their secret to the
investigator. In every case it was the same: the fear
at bottom was of the father, if the children examined
were boys, and was merely displaced upon the animal.

Every one of any experience in psychoanalysis has
undoubtedly seen such cases and has received the same
impression from them. But I can refer to only a few
detailed reports on the subject. This is an accident of
the literature of such cases, from which the conclusion
should not be drawn that our general assertion is based
on merely scattered observation. For instance I men-
tion an author, M. Wulff of Odessa, who has very
intelligently occupied himself with the neuroses of child-
hood. He tells, in relating the history of an illness,
that a nine-year-old boy suffered from a dog phobia at
the age of four, “ When he saw a dog running by on
the street he wept and cried : ' Dear dog, don't touch
me, 1 will be good” Ву “ being good “ he meant
* not to play violin any more “ (to practise onanism).*

* M. Wulff, Contributions to Infantile Sexuality, Zentralbl,
/ Psychoanalyze, 1912, II, No, I, p. 15.
198

The same author later sums up as follows: “ His dog

phobia is really his fear of the father displaced upon the —

dog, for his peculiar expression: * Dog, I will be good”
— that is to say, I will not masturbate—really refers to

the father who has forbidden masturbation.” He then —

adds something in a note which fully agrees with my |

experience and at the same time bears witness to the
abundance of such experiences: “such phobias (of
horses, dogs, cats, chickens and other domestic
animals) are, I think, at least as prevalent as pavor
nocturnus in childhood, and usually reveal themselves
in the analysis as a displacement of fear from one of the
parents to animals. 1 am not prepared to assert that
the wide-spread mouse and rat phobia has the same
mechanism.”

I reported the “ Analysis of the Phobia of à five-year-
old Boy”? which the father of the little patient had

put at my disposal. It was a fear of horses as a result

of which the boy refused to go on the street. He ex-
pressed his apprehension that the horse would come
into the room and bite him. It proves that this was
meant to be the punishment for his wish that the horse
should fall over (die). After assurances had relieved
the boy of his fear of his father, it proved that he was
fighting against wishes whose content was the absence

(departure or death) of the father. He indicated only

too plainly that he felt the father to be his rival for the
favour of the mother, upon whom his budding sexual
1 Little Hans, trans. by A. A. Brill (Moffat, Yard & Co,
NY).
199

W-
TOTEM AND TABOO
wishes were by dark premonitions directed. He p
fore had the typical attitude of the male child to its
parents which we call the “Oedipus complex” in.
which we recognize the central complex of the neuroses
in general. Through the analysis of “ little John ” we
have learnt a fact which is very valuable in relation to
totemism, namely, that under such conditions the child |
displaces a part of its feelings from the father upon
some animal.

Analysis showed the paths of association, both
significant and accidental in content, along which such
a displacement took place. It also allowed one to guess
the motives for the displacement. The hate which
resulted from the rivalry for the mother could not
permeate the boy's psychic life without being inhibited ;
he had to contend with the tenderness and admiration
which he had felt for his father from the beginning, so
that thechild assumed a double or ambivalent emotional
attitude towards the father and relieved himself of this
ambivalent conflict by displacing his hostile and anxious
feelings upon a substitute for the father. The displace-
ment could not, however, relieve the confiict by bring-
ing about a smooth division between the tender and the
hostile feelings. On the contrary, the conflict was
continued in reference to the object to which displace-
ment has been made and to which also the ambivalence
spreads. There was no doubt that little John had not
only fear, but respect and interest for horses. As soon
as his fear was moderated he identified himself with

the feared animal; he jumped around like a horse, and
200

|
|
|
|
|
|

solution of the phobia he did not scruple to identi
his parents with other large animals? i

We may venture the impression that certain traits of
totemism return as a negative expression in these
animal phobias of children. But we are indebted to

S. Ferenczi for a beautiful individual observation of
“what must be called a case of positive totemism in the
child? Tt is true that with the little Arpád, whom —
Ferenczi reports, the totemic interests do not awakenin .
direct connection with the Oedipus complex, but on the |

| basis of a narcistic premise, namely, the fear of castra- |
| tion. But whoever looks attentively through the |
history of little John will also find there abundant proof —
that the father was admired as the possessor of large |
genitals and was feared as threatening the child's own —
genitals. In the Oedipus as well as in the castration —
complex the father plays the same rôle of feared oppo |
i

nent to the infantile sexual interests. Castration and its |
. substitute through blinding are the punishment he
| fhreatens.t

When little Arpád was two and a half years old he —
once tried, while at a summer resort, to urinate into —

ep AL

2 * The Phantasy of the Giraffe,” Lc, p. 30.

* s Ferenczi, Contributions to Psychoanalysis, p. 204, trans-
lated by Ernest Jones (Badger, Boston, 1916).

* Compare the communications of Reitler, Ferenczi, Rank,
and Eder about the substitution of blindness in the Oedipus myth
for castration. Intern. Zeitschrift f. ärtzl. Psychoanalyze, 1913,
| Nož
1 ッ 201

å .

|
1
|

the chicken coop, and on this occasion а chicken bit
his penis or snapped at it. When he returned to the
same place a year later he became a chicken himself,
was interested only in the chicken coop and in every-
thing that occurred there, and gave up human speech
for cackling and crowing. During the period of
observation, at the age of five, he spoke again, but his
speech was exclusively about chickens and other fowl."
He played with no other toy and sang only songs in
which there was something about poultry. His be-
haviour towards his totem animal was subtly ambival-
ent, expressing itself in immoderate hating and loving.
He loved best to play killing chickens. ** The slaughter-
ing of poultry was quite a festival for him. He could
dance around the animals’ bodies för hours at a time in
a state of intense excitement.” * But then he kissed and
stroked the slaughtered animal, and cleaned and
caressed the chicken effigies which he himself had ill-
used.

Arpäd himself saw to it that the meaning of his
curious activity could not remain hidden. At times he
translated his wishes from the totemic method of
expression back into that of everyday life. “Now I
am small, now I am a chicken. When I get bigger I
shall be a fowl. When I am bigger still, I shall be a
cock.” On another occasion he suddenly expressed
the wish to cat a “potted mother” (by analogy,
potied fowl). He was very free with open threats
of castration against others, just as he himself had

1 Ferenczi, Le, p 209.
202

received them on account of onanistic preoccupation
with his penis. :
' According to Ferenczi there was no doubt as to the
source of his interest in the activities of the chicken
yard: " The continual sexual activity between cock and.
hen, the laying of eggs and the creeping out of the young
brood ” satisfied his sexual curiosity, which really was
directed towards human family life. His object wishes
have been formed on the model of chicken life when we

“find him saying to a woman neighbour: * I am going
to marry you and your sister and my three cousins
and the cook; no, instead of the cook T'Il marry my
mother.”

We shall be able to complete our consideration of
these observations later; at present we will only point
out two traits that show a valuable correspondence
with totemism: the complete identification with the
totem animal; and the ambivalent affective attitude
towards it. Tn view of these observations we consider
ourselves justified in substituting the father for the
totem animal in the male’s formula of totemism. We
then notice that in doing so we have taken no new or
especially daring step. For primitive men say it them-
selves and, as far as the totemic system is still in effect
to-day, the totem is called ancestor and primal father.
We have only taken literally an expression of these races

+ Ferenczi, Le, p. 212.

* Frazer finds that the essence of totemism is in this identifica-
tion: “ Totemism is an identification of a man with his totem.”
Totemism and Exogamy, TV, p. 5.

203

d TO AND TA! "
Which ethnologists did not know what to do with and
were therefore inclined to put it into the background.
Psychoanalysis warns us, on the contrary, to emphasize
this very point and to connect it with the attempt to
explain totemism.t

"The first result of our substitution is very remarkable.

If the totem animal is the father, then the two main

| "Commandments of totemism, the two taboo rules which
constitute its nucleus—not to kill the totem animal
and not to use a woman belonging to the same totem for
sexual purposes—agree in content with the two crimes
of Oedipus, who slew his father and took his mother to
wife, and also with the child's two primal wishes whose
insufficient repression or whose reawakening forms
the nucleus of perhaps all neuroses. If this similarity
is more than a deceptive play of accident it would per-
force make it possible for us to shed light upon the
origin of totemism in prehistorictimes. Inother words,
we should succeed in making it probable that the
totemic system resulted from the conditions under-
lying the Oedipus complex, just as the animal phobia of

“ little John” and the poultry perversion of “ little

Arpad ” resulted from it. In order to trace this possi-

bility we shall in what follows study a peculiarity of the

totemic system or, as we may say, of the totemic re-

1 T am indebted to Otto Rank for the report of a case of dog
phobia in an intelligent young man whose explanation of how he.
acquired his ailment sounds remarkably like the totem theory of
the Aruntas mentioned above. He had heard from his father |
that his mother at one time during her pregnancy had been
frightened by a dog.

204

|
į

us

ligion, which until now could hardly be brought
the discussion.

4

W. Robertson Smith, who died in 1894, and who

a physicist, philologist, Bible critic, and archæologis

many-sided as well as keen and free-thinking

mony, the so-called totem feast, had, from the w
beginning, formed an integral part of the tof

such an act from the year A.D. 500; he knew, howe
how to give a high degree of probability to his assum
tion through his analysis of the nature of sa
among the old Semites. As sacrifice assumes a god
person we are dealing here with an inference fr
higher phase of religious rite to its lowest phase
totemism. ⑥

I shall now cite from Robertson Smith's excellen
book * those statements about the origin and me:
of the sacrificial rite which are of great interest to
I shall omit the only too numerous tempting details
well as the parts dealing with all later developments.
In such an excerpt it is quite impossible to give
reader any sense of the lucidity or of the argumentatiw
force of the original. ś

Robertson Smith shows that sacrifice at the altar w

1 The Religion of the Semites, second edition, London, 1
? Ibid,
205

④ TOTEM AND TABOO
the essential part of the rite of old religions. It plays
- the same rôle in all religions, so that its origin must be
traced back to very general causes whose effects were
| everywhere the same.
But the sacrifice —the holy action жал oy fv (sacrifi-
- eium {spovpylo)—originally meant something different
from what later times understood by it: the offering to
the deity in order to reconcile him or to incline him to
| be favourable. The profane use of the word was after-
| wards derived from the secondary sense of self-denial.
As is demonstrated, the first sacrifice was nothing else
than “ an act of social fellowship between the deity and
his worshippers.”
- Things to eat and drink were brought as sacrific
man offered to his god the same things as those on which
| he himself lived, flesh, cereals, fruits, wine and oil.
Only in regard to sacrificial flesh did there exist restri
| tions and exceptions. The god partakes of the animal
| sacrifices with his worshippers while the vegetable
sacrifices are left to him alone. There is no doubt that
‘animal sacrifices are older and at one time were the only
forms of sacrifice. The vegetable sacrifices resulted
from the offering of the first-fruits and correspond to a
/ tribute to the lord of the soil and the land. But animal
sacrifice is older than agriculture.
| Linguistic survivals make it certain that the part of
/ the sacrifice destined for the god was looked upon as his
real food. This conception became offensive with the
progressive dematerialization of the deity, and was
avoided by offering the deity only the liquid part of the
⑧ 206

meal. Later the use of fire, which made the sacrificial
flesh ascend in smoke from the altar, made it possi
to prepare human food in such a way that it was more
suitable for the deity. The drink sacrifice was origin-
ally the blood of the sacrificed animals; wine was used
later as a substitute for the blood. Primitive man
looked upon wine as the * blood of the grape,” as oui
poets still call it.

The oldest form of sacrifice, older than the use of fire
and the knowledge of agriculture, was therefore the |
sacrifice of animals, whose flesh and blood the god and —
his worshippers ate together. It was essential that both —
participants should receive their shares of the meal. —

Such a sacrifice was a public ceremony, the celebra-
tion of a whole clan. As a matter of fact all religion
was a public affair; religious duty was a part of the |
social obligation. Sacrifice and festival go together —
among all races; cach sacrifice entails a holiday and n
holiday can be celebrated without a sacrifice. The -
sacrificial festival was an occasion for joyously trans.
cending one’s own interests and emphasizing social
community and community with god.

The ethical power of the public sacrificial feast was
based upon primal conceptions of the meaning of eating
and drinking in common. To eat and drink with some
one was at the same time a symbol and a confirmation of —
social community and of the assumption of mutual |
obligations ; the sacrificial eating gave direct expression
to the fact that the god and his worshippers are com- —
municants, thus confirming all their other relations,
207

— Customs that to-day still are in force among the Arabs
- of the desert prove that the binding force resulting from
the common meal is not a religious factor but that the
| subsequent mutual obligations are due to the act of
| eating itself. Whoever has shared the smallest bite
with such a Bedouin, or has taken a swallow of his milk,
need not fear him any longer as an enemy, but may be
| sure of his protection and help. Not, indeed, for ever;
strictly speaking this lasts only while it may be assumed
that the food partaken remains in the body. So
realistically is the bond of union conceived; it requires

| repetition to strengthen it and make it endure.
But why is this binding power ascribed to eating and
drinking in common ? In the most primitive societies
= there is only one unconditional and never-failing bond,
= that of kinship. The members of a community stand
by each other jointly and severally, a kin is a group of
| persons whose life is so bound into a physical unity
that thcy can be considered as parts of a common life.
In case of the murder of one of this kin they therefore
do not say: the blood of so and so has been spilt, but
ur blood has been spilt. The Hebraic phrase by
| which the tribal relation is acknowledged is: “ Thou art
| my bone and my flesh.” Kinship therefore signifies
having part in a general substance. It is natural then
. that it is based not only upon the fact that we are a part
| of the substance of our mother who has borne us, and
whose milk nourished us, but also that the food eaten
ter, through which the body is renewed, can acquire

| and strengthen kinship. If one shared a meal with.
= 208

was of the same substance as he; no meal was therefoi
partaken with any one recognized as a stranger.

The sacrificial repast was therefore originally a feast
of the kin, following the rule that only those of kin
could eat together. In our society the meal unites the
members of the family; but the sacrificial repast has —
nothing to do with the family. Kinship is older than
family life; the oldest families known to us regularly
comprised persons who belonged to various bonds of.

kinship. Themen married women of strange clansand |

the children inherited the clan of the mother; there was
no kinship between the man and the rest of the members
of the family. In such a family there was no common
meal. Even to-day savages eat apart and alone, and the —
religious prohibitions of totemism as to eating often —
make it impossible for them to eat with their wives and 」
children.

Let us now turn to the sacrificial animal. There was,
as we have heard, no meeting of the kin without animal
sacrifice, but, and this is significant, no animal was
slaughtered except for such a solemn occasion. With-
out any hesitation the people ate fruits, game and the —
milk of domestic animals, but religious scruples made
it impossible for the individual to kill a domestic animal
for his own use. There is not the least doubt, says
Robertson Smith, that every sacrifice was originally a
clan sacrifice, and that the killing of a sacrificial animal
originally belonged to those acts which were forbidden
to the individual and were only justified if the whole kin

209

.

? TOTEM AND TABOO

| assumed the responsibility. Primitive men had only
One class of actions which were thus characterized,
namely, actions which touched the holiness of the kin's
common blood. A life which no individual might take,
and which could be sacrified only through the consent
and participation of all the members of the clan, was on
the same plane as the life of a member of thekin. The
rule that every guest of the sacrificial repast must par-
take of the flesh of the sacrificial animal, had the same
| meaning as the rule that the execution of a guilty mem-
ber of the kin must be performed by the whole kin. In
other words: the sacrificial animal was treated like one
| of kin; the sacrificing community, its god, and the sacri-
ficial animal were of the same blood, and the members
of a clan.

On the basis of much evidence Robertson Smith
identifies the sacrificial animal with the old totem
animal. In a later age there were two kinds of sacri-
fices, those of domestic animals which usually were also
eaten, and the unusual sacrifice of animals which were
forbidden as being unclean. Further investigation
then shows that these unclean animals were holy and
that they were sacrificed to the gods to whom they were
holy, that these animals were originally identified with
the gods themselves and that at the sacrifice the wor-
shippers in some way emphasized their blood relation-
ship to the god and to the animal. But this difference
between usual and “ mystic ” sacrifices does not hold
good for still carlier times. Originally all animals were
holy, their meat was forbidden and might be eaten only
210

.

| THE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM
on solemn occasions, with the participation of the whole
kin. The slaughter of the animal amounted to the
spilling of the kin's blood and had to be done with the
same precautions and assurances against reproach,
The taming of domestic animals and the rise of cattle-
breeding seem everywhere to have put an end to the
pure and rigorous totemism of carlicst times! But
such holiness as still clung to domestic animals, in what
was now a “ pastoral ” religion, is sufficiently distinct
for us to recognize its totemic character. Even in late
classical times the rite in several localities prescribed
flight for the sacrificer after the sacrifice, as if to escape
revenge. In Greece the idea must once have been
general that the killing of an ox was really a crime. At
the Athenian festival of the Bouphonia a formal trial,
to which all the participants were summoned, was
instituted after the sacrifice. Finally it was agreed to
put the blame for the murder upon the knife, which was
then cast into the sea.
In spite of the dread which protects the life of the
animal as being of kin, it became necessary to kill it
from time to time in solemn conclave, and to divide its
flesh and blood among the members of the clan. The
motive which commands this act reveals the deepest
meaning of the essence of sacrifice. We have heard
that in later times every eating in common, the partici-

* * The inference is that the domestication to which totemism
leads (when there are any animals capable of domestication) is
fatal to totemism.” Jevons, Introduction to the History of
Religion, 1911, fifth edition, p. 120.

i 211

ki

sss

TOTEM AND TABOO

pation in the same substance which entered into their
bodies, established a holy bond between the com-
municants; in oldest time this meaning seemed to be |
attached only to participation in the substance of a holy |
sacrifice. The holy mystery of the sacrificial death was
Justified in that only in this way could the holy bond be
established which united the participants with each other
and with their god

This bond was nothing else than the life of the
sacrificial animal which lived on its flesh and blood am
was shared by all the participants by means of the
sacrificial feast. Such an idea was the basis of all the
blood bonds through which men in still later times be-
came pledged to each other. The thoroughly realistic
conception of consanguinity as an identity of substance
‘makes comprehensible the necessity of renewing it from
time to time through the physical process of the sacri- 」
ficial repast.

We will now stop quoting from Robertson Smith's |
train of thought in order to give a condensed summary
of what is essential in it. When the idea of private
property came into existence sacrifice was conceived as —
a gift to the deity, as a transfer from the property of |
man to that of the god. But this interpretation left all |
the peculiarities of the sacrificial ritual unexplained.
In oldest times the sacrificial animal itself had been
holy and its life inviolate ; it could be taken only in the
presence of the god, with the whole tribe taking part
and sharing the guilt in order to furnish the holy sub- -

1 Les р. 313.
212

* cut off pieces of the palpitating flesh with their swor

the kin. In reality it was the old totem animal, t
primitive god himself through the slaying and eating of
whom the members of the clan revived and assured thei
similarity with the god.

From this analysis of the nature of sacrifice Robe
son Smith drew the conclusion that the periodic kill
and eating of the totem before the period when
anthropomorphic deities were venerated was an import:
ant part of totem religion. The ceremonial of suci
totem feast was preserved for us, he thought, in th
description of a sacrifice in later times. Saint Nilu:
tells of a sacrificial custom of the Bedouins in the dese:
of Sinai towards the end of the fourth century A.
The victim, a camel, was bound and laid upon a rougł
altar of stones; the leader of the tribe made the partici-
pants walk three times around the altar to the accom:
paniment of song, inflicted the first wound upon th
animal and greedily drank the spurting blood; th
the whole community threw itself upon the sacrifice,

and ate them raw in such haste that in a short interval
between the rise of the morning star, for whom this |
sacrifice was meant, and its fading before the rays of the
sun, the whole sacrificial animal, flesh, skin, bones, and -
entrails, were devoured. According to every testi- |
mony this barbarous rite, which speaks of great an!

213

_uity, was not a rare custom but the general original
form of the totem sacrifice, which in later times under-
went the most varied modifications.

Many authors have refused to grant any weight to

. this conception of the totem feast because it could not —

be strengthened by direct observation at the stage of |

totemism. Robertson Smith himself has referred to

— examples in which the sacramental meaning of sacri-

fices seems certain, such as the human sacrifices of the

| Aztecs and others which recall the conditions of the
totem feast, the bear sacrifices of the bear tribe of the

Quataouaks in America, and the bear festival of the

Ainus in Japan. Frazer has given a full account of

these and similar cases in the two divisions of his great

work that have last appeared! An Indian tribe in

California which reveres the buzzard, a large bird of

prey, kills it once a year with solemn ceremony, where-

upon the bird is mourned and its skin and feathers
preserved. The Zuni Indians in New Mexico do the
same thing with their holy turtle.

In the Intichiuma ceremonies of Central Australian
tribes a trait has been observed which fits in excellently

| with the assumptions of Robertson Smith. Every

tribe that practises magic for the increase of its totem, ~
| Which it cannot eat itself, is bound to eat a part of its

| totem at the ceremony before it can be touched by the ・

other tribes. According to Frazer the best example of

| 1 The Golden Bough, Part V; Spirits of the Corn and of the
- Wild, 1912, in the chapters: “ Eating the God and Killing the
| Divine Animal.”

214

HE INFANTILE. RECU CE OF TOTI

the sacramental consumption of the othe:

Africa, in connection with the burial ceremony of this
tribe. ·

But we shall follow Robertson Smith in the assump-
tion that the sacramental killing and the common con-
sumption of the otherwise forbidden totem animal were
an important trait of the totem religion?

Let us now envisage the scene of such a totem meal:
and let us ombellish it further with a few probable |
features which could not be adequately considered be-
fore. Thus we have the clan, which on a solemn
occasion kills its totem in a cruel manner and cats it
raw, blood, flesh, and bones. At the same time the
‘members of the clan, disguised in imitation of the totem,
mimic it in sound and movement as if they wanted to |
emphasize their common identity. There is also the |
conscious realization that an action is being carried out
which is forbidden to each individual and which can
only be justified through the participation of all, so that |
no one is allowed to exclude himself from the killing —
and the feast. After the act is accomplished the mur-
dered animal is bewailed and lamented. The death —
lamentation is compulsive, being enforced by the fear —
Frazer, Totem and Exogamy, Vol. II, p. 590. y

* Tam not ignorant of the objections to this theory of sacrifice —
as expressed by Marillier, Hubert, Mauss and others, but they

have not essentially impaired the theories of Robertson Smith.
215

did c A ⑥
ete Le hal purpose is,
Robertson Smith remarks on an analogous occasion, to
exculpate oneself from responsibility for the slaying."
But after this mourning there follows loud festival
gaicty accompanied by the unchaining of every impulse
and the permission of every gratification. Here we 」
find an easy insight into the nature of the holiday. —

A holiday is a permitted, or rather a prescribed excess, -

solemn violation of a prohibition. People do not
commit the excesses which at all times have character- _
ized holidays, as a result of an order to be in a holiday
mood, but because in the very nature of a holiday there
is excess; the holiday mood is brought about by the |
release of what is otherwise forbidden.

| But what has mourning over the death of the totem
animal to do with the introduction of this holiday
| spirit? If men are happy over the slaying of the totem,
which is otherwise forbidden to them, why do they also
| mourn it?
We have heard that members of a clan become holy
through the consumption of the totem and thereby also
- strengthen their identification with it and with each
| other. The fact that they have absorbed the holy life
‘with which the substance of the totem is charged may
explain the holiday mood and everything that results
from it.

Psychoanalysis has revealed to us that the totem
animal is really a substitute for the father, and this
really explains the contradiction that it is usually for-

3 Religion of the Semites, second edition, 1907, p. 412.
216

E

tidden to Kill the totem animal, that e Noe of it
results in a holiday and that the animal is killed and
mourned. The ambivalent emotional attitude whit
to-day still marks the father complex in our childr
and so often continues into adult life also extended to
the father substitute of the totem animal. à

But if we associate the translation of the totem, as |
given by psychoanalysis, with the totem feast and the
Darwinian hypothesis about the primal state of human
society, a deeper understanding becomes possible and а
. hypothesis is offered which may seem fantastic but |
which has the advantage of establishing an un-
expected unity among a series of hitherto separate
phenomena.

The Darwinian conception of the primal horde does |
. mot, of course, allow for the beginning of totemism. |
There is only a violent, jealous father who keeps all the
females for himself and drives away the growing sons.
This primal state of society has nowhere been observed. |
The most primitive organization we know, which to-day —
is still in force with certain tribes, is associations of mi
consisting of members with equal rights, subject to the
restrictions of the totemic system, and founded on
matriarchy, or descent through the mother.) Can th
one have resulted from the other, and how was this -
possible 2

By basing our argument upon the celebration of the -

* For a recent contribution compare The Whole House of the
Chilkat, by G. T. Emmons (American Museum Journal, Vol.

_ XVI No. 7) [Translator].
217

TOTEM AND TABOO 3
totem we are in a position to give an answer: One day *
the expelled brothers joined forces, slew and ate the
father, and thus put an end to the father horde. To-
gether they dared and accomplished what would have
remained impossible for them singly. Perhaps some
advance in culture, like the use of a new weapon, had
given them the feeling of superiority. Of course these
cannibalistic savages ate their victim. This violent
primal father had surely been the envied and feared
model for cach of the brothers. Now they accom-
plished their identification with him by devouring him

“and each acquired a part of his strength. The totem

feast, which is perhaps mankind's first celebration,
would be the repetition and commemoration of this
memorable, criminal act with which so many things
began, social organization, moral restrictions and
religion?

* The reader will avoid the erroneous impression which this
exposition may call forth by taking into consideration the cón-
cluding sentence of the subsequent chapter.

? The seemingly monstrous assumption that the tyrannical
father yas overcome and slain by a combination of the expelled
sons has alsa been accepted by Atkinson as a direct result of the
conditions of the Darwinian primal horde. “A youthful band
of brothers living together in forced celibacy, or at most in poly-
androus relation with some single female captive. A horde as
yet weak in their impubescence they are, but they would, when
strength was gained with time, inevitably wrench by combined
attacks, renewed again and again, both wife and life from the
paternal tyrant ” (Primal Law, pp. 220-1). Atkinson, who
spent his life in New Caledonia and had unusual opportunities
to study the natives, also refers to the fact that the conditions of
the primal horde which Darwin assumes can easily be observed
among herds of wild cattle and horses and regularly lead to the

218

from our supposition, we need only assume that the
group of brothers banded together were dominated by
the same contradictory feclings towards the father |
which we can demonstrate as the content of ambival- -
ence of the father complex in all our children and in —
meurotics. They hated the father who stood so power-
fully in the way of their sexual demands and their desire
for power, but they also loved and admired him.
After they had satisfied their hate by his removal and
had carried out their wish for identification with him, |

killing of the father animal. He then assumes further that a |
disintegration of the horde took place after the removal of the.
father through embittered fighting among the victorious sons,
which thus precluded the origin of a new organisation of society:

* An ever recurring violent succession to the solitary paternal
tyrant by sons, whose parricidal hands were so soon again —
clenched in fratricidal strife ” (p. 228). Atkinson, who did not
have the suggestions of psychoanalysis at his command and did
not know the studies of Robertson Smith, finds a less violent
transition from the primal horde to the next social stage in which
many men live together in peaceful accord. He attributes it to
maternal love that at first only the youngest sons and later
others too remain in the horde, who in return for this toleration
acknowledge the sexual prerogative of the father by the restraint
which they practise towards the mother and towards their sisters,

So much for the very remarkable theory of Atkinson, its essen-
tial correspondence with the theory here expounded, and its
point of departure which makes it necessary to relinquish so.
much else.

‎must ascribe the indefiniteness, the disregard of time interval,‏ ד
‎and the crowding of the material in the above exposition to a‏
‎restraint which the nature of the subject demands. It would be‏
‎just us meaningless to strive for exactness in this material as it‏
‎would be unfair to demand certainty here.‏

‎219

TOTEM AND TABOO

the suppressed tender impulses had to assert them.
selves This took place in the form of remorse, a sense
| of guilt was formed which coincided here with the re-
| morse generally felt. The dead now became stronger
than the living had been, even as we observe it to-day in
the destinies of men. What the father’s presence had
formerly prevented they themselves now prohibited in
| the psychic situation of “ subsequent obedience”
| which we know so well from psychoanalysis. They
| undid their deed by declaring that the killing of thc
| father substitute, the totem, was not allowed, and re-
| nounced the fruits of their deed by denying themselves
| the liberated women. Thus they created the two
| fundamental taboos of totemism out of the sense of
guilt of the son, and for this very reason these had to
correspond with the two repressed wishes of the
Oedipus complex. Whoever disobeyed became guilty
of the only two crimes which troubled primitive
society.
The two taboos of totemism with which the morality
of man begins are psychologically not of equal value,
One of them, the sparing of the totem animal, rests

1 This new emotional attitude must also have been responsible
for the fact that the deed could not bring full satisfaction to any
of the perpetrators. In a certain sense it had been in vain. For
none of the sons could carry out his original wish of taking the
place of the father. But failure is, as we know, much more
Favourable to moral reaction than success.

2 % Murder and incest, or offences of like kind against the
- sacred law of blood, are in primitive society the only crimes of

which the community as such takes cognizance . . ." Religion
of the Semites, p. 419.

220

entirely upon emotional motives; the father
removed and nothing in reality could make up for
But the other, the incest prohibition, had, beside
strong practical foundation. Sexual need does n
unite men; it separates them. Though the brothe
had joined forces in order to overcome the father, ea
was the other's rival among the women. Each o
wanted to have them all to himself like the father, a
in the fight of each against the other the new organiza-
tion would have perished. For there was no longer
one stronger than all the rest who could have succes
fully assumed the röle of the father. Thus there was
nothing left for the brothers, if they wanted to li
together, but to erect the incest prohibition—perhaj
after many difficult experiences—through which they
equally renounced the women whom they desired, an
on account of whom they had removed the father in the
first place. Thus they saved the organization which h
‘made them strong and which could be based upon
homo-sexual feelings and activities which probal
manifested themselves among them during the time
their banishment. Perhaps this situation also form
the germ of the institution of the motherright discovered
by Bachofen, which was then abrogated by the patri-
archal family arrangement.
On the other hand the claim of totemism to be con: |
sidered the first attempt at a religion is connected with
the other taboo which protects the life of the toten
animal. The feelings of the sons found a natural a
appropriate substitute for the father in the animal,
21

wes
TOTEM AND TABOO
their compulsory treatment of it expressed more than
"the need of showing remorse. The surrogate for the
= father was perhaps used in the attempt to assuage the
burning sense of guilt, and to bring about a kind of
- reconciliation with the father. The totemic system
was a kind of agreement with the father in which the
latter granted everything that the child's phantasy could
'expect from him, protection, care, and forbearance, in
return for which the pledge was given to honour his life,
that is to say, not to repeat the act against the totem
through which the real father had perished. Totemism
also contained an attempt at justification. “ the
| father had treated us like the totem we should never
| have been tempted to kill him." Thus totemism helped
to gloss over the real state of affairs and to make one
forget the event to which it owed its origin.
| In this connection some features were formed which
henceforth determined the character of every religion.
‚ The totem religion had issued from the sense of guilt of
| the sons as an attempt to palliate this feeling and to
conciliate the injured father through subsequent
| Obedience. All later religions prove to be attempts to
solve the same problem, varying only in accordance
| with the stage of culture in which they are attempted
| and according to the paths which they take; they are all,
| however, reactions aiming at the same great event with
which culture began and which ever since has not let
| mankind come to rest.
| There is still another characteristic faithfully pre-
pre in religion which already appeared in totemism
② 22

THE

at this time. The ambivalent strain was R 、
great to be adjusted by any arrangement, or else
psychological conditions are entirely unfavourable to
any kind of settlement of these contradictory feelings.
It is certainly noticeable that the ambivalence attached |
to the father complex also continues in totemism and in |
religions in general. The religion of totemism included
not only manifestations of remorse and attempts at |
reconciliation, but also serves to commemorate the |
| triumph over the father. The gratification obtained
thereby creates the commemorative celebration of the
totem feast at which the restrictions of subsequent |
obedience are suspended, and makes it a duty to repeat |
the crime of parricide through the sacrifice of the totem -
animal as often as the benefits of this deed, namely, the
appropriation of the father's properties, threaten to
| disappear as a result of the changed influences of life.
We shall not be surprised to find that a part of the son’s |
defiance also reappears, often in the most remarkable |
disguises and inversions, in the formation of later
religions.
If thus far we have followed, in religion and moral
precepts—but little differentiated in totemism—the
| consequences of the tender impulses towards the father —
as they are changed into remorse, we must not overlook

the fact that for the most part the tendencies which have
impelled to parricide have retained the victory. The

| social and fraternal feelings on which this great change
is based, henceforth for long periods exercise the

greatest influence upon the development of society.
223 ③

* TOTEM AND TABOO .
They find expression in the sanctification of the |
common blood and in the emphasis upon the solidarity
of life within the clan. In thus ensuring each other's
lives the brothers express the fact that no one of them
is to be treated by the other as they all treated the father.
They preclude a repetition of the fate of the father.
The socially established prohibition against fratricide is
now added to the prohibition against killing the totem,
which is based on religious grounds. It will still be a
long time before the commandment discards the restric-
tion to members of the tribe and assumes the simple
phraseology : Thou shalt not kill. At first the brother
clan has taken the place of the father horde and was
guaranteed by the blood bond. Society is now based
| on complicity in the common crime, religion on the
sense of guilt and the consequent remorse, while moral-
ity is based partly on the necessities of society and partly
on the expiation which this sense of guilt demands.

Thus psychoanalysis, contrary to the newer concep-
tions of the tolemic system and more in accord with
ølder conceptions, bids us argue for an intimate
connection between totemism and exogamy as well as
for their simultaneous origin.

6

I am under the influence of many strong motives
which restrain me from the attempt to discuss the
further development of religions from their beginning in
| fotemism up to their present state. I shall follow out

224

weft with especial distinctness: the motive of
totem sacrifice and the relation of the son
the father."

meaning of the rite is the same: sanctification through
participation in the common meal. The sense of guilt, -
which can only be allayed through the solidarity of all
the participants, has also been retained. In addition
to this there is the tribal deity in whose supposed
presence the sacrifice takes place, who takes part in the
meal like a member of the tribe, and with whom identifi- | |
cation is effected by the act of eating the sacrifice.
How does the god come into this situation which origin-
ally was foreign to him ?
The answer might be that the idea of god had mean- —
while appeared—no one knows whence—and had
dominated the whole religious life, and that the totem
feast, like everything else that wished to survive; had —
been forced to fit itself into the new system. However,
psychoanalytic investigation of the individual teaches
with especial emphasis that god is in every case modelled
after the father and that our personal relation to god is
dependent upon our relation to our physical father, —
fluctuating and changing with him, and that god at |
bottom is nothing but an exalted father. Here also, as

1 Compare Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, by
C. 0. Jung, in which some dissenting points of view are repre- |
sented.

ョ 225

| TOTEM A DO E
. in the case of totemism, psychoanalysis advises us to
believe the faithful, who call god father just as they
called the totem their ancestor. If psychoanalysis
deserves any consideration at all, then the share of the
father in the idea of a god must be very important, quite
aside from all the other origins and meanings of god :
upon which psychoanalysis can throw no light. But
then the father would be represented twice in primitive
sacrifice, first as god, and secondly as the totem-animal-
| sacrifice, and we must ask, with all due regard for the
_ limitednumber of solutions which psychoanalysis offers,
whether this is possible and what the meaning of it may
be.
We know that there are a number of relations of the
god to the holy animal (the totem and the sacrificial
animal): 1. Usually one animal is sacred to every god,
sometimes even several animals. 2. In certain, especi-
- ally holy, sacrifices, the so-called “ mystical ” sacrifices,
the very animal which had been sanctified through the
god was sacrificed to him. 3. The god was often
revered in the form of an animal, or from another point
of view, animals enjoyed a godlike reverence long after
the period of totemism. 4. In myths the god is fre-
quently transformed into an animal, often into the
animal that is sacred to him. From this the assump-
tion was obvious that the god himself was the animal,
| and that he had cvolved from the totem animal at a
later stage of religious feeling. But the reflection that

226

may have been the first form of the father substitute an
the god a later one in which the father regained his
| human form. Such a new creation from the root of all |
religious evolution, namely, the longing for the father, |
might become possible if in the course of time an -
essential change had taken place in the relation to the
father and perhaps also to the animal. 4
Such changes are casily divined even if we disregard |
the beginning of a psychic estrangement from the |
animal as well as the disintegration of totemism through —
animal domestication. The situation created by the —
removal of the father contained an element which in th
course of time must have brought about an extraordin-
ary increase of longing for the father. For the brotheı
who had joined forces to kill the father had each been
animated by the wish to become like the father and
had given expression to this wish by incorporating parts.
of the substitute for him in the totem feast. In conse-
quence of the pressure which the bonds of the brother
clan exercised upon each member, this wish had to re- |
main unfulfilled. No one could or was allowed to ||
attain the father’s perfection of power, which was the
thing they had all sought. Thus the bitter feelin
against the father which had incited to the deed could |
subside in the course of time, while the longing for him
grew, and an ideal could arise having as a content the
fullness of power and the freedom from restriction of |

3 Sec above, p. 128,
| 227

the conquered primal father, as well as the willingness

| to subject themselves to him. The original democratic

equality of each member of the tribe could no longer be
retained on account of the interference of cultural
changes; in consequence of which there arose a ten-
dency to revive the old father ideal in the creation of
gods through the veneration of those individuals who
had distinguished themselves above the rest. That a
man should become a god and that a god should die,
which to-day seems to us an outrageous presumption,
was still by no means offensive to the conceptions of
classical antiquity. But the deification of the mur-
dered father, from whom the tribe now derived its
origin, was a much more serious attempt at expiation
than the former covenant with the totem.

In this evolution I am at a loss to indicate the place
of the great maternal deities who perhaps everywhere
preceded the paternal deities. But it seems certain that
the change in the relation to the father was not res-
tricted to religion but logically extended to the other
side of human life influenced by the removal of the
father, namely, the social organization. With the
institution of paternal deities the fatherless society

2 “To us moderns, for whom the breach which divides the
human and divine has deepened into an impassable gulf, such
mimicry may appear impious, but it was otherwise with the
ancients. To their thinking gods and men were akin, for many

families traced their descent from a divinity, and the deification

of a man probably seemed as little extraordinary to them as the
canonization of a saint seems to a modern Catholic.” Frazer,
The Golden Bough, Y; The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings,

IL, p. 177.

228

iu élan aan dia EN
“TOTEM AND TABOO ki

the fathers. Now there were patriarchs again, but
social achievements of the brother clan had not be
given up, and the actual difference between the new |
family patriarchs and the unrestricted primal father was
great enough to ensure the continuation of the religious
need, the preservation of the unsatisfied longing for the
father.
The father therefore really appears twice in the scene —
of sacrifice before the tribal god, once as the god and
"again as the totem-sacrificial-animal. But in attempting
to understand this situation we must beware of inter- |
pretations which superficially seek to translate it as an
allegory, and which forget the historical stages in the
process. The twofold presence of the father corres |
ponds to the two successive meanings of the scene.
The ambivalent attitude towards the father, as well as
the victory of the son's tender emotional feelings over —
his hostile ones, has here found plastic expressio
The scene of vanquishing the father, his greatest di
radation, furnishes here the material to represent his
highest triumph. The meaning which sacrifice has |
quite generally acquired is found in the fact that in the
very same action which continues the memory of this
misdeed it offers satisfaction to the father for the
ignominy put upon him.
In the further development the animal loses ifs.
sacredness and the sacrifice its relation to the Es
29

tion of the totem; the rite becomes a simple offering to
"the deity, a self-deprivation in favour of the god. God

— himself is now so exalted above man that he can be com-
— municated with only through a priest as intermediary.
At the same time the social order produces godlike
kings who transfer the patriarchal system to the state.

It must be said that the revenge of the deposed and re ,

| instated father has been very cruel; it culminated in the
- "dominance of authority. The subjugated sons have
used the new relation to disburden themselves still
more of their sense of guilt. Sacrifice, as it is now
= constituted, is entirely beyond their responsibility.
God himself has demanded and ordained it. Myths in
- which the god himself kills the animal that is sacred to
| him, which he himself really is, belong to this phase.
| This is the greatest possible denial of the great misdeed
| with which society and the sense of guilt began. There
| is an unmistakable second meaning in this sacrificial
| demonstration. It expresses satisfaction at the fact
- that the earlier father substitute has been abandoned in
| favour of the higher conception of god. The super-
ficial allegorical translation of the scene here roughly
corresponds with its psychoanalytic interpretation by
saying that the god is represented as overcoming the
| animal part of his nature.
But it would be erroneous to believe that in this
1 It is known that the overcoming of one generation of gods by
another in mythology represents the historical process of the
E substitution of one religious system for another, either as the
⑧ result of conquest by a strange race or by means of a psycholo-
| gical development. In the latter case the myth approaches the
230

‘period of esse ma put the
impulses which belong to the father complex had
tirely subsided. On the contrary, the first phases in
domination of the two new substitutive formations fe
the father, those of gods and kings, plainly show the
most energetic expression of that ambivalence which
characteristic of religion.
| In his great work, The Golden Bough, Frazer has
expressed the conjecture that the first kings of the Latis
| tribes were strangers who played the part of a deity and.
| were solemnly sacrificed in this rôle on specifi
holidays. The yearly sacrifice (self-sacrifice is a
variant) of a god seems to have been an important
feature of Semitic religions. The ceremony of human
sacrifice in various parts of the inhabited world makes it
certain that these human beings ended their lives as
representatives of the deity. This sacrificial custom can -
still be traced in later times in the substitution of an in-
animate imitation (doll) for the living person. Th
theanthropic god sacrifice, into which unfortunately
cannot enter with the same thoroughness with which the
animal sacrifice has been treated, throws the clearest
light upon the meaning of the older forms of sacrifice. |
It acknowledges with unsurpassable candour that the |
objéct of the sacrificial action has always been the same,
being identical with what is now revered as a god,

+ functional phenomena " in 11. Silberer's sense. That the god |
who kills the animal is a symbol of the libido, as asserted by |
C.G. Jung (L.c.), presupposes a different conception of the libido —
from that hitherto held, and at any rate seems to me questionabl

231

with the father. The question as to the relation
of animal to human sacrifice can now be easily solved.
| The original animal sacrifice was already a substitute
for a human sacrifice, for the solemn killing of the
father, and when the father substitute regained its |
human form, the animal substitute could also be re-
- transformed into a human sacrifice.
Thus the memory of that first great act of sacrifice
had proved to be indestructible despite all attempts to
= forget it, and just at the moment when men strove to get
as far away as possible from its motives, the undistorted
repetition of it had to appear in the form of the god
sacrifice. I need not fully indicate here the develop- |
| ments of religious thought which made this return
possible in the form of rationalizations. Robertson
Smith, who is, of course, far removed from the idea of
tracing sacrifice back to this great event of man's primal
|. history, says that the ceremony of the festivals in which
the old Semites celebrated the death of a deity were —
interpreted as “a commemoration of a mythical —
tragedy" and that the attendant lament was not
characterized by spontaneous sympathy, but displayed
a compulsive character, something that was imposed
by the fear of a divine wrath.! We are in a position to

Religion of the Semites, pp. 412-413. * The mourning is
| not a spontaneous expression of sympathy with the divine
| tragedy, but obligatory and enforced by fear of supernatural
anger. And a chief object of the mourners is to disclaim respon-
| sibility for the god" death—a point which has already come
| before us in connexion with theanthropic sacrifices, such as the
_* ox-murder at Athens.’ ”

232

| acknowledge that this interpretation was Cor
feelings of the celebrants being well explained by
basic situation.
We may now accept it as a fact that in the further

_ development of religions these two inciting factors, the
son’s sense of guilt and his defiance, were never agai
extinguished. Every attempted solution of the religious
problem and every kind of reconciliation of the two
“opposing psychic forces gradually falls to the ground,

_ probably under the combined influence of cultural
changes, historical events, and inner psychic trans-
formations.
The endeavour of the son to put himself in place of

the father god appeared with greater and greater dis- -
tinctness. With the introduction of agriculture the |
importance of the son in the patriarchal family in-
creased. He was emboldened to give new expression to.
his incestuous libido which found symbolic satisfaction

_ in labouring over mother earth. There came into
existence figures of gods like Attis, Adonis, Tammuz
and others, spirits of vegetation as well as youthful |
divinities who enjoyed the favours of maternal deities
and committed incest with the mother in defiance of the
father. But the sense of guilt, which was not allayed
through these creations, was expressed in myths which
visited these youthful lovers of the maternal goddesses
with short life and punishment through castration or
through the wrath of the father god appearing in animal
form. Adonis was killed by the boar, the sacred animal
of Aphrodite; Attis, the lover of Kybele, died of

mt 233

stration The lamentation for these gods and
joy at their resurrection have gone over into the ri
of another son whose divinity was destined to survive

long. ·

When Christianity began its entry into the ancient
world it met with the competition of the religion of
Mithras and for a long time it was doubtful which deity
was to be the victor.

The bright figure of the youthful Persian god has
eluded our understanding. Perhaps we may conclude
from the illustrations of Mithras slaying the steers that —
he represented the son who carried out the sacrifice of
the father by himself and thus released the brothers |
from their oppressing complicity in the deed. There
was another way of allaying this sense of guilt and this
ås the one that Christ took. He sacrificed his own life

and thereby redeemed the brothers from primal sin.

1 The fear of castration plays an extraordinarily big rôle in
disturbing the relations to the father in the case of our youthful
meurotics. In Ferenczi's excellent study we have scen how the |
boy recognized his totem in the animal which snaps at his little
penis. When children learn about ritual circumcision they iden-
tify it with castration. To my knowledge the parallel in the —
psychology of races to this attitude of our children has not yet
been drawn. The circumcision which was so frequent in primor-
dial times among primitive races belongs to the period of ini
tion in which its meaning is to be found; it has only secondarily
been relegated to an earlier time of life. It is very interesting
that among primitive men circumcision is combined with or re-
placed by the cutting off of the hair and the drawing of teeth,

| and that our children, who cannot know anything about this,
| really treat these two operations as equivalents to castration
when they display their fear of them,
234

"Te theory of primal sin is of Orphic origin; i
preserved in the mysteries and thence penetrated
the philosophic schools of Greek antiquity? M
were the descendants of Titans, who had killed and
membered the young Dionysos-Zagreus; the weight o
this crime oppressed them. A fragment of Anaxi- |
mander says that the unity of the world was destroyed
by a primordial crime and everything that issued from —
it must carry on the punishment for this crime?
Although the features of banding together, killing, an
dismembering as expressed in the deed of the Til
- very clearly recall the totem sacrifice described by Si

Nilus—as also many other myths of antiquity, for

example, the death of Orpheus himself we are never:
theless disturbed here by the variation according to.
| which a youthful god was murdered.
| In the Christian myth man's original sin is um.

doubtedly an offence against God the Father, and
Christ redeems mankind from the weight of original |
sin by sacrificing his own life, he forces us to the con-
clusion that this sin was murder. According to th
law of retaliation, which is deeply rooted in human |
feeling, a murder can be atoned only by the sacrifice of —
another life; the self-sacrifice points to a blood-guilt.? |

And if this sacrifice of one's own life brings about a
reconciliation with god, the father, then the crime

? Reinach, Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, II, p. 75.
5 “ Une sorte de péché proethnique,” L.c., p. 76.
+ The suicidal impulses of our neurotics regularly proye 19 be
self-punishments for death wishes directed against others. 5
235

i za OTE ND
| which must be expiated can only have been the mur
of the father. à
Thos in the Christian doctrine mankind most un- 」
reservedly acknowledges the guilty deed of primordial
times because it now has found the most completc |
expiation for this deed in the sacrificial death of the |
| son. The reconciliation with the father is the more |
| thorough because simultaneously with this sacrifice |
there follows the complete renunciation of woman, for
whose sake mankind rebelled against the father. But
now also the psychological fatality of ambivalence de-
mands its rights. In the same deed which offers the
greatest possible expiation to the father, the son also
| _attains the goal of his wishes against the father. He
becomes a god himself beside or rather in place of his
father. The religion of the son succeeds the religion of
the father. Asa sign of this substitution the old totem |
feast is revived again in the form of communion in
which the band of brothers now cats the flesh and blood
of the son and no longer that of the father, the sons
thereby identifying themselves with him and becoming
holy themselves. Thus through the ages we see the
identity of the totem feast with the animal sacrifice,
the theanthropic human sacrifice, and the Christian
eucharist, and in all these solemn occasions we recog-
— mize the after-effects of that crime which so oppressed
men but of which they must have been so proud. At.
bottom, however, the Christian communion is a new
setting aside of the father, a repetition of the crime that
| must be expiated. We see how well justified is Frazer's
> 236

|
④
|
|
|
|
|

dictum that “ the Christian communion has absorbe
within itself a sacrament which is doubtless far old
than Christianity.” *

7

A process like the removal of the primal father by
band of brothers must have left ineradicable traces i
the history of mankind and must have expressed it
the more frequently in numerous substitutive fo
tions the less it itself was to be remembered? I

mythology, where they are not hard to find, and
turning to another field in following a hint of 8. Reina
in his suggestive treatment of the death of Orpheus?
: There is a situation in the history of Greek art whi
| is strikingly similar, even if profoundly divergent, to th

+ Eating the God, p. 51. . . . Nobody familiar with the litera.
ture on this subject will assume that the tracing back of the Chri
tian communion to the totem feast is an idea of the author of th
book.
5 Ariel in The Tempest:

Full fathom five thy father lies:

OF his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange. . . .

* La Mort d'Orphée, Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, Vol. TI,
p. 100. i
237

persons, all of the same name and dressed in the same
ray, surround a single figure upon whose words and
_ actions they are dependent, to represent the chorus and
the original single impersonator of the hero. Later
. developments created a second and a third actor in
order to represent opponents in playing, and off-shoots |
f the hero, but the character of the hero as well as his
relation to the chorus remains unchanged. The hero
f the tragedy had to suffer; this is to-day still the essen-
tial content of a tragedy. He had taken upon himself 」
the so-called “ tragic guilt," which is not always easy to
explain; it is often not a guilt in the ordinary sense. |
- Almost always it consisted of a rebellion against a
divine or human authority, and the chorus accompanied |
| the hero with their sympathies, trying to restrain and
- warn him, and lamented his fate after he had met with
what was considered fitting punishment for his daring

— attempt.
| But why did the hero of the tragedy have to suffer,
| and what was the meaning of his “ tragic ” guilt? We
will cut short the discussion by a prompt answer. He
| had to suffer because he was the primal father, the hero
_ of that primordial tragedy the repetition of which here
serves a certain tendency, and the tragic guilt is the 。
guilt which he had to take upon himself in order to free
the chorus of theirs. The scene upon the stage came
— into being through purposive distortion of the historical

238

| caused = suffering of the hero; here, on the |
| hand, they exhaust themselves in sympathy and regr
and the hero himself is to blame for his suffering. The
crime foisted upon him, namely, presumption
rebellion against a great authority, is the same as th
which in the past oppressed the colleagues of the
chorus, namely, the band of brothers. Thus the tragi
hero, though still against his will, is made the redeemer
of the chorus.
When one bears in mind the suffering of the di
goat Dionysos in the performance of the Greek
tragedy and the lament of the retinue of goats who
identified themselves with him, one can easily under
stand how the almost extinct drama was reviewed in
the Middle Ages in the Passion of Christ. ⑧
In closing this study, which has been carried out in
extremely condensed form, I want to state the concl u-
sion that the beginnings of religion, ethics, society, and
art meet in the Oedipus complex. This is in enti
accord with the findings of psychoanalysis, namely,
that the nucleus of all neuroses as far as our present
knowledge of them goes is the Oedipus complex.
comes as a great surprise to me that these problems of
racial psychology can also be solved through a single
concrete instance, such as the relation to the father.
Perhaps another psychological problem must be i
cluded here. We have so frequently had occasion to
show the ambivalence of emotions in its real sense, th
is to say the coincidence of love and hate towards the -
same object, at the root of important cultural forma-
239 b

We know nothing about the origin of this
ambivalence. It may be assumed to be a fundamental
| phenomenon of our emotional life. But the other |
possibility seems to me also worthy of consideration: |
that ambivalence, originally foreign to our emotional
- life, was acquired by mankind from the father complex,
| where psychoanalytic investigation of the individual
— to-day still reveals the strongest expression of 5 i
Before closing we must take into account that the —
remarkable convergence reached in these illustrations, |
pointing to a single inclusive relation, ought not to blind
| us to the uncertainties of our assumptions and to the
difficulties of our conclusions. Of these difficulties I
will point out only two which must have forced them-
selves upon many readers.
In the first place it can hardly have escaped any one
— that we base everything upon the assumption of a psyche
| of the mass in which psychic processes occur as in the
psychic life of the individual. Moreover, we let the

1 That is to say, the parent complex.

5 Tam used to being misunderstood and therefore do not think

it superfluous to state clearly that in giving these deductions I

am by no means oblivious of the complex nature of the pheno-

mena which give rise to them; the only claim made is that a new

| factor has been added to the already known or still unrecognized

| origins of religion, morality, and society, which was furnished

| through psychoanalytic experience. The synthesis of the whole

explanation must be left to another. But it is in the nature of

this now contribution that it could play none other than the

central röle in such a synthesis, although it will be necessary to

| overcome great affective resistances before such importance will
| be conceded to it.

240

\

\ of sons that had been ill-treated by their fathers, to |

explanation which can avoid such assumptions would |

| acquire its attitude towards life afresh, there would be
| no progress in this field and almost no development.

does a generation use to transfer its psychic states to the
_ next generation ?

is in general little concerned with the manner in which ||
the required continuity in the psychic life of succeeding

. remaining effective in generations which could not have

' treatment by the very removal of the father.

ogy could not exist at all.

known anything of this deed. We allow an emotion
process, such as might have arisen among gencratioi

continue to new generations which had escaped such
These —
seem indeed to be weighty objections, and any other

seem to merit preference.
But further consideration shows that we ourselves
do not have to carry the whole responsibility for such

daring. Without the assumption of a mass psyche, ога
continuity in the emotional life of mankind which per- |
mits us to disregard the interruptions of psychic acts |
through the transgression of individuals, social psychol- -
Jf psychic processes of one
generation did not continue in the next, if each had to |

We are now confronted by two new questions: how
much can be attributed to this psychic continuity within
the series of generations, and what ways and means

1 do not claim that these problems
have been sufficiently explained or that direct com-
‘munication and tradition, of which one immediately
thinks, are adequate for the task. Social psychology

241

"to be performed by the inheritance of psychic disposi- -
| tions which, however, need certain incentives in the |
individual life in order to become effective. This may |
be the meaning of the poet's words: Strive to possess |
yourself of what you have inherited from your ancestors. |
The problem would appear more difficult if we could
admit that there are psychic impulses which can be so |
completely suppressed that they leave no traces what-
soever behind them. But that does not exist. The
greatest suppression must leave room for distorted |
substitutions and their resulting reactions. But in that |
case we may assume that no generation is capable of |
concealing its more important psychic processes from |
the next. For psychoanalysis has taught us that in his
unconscious psychic activity every person possesses ап 」
apparatus which enables him to interpret the reactions
of others, that is to say, to straighten out the distortions
which the other person has affected in the expression
of his feclings. By this method of unconscious under-
standing of all customs, ceremonies, and laws which the
original relation to the primal father had left behind,
later generations may also have succeeded in taking 」
over this legacy of feelings.

There is another objection which the analytic method
of thought itself might raise.
We have interpreted the first rules of morality and |
moral restrictions of primitive society as reactions to a
deed which gave the authors of it the conception of |

INFANTILE Logins OF TOTEM

should not be repeated and that its execution mu
bring no gain. This creative sense of guilt has not |
„become extinct with us. We find its asocial effects in
euros producing new rules of morality and
continued restrictions, in expiation for misdeed:
“committed, or as precautions against misdeeds to be |
“committed. But when we examine these neurotics for |
the deeds which have called forth such reactions, we -
are disappointed. We do not find deeds, but only |
impulses and feelings which sought evil but which wer
restrained from carrying it out. Only psychic realities —
} and not actual ones are at the basis of the neurotic's
"sense of guilt. It is characteristic of the neurosis to
put a psychic reality above an actual one and to react |

as seriously to thoughts as the normal person reacts
only towards realities.

May it not be true that the case was somewhat the
same with primitive men? We are justified in ascrib-
ing to them an extraordinary over-valuation of their
psychic acts as a partial manifestation of their narcistic

wish phantasy to kill and devour him may have sufficed
| to bring about the moral reaction which has created |
totemism and taboo. We should thus escape the
. necessity of tracing back the beginning of our cultural
possession, of which we rightly are so proud, to a
horrible crime which wounds all our feelings. The
i 3 Compare Chapter II.
? See Chapter TII.
243

; TOTEM AND TABOO 2
| causal connection, which stretches from that beginning å
to the present time, would not be impaired, for the |
| psychic reality would be of sufficient importance to
account for all those consequences. IL may be agreed
that a change has really taken place in the form of
| society from the father horde to the brother clan. This
| is a strong argument, but it is not conclusive. The
change might have been accomplished in a less violent
| manner and still have conditioned the appearance of the
moral reaction. As long as the pressure of the primal
father was felt the hostile feelings against him were
.. justified. and repentance at these feelings had to wait for
— another opportunity. Of as little validity is the second
objection, that everything derived from the ambivalent
relation to the father, namely taboos, and rules of
sacrifice, is characterized by the highest seriousness and
by complete reality. The ceremonials and inbibitions
of compulsion neurotics exhibit this characteristic too,
and yet they go back to a merely psyehic reality, to
resolution and not to execution. We must beware of
introducing the contempt for what is merely thought or |
, wished which characterizes our sober world where there —
- are only material values, into the world of primitive
. man and the neurotic, which is full of inner riches
| only,
We face a decision here which is really not easy.
) But let us begin by acknowledging that the difference
which may seem fundamental to others does not, in our |
judgment, touch the most important part of the subject.
If wishes and impulses have the full value of fact for
244

| far as their childish impotence permitted they put the:

| psychic reality, concerning whose structure there is no |

testimony they intended to do.

RI n

rimitive man, it is for us to follow such a cono
intelligently instead of correcting it according to o
standard. But in that case we must scrutinize moi

responsible for having raised this doubt. It is not tru
that compulsion neurotics, who to-day are under the
pressure of over-morality, defend themselves only |
against the psychic reality of temptations and punish |
themselves for impulses which they have only felt. A |
piece of historic reality is also involved; in their child
hood these persons had nothing but evil impulses, and as |

into action. Each of these over-good persons had а |
period of badness in his childhood, and a perverse
phase as a fore-runner and a premise of the latter ove:
morality. The analogy between primitive men and |
neurotics is therefore much more fundamentally estab- —
lished if we assume that with the former, too, the |
doubt, originally coincided with the actual reality, and |
that primitive men really did what according to all |

But we must not let our judgment about primitive men
be influenced too far by the analogy with neurotics.
Differences must also be taken into account. Of course
the sharp division between thinking and doing as wi
draw it does not exist either with savages or with
neurotics. But the neurotic is above all inhibited in
his actions; with him the thought is a complete substi
tute for the deed. Primitive man is not inhibited, the

245

he absolute certainty of the decision, that “ In the

inning was the deed.”