821

II

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF
EMOTIONS

I

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

For us the meaning of taboo branches off into two opposite directions.
On the one hand it means to us, sacred, consecrated; but on the other
hand it means, uncanny, dangerous, forbidden, and unclean. The opposite
for taboo is designated in Polynesian by the word noa and signifies some-
thing ordinary and generally accessible. Thus something like the concept
of reserve inheres in taboo; taboo expresses itself essentially in prohibi-
tions and restrictions. Our combination of “holy dred” would often ex-
press the meaning of taboo.

The taboo restrictions are different from religious or moral prohibitions.
They are not traced to a commandment of a god, but really they them-
selves impose their own prohibitions; they are differentiated from moral
prohibitions by failing to be included in a system which declares absti-
nences in general to be necessary and gives reasons for this necessity. The
taboo prohibitions lack all justification and are of unknown origin.
Though incomprehensible to us they are taken as a matter of course by
those who are under their dominance.

Wundt ¹ calls taboo the oldest unwritten code of law of humanity. It is
generally assumed that taboo is older than the gods and goes back to the
pre-religious age.

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

822

TOTEM AND TABOO

As we are in need of an impartial presentation of the subject of taboo
before subjecting it to psychoanalytic consideration I shall now cite an
excerpt from the article Taboo in the Encyclopaedia Britannica written by
the anthropologist Northcote W. Thomas:¹

“Properly speaking, taboo includes only (a) the sacred (or unclean)
character of persons or things, (b) the kind of prohibition which results
from this character, and (c) the sanctity (or uncleanliness) which results
from a violation of the prohibition. The converse of taboo in Polynesia is
‘noa’ and allied forms which mean ‘general’ or ‘common.’ . . .

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

“The objects of the taboo are many: 1. direct taboos aim at (a) pro-
tection of important persons—chiefs, priests, etc.—and things against
harm; (b) safeguarding of the weak—women, children and common
people generally—from the powerful mana (magical influence) of chiefs
and priests; (c) providing against the dangers incurred by handling or
coming in contact with corpses, by eating certain food, etc.; (d) guarding
the chief acts of life—births, initiation, marriage and sexual functions—
against interference; (e) securing human beings against the wrath or
power of gods and spirits;² (f) securing unborn infants and young chil-
dren, who stand in a specially sympathetic relation with their parents,
from the consequence of certain actions, and more especially from the
communication of qualities supposed to be derived from certain foods.
2. Taboos are imposed in order to secure against thieves the property of
an individual, his fields, tools, etc.”

Other parts of the article may be summarized as follows. Originally the
punishment for the violation of a taboo was probably left to an inner,
automatic arrangement. The violated taboo avenged itself. Wherever the
taboo was related to ideas of gods and demons an automatic punishment
was expected from the power of the godhead. In other cases, probably as
a result of a further development of the idea, society took over the punish-
¹Eleventh Edition; this article also gives the most important references.
²This application of the taboo can be omitted as not originally belonging in this
connection.

823

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

ment of the offender, whose action has endangered his companions. Thus
man’s first systems of punishment are also connected with taboo.

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

A peculiar power inherent in persons and ghosts, which can be trans-
mitted from them to inanimate objects is regarded as a source of the ta-
boo. This part of the article reads as follows: “Persons or things which
are regarded as taboo may be compared to objects charged with elec-
tricity; they are the seat of tremendous power which is transmissible by
contact, and may be liberated with destructive effect if the organisms
which provoke its discharge are too weak to resist it; the result of a vio-
lation of a taboo depends partly on the strength of the magical influence
inherent in the taboo object or person, partly on the strength of the op-
posing mana of the violator of the taboo. Thus, kings and chiefs are pos-
sessed of great power, and it is death for their subjects to address them
directly; but a minister or other person of greater mana than common, can
approach them unharmed, and can in turn be approached by their in-
feriors without risk. . . . So, too, indirect taboos depend for their
strength on the mana of him who opposes them; if it is a chief or a priest,
they are more powerful than those imposed by a common person.”

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

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

If I judge my readers’ impressions correctly, I dare say that after hear-
ing all that was said about taboo they are far from knowing what to un-
derstand by it and where to store it in their minds. This is surely due to
the insufficient information I have given and to the omission of all dis-
cussions concerning the relation of taboo to superstition, to belief in the
soul, and to religion. On the other hand I fear that a more detailed de-
scription of what is known about taboo would be still more confusing; I
can therefore assure the reader that the state of affairs is really far from
clear. We may say, however, that we deal with a series of restrictions
which these primitive races impose upon themselves; this and that is for-
bidden without any apparent reason; nor does it occur to them to ques-
tion this matter, for they subject themselves to these restrictions as a

324

matter of course and are convinced that any transgression will be pun-
ished automatically in the most severe manner. There are reliable reports
that innocent transgressions of such prohibitions have actually been
punished automatically. For instance, the innocent offender who had
eaten from a forbidden animal became deeply depressed, expected his
death and then actually died. The prohibitions mostly concern matters
which are capable of enjoyment such as freedom of movement and unre-
strained intercourse; in some cases they appear very ingenious, evidently
representing abstinences and renunciations; in other cases their content is
quite incomprehensible, they seem to concern themselves with trifles and
give the impression of ceremonials. Something like a theory seems to un-
derlie all these prohibitions, it seems as if these prohibitions are necessary
because some persons and objects possess a dangerous power which is
transmitted by contact with the object so charged, almost like a contagion.
The quantity of this dangerous property is also taken into consideration.
Some persons or things have more of it than others and the danger is
precisely in accordance with the charge. The most peculiar part of it is
that any one who has violated such a prohibition assumes the nature of
the forbidden object as if he had absorbed the whole dangerous charge.
This power is inherent in all persons who are more or less prominent, such
as kings, priests and the newly born, in all exceptional physical states such
as menstruation, puberty and birth, in everything sinister like illness and
death and in everything connected with these conditions by virtue of con-
tagion or dissemination.

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

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

Now why should we take any interest at all in the riddle of taboo? Not
only, I think, because every psychological problem is well worth the
effort of investigation for its own sake, but for other reasons as well. It
may be surmised that the taboo of Polynesian savages is after all not so
remote from us as we were at first inclined to believe; the moral and cus-
tomary prohibitions which we ourselves obey may have some essential
relation to this primitive taboo the explanation of which may in the end
throw light upon the dark origin of our own “categorical imperative.”

825

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

We are, therefore, inclined to listen with keen expectations when an in-
vestigator like W. Wundt gives his interpretation of taboo, especially as
he promises to go back to the very roots of the taboo concepts.¹

Wundt states that the idea of taboo “includes all customs which express
dread of particular objects connected with cultic ideas or of actions hav-
ing reference to them.”²

On another occasion he says: “In accordance with the general sense
of the word we understand by taboo every prohibition laid down in
customs or manners or in expressly formulated laws, not to touch an ob-
ject or to take it for one’s own use, or to make use of certain proscribed
words. . . .” Accordingly there would not be a single race or stage of
culture which had escaped the injurious effects of taboo.

Wundt then shows why he finds it more practical to study the nature of
taboo in the primitive states of Australian savages rather than in the
higher culture of the Polynesian races. In the case of the Australians he
divides taboo prohibitions into three classes according as they concern
animals, persons or other objects. The animal taboo, which consists essen-
tially of the taboo against killing and eating, forms the nucleus of To-
temism.³ The taboo of the second class, which has human beings for its
object, is of an essentially different nature. To begin with, it is restricted to
conditions which bring about an unusual situation in life for the person
tabooed. Thus young men at the feast of initiation, women during men-
struation and immediately after delivery, newly born children, the diseased
and especially the dead, are all taboo. The constantly used property of any
person, such as his clothes, tools and weapons, is permanently taboo for
everybody else. In Australia the new name which a youth receives at his
initiation into manhood becomes a part of his most personal property, it is
taboo and must be kept secret. The taboos of the third class, which apply
to trees, plants, houses and localities, are more variable and seem only to
follow the rule that anything which for any reason arouses dread or is
mysterious, becomes subject to taboo.

Wundt himself has to acknowledge that the changes which taboo un-
dergoes in the richer culture of the Polynesians and in the Malayan Archi-
peligo are not very profound. The greater social differentiation of these
races manifests itself in the fact that chiefs, kings and priests exercise an
especially effective taboo and are themselves exposed to the strongest
taboo compulsion.

But the real sources of taboo lie deeper than in the interests of the
privileged classes: “They begin where the most primitive and at the
same time the most enduring human impulses have their origin, namely,

¹ Voelkerpsychologie, Religion und Mythus, p. 300.

² l.c., p. 237.

³ Cf. Chapter I.

826

TOTEM AND TABOO

in the fear of the effect of demonic powers.”¹⁾ “The taboo, which originally
was nothing more than the objectified fear of the demonic power thought
to be concealed in the tabooed object, forbids the irritation of this power
and demands the placation of the demon whenever the taboo has been
knowingly or unknowingly violated.”
The taboo then gradually became an autonomous power which has de-
tached itself from demonism. It becomes the compulsion of custom and
tradition and finally the law. “But the commandment concealed behind
taboo prohibitions which differ materially according to place and time,
had originally the meaning: Beware of the wrath of the demons.”
Wundt therefore teaches that taboo is the expression and evolution of
the belief of primitive races in demonic powers, and that later taboo has
dissociated itself from this origin and has remained a power simply be-
cause it was one by virtue of a kind of a psychic persistence and in this
manner it became the root of our customs and laws. As little as one can
object to the first part of this statement I feel, however, that I am only
voicing the impression of many of my readers if I call Wundt’s explana-
tion disappointing. Wundt’s explanation is far from going back to the
sources of taboo concepts or to their deepest roots. For neither fear nor
demons can be accepted in psychology as finalities defying any further
deduction. It would be different if demons really existed; but we know
that, like gods, they are only the product of the psychic powers of man;
they have been created from and out of something.
Wundt also expresses a number of important though not altogether
clear opinions about the double meaning of taboo. According to him the
division between sacred and unclean does not yet exist in the first primi-
tive stages of taboo. For this reason these conceptions entirely lack the
significance which they could only acquire later on when they came to
be contrasted. The animal, person or place on which there is a taboo is
demonic, that is, not sacred, and therefore not yet, in the later sense,
unclean. The expression taboo is particularly suitable for this undifferen-
tiated and intermediate meaning of the demonic, in the sense of some-
thing which may not be touched, since it emphasizes a characteristic
which finally adheres both to what is sacred and to the unclean, namely,
the dread of contact. But the fact that this important characteristic is per-
manently held in common points to the existence of an original agree-
ment here between these two spheres which gave way to a differentiation
only as the result of further conditions through which both finally de-
veloped into opposites.
The belief associated with the original taboo, according to which a
demonic power concealed in the object avenges the touching of it or its
forbidden use by bewitching the offender was still an entirely objectified

¹⁾l.c., p. 307.

827

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

fear. This had not yet separated into the two forms which it assumed
at a more developed stage, namely, awe and aversion.

How did this separation come about? According to Wundt, this was
done through the transference of taboo prohibitions from the sphere
of demons to that of theistic conceptions. The antithesis of sacred and
unclean coincides with the succession of two mythological stages the
first of which did not entirely disappear when the second was reached
but continued in a state of greatly lowered esteem which gradually
turned into contempt. It is a general law in mythology that a preceding
stage, just because it has been overcome and pushed back by a higher
stage, maintains itself next to it in a debased form so that the objects
of its veneration become objects of aversion.¹

Wundt’s further elucidations refer to the relation of taboo to lustration
and sacrifice.

2

He who approaches the problem of taboo from the field of psychoanaly-
sis, which is concerned with the study of the unconscious part of the
individual’s psychic life, needs but a moment’s reflection to realize that
these phenomena are by no means foreign to him. He knows people who
have individually created such taboo prohibitions for themselves, which
they follow as strictly as savages observe the taboos common to their
tribe or society. If he were not accustomed to call these individuals
“compulsion neurotics” he would find the term “taboo disease” quite
appropriate for their malady. Psychoanalytic investigation has taught
him the clinical etiology and the essential part of the psychological
mechanism of this compulsion disease, so that he cannot resist applying
what he has learnt there to explain corresponding manifestations in folk
psychology.

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

The first and most striking correspondence between the compulsion
prohibitions of neurotics and taboo lies in the fact that the origin of

¹L.c., p. 313.

828

these prohibitions is just as unmotivated and enigmatic. They have ap-
peared at some time or other and must now be retained on account of
an unconquerable an-
xiety. An external threat of punishment is super-
fluous, because an inner certainty (a conscience) exists that violation
will be followed by unbearable disaster. The very most that compulsion
patients can tell us is the vague premonition that some person of their
environment will suffer harm if they should violate the prohibition. Of
what the harm is to consist is not known, and this inadequate informa-
tion is more likely to be obtained during the later discussions of the
expiatory and defensive actions than when the prohibitions themselves
are being discussed.

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

Some prohibitions are easily understood from their purpose but
others strike us as incomprehensible, foolish and senseless. We designate
such commands as “ceremonials” and we find that taboo customs show
the same variations.

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

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

“For a similar reason a Maori chief would not blow on a fire with his
mouth; for his sacred breath would communicate its sanctity to the fire,
which would pass it on to the meat in the pot, which would pass it on
to the man who ate the meat which was in the pot, which stood on the
fire, which was breathed on by the chief; so that the eater, infected by

829

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS
the chief’s breath conveyed through these intermediaries, would surely
die.”¹

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

Compulsion prohibitions, like taboo prohibitions, entail the most ex-
traordinary renunciations and restrictions of life, but a part of these can
be removed by carrying out certain acts which now also must be done
because they have acquired a compulsive character (obsessive acts);
there is no doubt that these acts are in the nature of penances, expiations,
defence reactions, and purifications. The most common of these obsessive
acts is washing with water (washing obsession). A part of the taboo
prohibitions can also be replaced in this way, that is to say, their viola-
tion can be made good through such a “ceremonial,” and here too lustra-
tion through water is the preferred way.

Let us now summarize the points in which the correspondence between
taboo customs and the symptoms of compulsion neurosis are most clearly
manifested: 1. In the lack of motivation of the commandments, 2. in
their enforcement through an inner need, 3. in their capacity for dis-
placement and in the danger of contagion from what is prohibited, 4. and
in the causation of ceremonial actions and commandments which ema-
nate from the forbidden.

However, psychoanalysis has made us familiar with the clinical history
as well as the psychic mechanism of compulsion neurosis. Thus, the his-
tory of a typical case of touching phobia reads as follows: In the very
beginning, during the early period of childhood, the person manifested
a strong pleasure in touching himself, the object of which was much
more specialized than one would be inclined to suspect. Presently the
carrying out of this very pleasurable act of touching was opposed by
a prohibition from without.² The prohibition was accepted because it
was supported by strong inner forces;³ it proved to be stronger than the
impulse which wanted to manifest itself through this act of touching.
But due to the primitive psychic constitution of the child this prohibition
did not succeed in abolishing the impulse. Its only success lay in repressing
the impulse (the pleasure of touching) and banishing it into the un-

¹Frazer, The Golden Bough, II: Taboo and the Perils of the Soul. 1911, p. 136.

²Both the pleasure and the prohibition referred to touching one’s own genitals.

³The relation to beloved persons who impose the prohibition.

830

conscious. Both the prohibition and the impulse remained; the impulse
because it had only been repressed and not abolished, the prohibition,
because if it had ceased, the impulse would have broken through into
consciousness and would have been carried out. An unsolved situation,
a psychic fixation, had thus been created and now everything else ema-
nated from the continued conflict between prohibition and impulse.

The main characteristic of the psychic constellation which has thus
gone under fixation lies in what one might call the ambivalent behaviour ¹⁾
of the individual to the object, or rather to an action regarding it. The
individual constantly wants to carry out this action (the act of touch-
ing), he sees in it the highest pleasure, but he may not carry it out, and
he even abominates it. The opposition between these two streams cannot
be easily adjusted because—there is no other way to express it—they
are so localized in the psychic life that they cannot meet. The prohibi-
tion becomes fully conscious, while the surviving pleasure of touching
remains unconscious, the person knowing nothing about it. If this psy-
chological factor did not exist the ambivalence could neither maintain
itself so long nor lead to such subsequent manifestations.

In the clinical history of the case we have emphasized the appearance
of the prohibition in early childhood as the determining factor, but for
the further elaboration of the neurosis this rôle is played by the repres-
sion which appears at this age. On account of the repression which has
taken place, which is connected with forgetting (amnesia), the motiva-
tion of the prohibition that has become conscious remains unknown, and
all attempts to unravel it intellectually must fail, as the point of attack
cannot be found. The prohibition owes its strength—its compulsive
character—to its association with its unknown counterpart, the hidden
and unabated pleasure, that is to say, to an inner need into which con-
scious insight is lacking. The transferability and reproductive power of
the prohibition reflect a process which harmonizes with the unconscious
pleasure and is very much facilitated through the psychological de-
terminants of the unconscious. The pleasure of the impulse constantly
undergoes displacement in order to escape the blocking which it en-
counters and seeks to acquire surrogates for the forbidden in the form
of substitutive objects and actions. For the same reason the prohibition
also wanders and spreads to the new aims of the proscribed impulse.
Every new advance of the repressed libido is answered by the prohibition
with a new severity. The mutual inhibition of these two contending
forces creates a need for discharge and for lessening the existing tension,
in which we may recognize the motivation for the compulsive acts. In
the neurosis there are distinctly acts of compromise which on the one
hand may be regarded as proofs of remorse and efforts to expiate and

¹⁾To use an excellent term coined by Bleuler.

831

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS
similiar actions; but on the other hand they are at the same time substi-
tutive actions which recompense the impulse for what has been forbid-
den. It is a law of neurotic diseases that these obsessive acts serve the
impulse more and more and come nearer and nearer to the original and
forbidden act.

We may now make the attempt to study taboo as if it were of the
same nature as the compulsive prohibitions of our patients. It must
naturally be clearly understood that many of the taboo prohibitions
which we shall study are already secondary, displaced and distorted, so
that we shall have to be satisfied if we can shed some light upon the
earliest and most important taboo prohibitions. We must also remember
that the differences in the situation of the savage and of the neurotic may
be important enough to exclude complete correspondence and prevent
a point by point transfer from one to the other such as would be possible
if we were dealing with exact copies.

First of all it must be said that it is useless to question savages as
to the real motivation of their prohibitions or as to the genesis of taboo.
According to our assumption they must be incapable of telling us any
thing about it since this motivation is “unconscious” to them. But fol-
lowing the model of the compulsive prohibition we shall construct the
history of taboo as follows: Taboos are very ancient prohibitions which
at one time were forced upon a generation of primitive people from
without, that is, they probably were forcibly impressed upon them by
an earlier generation. These prohibitions concerned actions for which
there existed a strong desire. The prohibitions maintained themselves
from generation to generation, perhaps only as the result of a tradition
set up by paternal and social authority. But in later generations they
have perhaps already become “organized” as a piece of inherited psychic
property. Whether there are such “innate ideas” or whether these have
brought about the fixation of the taboo by themselves or by co-operating
with education no one could decide in the particular case in question.
The persistence of taboo teaches, however, one thing, namely, that the
original pleasure to do the forbidden still continues among taboo races.
They therefore assume an ambivalent attitude toward their taboo pro-
hibitions; in their unconscious they would like nothing better than to
transgress them but they are also afraid to do it; the desire is afraid just
because they would like to transgress, and the fear is stronger than the
pleasure. But in every individual of the race the desire for it is uncon-
scious, just as in the neurotic.

The oldest and most important taboo prohibitions are the two basic
laws of totemism: namely, not to kill the totem animal, and to avoid
sexual intercourse with totem companions of the other sex.

It would, therefore, seem that these must have been the oldest and

832

strongest desires of mankind. We cannot understand this and therefore
we cannot use these examples to test our assumptions as long as the
meaning and the origin of the totemic system is so wholly unknown to
us. But the very wording of these taboos and the fact that they occur
together will remind any one who knows the results of the psychoanalytic
investigation of individuals, of something quite definite which psycho-
analysts call the central point of the infantile wish life and the nucleus
of the later neurosis.¹⁾

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

We know, without understanding it, that whoever does what is pro-
hibited and violates the taboo, becomes himself taboo. But how can we
connect this fact with the other, namely that the taboo adheres not
only to persons who have done what is prohibited, but also to persons

833

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

is too great. But a minister, for example, can become the harmless
mediator between them. Translated from the language of taboo into
the language of normal psychology this means: the subject who shrinks
from the tremendous temptation which contact with the king creates
for him can brook the intercourse of an official, whom he does not have to
envy so much and whose position perhaps seems attainable to him. The
minister, on his part, can moderate his envy of the king by taking into
consideration the power that has been granted to him. Thus, smaller
differences in the magic power that lead to temptation are less to be
feared than exceptionally big differences.

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

Though the secret meaning of a taboo prohibition cannot possibly
be of so special a nature as in the case of a neurosis, we must not be
astonished to find that touching plays a similar rôle in taboo prohibition
as in the délire de toucher. To touch is the beginning of every act of
possession, of every attempt to make use of a person or thing.

We have interpreted the power of contagion which inheres in the
taboo as the property of leading into temptation, and of inciting to imi-
tation. This does not seem to be in accord with the fact that the con-
tagiousness of the taboo is above all manifested in the transference to
objects which thus themselves become carriers of the taboo.

This transferability of the taboo reflects what is found in the neurosis,
namely, the constant tendency of the unconscious impulse to become
displaced through associative channels upon new objects. Our attention
is thus drawn to the fact that the dangerous magic power of the mana
corresponds to two real faculties, the capacity of reminding man of his
forbidden wishes, and the apparently more important one of tempting
him to violate the prohibition in the service of these wishes. Both func-
tions reunite into one, however, if we assume it to be in accord with a
primitive psychic life that with the awakening of a memory of a for-
bidden action there should also be combined the awakening of the
tendency to carry out the action. Memory and temptation then again
coincide. We must also admit that if the example of a person who has
violated a prohibition leads another to the same action, the disobedience
of the prohibition has been transmitted like a contagion, just as the
taboo is transferred from a person to an object, and from this to another.
If the violation of a taboo can be condoned through expiation or pen-

834

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

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

3

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

But we can avail ourselves of another method. We can shape our in-
vestigation so as to ascertain whether a part of the assumptions which
we have transferred from the neurosis to the taboo, or the conclusions
at which we have thereby arrived can be demonstrated directly in the
phenomena of taboo. We must decide, however, what we want to look
for. The assertion concerning the genesis of taboo, namely, that it was
derived from a primitive prohibition which was once imposed from
without, cannot, of course, be proved. We shall therefore seek to con-
firm those psychological conditions for taboo with which we have be-
come acquainted in the case of compulsion neurosis. How did we gain
our knowledge of these psychological factors in the case of neurosis?
Through the analytical study of the symptoms, especially the compulsive
actions, the defense reactions and the obsessive commands. These mech-
anisms gave every indication of having been derived from ambivalent

835

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS
impulses or tendencies, they either represented simultaneously the wish
and counter-wish or they served preponderantly one of the two contrary
tendencies. If we should now succeed in showing that ambivalence, i.e.,
the sway of contrary tendencies, exists also in the case of taboo regula-
tions or if we should find among taboo mechanisms some which like
neurotic obsessions give simultaneous expression to both currents, we
would have established what is practically the most important point in
the psychological correspondence between taboo and compulsion neu-
rosis.

We have already mentioned that the two fundamental taboo prohibi-
tions are inaccessible to our analysis because they belong to totemism;
another part of the taboo rules is of secondary origin and cannot be used
for our purpose. For among these races taboo has become the general
form of law giving and has helped to promote social tendencies which are
certainly younger than taboo itself, as for instance, the taboos imposed
by chiefs and priests to insure their property and privileges. But there
still remains a large group of laws which we may undertake to investi-
gate. Among these I lay stress on those taboos which are attached (a) to
enemies, (b) to chiefs, and (c) to the dead; the material for our investi-
gation is taken from the excellent collection of J. G. Frazer in his great
work, The Golden Bough.¹

(a) The Treatment of Enemies

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

The reconciliation customs practised on the island of Timor, after a
victorious band of warriors has returned with the severed heads of the
vanquished enemy, are especially significant because the leader of the
expedition is subject to heavy additional restrictions. “At the solemn
entry of the victors, sacrifices are made to conciliate the souls of the
enemy; otherwise one would have to expect harm to come to the victors.
A dance is given and a song is sung in which the slain enemy is mourned
¹Third Edition, Part II: Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, 1911.

336

TOTEM AND TABOO

and his forgiveness is implored: ‘Be not angry,’ they say, ‘because your
head is here with us; had we been less lucky, our heads might have been
exposed in your village. We have offered the sacrifice to appease you.
Your spirit may now rest and leave us at peace. Why were you our
enemy? Would it not have been better that we should remain friends?
Then your blood would not have been spilt and your head would not
have been cut off.’ ”¹

Similar customs are found among the Palu in Celebes; the Gallas
sacrifice to the spirits of their dead enemies before they return to their
home villages.²

Other races have found methods of making friends, guardians and
protectors out of their former enemies after they are dead. This consists
in the tender treatment of the severed heads, of which many wild tribes
of Borneo boast. When the See-Dayaks of Sarawak bring home a head
from a war expedition, they treat it for months with the greatest kindness
and courtesy and address it with the most endearing names in their lan-
guage. The best morsels from their meals are put into its mouth, together
with titbits and cigars. The dead enemy is repeatedly entreated to hate
his former friends and to bestow his love upon his new hosts because
he has now become one of them. It would be a great mistake to think
that any derision is attached to this treatment, horrible though it may
seem to us.³

Observers have been struck by the mourning for the enemy after he is
slain and scalped, among several of the wild tribes of North America.
When a Choctaw had killed an enemy he began a month’s mourning
during which he submitted himself to serious restrictions. The Dakota
Indians mourned in the same way. One authority mentions that the
Osaga Indians after mourning for their own dead mourned for their
foes as if they had been friends.⁴

Before proceeding to the other classes of taboo customs for the treat-
ment of enemies, we must define our position in regard to a pertinent
objection. Both Frazer as well as other authorities may well be quoted
against us to show that the motive for these rules of reconciliation is
quite simple and has nothing to do with “ambivalence.” These races
are dominated by a superstitious fear of the spirits of the slain, a fear
which was also familiar to classical antiquity, and which the great
British dramatist brought upon the stage in the hallucinations of Mac-
beth and Richard the Third. From this superstition all the reconciliation
rules as well as the restrictions and expiations which we shall discuss

¹Frazer, l.c., p. 166.
²Paulitschke, Ethnography of North-east Africa.
³Frazer Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 248, 1907; referring to Hugh Low, Sarawak (Lon-
don, 1848).
⁴J. O. Dorsey, see Frazer, Taboo, etc., p. 181.

837

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

later can be logically deduced; moreover, the ceremonies included in
the fourth group also argue for this interpretation, since the only explana-
tion of which they admit is the effort to drive away the spirits of the
slain which pursue the manslayers.¹⁾ Besides, the savages themselves
directly admit their fear for the spirits of their slain foes and trace back
the taboo customs under discussion to this fear.

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

We now return to the remaining classes of taboo rules. The restrictions
laid upon the victorious manslayer are unusually frequent and are
mostly of a serious nature. In Timor (compare the reconciliation cus-
toms mentioned above) the leader of the expedition cannot return to his
house under any circumstances. A special hut is erected for him in
which he spends two months engaged in the observance of various rules
of purification. During this period he may not see his wife or nourish
himself; another person must put his food in his mouth.²⁾ Among some
Dayak tribes warriors returning from a successful expedition must
remain sequestered for several days and abstain from certain foods;
they may not touch iron and must remain away from their wives. In
Logea, an island near New Guinea, men who have killed an enemy or
have taken part in the killing, lock themselves up in their houses for a
week. They avoid every intercourse with their wives and friends, they
do not touch their victuals with their hands, and live on nothing but
vegetable foods which are cooked for them in special dishes. As a reason
for this last restriction it is alleged that they must smell the blood of
the slain, otherwise they would sicken and die. Among the Toaripi-
or
Motumotu-tribes in New Guinea a manslayer must not approach his
wife and must not touch his food with his fingers. A second person must
feed him with special food. This continues until the next new moon.

I avoid the complete enumeration of all the cases of restrictions of the

¹⁾Frazer, Taboo, pp. 166–174. These ceremonies consist of hitting shields, shouting,
bellowing and making noises with various instruments, etc.

²⁾Frazer, Taboo, p. 166, referring to S. Mueller, Reisen en Onderzoekingen in den
Indischen Archipel. (Amsterdam, 1857).

838

victorious slayer mentioned by Frazer, and emphasize only such cases
in which the character of taboo is especially noticeable or where the
restriction appears in connection with expiation, purification and cere-
monial.

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

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

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

The detail and variations of these expiatory and purifying ceremonies
after the killing of an enemy would be most interesting for purposes of
a more searching study, but I need not enumerate any more of them
here because they cannot furnish us with any new points of view. I might
mention that the temporary or permanent isolation of the professional
executioner, which was maintained up to our time, is a case in point.
The position of the “free-holder” in mediæval society really conveys a
good idea of the “taboo” of savages.¹

¹For these examples see Frazer, Taboo, pp. 165–170, “Manslayers Tabooed.”

839

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

(b) The Taboo of Rulers

The behaviour of primitive races towards their chiefs, kings, and priests,
is controlled by two principles which seem rather to supplement than
to contradict each other. They must both be guarded and be guarded
against.¹⁾

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

Where the healing power of the royal touch is concerned we do not
have to look for examples among savages. In comparatively recent times
the kings of England exercised this power upon scrofula, whence it was
called “The King’s Evil.” Neither Queen Elizabeth nor any of her suc-
cessors renounced this part of the royal prerogative. Charles I is said
to have healed a hundred sufferers at one time, in the year 1633. Under
his dissolute son Charles II, after the great English revolution had
passed, royal healings of scrofula attained their greatest vogue.

¹Frazer, Taboo, p. 132. “He must not only be guarded, he must also be guarded
against.”

840

This king is said to have touched close to a hundred thousand victims of
scrofula in the course of his reign. The crush of those seeking to be cured
used to be so great that on one occasion six or seven patients suffered
death by suffocation instead of being healed. The skeptical king of
Orange, William III, who became king of England after the banishment
of the Stuarts, refused to exercise the spell; on the one occasion when he
consented to practise the touch, he did so with words: “May God give
you better health and more sense.”¹

The following account will bear witness to the terrible effect of touch-
ing by virtue of which a person, even though unintentionally, becomes
active against his king or against what belongs to him. A chief of high
rank and great holiness in New Zealand happened to leave the remains
of his meal by the roadside. A young slave came along, a strong healthy
fellow, who saw what was left over and started to eat it. Hardly had
he finished when a horrified spectator informed him of his offence in
eating the meal of the chief. The man had been a strong, brave warrior,
but as soon as he heard this he collapsed and was afflicted by terrible
convulsions, from which he died towards sunset of the following day.²
A Maori woman ate a certain fruit and then learned that it came from
a place on which there was a taboo. She cried out that the spirit of the
chief whom she had thus offended would surely kill her. This incident
occurred in the afternoon, and on the next day at twelve o’clock she was
dead.³ The tinder box of a Maori chief once cost several persons their
lives. The chief had lost it, and those who found it used it to light their
pipes. When they learned whose property the tinder box was they all
died of fright.⁴

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

But probably the greater part of this taboo of the rulers cannot be
traced back to the need of guarding against them. The other point of
view in the treatment of privileged persons, the need of guarding them
from dangers with which they are threatened, has had a distinct share
in the creation of taboo and therefore of the origin of court etiquette.

The necessity of guarding the king from every conceivable danger
arises from his great importance for the weal and woe of his subjects.
Strictly speaking, he is a person who regulates the course of the world;
his people have to thank him not only for rain and sunshine, which

¹ Frazer, The Magic Art, I, p. 368.

² Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha Maori (London, 1884), see Frazer, Taboo, p. 135.

³ W. Brown, New Zealand and Its Aborigines (London, 1845) Frazer, l.c.

⁴ Frazer, l.c.

841

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

allow the fruits of the earth to grow, but also for the wind which brings
the ships to their shores and for the solid ground on which they set their
feet.¹⁾

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

It seems like an obvious contradiction that persons of such perfection
of power should themselves require the greatest care to guard them
against threatening dangers, but this is not the only contradiction re-
vealed in the treatment of royal persons on the part of savages. These
races consider it necessary to watch over their kings to see that they
use their powers in the right way; they are by no means sure of their
good intentions or of their conscientiousness. A strain of mistrust is
mingled with the motivation of the taboo rules for the king. “The idea
that early kingdoms are despotisms,” says Frazer,²⁾ “in which the people
exist only for the sovereign, is wholly inapplicable to the monarchies
we are considering. On the contrary, the sovereign in them exists only
for his subjects: his life is only valuable so long as he discharges the
duties of his position by ordering the course of nature for his people’s
benefit. So soon as he fails to do so, the care, the devotion, the religious
homage which they had hitherto lavished on him cease and are changed
into hatred and contempt; he is ignominiously dismissed and may be
thankful if he escapes with his life. Worshipped as a god one day, he
is killed as a criminal the next. But in this changed behaviour of the
people there is nothing capricious or inconsistent. On the contrary, their
conduct is quite consistent. If their king is their god he is, or should be,
also their preserver; and if he will not preserve them he must make room
for another who will. So long, however, as he answers their expectations,
there is no limit to the care which they take of him, and which they
compel him to take of himself. A king of this sort lives hedged in by
ceremonious etiquette, a network of prohibitions and observances, of
which the intention is not to contribute to his dignity, much less to his
comfort, but to restrain him from conduct which, by disturbing the har-
mony of nature, might involve himself, his people, and the universe in
one common catastrophe. Far from adding to his comfort, these observ-
ances, by trammelling his every act, annihilate his freedom and often
render the very life, which it is their object to preserve, a burden and
sorrow to him.”

One of the most glaring examples of thus fettering and paralysing a

¹⁾Frazer, Taboo. The Burden of Royalty, p. 7.

²⁾l.c., p. 7.

842

holy ruler through taboo ceremonial seems to have been reached in the
life routine of the Mikado of Japan, as it existed in earlier centuries.
A description which is now over two hundred years old¹ relates: “He
thinks that it would be very prejudicial to his dignity and holiness to
touch the ground with his feet; for this reason when he intends to go
anywhere, he must be carried thither on men’s shoulders. Much less
will they suffer that he should expose his sacred person to the open air,
and the sun is not thought worthy to shine on his head. There is such
a holiness ascribed to all the parts of his body that he dares to cut
off neither his hair, nor his beard, nor his nails. However, lest he should
grow too dirty, they may clean him in the night when he is asleep; be
cause they say that what is taken from his body at that time, hath been
stolen from him, and that such a theft does not prejudice his holiness or
dignity. In ancient times, he was obliged to sit on the throne for some
hours every morning, with the imperial crown on his head; but to sit
altogether like a statue without stirring either hands or feet, head or
eyes, nor indeed any part of his body, because by this means it was
thought that he could preserve peace and tranquillity in his empire;
for if unfortunately, he turned himself on one side or other, or if he
looked a good while towards any part of his dominion, it was appre-
hended that war, famine, fire or some other great misfortune was near
at hand to desolate the country.”

Some of the taboos to which barbarian kings are subject vividly recall
the restrictions placed on murderers. On Shark Point at Cape Padron
in Lower Guinea (West Africa), a priest-king called Kukulu lives alone
in a woods. He is not allowed to touch a woman or to leave his house
and cannot even rise out of his chair, in which he must sleep in a sitting
position. If he should lie down the wind would cease and shipping would
be disturbed. It is his function to keep storms in check and in general,
to see to an even, healthy condition of the atmosphere.² The more pow-
erful a king of Loango is, says Bastian, the more taboos he must observe.
The heir to the throne is also bound to them from childhood on; they
accumulate abut him while he is growing up, and by the time of his
accession he is suffocated by them.

Our interest in the matter does not require us to take up more space
to describe more fully the taboos that cling to royal and priestly dignity.
We merely add that restrictions as to freedom of movement and diet
play the main rôle among them. But two examples of taboo ceremonial
taken from civilized nations, and therefore from much higher stages of

¹Kaempfer, History of Japan, see in Frazer, l.c., p. 3.
²Bastian, The German Expedition to the Coast of Loango (Jena 1874), cited by
Frazer, l.c., p. 5.

843

culture, will indicate to what an extent association with these privileged
persons tends to preserve ancient customs.
The flamen Dialis, the high-priest of Jupiter in Rome, had to observe
an extraordinarily large number of taboo rules. He was not allowed to
ride, to see a horse or an armed man, to wear a ring that was not broken,
to have a knot in his garments, to touch wheat flour or leaven, or even
to mention by name a goat, a dog, raw meat, beans and ivy; his hair
could only be cut by a free man and with a bronze knife, his hair, comb-
ings and nail parings had to be buried under a lucky tree; he could not
touch the dead, go into the open with bare head, and similar prohibitions.
His wife, the flaminica, also had her own prohibitions: she was not
allowed to ascend more than three steps on a certain kind of stairs and on
certain holidays she could not comb her hair; the leather for her shoes
could not be taken from any animal that had died a natural death but
only from one that had been slaughtered or sacrificed; when she heard
thunder she was unclean until she had made an expiatory sacrifice.¹⁾

The old kings of Ireland were subject to a series of very curious re-
strictions, the observance of which was expected to bring every blessing
to the country while their violation entailed every form of evil. The com-
plete description of these taboos is given in the Book of Rights, of which
the oldest manuscript copies bear the dates 1390 and 1418. The pro-
hibitions are very detailed and concern certain activities at specified
places and times; in some cities, for instance, the king cannot stay on
a certain day of the week, while at some specified hour this or that river
may not be crossed, or again there is a plain on which he cannot camp
a full nine days, etc.²⁾

Among many savage races the severity of the taboo restrictions for the
priest-kings has had results of historic importance which are especially
interesting from our point of view. The honour of being a priest-king
ceased to be desirable; the person in line for the succession often used
every means to escape it. Thus, in Cambodia, where there is a fire
and water king, it is often necessary to use force to compel the successor
to accept the honour. On Niue or Savage Island, a coral island in the
Pacific Ocean, monarchy actually came to an end because nobody was
willing to undertake the responsible and dangerous office. In some parts
of West Africa a general council is held after the death of the king to
determine upon the successor. The man on whom the choice falls is
seized, tied and kept in custody in the fetish house until he has declared
himself willing to accept the crown. Sometimes the presumptive successor
to the throne finds ways and means to avoid the intended honour; thus
it is related of a certain chief that he used to go armed day and night

1 Frazer, l.c., p. 13.
2 Frazer, l.c., p. 11.

844

TOTEM AND TABOO

and resist by force every attempt to place him on the throne.¹ Among
the Negroes of Sierra Leone the resistance against accepting the kingly
honour was so great that most of the tribes were compelled to make
strangers their kings.

Frazer makes these conditions responsible for the fact that in the
development of history a separation of the original priest-
kingship into
a spiritual and a secular power finally took place. Kings, crushed by the
burden of their holiness, became incapable of exercising their power over
real things and had to leave this to inferior but executive persons who
were willing to renounce the honours of royal dignity. From these there
grew up the secular rulers, while the spiritual over-
lordship, which was
now of no practical importance, was left to the former taboo kings. It
is well known to what extent this hypothesis finds confirmation in the
history of old Japan.

A survey of the picture of the relations of primitive peoples to their
rulers gives rise to the expectation that our advance from description to
psychoanalytic understanding will not be difficult. These relations are
of an involved nature and are not free from contradictions. Rulers are
granted great privileges which are practically cancelled by taboo prohibi-
tions in regard to other privileges. They are privileged persons, they can do
or enjoy what is withheld from the rest through taboo. But in contrast to
this freedom they are restricted by other taboos which do not affect the
ordinary individual. Here, therefore, is the first contrast, which amounts
almost to a contradiction, between an excess of freedom and an excess
of restriction as applied to the same persons. They are credited with
extraordinary magic powers, and contact with their person or their prop-
erty is therefore feared, while on the other hand the most beneficial effect
is expected from these contacts. This seems to be a second and an espe-
cially glaring contradiction; but we have already learned that it is only
apparent. The king’s touch, exercised by him with benevolent intention,
heals and protects; it is only when a common man touches the king
or his royal effects that the contact becomes dangerous, and this is prob-
ably because the act may recall aggressive tendencies. Another contra-
diction which is not so easily solved is expressed in the fact that great
power over the processes of nature is ascribed to the ruler and yet the
obligation is felt to guard him with especial care against threatening
dangers, as if his own power, which can do so much, were incapable of
accomplishing this. A further difficulty in the relation arises because
there is no confidence that the ruler will use his tremendous power to
the advantage of his subjects as well as for his own protection; he is
therefore distrusted and surveillance over him is considered to be justi-

¹A. Bastian, The German Expedition to the Coast of Loango, cited by Frazer, l.c.,
p. 18.

845

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS
fied. The taboo etiquette, to which the life of the king is subject, simul-
taneously serves all these objects of exercising a tutelage over the king,
of guarding him against dangers and of guarding his subjects against
danger which he brings to them.

We are inclined to give the following explanation of the complicated
and contradictory relation of the primitive peoples to their rulers.
Through superstition as well as through other motives, various tenden-
cies find expression in the treatment of kings, each of which is developed
to the extreme without regard to the other. As a result of this, contra-
dictions arise at which the intellect of savages takes no more offence than
a highly civilized person would as long as it is only a question of religious
matters or of “loyalty.”

That would be so far so good; but the psychoanalytic technique may
enable us to penetrate more deeply into the matter and to add something
about the nature of these various tendencies. If we subject the facts as
stated to analysis, just as if they formed the symptoms of a neurosis, our
first attention would be directed to the excess of anxious worry which
is said to be the cause of the taboo ceremonial. The concurrence of such
excessive tenderness is very common in the neurosis and especially in
the compulsion neurosis upon which we are drawing primarily for our
comparison. We now thoroughly understand the origin of this tender-
ness. It occurs wherever, besides the predominant tenderness, there
exists a contrary but unconscious stream of hostility, that is to say,
wherever the typical case of an ambivalent affective attitude is realized.
The hostility is then cried down by an excessive increase of tenderness
which is expressed as anxiety and becomes compulsive because otherwise
it would not suffice for its task of keeping the unconscious opposition in
a state of repression. Every psychoanalyst knows how infallibly this
anxious excess of tenderness can be resolved even under the most im-
probable circumstances, as for instance, when it appears between mother
and child, or in the case of affectionate married people. Applied to the
treatment of privileged persons this theory of an ambivalent feeling
would reveal that their veneration, their very deification, is opposed in
the unconscious by an intense hostile tendency, so that, as we had ex-
pected, the situation of an ambivalent feeling is here realized. The dis-
trust which certainly seems to contribute to the motivation of the royal
taboo, would be another direct manifestation of the same unconscious
hostility. Indeed the ultimate issues of this conflict show such a diversity
among different races that we would not be at a loss for examples in
which the proof of such hostility would be much easier. We learn from
Frazer¹ that the savage Timmes of Sierra Leone reserve the right to
administer a beating to their elected king on the evening before his coro-

¹l.c., p. 18, citing Zwefel et Monstier, Voyage aux Sources du Niger, 1880.

846

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

Another trait in the attitude of primitive races towards their rulers
recalls a mechanism which is universally present in mental disturbances,
and is openly revealed in the so-called delusions of persecution. Here
the importance of a particular person is extraordinarily heightened and
his omnipotence is raised to the improbable in order to make it easier
to attribute to him the responsibility for everything painful which hap-
pens to the patient. Savages really do not act differently towards their
rulers when they ascribe to them power over rain and shine, wind and
weather, and then dethrone or kill them because nature has disappointed
their expectation of a good hunt or a ripe harvest. The prototype which
the paranoiac reconstructs in his persecution mania is found in the
relation of the child to its father. Such omnipotence is regularly attrib-
uted to the father in the imagination of the son, and distrust of the father
has been shown to be intimately connected with the highest esteem for
him. When a paranoiac names a person of his acquaintance as his “per-
secutor,” he thereby elevates him to the paternal succession and brings
him under conditions which enable him to make him responsible for
all the misfortune which he experiences. Thus this second analogy be-
tween the savage and the neurotic may allow us to surmise how much
in the relation of the savage to his ruler arises from the infantile attitude
of the child to its father.

But the strongest support for our point of view, which seeks to com-
pare taboo prohibitions with neurotic symptoms, is to be found in the
taboo ceremonial itself, the significance of which for the status of kinship
has already been the subject of our previous discussion. This ceremonial
unmistakably reveals its double meaning and its origin from ambivalent
tendencies if only we are willing to assume that the effects it produces
are those which it intended from the very beginning. It not only dis-
tinguishes kings and elevates them above all ordinary mortals, but it
also makes their life a torture and an unbearable burden and forces them
into a thraldom which is far worse than that of their subjects. It would
thus be the correct counterpart to the compulsive action of the neurosis,
in which the suppressed impulse and the impulse which suppresses it
meet in mutual and simultaneous satisfaction. The compulsive action
is nominally a protection against the forbidden action; but we would
say that actually it is a repetition of what is forbidden. The word “nom-
inally” is here applied to the conscious whereas the word “actually”

84

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

applies to the unconscious instance of the psychic life. Thus also the
taboo ceremonial of kings is nominally an expression of the highest
veneration and a means of guarding them; actually it is the punishment
for their elevation, the revenge which their subjects take upon them.
The experiences which Cervantes makes Sancho Panza undergo as gov-
ernor on his island have evidently made him recognize this interpreta-
tion of courtly ceremonial as the only correct one. It is very possible
that this point would be corroborated if we could induce kings and
rulers of today to express themselves on this point.

Why the emotional attitude towards rulers should contain such a
strong unconscious share of hostility is a very interesting problem which,
however, exceeds the scope of this book. We have already referred to the
infantile father-
complex; we may add that an investigation of the early
history of kingship would bring the decisive explanations. Frazer has
an impressive discussion of the theory that the first kings were strangers
who, after a short reign, were destined to be sacrificed at solemn festivals
as representatives of the deity; but Frazer himself does not consider
his facts altogether convincing.¹ Christian myths are said to have been
still influenced by the after-
effects of this evolution of kings.

(c) The Taboo of the Dead

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

Among most primitive people the taboo of the dead displays, if we
may keep to our infection analogy, a peculiar virulence. It manifests
itself in the first place, in the consequences which result from contact
with the dead, and in the treatment of the mourners for the dead. Among
the Maori any one who had touched a corpse or who had taken part
in its interment, became extremely unclean and was almost cut off from
intercourse with his fellow beings; he was, as we say, boycotted. He
could not enter a house, or approach persons or objects without infecting
them with the same properties. He could not even touch his food with
his own hands, which were now unclean and therefore quite useless to
him. His food was put on the ground and he had no alternative except
to seize it as best he could, with his lips and teeth, while he held his
hands behind on his back. Occasionally he could be fed by another per-
son who helped him to his food with outstretched arms so as not to
touch the unfortunate one himself, but this assistant was then in turn
subjected to almost equally oppressive restrictions. Almost every village
contained some altogether disreputable individual, ostracized by society,
whose wretched existence depended upon people’s charity. This creature

¹Frazer, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, 2 vols., 1911 (The Golden
Bough).

348

alone was allowed within arm’s length of a person who had fulfilled
the last duty towards the deceased. But as soon as the period of segrega-
tion was over and the person rendered unclean through the corpse could
again mingle with his fellow-
beings, all the dishes which he had used
during the dangerous period were broken and all his clothing was thrown
away.

The taboo customs after bodily contact with the dead are the same
all over Polynesia, in Melanesia, and in a part of Africa; their most
constant feature is the prohibition against handling one’s food and the
consequent necessity of being fed by somebody else. It is noteworthy
that in Polynesia, or perhaps only in Hawaii,¹⁾ priest-
kings were subject
to the same restrictions during the exercise of holy functions. In the
taboo of the dead on the Island of Tonga the abatement and gradual
abolition of the prohibitions through the individual’s own taboo power
are clearly shown. A person who touched the corpse of a dead chieftain
was unclean for ten months; but if he was himself a chief, he was unclean
for only three, four, or five months, according to the rank of the de-
ceased. If it was the corpse of the idolized head-
chief even the greatest
chiefs become taboo for ten months. These savages are so certain that
any one who violates those taboo rules must become seriously ill and
die, that according to the opinion of an observer, they have never yet
dared to convince themselves of the contrary.²⁾

The taboo restrictions imposed upon persons whose contact with the
dead is to be understood in the transferred sense, namely the mourning
relatives such as widows and widowers, are essentially the same as those
mentioned above, but they are of greater interest for the point we are
trying to make. In the rules hitherto mentioned we see only the typical
expression of the virulence and power of diffusion of the taboo; in those
about to be cited we catch a gleam of the motives, including both the
ostensible ones and those which may be regarded as the underlying and
genuine motives.

Among the Shuswap in British Columbia widows and widowers have
to remain segregated during their period of mourning; they must not
use their hands to touch the body or the head and all utensils used by
them must not be used by any one else. No hunter will want to approach
the hut in which such mourners live, for that would bring misfortune;
if the shadow of one of the mourners should fall on him he would become
ill. The mourners sleep on thorn bushes, with which they also surround
their beds. This last precaution is meant to keep off the spirit of the
deceased; plainer still is the reported custom of other North American
tribes where the widow, after the death of her husband, has to wear a

¹⁾Frazer, Taboo, p. 148, etc.

²⁾W. Mariner, The Natives of the Tonga Islands, 1818; see Frazer, l.c., p. 140.

849

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

kind of trousers of dried grass in order to make herself inaccessible to
the approach of the spirit. Thus it is quite obvious that touching “in
the transferred sense” is after all understood only as bodily contact,
since the spirit of the deceased does not leave his kin and does not desist
from “hovering about them,” during the period of mourning.

Among the Agutainos, who live on Palawan, one of the Philippine
Islands, a widow may not leave her hut for the first seven or eight days
after her husband’s death, except at night, when she need not expect
encounters. Whoever sees her is in danger of immediate death and there-
fore she herself warns others of her approach by hitting the trees with
a wooden stick with every step she takes; these trees all wither. Another
observation explains the nature of the danger inherent in a widow. In
the district of Mekeo, British New Guinea, a widower forfeits all civil
rights and lives like an outlaw. He may not tend a garden or show him-
self in public, or enter the village or go on the street. He slinks about
like an animal, in the high grass or in the bushes, and must hide in a
thicket if he sees anybody, especially a woman, approaching. This last
hint makes it easy for us to trace back the danger of the widower or
widow to the danger of temptation. The husband who has lost his wife
must evade the desire for a substitute; the widow has to contend with
the same wish, and besides this, she may arouse the desire of other men
because she is without a master. Every such satisfaction through a sub-
stitute runs contrary to the intention of mourning and would cause the
anger of the spirit to flare up.¹⁾

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

Aside from the Australians and the Polynesians, who usually show us
taboo customs in their best state of preservation, we also find this pro-
hibition among races so far apart and unrelated to each other as the
Samojedes in Siberia and the Todas in South India, the Mongolians of
Tartary and the Tuaregs of the Sahara, the Aino of Japan and the
Akamba and Nandi in Central Africa, the Tinguanes in the Philippines
and the inhabitants of the Nikobari Islands and of Madagascar and
Borneo.²⁾ Among some of these races the prohibition and its consequences
hold good only for the period of mourning while in others it remains per-
 

¹ The same patient whose “impossibilities” I have correlated with taboo (see above,
p. 829) acknowledged that she always became indignant when she met anybody on the
street who was dressed in mourning. “Such people should be forbidden to go out!”
she said.

² Frazer, l.c., p. 353.

350

manent; but in all cases it seems to diminish with the lapse of time after
the death.

The avoidance of the name of the deceased is as a rule kept up with
extraordinary severity. Thus, among many South American tribes, it is
considered the gravest insult to the survivors to pronounce the name of
the deceased in their presence, and the penalty set for it is no less than
that for the slaying itself.¹ At first it is not easy to guess why the men-
tion of the name should be so abominated, but the dangers associated
with it have called into being a whole series of interesting and important
expedients to avoid this. Thus the Masai in Africa have hit upon the
evasion of changing the name of the deceased immediately upon his
death; he may now be mentioned without dread by this new name,
while all the prohibitions remain attached to the old name. It seems to
be assumed that the ghost does not know his new name and will not find
it out. The Australian tribes on Adelaide and Encounter Bay are so
consistently cautious that when a death occurs almost every person who
has the same name as the deceased or a very similar one, exchanges it
for another. Sometimes by a further extension of the same idea as seen
among several tribes in Victoria and in North America all the relatives
of the deceased change their names regardless of whether their names
resemble the name of the deceased in sound. Among the Guaycuru in
Paraguay the chief used to give new names to all the members of the
tribe, on such sad occasions, which they then remembered as if they
had always had them.²

Furthermore, if the deceased had the same name as an animal or
object, etc., some of the races just enumerated thought it necessary to
give these animals and objects new names, in order not to be reminded
of the deceased when they mentioned them. Through this there must
have resulted a never ceasing change of vocabulary, which caused a good
deal of difficulty for the missionaries, especially where the interdiction
upon a name was permanent. In the seven years which the missionary
Dobrizhofer spent among the Abipons in Paraguay, the name for jaguar
was changed three times and the words for crocodile, thorns and animal
slaughter underwent a similar fate.³ But the dread of pronouncing a
name which has belonged to a deceased person extends also to the men
tion of everything in which the deceased had any part, and a further
important result of this process of suppression is that these races have
no tradition or any historical reminiscences, so that we encounter the
greatest difficulties in investigating their past history. Among a number
of these primitive races compensating customs have also been estab-

¹ Frazer, l.c., p. 352, etc.

² Frazer, l.c., p. 357, citing an old Spanish observer, 1732.

³ Frazer, l.c., p. 360.

851

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

lished in order to re-awaken the names of the deceased after a long
period of mourning; they are bestowed upon children who were regarded
as reincarnations of the dead.

The strangeness of this taboo on names diminishes if we bear in mind
that the savage looks upon his name as an essential part and an impor-
tant possession of his personality, and that he ascribes the full signifi-
cance of things to words. Our children do the same, as I have shown
elsewhere, and therefore they are never satisfied with accepting a mean-
ingless verbal similarity, but consistently conclude that when two things
have identical names a deeper correspondence between them must exist.
Numerous peculiarities of normal behaviour may lead civilized man to
conclude that he too is not yet as far removed as he thinks from attrib-
uting the importance of things to mere names and feeling that his name
has become peculiarly identified with his person. This is corroborated by
psychoanalytic experiences, where there is much occasion to point out
the importance of names in unconscious thought activity.¹ As was to be
expected, the compulsion neurotics behave just like savages in regard
to names. They show the full “complex sensitiveness” towards the utter-
ance and hearing of special words (as do also other neurotics) and derive
a good many, often serious, inhibitions from their treatment of their
own name. One of these taboo patients whom I knew, had adopted the
avoidance of writing down her name for fear that it might get into some-
body’s hands who thus would come into possession of a piece of her
personality. In her frenzied faithfulness, which she needed to protect
herself against the temptations of her phantasy, she had created for
herself the commandment, “not to give away anything of her personal-
ity.” To this belonged first of all her name, then by further application
her handwriting, so that she finally gave up writing.

Thus it no longer seems strange to us that savages should consider a
dead person’s name as a part of his personality and that it should be
subjected to the same taboo as the deceased. Calling a dead person by
name can also be traced back to contact with him, so that we can turn
our attention to the more inclusive problem of why this contact is visited
with such a severe taboo.

The nearest explanation would point to the natural horror which a
corpse inspires, especially in view of the changes so soon noticeable
after death. Mourning for a dead person must also be considered as a
sufficient motive for everything which has reference to him. But horror
of the corpse evidently does not cover all the details of taboo rules, and
mourning can never explain to us why the mention of the dead is a
severe insult to his survivors. On the contrary, mourning loves to pre-
occupy itself with the deceased to elaborate his memory, and preserv-
¹ Stekel, Abraham.

852

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

For they do not conceal the fact that they fear the presence and the
return of the spirit of a dead person; they practise a host of ceremonies
to keep him off and banish him.¹ They look upon the mention of his
name as a conjuration which must result in his immediate presence.²
They, therefore, consistently do everything to avoid conjuring and awak-
ening a dead person. They disguise themselves in order that the spirit
may not recognize them,³ they distort either his name or their own, and
become infuriated when a ruthless stranger incites the spirit against
his survivors by mentioning his name. We can hardly avoid the con-
clusion that they suffer, according to Wundt’s expression, from the fear of
“his soul now turned into a demon.”⁴

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

The assumption which this theory makes, namely, that immediately
after death the beloved member of a family becomes a demon, from
whom the survivors have nothing but hostility to expect, so that they
must protect themselves by every means from his evil desires, is so
peculiar that our first impulse is not to believe it. Yet almost all com-
petent authors agree as to this interpretation of primitive races. Wester-
marck,⁵ who, in my opinion, gives altogether too little consideration to
taboo, makes this statement: “On the whole facts lead me to conclude
that the dead are more frequently regarded as enemies than as friends
and that Jevons and Grant Allen are wrong in their assertion that it
was formerly believed that the malevolence of the dead was as a rule
directed only against strangers, while they were paternally concerned

¹Frazer, l.c., p. 353, cites the Tuaregs of the Sahara as an example of such an acknowl-
edgment.

²Perhaps this condition is to be added: as long as any part of his physical remains
exist. Frazer, l.c., p. 372.

³On the Nikobar Islands, Frazer, l.c., p. 382.

⁴Wundt, Religion and Myth, Vol. II, p. 49.

⁵The Origin and Development of Moral Conceptions, see section entitled “Attitude
Towards the Dead,” Vol. II, p. 424. Both the notes and the text show an abundance
of corroborating and often very characteristic testimony, e.g., the Maori believed
that “the nearest and most beloved relatives changed their nature after death and
bore ill-will even to their former favourites.” The Eastern Negroes believe that every
dead person is for a long time malevolent; the closer the relationship the greater the
fear. The Central Eskimos are dominated by the idea that the dead come to rest very
late and that at first they are to be feared as mischievous spirits who frequently hover
about the village to spread illness, death and other evils. (Boas.)

853

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

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

R. Kleinpaul has written an impressive book in which he makes use
of the remnants of the old belief in souls among civilized races to show
the relation between the living and the dead.¹⁾ According to him too, this
relation culminates in the conviction that the dead, thirsting for blood,
draw the living after them. The living did not feel themselves safe from
the persecutions of the dead until a body of water had been put between
them. That is why it is preferred to bury the dead on islands or to
bring them to the other side of a river: the expressions “here” and “be-
yond” originated in this way. Later moderation has restricted the malev-
olence of the dead to those categories where a peculiar right to feel rancour
had to be admitted, such as the murdered who pursue their murderer as
evil spirits, and those who, like brides, had died with their longings un-
satisfied. Kleinpaul believes that originally, however, the dead were all
vampires, who bore ill-will towards the living, and strove to harm them and
deprive them of life. It was the corpse that first furnished the conception
of an evil spirit.

The hypothesis that those whom we love best turn into demons after
death obviously allows us to put a further question. What prompted
primitive races to ascribe such a change of sentiment to the beloved
dead? Why did they make demons out of them? According to Wester-
marck this question is easily answered.²⁾ “As death is usually considered
the worst calamity that can overtake man, it is believed that the de-
ceased are very dissatisfied with their lot. Primitive races believe that
death comes only through being slain, whether by violence or by magic,
and this is considered already sufficient reason for the soul to be vindic-
tive and irritable. The soul presumably envies the living and longs for
the company of its former kin; we can therefore understand that the
soul should seek to kill them with diseases in order to be re-united with
them. . . .”

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

Our study of psychoneurotic disturbances points to a more compre-
hensive explanation, which includes that of Westermarck.

When a wife loses her husband, or a daughter her mother, it not in-
frequently happens that the survivor is afflicted with tormenting scruples,
called “obsessive reproaches” which raise the question whether she her-
self has not been guilty through carelessness or neglect, of the death of
the beloved person. No recalling of the care with which she nursed the

¹⁾ R. Kleinpaul: The Living and the Dead in Folklore, Religion and Myth, 1898.

²⁾ L.c., p. 426.

854

invalid, or direct refutation of the asserted guilt can put an end to the
torture, which is the pathological expression of mourning and which in
time slowly subsides. Psychoanalytic investigation of such cases has
made us acquainted with the secret mainsprings of this affliction. We
have ascertained that these obsessive reproaches are in a certain sense
justified and therefore are immune to refutation or objections. Not that
the mourner has really been guilty of the death or that she has really been
careless, as the obsessive reproach asserts; but still there was something
in her, a wish of which she herself was aware, which was not displeased
with the fact that death came, and which would have brought it about
sooner had it been strong enough. The reproach now reacts against this
unconscious wish after the death of the beloved person. Such hostility,
hidden in the unconscious behind tender love, exists in almost all cases
of intensive emotional allegiance to a particular person, indeed it repre-
sents the classic case, the prototype of the ambivalence of human emo-
tions. There is always more or less of this ambivalence in everybody’s
disposition; normally it is not strong enough to give rise to the obsessive
reproaches we have described. But where there is abundant predisposi-
tion for it, it manifests itself in the relation to those we love most, pre-
cisely where you would least expect it. The disposition to compulsion
neurosis which we have so often taken for comparison with taboo prob-
lems, is distinguished by a particularly high degree of this original
ambivalence of emotions.

We now know how to explain the supposed demonism of recently de-
parted souls and the necessity of being protected against their hostility
through taboo rules. By assuming a similar high degree of ambivalence
in the emotional life of primitive races such as psychoanalysis ascribes
to persons suffering from compulsion neurosis, it becomes comprehen-
sible that the same kind of reaction against the hostility latent in the
unconscious behind the obsessive reproaches of the neurotic should also
be necessary here after the painful loss had occurred. But this hostility,
which is painfully felt in the unconscious in the form of satisfaction
with the demise, experiences a different fate in the case of primitive
man: the defence against it is accomplished by displacement upon the
object of hostility, namely, the dead. We call this defence process, fre-
quent both in normal and diseased psychic life, a projection. The sur-
vivor will deny that he has ever entertained hostile impulses toward the
beloved dead; but now the soul of the deceased entertains them and
will try to give vent to them during the entire period of mourning. In
spite of the successful defence through projection, the punitive and
remorseful character of this emotional reaction manifests itself in being
afraid, in self-imposed renunciations and in subjection to restrictions
which are partly disguised as protective measures against the hostile

855

demon. Thus we find again that taboo has grown out of the soil of an
ambivalent emotional attitude. The taboo of the dead also originates
from the opposition between the conscious grief and the unconscious
satisfaction at death. If this is the origin of the resentment of spirits it
is self-evident that just the nearest and formerly most beloved survivors
have to fear it most.

As in neurotic symptoms, the taboo regulations also evince opposite
feelings. Their restrictive character expresses mourning, while they also
betray very clearly what they are trying to conceal, namely, the hostility
towards the dead, which is now motivated as self-defence. We have
learnt to understand part of the taboo regulations as temptation fears.
A dead person is defenceless, which must act as an incitement to satisfy
hostile desires entertained against him; this temptation has to be op-
posed by the prohibition.

But Westermarck is right in not admitting any difference in the sav-
age’s conception between those who have died by violence and those
who have died a natural death. As will be shown later,¹⁾ in the unconscious
mode of thinking even a natural death is perceived as murder; the per-
son was killed by evil wishes. Any one interested in the origin and
meaning of dreams dealing with the death of dear relatives such as
parents and brothers and sisters will find that the same feeling of ambiv-
alence is responsible for the fact that the dreamer, the child, and the
savage all have the same attitude towards the dead.²⁾

A little while ago we challenged Wundt’s conception, which explains
the nature of taboo through the fear of demons, and yet we have just
agreed with the explanation which traces back the taboo of the dead
to a fear of the soul of the dead after it has turned into a demon. This
seems like a contradiction, but it will not be difficult for us to explain
it. It is true that we have accepted the idea of demons, but we know that
this assumption is not something final which psychology cannot resolve
into further elements. We have, as it were, exposed the demons by rec-
ognizing them as mere projections of hostile feelings which the survivor
entertains toward the dead.

The double feeling—tenderness and hostility—against the deceased,
which we consider well founded, endeavours to assert itself at the time
of bereavement as mourning and satisfaction. A conflict must ensue
between these contrary feelings, and as one of them, namely the hostility,
is altogether or for the greater part unconscious, the conflict cannot
result in a conscious difference in the form of hostility or tenderness as,
for instance, when we forgive an injury inflicted upon us by some one
we love. The process usually adjusts itself through a special psychic

¹⁾Cf. Chap. III.

²⁾See: Freud The Interpretation of Dreams.

856

TOTEM AND TABOO

mechanism, which is designated in psychoanalysis as projection. This
unknown hostility, of which we are ignorant and of which we do not
wish to know, is projected from our inner perception into the outer
world and is thereby detached from our own person and attributed to
the other. Not we, the survivors, rejoice because we are rid of the de-
ceased, on the contrary, we mourn for him; but now, curiously enough,
he has become an evil demon who would rejoice in our misfortune and
who seeks our death. The survivors must now defend themselves against
this evil enemy; they are freed from inner oppression, but they have
only succeeded in exchanging it for an affliction from without.

It is not to be denied that this process of projection, which turns the
dead into malevolent enemies, finds some support in the real hostilities
of the dead which the survivors remember and with which they really
can reproach the dead. These hostilities are harshness, the desire to dom-
inate, injustice, and whatever else forms the background of even the
most tender relations between men. But the process cannot be so simple
that this factor alone could explain the origin of demons by projection.
The offences of the dead certainly motivate in part the hostility of the
survivors, but they would have been ineffective if they had not given
rise to this hostility and the occasion of death would surely be the least
suitable occasion for awakening the memory of the reproaches which
justly could have been brought against the deceased. We cannot dispense
with the unconscious hostility as the constant and really impelling mo-
tive. This hostile tendency towards those nearest and dearest could re-
main latent during their lifetime, that is to say, it could avoid betraying
itself to consciousness either directly or indirectly through any substitu-
tive formation. However, when the person who was simultaneously loved
and hated died, this was no longer possible, and the conflict became
acute. The mourning originating from the enhanced tenderness, became
on the one hand more intolerant of the latent hostility, while on the other
hand it could not tolerate that the latter should not give origin to a feel-
ing of pure gratification. Thus there came about the repression of the
unconscious hostility through projection, and the formation of the
ceremonial in which fear of punishment of demons finds expression. With
the termination of the period of mourning, the conflict also loses its
acuteness so that the taboo of the dead can be abated or sink into ob-
livion.

4

Having thus explained the basis on which the very instructive taboo of
the dead has grown up, we must not miss the opportunity of adding a
few observations which may become important for the understanding
to taboo in general.

857

The projection of unconscious hostility upon demons in the taboo
of the dead is only a single example from a whole series of processes
to which we must grant the greatest influence in the formation of prim-
itive psychic life. In the foregoing case the mechanism of projection is
used to settle an emotional conflict; it serves the same purpose in a
large number of psychic situations which lead to neuroses. But projec- tion is not specially created for the purpose of defence, it also comes into
being where there are no conflicts. The projection of inner perceptions
to the outside is a primitive mechanism which, for instance, also in-
fluences our sense-perceptions, so that it normally has the greatest share
in shaping our outer world. Under conditions that have not yet been
sufficiently determined even inner perceptions of ideational and emo-
tional processes are projected outwardly, like sense perceptions, and are
used to shape the outer world, whereas they ought to remain in the
inner world. This is perhaps genetically connected with the fact that the
function of attention was originally directed not towards the inner world,
but to the stimuli streaming in from the outer world, and only received
reports of pleasure and pain from the endopsychic processes. Only with
the development of the language of abstract thought through the asso-
ciation of sensory remnants of word representations with inner processes,
did the latter gradually become capable of perception. Before this took
place primitive man had developed a picture of the outer world through
the outward projection of inner perceptions, which we, with our rein-
forced conscious perception, must now translate back into psychology.

The projection of their own evil impulses upon demons is only a part
of what has become the world system (“Weltanschauung”) of primitive
man which we shall discuss later as “animalism.” We shall then have
to ascertain the psychological nature of such a system formation and
the points of support which we shall find in the analysis of these system
formations will again bring us face to face with the neurosis. For the
present we merely wish to suggest that the “secondary elaboration” of
the dream content is the prototype of all these system formations.¹ And
let us not forget that beginning at the stage of system formation there
are two origins for every act judged by consciousness, namely the sys-
tematic, and the real but unconscious origin.²

Wundt³ remarks that “among the influences which myth everywhere
ascribes to demons the evil ones preponderate, so that according to the
religions of races evil demons are evidently older than good demons.”
Now it is quite possible that the whole conception of demons was derived

¹See: The Interpretation of Dreams.

²The projection creations of primitive man resemble the personifications throug¿
which the poet projects his warring impulses out of himself, as separated individuals.

³Myth and Religion, p. 129.

358

from the extremely important relation to the dead. In the further course
of human development the ambivalence inherent in this relation then
manifested itself by allowing two altogether contrary psychic forma-
tions to issue from the same root, namely, the fear of demons and of
ghosts, and the reverence for ancestors.¹⁾ Nothing testifies so much to
the influence of mourning on the origin of belief in demons as the fact
that demons were always taken to be the spirits of persons not long
dead. Mourning has a very distinct psychic task to perform, namely, to
detach the memories and expectations of the survivors from the dead.
When this work is accomplished the grief, and with it the remorse and
reproach, lessens, and therefore also the fear of the demon. But the very
spirits which at first were feared as demons now serve a friendlier pur-
pose; they are revered as ancestors and appealed to for help in times
of distress.

If we survey the relation of survivors to the dead through the course
of the ages, it is very evident that the ambivalent feeling has extraordi-
narily abated. We now find it easy to suppress whatever unconscious
hostility towards the dead there may still exist without any special psy-
chic effort on our part. Where formerly satisfied hate and painful ten-
derness struggled with each other, we now find piety, which appears like
a cicatrice and demands: De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Only neurotics still
blur the mourning for the loss of their dear ones with attacks of com-
pulsive reproaches which psychoanalysis reveals as the old ambivalent
emotional feeling. How this change was brought about, and to what
extent constitutional changes and real improvement of familiar rela-
tions share in causing the abatement of the ambivalent feeling, need not
be discussed here. But this example would lead us to assume that the
psychic impulses of primitive man possessed a higher degree of ambiva-
lence than is found at present among civilized human beings. With the
decline of this ambivalence the taboo, as the compromise symptom of the
ambivalent conflict, also slowly disappeared. Neurotics who are com-
pelled to reproduce this conflict, together with the taboo resulting from
it, may be said to have brought with them an atavistic remnant in the
form of an archaic constitution the compensation of which in the interest
of cultural demands entails the most prodigious psychic efforts on their
part.

As this point we may recall the confusing information which Wundt
offered us about the double meaning of the word taboo, namely, holy
and unclean (see above). It was supposed that originally the word taboo

¹⁾In the psychoanalysis of neurotic persons who suffer, or have suffered, in their
childhood from the fear of ghosts, it is often not difficult to expose these ghosts as
the parents. Compare also in this connection the communication of P. Haeberlin,
Sexual Ghosts (Sexual Problems, Feb. 1912), where it is a question of another
erotically accentuated person, but where the father was dead.

859

did not yet mean holy and unclean but signified something demonic,
something which may not be touched, thus emphasizing a characteristic
common to both extremes of the later conception; this persistent com-
mon trait proves, however, that an original correspondence existed be-
tween what was holy and what was unclean, which only later became
differentiated.

In contrast to this, our discussion readily shows that the double mean-
ing in question belonged to the word taboo from the very beginning and
that it serves to designate a definite ambivalence as well as everything
which has come into existence on the basis of this ambivalence. Taboo
is itself an ambivalent word and by way of supplement we may add
that the established meaning of this word might of itself have allowed
us to guess what we have found as the result of extensive investigation,
namely, that the taboo prohibition is to be explained as the result of an
emotional ambivalence. A study of the oldest languages has taught us
that at one time there were many such words which included their own
contrasts so that they were in a certain sense ambivalent, though per-
haps not exactly in the same sense as the word taboo.¹⁾ Slight vocal modi-
fications of this primitive word containing two opposite meanings later
served to create a separate linguistic expression for the two opposites
originally united in one word.

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

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

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

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

¹⁾Compare my article on Abel’s Gegensinn der Urwort in the Jahrbuch für Psycho-
analytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen, Bd. II, 1910.

860

TOTEM AND TABOO

where we become aware of the inner condemnation of such acts which
realized some of our definite wish impulses. Confirmation seems super-
fluous here; whoever has a conscience must feel in himself the justifica-
tion of the condemnation, and the reproach for the accomplished action.
But this same character is evinced by the attitude of savages towards
taboo. Taboo is a command of conscience, the violation of which causes
a terrible sense of guilt which is as self-evident as its origin is unknown.¹

It is, therefore, probable that conscience also originates on the basis
of an ambivalent feeling from quite definite human relations which con-
tain this ambivalence. It probably originates under conditions which
are in force both for taboo and the compulsion neurosis, that is, one
component of the two contrasting feelings is unconscious and is kept
repressed by the compulsive domination of the other component. This
is confirmed by many things which we have learned from our analysis
of neurosis. In the first place the character of compulsion neurotics shows
a predominant trait of painful conscientiousness which is a symptom
of reaction against the temptation which lurks in the unconscious, and
which develops into the highest degrees of guilty conscience as their illness
grows worse. Indeed, one may venture the assertion that if the origin of
guilty conscience could not be discovered through compulsion neurotic
patients, there would be no prospect of ever discovering it. This task is
successfully solved in the case of the individual neurotic, and we are
confident of finding a similar solution in the case of races.

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

If taboo expresses itself mainly in prohibitions it may well be con- sidered self-evident, without remote proof from the analogy with neuro- sis that it is based on a positive, desireful impulse. For what nobody de- sires to do does not have to be forbidden, and certainly whatever is
expressly forbidden must be an object of desire. If we applied this
plausible theory to primitive races we would have to conclude that among
their strongest temptations were desires to kill their kings and priests,

¹It is an interesting parallel that the sense of guilt resulting from the violation of a
taboo is in no way diminished if the violation took place unwittingly (see examples
above), and that even in the Greek myth the guilt of Oedipus is not cancelled by the
fact that it was incurred without his knowledge and will and even against them.

861

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

to commit incest, to abuse their dead and the like. That is not very prob-
able. And if we should apply the same theory to those cases in which
we ourselves seem to hear the voice of conscience most clearly we would
arouse the greatest contradiction. For there we would assert with the
utmost certainty that we did not feel the slightest temptation to violate
any of these commandments, as for example, the commandment: Thou
shalt not kill, and that we felt nothing but repugnance at the very idea.

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

But if we take into account the following results of psychoanalysis, our
understanding of the problem is greatly advanced. The analysis of
dreams of normal individuals has shown that our own temptation to kill
others is stronger and more frequent than we had suspected and that
it produces psychic effects even where it does not reveal itself to our
consciousness. And when we have learnt that the obsessive rules of cer-
tain neurotics are nothing but measures of self-reassurance and self-
punishment erected against the reinforced impulse to commit murder,
we can return with fresh appreciation to our previous hypothesis that
every prohibition must conceal a desire. We can then assume that this
desire to murder actually exists and that the taboo as well as the moral
prohibition are psychologically by no means superfluous but are, on the
contrary, explained and justified through our ambivalent attitude towards
the impulse to slay.

The nature of this ambivalent relation so often emphasized as funda-
mental, namely, that the positive underlying desire is unconscious, opens
the possibility of showing further connections and explaining further
problems. The psychic processes in the unconscious are not entirely iden-
tical with those known to us from our conscious psychic life, but have
the benefit of certain notable liberties of which the latter are deprived.
An unconscious impulse need not have originated where we find it ex-
pressed; it can spring from an entirely different place and may originally
have referred to other persons and relations, but through the mechanism
of displacement, it reaches the point where it comes to our notice. Thanks
to the indestructibility of unconscious processes and their inaccessibility
to correction, the impulse may be saved over from earlier times to which
it was adapted to later periods and conditions in which its manifesta-
tions must necessarily seem foreign. These are all only hints, but a
careful elaboration of them would show how important they may be
come for the understanding of the development of civilization.

862

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

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

Here again, I will take a single fact as my starting point. Primitive
races fear a punishment for the violation of a taboo, usually a serious
disease or death. This punishment threatens only him who has been
guilty of the violation. It is different with the compulsion neurosis. If
the patient wants to do something that is forbidden to him he does not
fear punishment for himself, but for another person. The person is usu-
ally indefinite, but, by means of analysis, is easily recognized as some
one very near and dear to the patient. The neurotic therefore acts as if
he were altruistic, while primitive man seems egotistical. Only if retri-
bution fails to overtake the taboo violator spontaneously does a collec-
tive feeling awaken among savages that they are all threatened through
the sacrilege, and they hasten to inflict the omitted punishment them-
selves. It is easy for us to explain the mechanism of this solidarity. It is
a question of fear of the contagious example, the temptation to imi-
tate, that is to say, of the capacity of the taboo to infect. If some one
has succeeded in satisfying the repressed desire, the same desire must
manifest itself in all his companions; hence, in order to keep down this
temptation, this envied individual must be despoiled of the fruit of his
daring. Not infrequently the punishment gives the executors themselves
an opportunity to commit the same sacrilegious act by justifying it as
an expiation. This is really one of the fundamentals of the human code
of punishment which rightly presumes the same forbidden impulses
in the criminal and in the members of society who avenge his offence.

Psychoanalysis here confirms what the pious were wont to say, that
we are all miserable sinners. How then shall we explain the unexpected
nobility of the neurosis which fears nothing for itself and everything for
the beloved person?

Psychoanalytic investigation shows that this nobility is not primary.
Originally, that is to say at the beginning of the disease, the threat of
punishment pertained to one’s own person; in every case the fear was
for one’s own life; the fear of death being only later displaced upon

863

TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS

another beloved person. The process is somewhat complicated but we
have a complete grasp of it. An evil impulse—a death wish—towards
the beloved person is always at the basis of the formation of a prohibi-
tion. This is repressed through a prohibition, and the prohibition is con-
nected with a certain act which by displacement usually substitutes the
hostile for the beloved person, and the execution of this act is threatened
with the penalty of death. But the process goes further and the original
wish for the death of the beloved other person is then replaced by fear
for his death. The tender altruistic trait of the neurosis therefore merely
compensates for the opposite attitude of brutal egotism which is at the
basis of it. If we designate as social these emotional impulses which are
determined through regard for another person who is not taken as a
sexual object, we can emphasize the withdrawal of these social factors
as an essential feature of the neurosis, which is later disguised through
over-compensation.
Without lingering over the origin of these social impulses and their
relation to other fundamental impulses of man, we will bring out the
second main characteristic of the neurosis by means of another example.
The form in which taboo manifests itself has the greatest similarity to
the touching phobia of neurotics, the délire de toucher. As a matter of
fact this neurosis is regularly concerned with the prohibition of sexual
touching and psychoanalysis has quite generally shown that the motive
power which is deflected and displaced in the neurosis is of sexual origin.
In taboo the forbidden contact has evidently not only sexual significance
but rather the more general one of attack, of acquisition and of personal
assertion. If it is prohibited to touch the chief or something that was
in contact with him it means that an inhibition should be imposed upon
the same impulse which on other occasions expresses itself in suspicious
surveillance of the chief and even in physical ill-treatment of him before
his coronation (see above). Thus the preponderance of sexual com-
ponents of the impulse over the social components is the determining
factor of the neurosis. But the social impulses themselves came into being
through the union of egotistical and erotic components into special en-
tities.

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

In one way the neuroses show a striking and far-reaching correspon-
dence with the great social productions of art, religion and philosophy,
while again they seem like distortions of them. We may say that hysteria
is a caricature of an artistic creation, a compulsion neurosis, a caricature

864

of a religion, and a paranoiac delusion a caricature of a philosophic sys-
tem. In the last analysis this deviation goes back to the fact that the neu-
roses are asocial formations; they seek to accomplish by private means
what arose in society through collective labour. In analysing the impulse
of the neuroses one learns that motive powers of sexual origin exercise
the determining influence in them, while the corresponding cultural cre-
ations rest upon social impulses and on such as have issued from the
combination of egotistical and sexual components. It seems that the
sexual need is not capable of uniting men in the same way as the de-
mands of self-preservation; sexual satisfaction is in the first place the
private concern of the individual.

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