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Totem and Taboo Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of
Savages and Neurotics by Professor Dr. Sigmund Freud
Authorized English translation with Introduction by A. A. Brill
Introductory Notes AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The essays treated here appeared under the subtitle of this book in the first numbers
of the periodical Imago edited by me. They represent my first efforts to apply view-points
and results of psychoanalysis to unexplained problems of racial psychology. In method this
book contrasts with that of W. Wundt and the works of the Zurich Psychoanalytic School.
The former tries to accomplish the same object through assumptions and procedures from non-analytic
psychology, while the latter follow the opposite course and strive to settle problems of individual
psychology by referring to material of racial psychology. I am pleased to say that the first
stimulus for my own works came from these two sources.
I am fully aware of the shortcomings in these essays. I shall not touch upon those which
are characteristic of first efforts at investigation. The others, however, demand a word of explanation.
The four essays which are here collected will be of interest to a wide circle of educated
people, but they can only be thoroughly understood and judged by those who are really acquainted
with psychoanalysis as such. It is hoped that they may serve as a bond between students
of ethnology, philology, folklore and of the allied sciences, and psychoanalysts; they
cannot, however, supply both groups the entire requisites for such co-operation. They will
not furnish the former with sufficient insight into the new psychological technique, nor
will the psychoanalysts acquire through them an adequate command over the material to be
elaborated. Both groups will have to content themselves with whatever attention they can
stimulate here and there and with the hope that frequent meetings between them will not
remain unproductive for science. The two principal themes, totem and taboo,
which give the name to this small book are not treated alike here. The problem of taboo
is presented more exhaustively, and the effort to solve it is approached with perfect confidence.
The investigation of totemism may be modestly expressed as: "This is all that psychoanalytic
study can contribute at present to the elucidation of the problem of totemism." This difference
in the treatment of the two subjects is due to the fact that taboo still exists in our
midst. To be sure, it is negatively conceived and directed to different contents, but according
to its psychological nature, it is still nothing else than Kant's 'Categorical Imperative',
which tends to act compulsively and rejects all conscious motivations. On the other hand,
totemism is a religio-social institution which is alien to our present feelings; it has long
been abandoned and replaced by new forms. In the religions, morals, and customs of the
civilized races of to-day it has left only slight traces, and even among those races
where it is still retained, it has had to undergo great changes. The social and material
progress of the history of mankind could obviously change taboo much less than totemism.
In this book the attempt is ventured to find the original meaning of totemism through its
infantile traces, that is, through the indications in which it reappears in the development of
our own children. The close connection between totem and taboo indicates the further paths
to the hypothesis maintained here. And although this hypothesis leads to somewhat improbable
conclusions, there is no reason for rejecting the possibility that it comes more or less
near to the reality which is so hard to reconstruct.
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION When one reviews the history of psychoanalysis
one finds that it had its inception in the study of morbid mental states. Beginning with
the observation of hysteria and the other neuroses Professor Freud gradually extended
his investigations to normal psychology and evolved new concepts and new methods of study.
The neurotic symptoms were no longer imaginary troubles the nature of which one could not
grasp, but were conceived as mental and emotional maladjustments to one's environment. The stamp
of degeneracy impressed upon neurotics by other schools of medicine was altogether eradicated.
Deeper investigation showed conclusively that a person might become neurotic if subjected
to certain environments, and that there was no definite dividing line between normal and
abnormal. The hysterical symptoms, obsessions, doubts, phobias, as well as hallucinations
of the insane, show the same mechanisms as those similar psychic structures which one
constantly encounters in normal persons in the form of mistakes in talking, reading,
writing, forgetting, dreams and wit. The dream, always highly valued by the populace, and
as much despised by the educated classes, has a definite structure and meaning when
subjected to analysis. Professor Freud's monumental work, The Interpretation of Dreams, marked
a new epoch in the history of mental science. One might use the same words in reference
to his profound analysis of wit. Faulty psychic actions, dreams and wit are
products of the unconscious mental activity, and like neurotic or psychotic manifestations
represent efforts at adjustment to one's environment. The slip of the tongue shows that on account
of unconscious inhibitions the individual concerned is unable to express his true thoughts;
the dream is a distorted or plain expression of those wishes which are prohibited in the
waking states, and the witticism, owing to its veiled or indirect way of expression,
enables the individual to obtain pleasure from forbidden sources. But whereas dreams,
witticisms, and faulty actions give evidences of inner conflicts which the individual overcomes,
the neurotic or psychotic symptom is the result of a failure and represents a morbid adjustment.
The aforementioned psychic formations are therefore nothing but manifestations of the
struggle with reality, the constant effort to adjust one's primitive feelings to the
demands of civilization. In spite of all later development the individual retains all his
infantile psychic structures. Nothing is lost; the infantile wishes and primitive impulses
can always be demonstrated in the grown-up and on occasion can be brought back to the
surface. In his dreams the normal person is constantly reviving his childhood, and the
neurotic or psychotic individual merges back into a sort of psychic infantilism through
his morbid productions. The unconscious mental activity which is made up of repressed infantile
material for ever tries to express itself. Whenever the individual finds it impossible
to dominate the difficulties of the world of reality there is a regression to the infantile,
and psychic disturbances ensue which are conceived as peculiar thoughts and acts. Thus the civilized
adult is the result of his childhood or the sum total of his early impressions; psychoanalysis
thus confirms the old saying: The child is father to the man.
It is at this point in the development of psychoanalysis that the paths gradually broadened
until they finally culminated in this work. There were many indications that the childhood
of the individual showed a marked resemblance to the primitive history or the childhood
of races. The knowledge gained from dream analysis and phantasies, when applied to the
productions of racial phantasies, like myths and fairy tales, seemed to indicate that the
first impulse to form myths was due to the same emotional strivings which produced dreams,
fancies and symptoms. Further study in this direction has thrown much light on our great
cultural institutions, such as religion, morality, law and philosophy, all of which Professor
Freud has modestly formulated in this volume and thus initiated a new epoch in the study
of racial psychology. I take great pleasure in acknowledging my
indebtedness to Mr Alfred B. Kuttner for the invaluable assistance he rendered in the translation
of this work. A. A. Brill.
End of the Introductory Notes
TOTEM AND TABOO
CHAPTER I THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF ***
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 contemporary: there are people whom we still consider more
closely related to primitive man than to ourselves, in whom we therefore recognize the direct
descendants and representatives of earlier man. We can thus judge the so-called savage
and semi-savage races; their psychic life assumes 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 neurotic as it has become known through
psychoanalysis will reveal numerous 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 comparison 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
neighbours, 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 pottery. 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
in assembly. It is quite doubtful whether they evince any traces of religion in the
form of worship of higher beings. The tribes living in the interior who have to contend
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 *** 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
*** 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 and
harmless, or dangerous and feared; more rarely the totem is a plant or a force of nature
(rain, water), which stands in a peculiar relation to the whole clan. The totem is first
of all the tribal ancestor of the clan, as well as its tutelary spirit and protector;
it sends oracles and, though otherwise dangerous, the totem knows and spares its children. The
members of a totem are 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
prohibitions is automatically punished. The character of a totem is inherent not only
in a single animal or a single being but in all the members of the species. From time
to time festivals are held at which the members of a totem represent or imitate, in ceremonial
dances, the 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 foundation 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. 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. And now, finally, we
must consider that peculiarity of
the totemic system which attracts the interest of the psychoanalyst. Almost everywhere the
totem prevails there also exists the law that the members of the same totem are not allowed
to enter into *** 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 nothing to account for
it in anything that we have hitherto learned from the conception of the totem or from any
of its attributes; that is, we do not understand how it happened to enter the system of 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. However that may be, the association of totemism and exogamy exists, and proves
to be very strong. Let us elucidate the meaning of this prohibition
through further discussion. (a) The violation of the prohibition is not
left to what is, so to speak, an automatic punishment, as is the case with other violations
of the prohibitions of the totem (e.g., not to kill the totem animal), but is most energetically
avenged by the whole tribe as if it were a question of warding off a danger that threatens
the community as a whole or a guilt that weighs upon all. A few sentences from Frazer's book
will show how seriously such trespasses are treated by these savages who, according to
our standard are otherwise very immoral. "In Australia the regular penalty for ***
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
offence 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 results of the prohibition, for instance in the case of maternal heredity,
are easily perceived. If, for example, the man belongs to a clan with the totem of the
Kangaroo and marries a woman of the Emu totem, the children, both boys and girls, are all
Emu. According to the totem law incestuous relations with his mother and his sister,
who are Emu like himself, are therefore made impossible for a son of this marriage.
(d) But we need only a reminder to realize that the exogamy connected with the totem
accomplishes more; that is, aims at more than the prevention of *** with the mother or
the sisters. It also makes it impossible for the man to have *** 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 psychological justification
for this extraordinary restriction, which far exceeds anything comparable to it among
civilized races, is not, at first, evident. All we seem to understand is that the rôle
of the totem (the animal) as ancestor is taken very seriously. Everybody descended from the
same totem is consanguineous; that is, of one family; and in this family the most distant
grades of relationship are recognized as an absolute obstacle to *** union.
Thus these savages reveal to us an unusually high grade of *** dread or *** 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
*** 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 *** intercourse, extending beyond the limitations of matrimony,
the blood relationship, and with it also the prevention of ***, becomes so uncertain
that we cannot dispense with some other basis for the prohibition. It is therefore not superfluous
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, reveals 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 calls not only his begetter
'father' but also every other man who, according to the tribal regulations, might have married
his mother and thus become his father; he calls 'mother' not only the woman who bore
him but also every other woman who might have become his mother without violation of the
tribal laws; he calls 'brothers' and 'sisters' not only the children of his real parents,
but also the 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, is simple if looked upon as a remnant and indication of
those marriage institutions which the Rev. L. Fison has called 'group marriage', characterized
by a number of men exercising conjugal rights over a number of women. The children of this
group marriage would then rightly look upon each other 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 authorities on the Australian savages are agreed that the classificatory relationship
names must be considered as survivals from the period of group marriages. And, according
to Spencer and Gillen, a certain form of group marriage can be established as still existing
to-day among the tribes of the Urabunna and the Dieri. Group marriage therefore preceded
individual 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 *** shunning which we have met among
these same races. The totem exogamy, or prohibition of *** intercourse between members of the
same clan, seemed the most appropriate means for the prevention of group ***; and this
totem exogamy then became fixed and long survived its original motivation.
Although we believe we understand the motives of the marriage restrictions among the Australian
savages, we have still to learn that the actual conditions reveal a still more bewildering
complication. For there are only 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 Australian tribe therefore
looks
as follows: [Illustration]
The twelve totem groups are brought under four subclasses and two main classes. All
the divisions are exogamous. The subclass c forms an exogamous unit with e, and the
subclass d with f. The success or the tendency of these arrangements is quite obvious; they
serve as a further restriction on the marriage choice and on *** 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 11/12 of all the women 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
[Greek: α alpha] can only marry a woman from the groups 1 to 6. With the introduction of
the two subclassess the selection sinks to 3/12 or 1/4; a man of the totem [Greek: α
alpha] 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 sub-divisions 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 *** 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 regulation of the marriage choice at which
they aimed has been accomplished. In the further development of the classification
of the marriage system there seems to be a tendency to go beyond the prevention of natural
and group ***, and to prohibit marriage between more distant group relations, in a
manner similar to the Catholic church, which extended the marriage prohibitions always
in force for brother and sisters, to cousins, and invented for them the grades of spiritual
kinship. It would hardly serve our purpose to go into
the extraordinarily intricate and unsettled discussion 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 the Australians as well as by
other savage people to prevent ***. We must say that these savages are even more
sensitive to *** than we, perhaps because they are more subject to temptations than
we are, and hence require more extensive protection against it.
But the *** dread of these races does not content itself with the creation of the institutions
described, which, in the main, seem to be directed against group ***. We must add
a series of 'customs' which watch over the individual behaviour to near relatives in
our sense, which are maintained with almost religious severity and of whose object there
can hardly be any doubt. These customs or custom prohibitions may be called 'avoidances'.
They spread far beyond the Australian totem races. But 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 relations 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 there regularly sleeps and takes his meals. He may still visit his home to
ask for food; but if his sister is at home he must go away before he has eaten; if no
sister is about he may sit down to eat near the door. If brother and sister meet by chance
in the open, she 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 mention her name and will guard against using any current word
if it forms part of her name. This avoidance, which begins with the ceremony of puberty,
is strictly observed for life. The reserve between mother and son increases with age
and generally is more 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 manner of mother and son, but uses the formal address. Similar customs
obtain in New Caledonia. If brother and sister meet, she flees into the bush and he passes
by without turning his head toward her. On the Gazella 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.
In New Mecklenburg some cousins are subject to such restrictions, which also apply to
brothers and sisters. They may neither approach each other, shake hands, nor give each other
presents, though they may talk to each other at a distance of several paces. The penalty
for *** with a sister is death through hanging.
These rules of avoidance are especially severe in the Fiji Islands where they concern not
only consanguineous sisters but group sisters as well.
To hear that these savages hold sacred *** in which persons of just these forbidden degrees
of kinship seek *** union would seem still more peculiar to us, if we did not prefer
to make use of this contradiction to explain the prohibition instead of being astonished
at it. Among the Battas of Sumatra these laws of
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 consanguineous intercourse they do quite right to avoid all temptations by means of
such prohibitions. Among the Barongos in Delagoa Bay, in Africa,
the most rigorous 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. Among the Akamba (or Wakamba) in British East
Africa, a law of avoidance is in force which one would have expected to encounter more
frequently. A girl must carefully avoid her own father between the time of her puberty
and her marriage. She hides herself if she meets him on the street and never attempts
to sit down next to him, behaving in this way right up to her engagement. But after
her marriage no further obstacle is put in the way of her social intercourse with her
father. The most widespread and strictest avoidance,
which is perhaps the most interesting one for civilized races is that which restricts
the social relations between a man and his mother-in-law. It is quite general in Australia,
but it is also in force among the Melanesian, Polynesian and *** races of Africa as far
as the traces of totemism and group relationship 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 Island 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 distance. It is quite out of the question that he should
ever pronounce the name of his mother-in-law, or she his.
On the Solomon Islands, beginning with his 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. Among the Zulu Kaffirs custom demands that
a man should be ashamed of his mother-in-law and that he should do everything to avoid
her company. He does not enter a hut in which she is, and when they meet he or she goes
aside, she perhaps hiding behind a bush while he holds his shield before his face. If they
cannot avoid each other and the woman has nothing with which to cover herself, she at
least binds a bunch of grass around her head in order to satisfy the ceremonial requirements.
Communication between them must either be made through a third person or else they may
shout at each other at a considerable distance if they have some barrier between them as,
for instance, the enclosure of a kraal. Neither may utter the other's name.
Among the Basogas, a *** 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 abominates *** to such an extent as not to let it go unpunished
even among domestic animals. Whereas all observers have interpreted the
purpose and meaning of the avoidances between near relatives as protective measures against
***, different interpretations have been given for those prohibitions which concern
the relationship with the mother-in-law. It was quite incomprehensible why all these races
should manifest such great fear of temptation on the part of the man for an elderly woman,
old enough to be his mother. 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 'marriage by capture'. "As long as the capture of women actually took place,
the indignation of the parents was probably serious enough. When nothing but symbols of
this form of marriage survived, the indignation of the parents was also symbolized and this
custom continued after its origin had been forgotten." Crawley has found it easy to show
how little this tentative explanation agrees with the details of actual observation.
E. B. Tylor thinks that the treatment of the son-in-law on the part of the mother-in-law
is nothing more than a form of 'cutting' on the part of the woman's family. The man counts
as a stranger, and this 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 explanation
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 *** factor, and that
it does not take into account the almost sacred loathing which finds expression in the laws
of avoidance. A Zulu woman who was asked about the basis
for this prohibition showed great delicacy of feeling in her answer: "It is not right
that he should see the *** which nursed his wife."
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 organization. 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-established
by individuals. Many a European will see an act of high wisdom in the laws of avoidance
which savage races have established to preclude any understanding between two persons who
have become so closely related. There is hardly any doubt that there is something in the psychological
situation of mother-in-law and son-in-law which furthers hostilities between them and
renders living together difficult. The fact that the witticisms of civilized races show
such a preference for this very mother-in-law theme seems to me to point to the fact that
the emotional relations between mother-in-law and son-in-law are controlled by components
which stand 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 unwilling to give up
the possession of her daughter; she distrusts the stranger to whom her daughter has been
delivered, and shows a tendency to maintain the dominating position, to which she became
accustomed at home. On the part of the man, there is the determination not to subject
himself any longer to any foreign will, his jealousy of all persons who preceded him in
the possession of his wife's tenderness, and, last but not least, his aversion to being
disturbed in his illusion of *** 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 investigation of individuals has given us, makes it possible to add other
motives to the above. Where the psycho-*** 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 relation, and the monotony in the wife's emotional life.
The ageing mother protects herself against this by living through the lives of her children,
by identifying herself with them and making their emotional experiences her own. Parents
are said 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 indentification 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 predisposition. At all events the tendency to such infatuation
is very frequent with the mother-in-law, and either this infatuation itself or the tendency
opposed to it joins the conflict of 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 object selection has normally led him to
his love object through the image of his mother and perhaps of his sister; in consequence
of the *** 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 *** dread demands that he should not be reminded of the genealogy
of his love selection; 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 actually represents an *** temptation for
the son-in-law, just as it not infrequently happens that a man falls in love with his
subsequent mother-in-law before 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 'avoidances' 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 ***. This would also hold good for all
the other avoidances between those related by blood or by marriage. There is only one
difference, namely, in the first case the *** is direct, so that the purpose of the
prevention might be conscious; in the other case, which includes the mother-in-law relation,
the *** 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 *** 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 *** dread is the statement that it is a subtle infantile trait and is in striking
agreement with the psychic life of the neurotic. Psychoanalysis has taught us that the first
object selection of the boy is of an incestuous nature and that it is directed to the forbidden
objects, the mother and the sister; pyschoanalysis has taught us also the methods through which
the maturing individual frees himself from these incestuous attractions. The neurotic,
however, regularly presents to us a piece of psychic infantilism; he has either not
been able to free himself from the childlike conditions of psychosexuality, or else he
has returned to them (inhibited development and regression). Hence the incestuous fixations
of the libido still play or again are playing the main rôle in his unconscious psychic
life. We have gone so far as to declare that the relation to the parents instigated by
incestuous longings is the central complex of the neurosis. This discovery of the significance
of *** for the neurosis naturally meets with the most general incredulity on the part
of the grown-up, normal man; a similar rejection will also meet the researches of Otto Rank,
which show in even larger scope to what extent the *** theme stands in the centre of poetical
interest 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 *** wishes which have since succumbed to repression. It is therefore of
importance to us to be able to show that man's *** 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. End of Chapter I
CHAPTER II TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS
Part 1 Taboo is a Polynesian word, the translation
of which provides difficulties for us because we no longer possess the idea which it connotes.
It was still current with the ancient Romans: their word 'sacer' was the same as the taboo
of the Polynesians. The hagos of the Greeks and the Kodaush of the Hebrews must also have
signified the same thing which the Polynesians express through their word taboo and what
many races in America, Africa (Madagascar), North and Central Asia express through analogous
designations. For us the meaning of taboo branches off into
two opposite directions. On the one hand it means to us sacred, consecrated: but on the
other hand it means, uncanny, dangerous, forbidden, and unclean. The opposite for taboo is designated
in Polynesian by the word noa and signifies something ordinary and generally accessible.
Thus something like the concept of reserve inheres in taboo; taboo expresses itself essentially
in prohibitions and restrictions. Our combination of 'holy dread' would often express the meaning
of taboo. The taboo restrictions are different from
religious or moral prohibitions. They are not traced to a commandment of a god but really
they themselves impose their own prohibitions; they are differentiated from moral prohibitions
by failing to be included in a system which declares abstinences in general to be necessary
and gives reasons for this necessity. The taboo prohibitions lack all justification
and are of unknown origin. Though incomprehensible to us they are taken as a matter of course
by those who are under their dominance. Wundt calls taboo the oldest unwritten code
of law of humanity. It is generally assumed that taboo is older than the gods and goes
back to the pre-religious age. As we are in need of an impartial presentation
of the subject of taboo before subjecting it to psychoanalytic consideration I shall
now cite an excerpt from the article Taboo in the Encyclopedia Britannica written by
the anthropologist Northcote W. Thomas: "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 prohibitions 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) protection 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 *** functions—against interference; (e) securing human beings against
the wrath or power of gods and spirits; (f) securing unborn infants and young children
who stand in a specially sympathetic relation with their parents, from the consequence of
certain actions, and more especially from the 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 punishment of the offender,
whose action has endangered his companions. Thus man's first systems of punishment are
also connected with taboo. "The violation of a taboo makes the offender
himself taboo." The author goes on to say that certain dangers resulting from the violation
of a taboo may be exercised through acts of penance and ceremonies of purification.
A peculiar power inherent in persons and ghosts, which can be transmitted from them to inanimate
objects is regarded as the source of the taboo. This part of the article reads as follows:
"Persons or things which are regarded as taboo may be compared to objects charged with electricity;
they are the seat of tremendous power which is transmissible by contact, and may be liberated
with destructive effect if the organisms which provoke its discharge are too weak to resist
it; the result of a violation of a taboo depends partly on the strength of the magical influence
inherent in the taboo object or person, partly on the strength of the opposing mana of the
violator of the taboo. Thus, kings and chiefs are possessed of great power, and it is death
for their subjects to address them directly; but a minister or other person of greater
mana than common, can approach them unharmed, and can in turn be approached by their inferiors
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 *** 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 hearing all that was
said about taboo they are far from knowing what to understand by it and where to store
it in their minds. This is surely due to the insufficient information I have given and
to the omission of all discussions 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 description
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 forbidden without any apparent reason; nor does it occur to them to question
this matter, for they subject themselves to these restrictions as a matter of course and
are convinced that any transgression will be punished automatically in the most severe
manner. There are reliable reports that innocent transgressions of such prohibitions have actually
been punished automatically. For instance, the innocent offender who had eaten from a
forbidden animal became 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 unrestrained 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 underlie 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 ***, puberty and birth, in everything sinister like illness
and death and in everything connected with these conditions by virtue of contagion or
dissemination. However, the term 'taboo' includes all 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 belief in spirits and demons
which is so characteristic of these low grades of culture.
Now why should we take any interest at all in the riddle of taboo? Not only, I think,
because every psychological problem is well worth the effort of investigation for its
own sake, but for other reasons as well. It may be surmised that the taboo of Polynesian
savages is after all not so remote from us as we were at first inclined to believe; the
moral and customary prohibitions which we ourselves obey may have some 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.' We are therefore inclined to listen with keen
expectations when an investigator like W. Wundt gives his interpretation of taboo, especially
as he promises to "go back to the very roots of the taboo concepts".
Wundt states that the idea of taboo "includes all customs which express dread of particular
objects connected with cultic ideas or of actions having reference to them".
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 object or to take it for one's own use, or to make use of certain proscribed
words...." Accordingly there would not be a single race or stage of culture which had
escaped the injurious effects of taboo. Wundt then shows why he finds it more 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 essentially of the taboo against killing and
eating, forms the nucleus of Totemism. 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 *** and immediately
after delivery, newly born children, the deceased and especially the dead, are all taboo. The
constantly used property of any person, such as his clothes, tools and weapons, is permanently
taboo for everybody else. In Australia the new name which a youth receives at his initiation
into manhood becomes part of his most personal property, it is taboo and must be kept secret.
The taboos of the third class, which apply to trees, plants, houses and localities, are
more variable and seem only to follow the rule that anything which for any reason arouses
dread or is mysterious, becomes subject to taboo.
Wundt himself has to acknowledge that the changes which taboo undergoes in the richer
culture of the Polynesians and in the Malayan Archipelago are not very profound. The greater
social differentiation of these races 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, in the fear of
the effect of demonic powers". "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 detached itself from demonism. It becomes the compulsion of custom and tradition
and finally of the law. "But the commandment concealed behind taboo prohibitions which
differ materially 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 because
it was one by virtue of a kind of a psychic persistence and in this manner it became the
root of our customs and laws. As little as one can object to the first part of this statement
I feel, however, that I am only voicing the impression of many of my readers if I call
Wundt's explanation 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 primitive stages of taboo. For this reason these conceptions
entirely lack the significance which they could only acquire later on when they came
to be 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 undifferentiated and intermediate meaning of the demonic, in
the sense of something 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 permanently held in common points to the
existence of an original agreement here between these two spheres which gave way to a differentiation
only as the result of further conditions through which both finally developed into opposites.
The belief associated with the original taboo, according to which a demonic power concealed
in the object avenges the touching of it or its forbidden use by bewitching the offender
was still an entirely objectified fear. This had not yet separated into the two forms which
it assumed at a more developed stage, namely, awe and aversion.
How did this separation come about? 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. Wundt's further elucidations refer to the
relation of taboo to lustration and sacrifice. 2
He who approaches the problem of taboo from the field of psychoanalysis, which is concerned
with the study of the unconscious part of the individual's psychic life, needs but a
moment's 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. It would
certainly be both premature and unprofitable to base conclusions relating to inner relationships
upon the correspondence of merely mechanical conditions. We shall bear this warning in
mind without, however, giving up our intended comparison on account of the possibility of
such confusions. The first and most striking correspondence
between the compulsion prohibitions of neurotics and taboo lies in the fact that the origin
of these prohibitions is just as unmotivated and enigmatic. They have appeared at some
time or other and must now be retained on account of an unconquerable anxiety. An external
threat of punishment is superfluous, because an inner certainty (a conscience) exists that
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 information is more likely to be obtained during the later discussions
of the expiatory and defensive actions than when the prohibitions themselves are being
discussed. As in the case of taboo the nucleus of the
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 displacement; they make use of
almost any form of connection to extend from one object to another and then in turn make
this new object 'impossible', as one of my patients aptly puts it. This impossibility
finally lays an embargo upon the whole world. The 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 neighbouring things. We have already emphasized the same
characteristics of contagion and transference in the description of taboo prohibitions.
We also know that any one who has violated a taboo by touching something 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 the chiefs breath conveyed through these
intermediaries, would surely die". My patient demanded that a utensil which her
husband had purchased and brought home should be removed lest it make the place where she
lives impossible. For she has heard that this object was bought in a store which is situated,
let us say, in Stag Street. But as the word 'stag' is the name of a friend now in a distant
city, whom she has known in her youth under her maiden name and whom she now finds 'impossible',
that is taboo, the object bought in Vienna is just as taboo as this friend with whom
she does not want to come into contact. Compulsion prohibitions, like taboo prohibitions,
entail the most extraordinary 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 violation can be made good through
such a 'ceremonial', and here too lustration through water is the preferred way.
Let us now summarize the points in which the correspondence between taboo customs and the
symptoms of compulsion neurosis are most clearly manifested: 1. In the lack of motivation of
the commandments, 2. in their enforcement through an inner need, 3. in their capacity
of displacement and in the danger of contagion from what is prohibited, 4. and in the causation
of ceremonial actions and commandments which emanate from the forbidden.
However, psychoanalysis has made us familiar with the clinical history as well as the psychic
mechanism of compulsion neurosis. Thus the history of a typical case of touching phobia
reads as follows: In the very beginning, during the early period of childhood, the person
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. The prohibition was accepted
because it was supported by strong inner forces; 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 unconscious. 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
emanated 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 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 touching), 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 prohibition
becomes fully conscious, while the surviving pleasure of touching remains unconscious,
the person knowing nothing about it. If this psychological factor did not exist the ambivalence
could neither maintain itself so long nor lead to such subsequent manifestations.
In the clinical history of the case we have 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 repression which appears at this age. On account of the repression
which has taken place, which is connected with forgetting (amnesia), the motivation
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 conscious
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 determinants of the unconscious. The pleasure of the impulse constantly undergoes
displacement in order to escape the blocking which it encounters and seeks to acquire surrogates
for the forbidden in the form of substitutive objects and actions. For the same reason the
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 similar actions; but on the
other hand they are at the same time substitutive actions which recompense the impulse for what
has been forbidden. 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 anything about
it since this motivation is 'unconscious' to them. But following 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 prohibitions; in their unconscious they would like nothing
better than to transgress them but they are also afraid to do it; they are afraid just
because they would like to transgress, and the fear is stronger than the pleasure. But
in every individual of the race the desire for it is unconscious, just as in the neurotic.
The oldest and most important taboo prohibitions are the two basic laws of totemism: namely
not to kill the totem animal, and to avoid *** intercourse with totem companions of
the other sex. It would therefore seem that these must have
been the oldest and strongest desires of mankind. We cannot understand this and therefore we
cannot use these examples to test our 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 psychoanalysts call the
central point of the infantile wish life and the nucleus of the later neurosis.
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 prohibited and violates the taboo,
becomes himself taboo. But how can we connect this fact with the other, namely that the
taboo adheres not only to persons who have done what is prohibited but also to persons
who are in exceptional circumstances, to these circumstances themselves, and to impersonal
things? What can this dangerous attribute be which always remains the same under all
these different conditions? Only one thing, namely, the propensity to arouse the ambivalence
of man and to tempt him to violate the prohibition. An individual who has violated a taboo becomes
himself taboo because he has the dangerous property of tempting others to follow his
example. He arouses envy; why should he be allowed to do what is prohibited to others?
He is therefore really contagious, in so far as every example incites to imitation and
therefore he himself must be avoided. But a person may become permanently or temporarily
taboo without having violated any taboos, for the simple reason that he is in a condition
which has the property of inciting the forbidden desires of others and of awakening the ambivalent
conflict in them. Most of the exceptional positions and conditions have this character
and possess this dangerous power. The king or chieftain rouses envy of his prerogatives;
everybody would perhaps like to be king. The dead, the newly born, and women when they
are incapacitated all act as incitements on account of their peculiar helplessness, while
the individual who has just reached *** maturity tempts through the promise of a new
pleasure. Therefore all these persons and all these conditions are taboo, for one must
not yield to the temptations which they offer. Now, too, we understand why the forces inherent
in the 'mana' of various persons can neutralize one another so that the mana of one individual
can partly cancel that of the other. The taboo of a king is too strong for his subject because
the social difference between them is too great. But a minister, for example, can become
the harmless mediator between them. 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 becomes a social danger
which must be punished or expiated by all the members of society lest it harm them all.
This danger really exists if we substitute the known 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 perforce 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 imitation. This does not seem to be in accord with the fact that the contagiousness
of the taboo is above all manifested in the transference to objects which thus themselves
become carriers of the taboo. This transferability of the taboo reflects
what is found in the neurosis, namely, the constant tendency of the unconscious impulse
to become displaced through associative channels upon new objects. Our attention is thus drawn
to the fact that the dangerous magic power of the 'mana' corresponds to two real faculties,
the capacity of reminding man of his forbidden wishes, and the apparently more important
one of tempting him to violate the prohibition in the service of these wishes. Both functions
reunite into one, however, if we assume it to be in accord with a primitive psychic life
that with the awakening of a memory of a forbidden action there should also be combined the 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 penance, which means,
of course, a renunciation of a possession or a liberty, we have the proof that the observance
of a taboo regulation was itself a renunciation of something really wished for. The omission
of one renunciation is cancelled through a renunciation at some other point. This would
lead us to conclude that, as far as taboo 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 contagious, and because the prohibited
desire becomes displacing in the unconscious upon something else. The expiation for the
violation of a taboo through a renunciation proves that a renunciation is at the basis
of the observance of the taboo. 3
We may ask what we have gained from the comparison of taboo with compulsion neurosis and what
value can be claimed for the interpretation we have given on the basis of this comparison?
Our intrepretation is evidently of no value unless it affords an advantage not to be had
in any other way and unless it affords a better understanding of taboo than was otherwise
possible. We might claim that we have already given proof of its usefulness in what has
been said above; but we shall have to try to strengthen our proof by continuing the
explanation of taboo prohibitions and customs in detail.
But we can avail ourselves of another method. We can shape our investigation 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 confirm those psychological conditions for taboo with which we have become acquainted
in the case of compulsion neurosis. How did we gain our knowledge of these psychological
factors in the case of neurosis? Through the analytical study of the symptoms, especially
the compulsive actions, the defence reactions and the obsessive commands. These mechanisms
gave every indication of having been derived from ambivalent 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 regulations or if
we should find among taboo mechanisms some which like neurotic obsessions give simultaneous
expression to both currents, we would have established what is practically the most important
point in the psychological correspondence between taboo and compulsion neurosis.
We have already mentioned that the two fundamental taboo prohibitions are inaccessible to our
analysis because they belong to totemism; another part of the taboo rules is of secondary
origin and cannot be used for our purpose. For among these races taboo has become the
general form of law giving and has helped to promote social tendencies which are certainly
younger; than taboo itself, as for instance, the taboos imposed by chiefs and priests to
insure their property and privileges. But there still remains a large group of laws
which we may undertake to investigate. Among these I lay stress on those taboos which are
attached (a) to enemies, (b) to chiefs, and (c) to the dead; the material for our investigation
is taken from the excellent collection of J. G. Frazer in his great work, The Golden
Bough. End of Chapter II, Part 1
Chapter II, Part 2 (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 customs. 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 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'".
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.
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 language. 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.
Observers have been struck by the mourning for the enemy after he is slain and scalped,
among several of the wild tribe of North America. When a Choctaw had killed an enemy he began
a month's mourning during which he submitted himself to serious restrictions. The Dakota
Indians mourned in the same way. One authority mentions that the Osaga Indians after mourning
for their own dead mourned for their foes as if they had been friends.
Before proceeding to the other classes of taboo customs for the treatment of enemies,
we must define our position in regard to a pertinent objection. Both Frazer as well as
other 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 Macbeth and Richard the Third. From this superstition
all the reconciliation rules as well as the restrictions and expiations which we shall
discuss later can be logically deduced; moreover, the ceremonies included in the fourth group
also argue for this interpretation, since the only explanation of which they admit is
the effort to drive away the spirits of the slain which pursue the manslayers. 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 customs mentioned above) the leader of the expedition cannot
return to his house under any circumstances. A special hut is erected for him in which
he spends two months engaged in the observance of 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. 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 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 ceremonial.
Among the Monumbos in German New Guinea a man who has killed an enemy in combat becomes
'unclean', the same word being employed which is applied to women during *** 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 procured 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 itched he was not allowed
to scratch it with his hand but used a small stick for this purpose.
After a Pima Indian had killed an Apache he had to submit himself to severe ceremonies
of purification and expiation. During a fasting period of sixteen days he was not allowed
to touch meat or salt, to look at a fire or to speak to any one. He lived alone in the
woods, where he was waited upon by an old woman who brought him a small allowance of
food; he often bathed in the nearest river, and carried a lump of clay on his head as
a sign of mourning. On the seventeenth day there took place a public ceremony through
which he and his weapons were solemnly purified. As the Pima Indians took the manslayer taboo
much more seriously than their enemies and, unlike them, did not 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 unsatisfactory 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. The current explanation of all these rules
of reconciliation, restriction, expiation and purification, combines two principles,
namely, the extension 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 combination 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. 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 protective measure against
the very dangers that arise from contact with the king; but it is probably a question of
the healing power of the intentional touching on the king's part in 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 successors 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.
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 sceptical king of Orange, William III, who became king of England after the banishment
of the Stuarts, refused to exercise the spell; on the one occasion when he consented to practise
the touch, he did so with words: "May God give you better health and more sense".
The following account will bear witness to the terrible effect of touching by virtue
of which a person, even though unintentionally, becomes active against his king or against
what belongs to him. A chief of high rank and great holiness in New Zealand happened
to leave the remains of his meal by the roadside. A young slave came along, a strong healthy
fellow, who saw what was left over and started to eat it. Hardly had he finished when a horrified
spectator 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. 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. 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.
It is hardly astonishing that the need was felt to isolate dangerous persons like chiefs
and priests, by building a wall around them which made them inaccessible to others. We
surmise that this wall, which originally was constructed out of taboo rules, still exists
to-day in the form of court ceremony. But probably the greater part of this taboo
of the rulers cannot be traced back to the need of guarding against them. The other point
of view in the treatment of privileged persons, the need of guarding them from dangers with
which they are threatened, has had a distinct share in the creation of taboo and therefore
of the origin of court etiquette. The necessity of guarding the king from every
conceivable danger arises from his great 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 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. These savage kings are endowed with a wealth
of power and an ability to bestow happiness which only gods possess; certainly in later
stages of civilization none but the most servile courtiers would play the hypocrite to the
extent of crediting their sovereigns with the possession of attributes similar to these.
It seems like an obvious contradiction that persons of such perfection of power should
themselves require the greatest care to guard them against threatening dangers, but this
is not the only contradiction revealed in the treatment of royal persons on the part
of savages. These races consider it necessary to watch over their kings to see that they
use their powers in the right way; they are by no means sure of their good intentions
or of their conscientiousness. A strain of mistrust is mingled with the motivation of
the taboo rules for the king. "The idea that early kingdoms are despotisms", says Frazer,
"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 harmony of nature, might involve
himself, his people, and the universe in one common catastrophe. Far from adding to his
comfort, these observances, 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 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 old relates: "He thinks that it would be very prejudicial
to his dignity and holiness to touch the ground with his feet; for this reason when he intends
to go anywhere, he must be carried thither on men's shoulders. Much less will they suffer
that he should expose his sacred person to the open air, and the sun is not thought worthy
to shine on his head. There is such a holiness ascribed to all the parts of his body that
he dares to cut off neither his hair, nor his beard, nor his nails. However, lest he
should grow too dirty, they may clean him in the night when he is asleep; because they
say that what is taken from his body at that time, hath been stolen from him, and that
such a theft does not prejudice his holiness or dignity. In ancient times, he was obliged
to sit on the throne for some hours every morning, 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 apprehended
that war, famine, fire or some other great misfortune was near at hand to desolate the
country." Some of the taboos to which barbarian kings
are subject vividly recall the restrictions placed on murderers. On Shark Point at Cape
Padron in Lower Guinea (West Africa), a priest-king called Kukulu lives alone in a woods. He is
not allowed to touch a woman or to leave his house and cannot even rise out of his chair,
in which he must sleep in a sitting position. If he should lie down the wind would cease
and shipping would be disturbed. It is his function to keep storms in check, and in general,
to see to an even, healthy condition of the atmosphere. The more powerful a king of Loango
is, says Bastian, the more taboos he must observe. The heir to the throne is also bound
to them from childhood on; they accumulate about him while he is growing up, and by the
time of his accession he is suffocated by them.
Our interest in the matter does not require us to take up more space to describe more
fully the taboos that cling to royal and priestly dignity. We merely add that restrictions as
to freedom of movement and diet play the main rôle among them. But two examples of taboo
ceremonial taken from civilized nations, and therefore from much higher stages of culture,
will indicate to what an extent association with these privileged persons tends to preserve
ancient customs. The Flamen Dialis, the high-priest of Jupiter
in Rome, had to observe an extraordinarily large number of taboo rules. He was not allowed
to ride, to see a horse or an armed man, to wear a ring that was not broken, to have a
knot in his garments, to touch wheat flour or leaven, or even to mention by name a goat,
a dog, raw meat, beans and ivy; his hair could only be cut by a free man and with a bronze
knife, his hair combings 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. The old kings of Ireland were subject to a
series of very curious restrictions, the observance of which was expected to bring every blessing
to the country while their violation entailed every form of evil. The complete description
of these taboos is given in the Book of Rights, of which the oldest manuscript copies bear
the dates 1890 and 1418. The prohibitions are very detailed and concern certain activities
at specified places and times; in some cities, for instance, the king cannot stay on a certain
day of the week, while at some specified hour this or that river may not be crossed, or
again there is a plane on which he cannot camp a full nine days, etc.
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 Combodscha, 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 and resist
by force every attempt to place him on the throne. 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 prohibitions
in regard to other privileges. They are privileged persons, they can do or enjoy what is withheld
from the rest through taboo. But in contrast to this freedom they are restricted by other
taboos which do not affect the ordinary individual. Here, therefore, is the first contrast, which
amounts almost to a contradiction, between an excess of freedom and an excess of restriction
as applied to the same persons. They are credited with extraordinary magic powers, and contact
with their person or their property is therefore feared, while on the other hand the most beneficial
effect is expected from these contacts. This seems to be a second and an especially 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 probably because the act may recall aggressive tendencies. Another contradiction which is
not so easily solved is expressed in the fact that great power over the processes of nature
is ascribed to the ruler and yet the obligation is felt to guard him with especial care against
threatening dangers, as if his own power, which can do so much, were incapable of accomplishing
this. A further 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 justified. The taboo etiquette, to which the life of the king is subject, simultaneously
serves all these objects of exercising a tutelage over the king, of guarding him against dangers
and of guarding his subjects against danger which he brings to them.
We are inclined to give the following explanation of the complicated and contradictory relation
of the primitive peoples to their rulers. Through superstition as well as through other
motives, various tendencies 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, contradictions
arise at which the intellect of savages takes no more offence than a highly civilized person
would as long as it is only a question of religious matters or of 'loyalty'.
That would be so far so good; but the 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 occurrence 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 tenderness. 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 improbable circumstances, as for instance, when it appears between mother and child,
or in the case of affectionate married people. Applied to the treatment of privileged persons
this theory of an ambivalent feeling would reveal that their veneration, their very deification,
is opposed in the unconscious by an intense hostile tendency, so that, as we had expected,
the situation of an ambivalent feeling is here realized. The distrust 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 Frazer that the
savage Timmes of Sierra Leone reserve the right to administer a beating to their elected
king on the evening before his coronation, and that they make use of this constitutional
right with such thoroughness that the unhappy ruler sometimes does not long survive his
accession to the throne; 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 happens 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 attributed 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 'persecutor', 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
between 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 compare taboo prohibitions
with neurotic symptoms, is to be found in the taboo ceremonial itself, the significance
of which for the status of kinship has already been the subject of our previous discussion.
This 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 distinguishes kings and elevates them above all ordinary
mortals, but it also makes their life a torture and an unbearable burden and forces them into
a thraldom which is far worse than that of their subjects. It would thus be the correct
counterpart to the compulsive action of the neurosis, in which the suppressed impulse
and the impulse which 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 'nominally' is here
applied to the conscious whereas the word 'actually' 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 governor on his island have evidently made him recognize
this interpretation of courtly ceremonial as the only correct one. It is very possible
that this point would be corroborated if we could induce kings and rulers of to-day to
express themselves on this point. Why the emotional attitude towards rulers
should contain such a strong unconscious share of hostility is a very interesting problem
which, however, exceeds the scope of this book. We have already referred to the infantile
father-complex; we may add that an investigation of the early history of kingship would bring
the decisive explanations. Frazer has an impressive discussion of the theory that the first kings
were strangers who, after a short reign, were destined to be sacrificed at solemn festivals
as representatives of the deity; but Frazer himself does not consider his facts altogether
convincing. Christian myths are said to have been still influenced by the after-effects
of this evolution of kings. End of Chapter II, Part 2