807

I

THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST

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

If this assumption is correct, a comparison of the psychology of
primitive races as taught by folklore, with the psychology of the neu-
rotic as it has become known through psychoanalysis, will reveal numer-
ous points of correspondence and throw new light on subjects that are
more or less familiar to us.

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

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

808

TOTEM AND TABOO

in assembly. It is quite doubtful whether they evince any traces of re-
ligion in the form of worship of higher beings. The tribes living in the
interior who have to contend with the greatest vicissitudes of life owing
to a scarcity of water, seem in every way more primitive than those who
live near the coast.

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

Among the Australians the system of Totemism takes the place of all
religious and social institutions. Australian tribes are divided into smaller
septs or clans, each taking the name of its totem. Now what is a totem?
As a rule it is an animal, either edible or harmless, or dangerous and
feared; more rarely the totem is a plant or a force of nature (rain, water),
which stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan. The totem is first
of all the tribal ancestor of the clan, as well as its tutelary spirit and pro-
tector; it sends oracles and, though otherwise dangerous, the totem knows
and spares its children. The members of a totem are therefore under a
sacred obligation not to kill (destroy) their totem, to abstain from eating
its meat or from any other enjoyment of it. Any violation of these pro-
hibitions is automatically punished. The character of a totem is inherent
not only in a single animal or a single being but in all the members of the
species. From time to time festivals are held at which the members of a
totem represent or imitate, in ceremonial dances, the movements and
characteristics of their totems.

The totem is hereditary either through the maternal or the paternal
line (maternal transmission probably always preceded and was only
later supplanted by the paternal). The attachment to a totem is the foun-
dation of all the social obligations of an Australian: it extends on the one
hand beyond the tribal relationship, and on the other hand it supersedes
consanguineous relationship.¹

The totem is not limited to district or to locality; the members of a
totem may live separated from one another and on friendly terms with
adherents of other totems.²

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

²This very brief extract of the totemic system cannot be left without some elucida-
tion and without discussing its limitations. The name Totem or Totam was first
learned from the North American Indians by the Englishman, J. Long, in 1791. The
subject has gradually acquired great scientific interest and has called forth a copious
literature. I refer especially to Totemism and Exogamy by J. G. Frazer, 4 vols., 1910,
and the books and articles of Andrew Lang (The Secret of Totem, 1905). The credit

809

And now, finally, we must consider that peculiarity of the toteinic sys-
tem which attracts the interest of the psychoanalyst. Almost everywhere
where the totem prevails, there also exists the law that the members of the
same totem are not allowed to enter into sexual relations with each other;
that is, that they cannot marry each other. This represents the exogamy
which is associated with the totem.

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

Let us elucidate the meaning of this prohibition through further dis-
cussion.

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

for having recognized the significance of totemism for the ancient history of man
belongs to the Scotchman, J. Ferguson MacLennan (Fortnightly Review, 1869–70).
Exterior to Australia, totemic institutions were found and are still observed among
North American Indians, as well as among the races of the Polynesian Islands group
in East India, and in a large part of Africa. Many traces and survivals otherwise
hard to interpret lead to the conclusion that totemism also once existed among the
aboriginal Aryan and Semitic races of Europe, so that many investigators are inclined
to recognize in totemism a necessary phase of human development through which
every race has passed.

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

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

Not only is the theory of totemism controversial, but the very facts concerning
it are hardly to be expressed in such general statements as were attempted above.
There is hardly an assertion to which one would not have to add exceptions and con-
tradictions. But it must not be forgotten that even the most primitive and conservative
races are, in a certain sense, old, and have a long period behind them during which
whatsoever was aboriginal with them has undergone much development and distor-
tion. Thus among those races who still evince it, we find totemism today in the most
manifold states of decay and disintegration; we observe that fragments of it have
passed over to other social and religious institutions; or it may exist in mixed forms
but far removed from its original nature. The difficulty then consists in the fact that
it is not altogether easy to decide what in the actual conditions is to be taken as a
faithful copy of the significant past and what is to be considered as a secondary dis-
tortion of it.

810

hibitions of the totem (e.g., not to kill the totem animal), but is most
energetically avenged by the whole tribe as if it were a question of ward-
ing off a danger that threatens the community as a whole or a guilt that
weighs upon all. A few sentences from Frazer’s book¹⁾ will show how seri-
ously such trespasses are treated by these savages who, according to our
standard, are otherwise very immoral.

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

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

(c) As the totem is hereditary and is not changed by marriage, the re-
sults of the prohibition, for instance in the case of maternal heredity, are
easily perceived. If, for example, the man belongs to a clan with the totem
of the Kangaroo and marries a woman of the Emu totem, the children,
both boys and girls, are all Emu. According to the totem law incestuous
relations with his mother and his sister, who are Emu like himself, are
therefore made impossible for a son of this marriage.²⁾

(d) But we need only a reminder to realize that the exogamy connected
with the totem accomplishes more; that is, aims at more than the preven-
tion of incest with the mother or the sisters. It also makes it impossible
for the man to have sexual union with all the women of his own group,
with a number of females, therefore, who are not consanguineously related
to him, by treating all these women like blood relations. The psycholog-
ical justification for this extraordinary restriction, which far exceeds any-
thing comparable to it among civilized races, is not, at first, evident. All

¹⁾Frazer, l.c., p. 54.

²⁾But the father, who is a Kangaroo, is free—at least under this prohibi-
tion—to commit incest with his daughters, who are Emu. In the case of paternal inheritance of the
totem the father would be Kangaroo as well as the children; then incest with the
daughter would be forbidden to the father and incest with the mother would be left
open to the son. These consequences of the totem prohibition seem to indicate that
the maternal inheritance is older than the paternal one, for there are grounds for
assuming that the totem prohibitions are directed first of all against the incestuous
desires of the son.

81

we seem to understand is that the rôle of the totem (the animal) as ances-
tor is taken very seriously. Everybody descended from the same totem is
consanguineous; that is, of one family; and in this family the most dis-
tant grades of relationship are recognized as an absolute obstacle to sex-
ual union.

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

In what manner the substitution of the totem group for the actual
family has come about remains a riddle, the solution of which is perhaps
bound up with the explanation of the totem itself. Of course it must be
remembered that with a certain freedom of sexual intercourse, extending
beyond the limitations of matrimony, the blood relationship, and with it
also the prevention of incest, becomes so uncertain that we cannot dis-
pense with some other basis for the prohibition. It is, therefore, not super-
fluous to note that the customs of Australians recognize social conditions
and festive occasions at which the exclusive conjugal right of a man to a
woman is violated.

The linguistic customs of these tribes, as well as of most totem races,
reveal a peculiarity which undoubtedly is pertinent in this connection.
For the designations of relationship of which they make use do not take
into consideration the relationship between two individuals, but between
an individual and his group; they belong, according to the expression of
L. H. Morgan, to the “Classifying” system. That means that a man not
only calls his begetter “father” but also every other man who, according to
the tribal regulations, might have married his mother and thus, become
his father; he calls “mother” not only the woman who bore him, but also
every other woman who might have become his mother without violation
of the tribal laws; he calls “brothers” and “sisters” not only the children of
his real parents, but also the children of all the persons named who stand
in the parental group relation with him, and so on. The kinship names
which two Australians give each other do not, therefore, necessarily point
to a blood relationship between them, as they would have to according to
the custom of our language; they signify much more the social than the
physical relations. An approach to this classifying system is perhaps to be
found in our nursery, when the child is induced to greet every male and
female friend of the parents as “uncle” and “aunt,” or it may be found
in a transferred sense when we speak of “Brothers in Apollo,” or “Sisters
in Christ.”

The explanation of this linguistic custom, which seems so strange to us,

312

is simple if looked upon as a remnant and indication of those marriage
institutions which the Rev. L. Fison has called “group marriage,” char-
acterized by a number of men exercising conjugal rights over a number
of women. The children of this group marriage would then rightly look
upon each other as brothers and sisters although not born of the same
mother, and would take all the men of the group for their fathers.

Although a number of authors, as, for instance, B. Westermarck in his
History of Human Marriage, oppose the conclusions which others have
drawn from the existence of group-relationship names, the best authori-
ties on the Australian savages are agreed that the classificatory relation-
ship names must be considered as survivals from the period of group
marriages. And, according to Spencer and Gillen,¹ a certain form of group
marriage can be established as still existing to-day among the tribes of
the Urabunna and the Dieri. Group marriage therefore preceded indi-
vidual marriage among these races, and did not disappear without leaving
distinct traces in language and custom.

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

Although we believe we understand the motives of the marriage re-
strictions among the Australian savages, we have still to learn that the
actual conditions reveal a still more bewildering complication. For there
are only a few tribes in Australia which show no other prohibition besides
the totem barrier. Most of them are so organized that they fall into two
divisions which have been called marriage classes, or phratries. Each of
these marriage groups is exogamous and includes a majority of totem
groups. Usually each marriage group is again divided into two subclasses
(subphratries), and the whole tribe is therefore divided into four classes;
the subclasses thus standing between the phratries and the totem groups.

The typical and very often intricate scheme of organization of an Aus-
tralian tribe is shown in the diagram opposite:

The twelve totem groups are brought under four subclasses and two
main classes. All the divisions are exogamous.² The subclass c forms an
exogamous unit with e, and the subclass d with f. The success or the tend-
ency of these arrangements is quite obvious; they serve as a further
restriction on the marriage choice and on sexual freedom. If there were
only these twelve totem groups—assuming the same number of people in
each group—every member of a group would have 11⁄2 of all the women

¹The Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899).

²The number of totems is arbitrarily chosen.

813

of the tribe to choose from. The existence of the two phratries reduces this
number to ⁶/₁₂ or ¹/₂; a man of the totem ^a can only marry a woman from
groups 1 to 6. With the introduction of the two subclasses the selection
sinks to ³/₁₂ or ¹/₄; a man of the totem ^a must limit his marriage choice
to a woman of the totems 4, 5, 6.

The historical relations of the marriage classes—of which there are
found as many as eight in some tribes—are quite unexplained. We only
see that these arrangements seek to attain the same object as the totem
exogamy, and even strive for more. But whereas the totem exogamy makes

the impression of a sacred statute which sprang into existence, no one
knows how, and is therefore a custom, the complicated institutions of the
marriage classes, with their subdivisions and the conditions attached to
them, seem to spring from legislation with a definite aim in view. They
have perhaps taken up afresh the task of incest prohibition because the
influence of the totem was on the wane. And while the totem system is, as
we know, the basis of all other social obligations and moral restrictions of
the tribe, the importance of the phratries generally ceases when the regula-
tion of the marriage choice at which they aimed has been accomplished.

In the further development of the classification of the marriage system
there seems to be a tendency to go beyond the prevention of natural and
group incest, and to prohibit marriage between more distant group rela-
tions, in a manner similar to the Catholic church, which extended the mar-
riage prohibitions always in force for brothers and sisters, to cousins, and
invented for them the grades of spiritual kinship.¹

It would hardly serve our purpose to go into the extraordinarily intri-
cate and unsettled discussion concerning the origin and significance of
the marriage classes, or to go more deeply into their relation to totemism.
It is sufficient for our purposes to point out the great care expended by

¹Article Totemism in Encyclopædia Britannica, eleventh edition, 1911 (A. Lang).

814

the Australians as well as by other savage people to prevent incest.¹⁾ We
must say that these savages are even more sensitive to incest than we, per-
haps because they are more subject to temptations than we are, and hence,
require more extensive protection against it.

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

Such restrictive prohibitions are directed in Melanesia against the re-
lations of boys with their mothers and sisters. Thus, for instance, on
Lepers Island, one of the New Hebrides, the boy leaves his maternal home
at a fixed age and moves to the “clubhouse,” where he regularly
sleeps and takes his meals. He may still visit his home to ask for food,
but if his sister is at home he must go away before he has eaten; if no
sister is about, he may sit down to eat near the door. If brother and sister
meet by chance in the open, she must run away or turn aside and conceal
herself. If the boy recognizes certain footprints in the sand as his sister’s,
he is not to follow them, nor is she to follow his. He will not even men-
tion her name and will guard against using any current word if it forms
part of her name. This avoidance, which begins with the ceremony of
puberty, is strictly observed for life. The reserve between mother and
son increases with age and generally is more obligatory on the mother’s
side. If she brings him something to eat she does not give it to him herself
but puts it down before him, nor does she address him in the familiar man-
ner of mother and son, but uses the formal address. Similar customs obtain
in New Caledonia. If brother and sister meet, she flees into the bush and
he passes by without turning his head toward her.²⁾

On the Gazelle Peninsula in New Britain a sister, beginning with her
marriage, may no longer speak with her brother, nor does she utter his
name but designates him by means of a circumlocution.³⁾

In New Mecklenburg some cousins are subject to such restrictions,
which also apply to brothers and sisters. They may neither approach each

¹⁾Storfer has recently drawn special attention to this point in his monograph: Par-
ricide as a Special Case. Papers on Applied Psychic Investigation, No. 12 (Vienna,
1911).

²⁾R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, alsoFrazerTotemism and Exogamy, Vol. I,
p. 77.

³⁾Frazer, l.c., II, p. 124, referring to Kleintischen: The Inhabitants of the Coast of
the Gazelle Peninsula.

815

other, shake hands, nor give each other presents, though they may talk
to each other at a distance of several paces. The penalty for incest with
a sister is death through hanging.¹

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

To hear that these savages hold sacred orgies in which persons of just
these forbidden degrees of kinship seek sexual union would seem still more
peculiar to us, if we did not prefer to make use of this contradiction to
explain the prohibition instead of being astonished at it.²

Among the Battas of Sumatra these laws of avoidance affect all near
relationships. For instance, it would be most offensive for a Battan to
accompany his own sister to an evening party. A brother will feel most
uncomfortable in the company of his sister even when other persons are
also present. If either comes into the house, the other prefers to leave.
Nor will a father remain alone in the house with his daughter any more
than the mother with her son. The Dutch missionary who reported these
customs added that unfortunately he had to consider them well founded.
It is assumed without question by these races that a man and a woman left
alone together will indulge in the most extreme intimacy, and as they
expect all kinds of punishments and evil consequences from consanguin-
eous intercourse they do quite right to avoid all temptations by means
of such prohibitions.³

Among the Barongos in Delagoa Bay, in Africa, the most rigorous
precautions are directed, curiously enough, against the sister-in-law, the
wife of the brother of one’s own wife. If a man meets this person who is
so dangerous to him, he carefully avoids her. He does not dare to eat out
of the same dish with her; he speaks only timidly to her, does not dare
to enter her hut, and greets her only with a trembling voice.⁴

Among the Akamba (or Wakamba) in British East Africa, a law of
avoidance is in force which one would have expected to encounter more
frequently. A girl must carefully avoid her own father between the time
of her puberty and her marriage. She hides herself if she meets him on
the street and never attempts to sit down next to him, behaving in this
way right up to her engagement. But after her marriage no further ob-
stacle is put in the way of her social intercourse with her father.⁵

The most widespread and strictest avoidance, which is perhaps the
most interesting one for civilized races is that which restricts the social
relations between a man and his mother-in-law. It is quite general in
Australia, but it is also in force among the Melanesian, Polynesian and

¹ Frazer, l.c., II, p. 131, referring to P. G. Peckel in Anthropes, 1908.

² Frazer, l.c., II, p. 147, referring to the Rev. L. Fison.

³ Frazer, l.c., II, p. 189.

⁴ Frazer, l.c., II, p. 388, referring to Junod.

⁵ Frazer, l.c., II, p. 424.

816

Negro races of Africa as far as the traces of totemism and group relation-
ship reach, and probably further still. Among some of these races similar
prohibitions exist against the harmless social intercourse of a wife with
her father-in-law, but these are by far not so constant or so serious. In a
few cases both parents-in-law become objects of avoidance.

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

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

In Vanna Lava (Port Patterson) a man will not even walk behind his
mother-in-law along the beach until the rising tide has washed away the
trace of her footsteps. But they may talk to each other at a certain dis-
tance. It is quite out of the question that he should ever pronounce the
name of his mother-in-law, or she his.¹

On the Solomon Islands, beginning with his marriage, a man must
neither see nor speak with his mother-in-law. If he meets her he acts as if
he did not know her and runs away as fast as he can in order to hide
himself.²

Among the Zulu Kaffirs custom demands that a man should be ashamed
of his mother-in-law and that he should do everything to avoid her com-
pany. He does not enter a hut in which she is and when they meet, he or
she goes aside, she perhaps hiding behind a bush while he holds his shield
before his face. If they cannot avoid each other and the woman has noth-
ing with which to cover herself, she at least binds a bunch of grass around
her head in order to satisfy the ceremonial requirements. Communication
between them must either be made through a third person or else they may
shout at each other at a considerable distance if they have some barrier
between them as, for instance, the enclosure of a kraal. Neither may utter
the other’s name.³

Among the Basogas, a Negro tribe living in the region of the Nile
sources, a man may talk to his mother-in-law only if she is in another
room of the house and is not visible to him. Moreover, this race abom-
inates incest to such an extent as not to let it go unpunished even among
domestic animals.⁴

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

¹ Frazer, l.c., II, p. 76.

² Frazer, l.c., II, p. 113, referring to C. Ribbie: Two Years among the Cannibals of
the Solomon Islands, 1905.

³ Frazer, l.c., II, p. 385.

⁴ Frazer, l.c., II, p. 461.

817

different interpretations have been given for those prohibitions which
concern the relationship with the mother-in-law. It was quite incompre-
hensible why all these races should manifest such great fear of temptation
on the part of the man for an elderly woman, old enough to be his
mother.¹

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

Sir J. Lubbock, in his book The Origin of Civilization, traces back the
behaviour of the mother-in-law toward the son-in-law to the former “mar-
riage by capture.” “As long as the capture of women actually took place,
the indignation of the parents was probably serious enough. When noth-
ing but symbols of this form of marriage survived, the indignation of the
parents was also symbolized and this custom continued after its origin
had been forgotten.” Crawley has found it easy to show how little this
tentative explanation agrees with the details of actual observation.

E. B. Tylor thinks that the treatment of the son-in-law on the part
of the mother-in-law is nothing more than a form of “cutting” on the part
of the woman’s family. The man counts as a stranger, and this continues
until the first child is born. But even if no account is taken of cases in
which this last condition does not remove the prohibition, this explana-
tion is subject to the objection that it does not throw any light on the
custom dealing with the relation between mother-in-law and son-in-law,
thus overlooking the sexual factor, and that it does not take into account
the almost sacred loathing which finds expression in the laws of avoid-
ance.²

A Zulu woman who was asked about the basis for this prohibition
showed great delicacy of feeling in her answer: “It is not right that he
should see the breasts which nursed his wife.”³

It is known that also among civilized races the relation of son-in-law
and mother-in-law belongs to one of the most difficult sides of family or-
ganization. Although laws of avoidance no longer exist in the society of
the white races of Europe and America, much quarrelling and displeasure
would often be avoided if they did exist and did not have to be re-estab-
lished by individuals. Many a European will see an act of high wisdom
in the laws of avoidance which savage races have established to preclude
any understanding between two persons who have become so closely re-
lated. There is hardly any doubt that there is something in the psycholog-
ical situation of mother-in-law and son-in-law which furthers hostilities

¹ v. Crawley: The Mystic Ro-
se (London, 1902), p. 405.

² Crawley, l.c., p. 407.

³ Crawley, l.c., p. 401, referring to Leslie: Among the Zulus and Amatongas, 1875.

818

between them and renders living together difficult. The fact that the wit-
ticisms of civilized races show such a preference for this very mother-in-
law theme seems to me to point to the fact that the emotional relations
between mother-in-law and son-in-law are controlled by components
which stand in sharp contrast to each other. I mean that the relation is
really “ambivalent”; that is, it is composed of conflicting feelings of
tenderness and hostility.

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

The knowledge of hidden psychic feelings which psychoanalytic in-
vestigation of individuals has given us, makes it possible to add other
motives to the above. Where the psycho-sexual needs of the woman are
to be satisfied in marriage and family life, there is always the danger of
dissatisfaction through the premature termination of the conjugal rela-
tion, and the monotony in the wife’s emotional life. The ageing mother
protects herself against this by living through the lives of her children,
by identifying herself with them and making their emotional experiences
her own. Parents are said to remain young with their children, and this is,
in fact, one of the most valuable psychic benefits which parents derive
from their children. Childlessness thus eliminates one of the best means
to endure the necessary resignation imposed upon the individual through
marriage. This emotional identification with the daughter may easily go
so far with the mother that she also falls in love with the man her daughter
loves, which leads, in extreme cases, to severe forms of neurotic ailments
on account of the violent psychic resistance against this emotional pre-
disposition. At all events the tendency to such infatuation is very frequent
with the mother-in-law, and either this infatuation itself or the tendency
opposed to it joins the conflict of contending forces in the psyche of the
mother-in-law. Very often it is just this harsh and sadistic component of
the love emotion which is turned against the son-in-law in order better to
suppress the forbidden tender feelings.

The relation of the husband to his mother-in-law is complicated through
similar feelings which, however, spring from other sources. The path of

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

I see no objection to the assumption that it is just this incestuous factor
of the relationship which motivates the avoidance between son- and
mother-in-law among savages. Among the explanations for the “avoid-
ances” which these primitive races observe so strictly, we would therefore
give preference to the opinion originally expressed by Fison, who sees
nothing in these regulations but a protection against possible incest. This
would also hold good for all the other avoidances between those related
by blood and by marriage. There is only one difference, namely, in the
first case the incest is direct, so that the purpose of the prevention might
be conscious; in the other case, which includes the mother-in-law relation,
the incest would be a phantasy temptation brought about by unconscious
intermediary links.

We have had little opportunity in this exposition to show that the facts
of folk-psychology can be seen in a new light through the application of
the psychoanalytic point of view, for the incest dread of savages has long
been known as such, and is in need of no further interpretation. What
we can add to the further appreciation of incest dread is the statement
that it is a subtle infantile trait and is in striking agreement with the psy-
chic life of the neurotic. Psychoanalysis has taught us that the first object
selection of the boy is of an incestuous nature and that it is directed to
the forbidden objects, the mother and the sister; psychoanalysis has
taught us also the methods through which the maturing individual frees
himself from these incestuous attractions. The neurotic, however, regu-
larly presents to us a piece of psychic infantilism; he has either not been
able to free himself from the childlike conditions of psycho-sexuality, or
else he has returned to them (inhibited development and regression).
Hence, the incestuous fixations of the libido still play or again are play-
ing the main rôle in his unconscious psychic life. We have gone so far

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as to declare that the relation to the parents instigated by incestuous
longings is the central complex of the neurosis. This discovery of the sig
nificance of incest for the neurosis naturally meets with the most gen
eral incredulity on the part of the grown-up, normal man; a similar rejec
tion will also meet the researches of Otto Rank, which show in even larger
scope to what extent the incest theme stands in the centre of poetical in
terest and how it forms the material of poetry in countless variations and
distortions. We are forced to believe that such a rejection is above all the
product of man’s deep aversion to his former incest wishes which have
since succumbed to repression. It is, therefore, of importance to us to be
able to show that man’s incest wishes, which later are destined to become
unconscious, are still felt to be dangerous by savage races who consider
them worthy of the most severe defensive measures.