Totem and taboo
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Title: Totem and taboo
Resemblances between the psychic lives of savages and neurotics
Author: Sigmund Freud
Translator: A. A. Brill
Release date: October 28, 2012 [eBook #41214]
Language: English
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TOTEM AND TABOO
BY DR. S. FREUD
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TOTEM AND TABOO
RESEMBLANCES BETWEEN THE PSYCHIC
LIVES OF SAVAGES AND NEUROTICS
BY
PROFESSOR SIGMUND FREUD, L<small>l</small>.D.
Authorized English Translation,
with Introduction by
A. A. BRILL, Ph.B., M.D.
Asst. Prof. of Psychiatry, N.Y. Post-Graduate Medical
School; Lecturer in Psychoanalysis and Abnormal
Psychology, New York University;
former Chief of Clinic of Psychiatry,
Columbia University
[Illustration: colophon]
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LIMITED
1919
_Printed in Great Britain
by_ Butler & Tanner.
_Frome and London_
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[1]. 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.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST 1
II TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 30
III ANIMISM, MAGIC AND THE OMNIPOTENCE OF
THOUGHT 125
IV THE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 166
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
When one reviews the history of psychoanalysis[2] one finds that it had
its inception in the study of morbid mental states. Beginning with the
observation of hysteria and the other neuroses[3] 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[4], 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_[5], marked a new epoch in the history of mental science. One
might use the same words in reference to his profound analysis of
wit[6].
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[7], 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[8].
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. B<small>RILL</small>.
TOTEM AND TABOO
CHAPTER I
THE SAVAGE’S DREAD OF INCEST
Primitive man is known to us by the stages of development through which
he has passed: that is, through the inanimate monuments and implements
which he has left behind for us, through our knowledge of his art, his
religion and his attitude towards life, which we have received either
directly or through the medium of legends, myths and fairy tales; and
through the remnants of his ways of thinking that survive in our own
manners and customs. Moreover, in a certain sense he is still our
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 sexual impulses. And yet
we learn that they have considered it their duty to exercise the most
searching care and the most painful rigour in guarding against
incestuous sexual relations. In fact their whole social organization
seems to serve this object or to have been brought into relation with
its attainment.
Among the Australians the system of _Totemism_ takes the place of all
religious and social institutions. Australian tribes are divided into
smaller _septs_ or clans, each taking the name of its _totem_. Now what
is a totem? As a rule it is an animal, either edible 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[9].
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[10].
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 sexual relations
with each other; that is, that they cannot marry each other_. This
represents the _exogamy_ which is associated with the totem.
This sternly maintained prohibition is very remarkable. There is 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[11]
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 sexual intercourse with a person
of a forbidden clan is death. It matters not whether the woman is of the
same local group or has been captured in war from another tribe; a man
of the wrong clan who uses her as his wife is hunted down and killed by
his clansmen, and so is the woman; though in some cases, if they succeed
in eluding capture for a certain time, the 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[12].
(_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 incest with the mother or the sisters. It also makes it
impossible for the man to have sexual union with all the women of his
own group, with a number of females, therefore, who are not
consanguineously related to him, by treating all these women like blood
relations. The 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 sexual union.
Thus these savages reveal to us an unusually high grade of incest dread
or incest sensitiveness, combined with the peculiarity, which we do not
very well understand, of substituting the totem relationship for the
real blood relationship. But we must not exaggerate this contradiction
too much, and let us bear in mind that the totem prohibitions include
real incest as a special case.
In what manner the substitution of the totem group for the actual family
has come about remains a riddle, the solution of which is perhaps bound
up with the explanation of the totem itself. Of course it must be
remembered that with a certain freedom of sexual intercourse, extending
beyond the limitations of matrimony, the blood relationship, and with it
also the prevention of incest, becomes so uncertain that we cannot
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_[13], 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[14], 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 incest shunning which we have met among these same
races. The totem exogamy, or prohibition of sexual intercourse between
members of the same clan, seemed the most appropriate means for the
prevention of group incest; and this totem exogamy then became fixed and
long survived its original motivation.
Although we believe we understand the motives of the marriage
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[15]. 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 sexual freedom. If there were
only these twelve totem groups--assuming the same number of people in
each group--every member of a group would have 11/12 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 incest prohibition
because the influence of the totem was on the wane. And while the totem
system is, as we know, the basis of all other social obligations and
moral restrictions of the tribe, the importance of the phratries
generally ceases when the 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 incest, 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[16].
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 incest[17]. We must say that these savages are even more
sensitive to incest than we, perhaps because they are more subject to
temptations than we are, and hence require more extensive protection
against it.
But the incest dread of these races does not content itself with the
creation of the institutions described, which, in the main, seem to be
directed against group incest. We must add a series of ‘customs’ which
watch over the individual behaviour to near relatives in our sense,
which are 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[18].
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[19].
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 incest
with a sister is death through hanging[20].
These rules of avoidance are especially severe in the Fiji Islands where
they concern not only consanguineous sisters but group sisters as well.
To hear that these savages hold sacred orgies in which persons of just
these forbidden degrees of kinship seek sexual union would seem still
more peculiar to us, if we did not prefer to make use of this
contradiction to explain the prohibition instead of being astonished at
it[21].
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[22].
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[23].
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[24].
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
Negro 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[25].
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[26].
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[27].
Among the Basogas, a negro tribe living in the region of the Nile
sources, a man may talk to his mother-in-law only if she is in another
room of the house and is not visible to him. Moreover, this race
abominates incest to such an extent as not to let it go unpunished even
among domestic animals[28].
Whereas all observers have interpreted the purpose and meaning of the
avoidances between near relatives as protective measures against incest,
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[29].
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 sexual factor, and that it does not
take into account the almost sacred loathing which finds expression in
the laws of avoidance[30].
A Zulu woman who was asked about the basis for this prohibition showed
great delicacy of feeling in her answer: “It is not right that he
should see the breasts which nursed his wife.”[31]
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 sexual
over-valuation. As a rule such a disturbance emanates for the most part
from his mother-in-law who reminds him of her daughter through so many
common traits but who lacks all the charm of youth, such as beauty and
that psychic spontaneity which makes his wife precious to him.
The knowledge of hidden psychic feelings which psychoanalytic
investigation of individuals has given us, makes it possible to add
other motives to the above. Where the psycho-sexual needs of the woman
are to be satisfied in marriage and family life, there is always the
danger of dissatisfaction through the premature termination of the
conjugal 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
incest barriers his preference for these two beloved persons of his
childhood has been deflected and he is then able to find their image in
strange objects. He now sees the mother-in-law taking the place of his
own mother and of his sister’s mother, and there develops a tendency to
return to the primitive selection, against which everything in him
resists. His incest dread 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 incest 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 incest.
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 incest is direct, so that the purpose of the
prevention might be conscious; in the other case, which includes the
mother-in-law relation, the incest would be a phantasy temptation
brought about by unconscious intermediary links.
We have had little opportunity in this exposition to show that the facts
of folk-psychology can be seen in a new light through the application of
the psychoanalytic point of view, for the incest dread of savages has
long been known as such, and is in need of no further interpretation.
What we can add to the further appreciation of incest dread is the
statement that it is a subtle infantile trait and is in striking
agreement with the 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 incest
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 incest 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 incest wishes which
have since succumbed to repression. It is therefore of importance to us
to be able to show that man’s incest wishes, which later are destined to
become unconscious, are still felt to be dangerous by savage races who
consider them worthy of the most severe defensive measures.
CHAPTER II
TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS
1
Taboo is a Polynesian word, the translation of which provides
difficulties for us because we no longer possess the idea which it
connotes. It was still current with the ancient Romans: their word
‘sacer’ was the same as the taboo of the Polynesians. The [Greek: ἁγος 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[32] 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[33]:
“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 sexual
functions--against interference; (_e_) securing human beings against the
wrath or power of gods and spirits[34]; (_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 menstruation and child-bed, the status of the warrior
before and after the expedition, the activities of fishing and of the
chase, and similar activities. A general taboo may also be imposed upon
a large district like an ecclesiastical interdict, and may then last for
years.
If I judge my readers’ impressions correctly, I dare say that after
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 menstruation, puberty and birth, in everything sinister
like illness and death and in everything connected with these conditions
by virtue of contagion or dissemination.
However, the term ‘taboo’ includes all 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”[35].
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”[36].
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[37]. The taboo of the second class, which has human
beings for its object, is of an essentially different nature. To begin
with it is restricted to conditions which bring about an unusual
situation in life for the person tabooed. Thus young men at the feast of
initiation, women during menstruation and immediately after delivery,
newly born children, the deceased and especially the dead, are all
taboo. The constantly used property of any person, such as his clothes,
tools and weapons, 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_”[38]. “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[39].
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”[40].
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[41]. The prohibition was accepted
because it was supported by strong inner forces[42]; 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[43]
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 sexual
intercourse with totem companions of the other sex.
It would therefore seem that these must have been the oldest and
strongest desires of mankind. We cannot understand this and therefore we
cannot use these examples to test our 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[44].
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 sexual
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_[45].
(_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’”[46].
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[47].
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[48].
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[49].
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[50]. 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.[51] 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 menstruation or confinement. For a considerable period
he is not allowed to leave the men’s club-house, while the inhabitants
of his village gather about him and celebrate his victory with songs and
dances. He must not touch any one, not even his wife and children; if he
did so they would be afflicted with boils. He finally becomes clean
through washing and other ceremonies.
Among the Natchez in North America young warriors who had 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[52].
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[53].
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”[54].
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[55]. 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[56]. 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[57].
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[58].
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[59], “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[60] 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[61]. 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[62].
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.[63]
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[64]. 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[65] 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[66]. Christian myths are said
to have been still influenced by the after-effects of this evolution of
kings.
(_C_) THE TABOO OF THE DEAD
We know that the dead are mighty rulers: we may be surprised to learn
that they are regarded as enemies.
Among most primitive people the taboo of the dead displays, if we may
keep to our infection analogy, a peculiar virulence. It manifests itself
in the first place, in the consequences which result from contact with
the dead, and in the treatment of the mourners for the dead. Among the
Maori any one who had touched a corpse or who had taken part in its
interment, became extremely unclean and was almost cut off from
intercourse with his fellow beings; he was, as we say, boycotted. He
could not enter a house, or approach persons or objects without
infecting them with the same properties. He could not even touch his
food with his own hands, which were now unclean and therefore quite
useless to him. His food was put on the ground and he had no alternative
except to seize it as best he could, with his lips and teeth, while he
held his hands behind on his back. Occasionally he could be fed by
another person who helped him to his food with outstretched arms so as
not to touch the unfortunate one himself, but this assistant was then in
turn subjected to almost equally oppressive restrictions. Almost every
village contained some altogether disreputable individual, ostracized by
society, whose wretched existence depended upon people’s charity. This
creature alone was allowed within arm’s length of a person who had
fulfilled the last duty towards the deceased. But as soon as the period
of segregation was over and the person rendered unclean through the
corpse could again mingle with his fellow-beings, all the dishes which
he had used during the dangerous period were broken and all his clothing
was thrown away.
The taboo customs after bodily contact with the dead are the same all
over Polynesia, in Melanesia, and in a part of Africa; their most
constant feature is the prohibition against handling one’s food and the
consequent necessity of being fed by somebody else. It is noteworthy
that in Polynesia, or perhaps only in Hawaii[67], priest-kings were
subject to the same restrictions during the exercise of holy functons.
In the taboo of the dead on the Island of Tonga the abatement and
gradual abolition of the prohibitions through the individual’s own
taboo power are clearly shown. A person who touched the corpse of a dead
chieftain was unclean for ten months; but if he was himself a chief, he
was unclean for only three, four, or five months, according to the rank
of the deceased; if it was the corpse of the idolized head-chief even
the greatest chiefs became taboo for ten months. These savages are so
certain that any one who violates these taboo rules must become
seriously ill and die, that according to the opinion of an observer,
they have never yet dared to convince themselves of the contrary[68].
The taboo restrictions imposed upon persons whose contact with the dead
is to be understood in the transferred sense, namely the mourning
relatives such as widows and widowers, are essentially the same as those
mentioned above, but they are of greater interest for the point we are
trying to make. In the rules hitherto mentioned we see only the typical
expression of the virulence and power of diffusion of the taboo; in
those about to be cited we catch a gleam of the motives, including both
the ostensible ones and those which may be regarded as the underlying
and genuine motives.
Among the Shuswap in British-Columbia widows and widowers have to
remain segregated during their period of mourning; they must not use
their hands to touch the body or the head and all utensils used by them
must not be used by any one else. No hunter will want to approach the
hut in which such mourners live, for that would bring misfortune; if the
shadow of one of the mourners should fall on him he would become ill.
The mourners sleep on thorn bushes, with which they also surround their
beds. This last precaution is meant to keep off the spirit of the
deceased; plainer still is the reported custom of other North American
tribes where the widow, after the death of her husband, has to wear a
kind of trousers of dried grass in order to make herself inaccessible to
the approach of the spirit. Thus it is quite obvious that touching ‘in
the transferred sense’ is after all understood only as bodily contact,
since the spirit of the deceased does not leave his kin and does not
desist from ‘hovering about them’, during the period of mourning.
Among the Agutainos, who live on Palawan, one of the Philippine Islands,
a widow may not leave her hut for the first seven or eight days after
her husband’s death, except at night, when she need not expect
encounters. Whoever sees her is in danger of immediate death and
therefore she herself warns others of her approach by hitting the trees
with a wooden stick with every step she takes; these trees all wither.
Another observation explains the nature of the danger inherent in a
widow. In the district of Mekeo, British New Guinea, a widower forfeits
all civil rights and lives like an outlaw. He may not tend a garden, or
show himself in public, or enter the village or go on the street. He
slinks about like an animal, in the high grass or in the bushes, and
must hide in a thicket if he sees anybody, especially a woman,
approaching. This last hint makes it easy for us to trace back the
danger of the widower or widow to the danger of temptation. The husband
who has lost his wife must evade the desire for a substitute; the widow
has to contend with the same wish, and beside this, she may arouse the
desire of other men because she is without a master. Every such
satisfaction through a substitute runs contrary to the intention of
mourning and would cause the anger of the spirit to flare up[69].
One of the most surprising, but at the same time one of the most
instructive taboo customs of mourning among primitive races is the
prohibition against pronouncing the _name_ of the deceased. This is
very widespread, and has been subjected to many modifications with
important consequences.
Aside from the Australians and the Polynesians, who usually show us
taboo customs in their best state of preservation, we also find this
prohibition among races so far apart and unrelated to each other as the
Samojedes in Siberia and the Todas in South India, the Mongolians of
Tartary and the Tuaregs of the Sahara, the Aino of Japan and the Akamba
and Nandi in Central Africa, the Tinguanes in the Philippines and the
inhabitants of the Nikobari Islands and of Madagascar and Borneo[70].
Among some of these races the prohibition and its consequences hold good
only for the period of mourning while in others it remains permanent;
but in all cases it seems to diminish with the lapse of time after the
death.
The avoidance of the name of the deceased is as a rule kept up with
extraordinary severity. Thus, among many South American tribes, it is
considered the gravest insult to the survivors to pronounce the name of
the deceased in their presence, and the penalty set for it is no less
than that for the slaying itself[71]. At first it is not easy to guess
why the mention of the name should be so abominated, but the dangers
associated with it have called into being a whole series of interesting
and important expedients to avoid this. Thus the Masai in Africa have
hit upon the evasion of changing the name of the deceased immediately
upon his death; he may now be mentioned without dread by this new name,
while all the prohibitions remain attached to the old name. It seems to
be assumed that the ghost does not know his new name and will not find
it out. The Australian tribes on Adelaide and Encounter Bay are so
consistently cautious that when a death occurs almost every person who
has the same name as the deceased or a very similar one, exchanges it
for another. Sometimes by a further extension of the same idea as seen
among several tribes in Victoria and in North America all the relatives
of the deceased change their names regardless of whether their names
resemble the name of the deceased in sound. Among the Guaycuru in
Paraguay the chief used to give new names to all the members of the
tribe, on such sad occasions, which they then remembered as if they had
always had them[72].
Furthermore, if the deceased had the same name as an animal or object,
etc., some of the races just enumerated thought it necessary to give
these animals and objects new names, in order not to be reminded of the
deceased when they mentioned them. Through this there must have resulted
a never ceasing change of vocabulary, which caused a good deal of
difficulty for the missionaries, especially where the interdiction upon
a name was permanent. In the seven years which the missionary
Dobrizhofer spent among the Abipons in Paraguay, the name for jaguar was
changed three times and the words for crocodile, thorns and animal
slaughter underwent a similar fate[73]. But the dread of pronouncing a
name which has belonged to a deceased person extends also to the mention
of everything in which the deceased had any part, and a further
important result of this process of suppression is that these races have
no tradition or any historical reminiscences, so that we encounter the
greatest difficulties in investigating their past history. Among a
number of these primitive races compensating customs have also been
established in order to re-awaken the names of the deceased after a long
period of mourning; they are bestowed upon children who were regarded as
reincarnations of the dead.
The strangeness of this taboo on names diminishes if we bear in mind
that the savage looks upon his name as an essential part and an
important possession of his personality, and that he ascribes the full
significance of things to words. Our children do the same, as I have
shown elsewhere, and therefore they are never satisfied with accepting a
meaningless verbal similarity, but consistently conclude that when two
things have identical names a deeper correspondence between them must
exist. Numerous peculiarities of normal behaviour may lead civilized man
to conclude that he too is not yet as far removed as he thinks from
attributing the importance of things to mere names and feeling that his
name has become peculiarly identified with his person. This is
corroborated by psychoanalytic experiences, where there is much occasion
to point out the importance of names in unconscious thought
activity[74]. As was to be expected, the compulsion neurotics behave
just like savages in regard to names. They show the full ‘complex
sensitiveness’ towards the utterance and hearing of special words (as do
also other neurotics) and derive a good many, often serious, inhibitions
from their treatment of their own name. One of these taboo patients whom
I knew, had adopted the avoidance of writing down her name for fear that
it might get into somebody’s hands who thus would come into possession
of a piece of her personality. In her frenzied faithfulness, which she
needed to protect herself against the temptations of her phantasy, she
had created for herself the commandment, ‘not to give away anything of
her personality’. To this belonged first of all her name, then by
further application her hand-writing, so that she finally gave up
writing.
Thus it no longer seems strange to us that savages should consider a
dead person’s name as a part of his personality and that it should be
subjected to the same taboo as the deceased. Calling a dead person by
name can also be traced back to contact with him, so that we can turn
our attention to the more inclusive problem of why this contact is
visited with such a severe taboo.
The nearest explanation would point to the natural horror which a corpse
inspires, especially in view of the changes so soon noticeable after
death. Mourning for a dead person must also be considered as a
sufficient motive for everything which has reference to him. But horror
of the corpse evidently does not cover all the details of taboo rules,
and mourning can never explain to us why the mention of the dead is a
severe insult to his survivors. On the contrary, mourning loves to
preoccupy itself with the deceased, to elaborate his memory, and
preserve it for the longest possible time. Something besides mourning
must be made responsible for the peculiarities of taboo customs,
something which evidently serves a different purpose. It is this very
taboo on names which reveals this still unknown motive, and if the
customs did not tell us about it we would find it out from the
statements of the mourning savages themselves.
For they do not conceal the fact that they fear the presence and the
return of the spirit of a dead person; they practise a host of
ceremonies to keep him off and banish him[75]. They look upon the
mention of his name as a conjuration which must result in his immediate
presence[76]. They therefore consistently do everything to avoid
conjuring and awakening a dead person. They disguise themselves in order
that the spirit may not recognize them[77], they distort either his name
or their own, and become infuriated when a ruthless stranger incites the
spirit against his survivors by mentioning his name. We can hardly avoid
the conclusion that they suffer, according to Wundt’s expression, from
the fear of “his soul now turned into a demon,”[78].
With this understanding we approach Wundt’s conception who, as we have
heard, sees the nature of taboo in the fear of demons.
The assumption which this theory makes, namely, that immediately after
death the beloved member of a family becomes a demon, from whom the
survivors have nothing but hostility to expect, so that they must
protect themselves by every means from his evil desires, is so peculiar
that our first impulse is not to believe it. Yet almost all competent
authors agree as to this interpretation of primitive races.
Westermarck[79], who, in my opinion, gives altogether too little
consideration to taboo, makes this statement: “On the whole facts lead
me to conclude that the dead are more frequently regarded as enemies
than as friends and that Jevons and Grant Allen are wrong in their
assertion that it was formerly believed that the malevolence of the dead
was as a rule directed only against strangers, while they were
paternally concerned about the life and welfare of their descendants
and the members of their clan.”
R. Kleinpaul has written an impressive book in which he makes use of the
remnants of the old belief in souls among civilized races to show the
relation between the living and the dead[80]. According to him too, this
relation culminates in the conviction that the dead, thirsting for
blood, draw the living after them. The living did not feel themselves
safe from the persecutions of the dead until a body of water had been
put between them. That is why it was preferred to bury the dead on
islands or to bring them to the other side of a river: the expressions
‘here’ and ‘beyond’ originated in this way. Later moderation has
restricted the malevolence of the dead to those categories where a
peculiar right to feel rancour had to be admitted, such as the murdered
who pursue their murderer as evil spirits, and those who, like brides,
had died with their longings unsatisfied. Kleinpaul believes that
originally, however, the dead were all vampires, who bore ill-will to
the living, and strove to harm them and deprive them of life. It was the
corpse that first furnished the conception of an evil spirit.
The hypothesis that those whom we love best turn into demons after
death obviously allows us to put a further question. What prompted
primitive races to ascribe such a change of sentiment to the beloved
dead? Why did they make demons out of them? According to Westermarck
this question is easily answered[81]. “As death is usually considered
the worst calamity that can overtake man, it is believed that the
deceased are very dissatisfied with their lot. Primitive races believe
that death comes only through being slain, whether by violence or by
magic, and this is considered already sufficient reason for the soul to
be vindictive and irritable. The soul presumably envies the living and
longs for the company of its former kin; we can therefore understand
that the soul should seek to kill with them diseases in order to be
re-united with them....
“ ...A further explanation of the malevolence ascribed to souls lies in
the instinctive fear of them, which is itself the result of the fear of
death.”
Our study of psychoneurotic disturbances points to a more comprehensive
explanation, which includes that of Westermarck.
When a wife loses her husband, or a daughter her mother, it not
infrequently happens that the survivor is afflicted with tormenting
scruples, called ‘obsessive reproaches’ which raises the question
whether she herself has not been guilty through carelessness or neglect,
of the death of the beloved person. No recalling of the care with which
she nursed the invalid, or direct refutation of the asserted guilt can
put an end to the torture, which is the pathological expression of
mourning and which in time slowly subsides. Psychoanalytic investigation
of such cases has made us acquainted with the secret mainsprings of this
affliction. We have ascertained that these obsessive reproaches are in a
certain sense justified and therefore are immune to refutation or
objections. Not that the mourner has really been guilty of the death or
that she has really been careless, as the obsessive reproach asserts;
but still there was something in her, a wish of which she herself was
unaware, which was not displeased with the fact that death came, and
which would have brought it about sooner had it been strong enough. The
reproach now reacts against this unconscious wish after the death of the
beloved person. Such hostility, hidden in the unconscious behind tender
love, exists in almost all cases of intensive emotional allegiance to a
particular person, indeed it represents the classic case, the prototype
of the ambivalence of human emotions. There is always more or less of
this ambivalence in everybody’s disposition; normally it is not strong
enough to give rise to the obsessive reproaches we have described. But
where there is abundant predisposition for it, it manifests itself in
the relation to those we love most, precisely where you would least
expect it. The disposition to compulsion neurosis which we have so often
taken for comparison with taboo problems, is distinguished by a
particularly high degree of this original ambivalence of emotions.
We now know how to explain the supposed demonism of recently departed
souls and the necessity of being protected against their hostility
through taboo rules. By assuming a similar high degree of ambivalence in
the emotional life of primitive races such as psychoanalysis ascribes to
persons suffering from compulsion neurosis, it becomes comprehensible
that the same kind of reaction against the hostility latent in the
unconscious behind the obsessive reproaches of the neurotic should also
be necessary here after the painful loss has occurred. But this
hostility which is painfully felt in the unconscious in the form of
satisfaction with the demise, experiences a different fate in the case
of primitive man: the defence against it is accomplished by displacement
upon the object of hostility, namely the dead. We call this defence
process, frequent both in normal and diseased psychic life, a
_projection_. The survivor will deny that he has ever entertained
hostile impulses toward the beloved dead; but now the soul of the
deceased entertains them and will try to give vent to them during the
entire period of mourning. In spite of the successful defence through
projection, the punitive and remorseful character of this emotional
reaction manifests itself in being afraid, in self-imposed renunciations
and in subjection to restrictions which are partly disguised as
protective measures against the hostile demon. Thus we find again that
taboo has grown out of the soil of an ambivalent emotional attitude. The
taboo of the dead also originates from the opposition between the
conscious grief and the unconscious satisfaction at death. If this is
the origin of the resentment of spirits it is self-evident that just the
nearest and formerly most beloved survivors have to fear it most.
As in neurotic symptoms, the taboo regulations also evince opposite
feelings. Their restrictive character expresses mourning, while they
also betray very clearly what they are trying to conceal, namely, the
hostility towards the dead, which is now motivated as self-defence. We
have learnt to understand part of the taboo regulations as temptation
fears. A dead person is defenceless, which must act as an incitement to
satisfy hostile desires entertained against him; this temptation has to
be opposed by the prohibition.
But Westermarck is right in not admitting any difference in the savage’s
conception between those who have died by violence and those who have
died a natural death. As will be shown later[82], in the unconscious
mode of thinking even a natural death is perceived as murder; the person
was killed by evil wishes. Any one interested in the origin and meaning
of dreams dealing with the death of dear relatives such as parents and
brothers and sisters will find that the same feeling of ambivalence is
responsible for the fact that the dreamer, the child, and the savage all
have the same attitude towards the dead[83].
A little while ago we challenged Wundt’s conception, who explains the
nature of taboo through the fear of demons, and yet we have just agreed
with the explanation which traces back the taboo of the dead to a fear
of the soul of the dead after it has turned into a demon. This seems
like a contradiction, but it will not be difficult for us to explain it.
It is true that we have accepted the idea of demons, but we know that
this assumption is not something final which psychology cannot resolve
into further elements. We have, as it were, exposed the demons by
recognizing them as mere projections of hostile feelings which the
survivor entertains towards the dead.
The double feeling--tenderness and hostility--against the deceased,
which we consider well founded, endeavours to assert itself at the time
of bereavement as mourning and satisfaction. A conflict must ensue
between these contrary feelings, and as one of them, namely the
hostility, is altogether or for the greater part unconscious, the
conflict cannot result in a conscious difference in the form of
hostility or tenderness as, for instance, when we forgive an injury
inflicted upon us by some one we love. The process usually adjusts
itself through a special psychic mechanism, which is designated in
psychoanalysis as _projection_. This unknown hostility, of which we are
ignorant and of which we do not wish to know, is projected from our
inner perception into the outer world and is thereby detached from our
own person and attributed to the other. Not we, the survivors, rejoice
because we are rid of the deceased, on the contrary, we mourn for him;
but now, curiously enough, he has become an evil demon who would rejoice
in our misfortune and who seeks our death. The survivors must now defend
themselves against this evil enemy; they are freed from inner
oppression, but they have only succeeded in exchanging it for an
affliction from without.
It is not to be denied that this process of projection, which turns the
dead into malevolent enemies, finds some support in the real hostilities
of the dead which the survivors remember and with which they really can
reproach the dead. These hostilities are harshness, the desire to
dominate, injustice, and whatever else forms the background of even the
most tender relations between men. But the process cannot be so simple
that this factor alone could explain the origin of demons by projection.
The offences of the dead certainly motivate in part the hostility of the
survivors, but they would have been ineffective if they had not given
rise to this hostility and the occasion of death would surely be the
least suitable occasion for awakening the memory of the reproaches which
justly could have been brought against the deceased. We cannot dispense
with the unconscious hostility as the constant and really impelling
motive. This hostile tendency towards those nearest and dearest could
remain latent during their lifetime, that is to say, it could avoid
betraying itself to consciousness either directly or indirectly through
any substitutive formation. However, when the person who was
simultaneously loved and hated died, this was no longer possible, and
the conflict became acute. The mourning originating from the enhanced
tenderness, became on the one hand more intolerant of the latent
hostility, while on the other hand it could not tolerate that the latter
should not give origin to a feeling of pure gratification. Thus there
came about the repression of the unconscious hostility through
projection, and the formation of the ceremonial in which fear of
punishment by demons finds expression. With the termination of the
period of mourning, the conflict also loses its acuteness so that the
taboo of the dead can be abated or sink into oblivion.
4
Having thus explained the basis on which the very instructive taboo of
the dead has grown up, we must not miss the opportunity of adding a few
observations which may become important for the understanding of taboo
in general.
The projection of unconscious hostility upon demons in the taboo of the
dead is only a single example from a whole series of processes to which
we must grant the greatest influence in the formation of primitive
psychic life. In the foregoing case the mechanism of projection is used
to settle an emotional conflict; it serves the same purpose in a large
number of psychic situations which lead to neuroses. But projection is
not specially created for the purpose of defence, it also comes into
being where there are no conflicts. The projection of inner perceptions
to the outside is a primitive mechanism which, for instance, also
influences our sense-perceptions, so that it normally has the greatest
share in shaping our outer world. Under conditions that have not yet
been sufficiently determined even inner perceptions of ideational and
emotional processes are projected outwardly, like sense perceptions, and
are used to shape the outer world, whereas they ought to remain in the
inner world. This is perhaps genetically connected with the fact that
the function of attention was originally directed not towards the inner
world, but to the stimuli streaming in from the outer world, and only
received reports of pleasure and pain from the endopsychic processes.
Only with the development of the language of abstract thought through
the association of sensory remnants of word representations with inner
processes, did the latter gradually become capable of perception. Before
this took place primitive man had developed a picture of the outer world
through the outward projection of inner perceptions, which we, with our
reinforced conscious perception, must now translate back into
psychology.
The projection of their own evil impulses upon demons is only a part of
what has become the world system (‘Weltanschauung’) of primitive man
which we shall discuss later as ‘animism’. We shall then have to
ascertain the psychological nature of such a system formation and the
points of support which we shall find in the analysis of these system
formations will again bring us face to face with the neurosis. For the
present we merely wish to suggest that the ‘secondary elaboration’ of
the dream content is the prototype of all these system formations[84].
And let us not forget that beginning at the stage of system formation
there are two origins for every act judged by consciousness, namely the
systematic, and the real but unconscious origin[85].
Wundt[86] remarks that “among the influences which myth everywhere
ascribes to demons the evil ones preponderate, so that according to the
religions of races evil demons are evidently older than good demons.”
Now it is quite possible that the whole conception of demons was derived
from the extremely important relation to the dead. In the further course
of human development the ambivalence inherent in this relation then
manifested itself by allowing two altogether contrary psychic formations
to issue from the same root, namely, the fear of demons and of
_ghosts_, and the reverence for ancestors[87]. Nothing testifies so much
to the influence of mourning on the origin of belief in demons as the
fact that demons were always taken to be the spirits of persons not long
dead. Mourning has a very distinct psychic task to perform, namely, to
detach the memories and expectations of the survivors from the dead.
When this work is accomplished the grief, and with it the remorse and
reproach, lessens, and therefore also the fear of the demon. But the
very spirits which at first were feared as demons now serve a friendlier
purpose; they are revered as ancestors and appealed to for help in times
of distress.
If we survey the relation of survivors to the dead through the course of
the ages, it is very evident that the ambivalent feeling has
extraordinarily abated. We now find it easy to suppress whatever
unconscious hostility towards the dead there may still exist without any
special psychic effort on our part. Where formerly satisfied hate and
painful tenderness struggled with each other, we now find piety, which
appears like a cicatrice and demands: _De mortuis nil nisi_ _bene_.
Only neurotics still blur the mourning for the loss of their dear ones
with attacks of compulsive reproaches which psychoanalysis reveals as
the old ambivalent emotional feeling. How this change was brought about,
and to what extent constitutional changes and real improvement of
familiar relations share in causing the abatement of the ambivalent
feeling, need not be discussed here. But this example would lead us to
assume _that the psychic impulses of primitive man possessed a higher
degree of ambivalence than is found at present among civilized human
beings. With the decline of this ambivalence the taboo, as the
compromise symptom of the ambivalent conflict, also slowly disappeared._
Neurotics who are compelled to reproduce this conflict, together with
the taboo resulting from it, may be said to have brought with them an
atavistic remnant in the form of an archaic constitution the
compensation of which in the interest of cultural demands entails the
most prodigious psychic efforts on their part.
At this point we may recall the confusing information which Wundt
offered us about the double meaning of the word taboo, namely, holy and
unclean (see above). It was supposed that originally the word taboo did
not yet mean holy and unclean but signified something demonic, something
which may not be touched, thus emphasizing a characteristic common to
both extremes of the later conception; this persistent common trait
proves, however, that an original correspondence existed between what
was holy and what was unclean, which only later became differentiated.
In contrast to this, our discussion readily shows that the double
meaning in question belonged to the word taboo from the very beginning
and that it serves to designate a definite ambivalence as well as
everything which has come into existence on the basis of this
ambivalence. Taboo is itself an ambivalent word and by way of supplement
we may add that the established meaning of this word might of itself
have allowed us to guess what we have found as the result of extensive
investigation, namely, that the taboo prohibition is to be explained as
the result of an emotional ambivalence. A study of the oldest languages
has taught us that at one time there were many such words which included
their own contrasts so that they were in a certain sense ambivalent,
though perhaps not exactly in the same sense as the word taboo[88].
Slight vocal modifications of this primitive word containing two
opposite meanings later served to create a separate linguistic
expression for the two opposites originally united in one word.
The word taboo has had a different fate; with the diminished importance
of the ambivalence which it connotes it has itself disappeared, or
rather, the words analogous to it have vanished from the vocabulary. In
a later connection I hope to be able to show that a tangible historic
change is probably concealed behind the fate of this conception; that
the word at first was associated with definite human relations which
were characterized by great emotional ambivalence from which it expanded
to other analogous relations.
Unless we are mistaken, the understanding of taboo also throws light
upon the nature and origin of _conscience_. Without stretching ideas we
can speak of a taboo conscience and a taboo sense of guilt after the
violation of a taboo. Taboo conscience is probably the oldest form in
which we meet the phenomenon of conscience.
For what is ‘conscience’? According to linguistic testimony it belongs
to what we know most surely; in some languages its meaning is hardly to
be distinguished from consciousness.
Conscience is the inner perception of objections to definite wish
impulses that exist in us; but the emphasis is put upon the fact that
this rejection does not have to depend on anything else, that it is
sure of itself. This becomes even plainer in the case of a guilty
conscience, where we become aware of the inner condemnation of such acts
which realized some of our definite wish impulses. Confirmation seems
superfluous here; whoever has a conscience must feel in himself the
justification of the condemnation, and the reproach for the accomplished
action. But this same character is evinced by the attitude of savages
towards taboo. Taboo is a command of conscience, the violation of which
causes a terrible sense of guilt which is as self-evident as its origin
is unknown[89].
It is therefore probable that conscience also originates on the basis of
an ambivalent feeling from quite definite human relations which contain
this ambivalence. It probably originates under conditions which are in
force both for taboo and the compulsion neurosis, that is, one component
of the two contrasting feelings is unconscious and is kept repressed by
the compulsive domination of the other component. This is confirmed by
many things which we have learned from our analysis of neurosis. In the
first place the character of compulsion neurotics shows a predominant
trait of painful conscientiousness which is a symptom of reaction
against the temptation which lurks in the unconscious, and which
develops into the highest degrees of guilty conscience as their illness
grows worse. Indeed, one may venture the assertion that if the origin of
guilty conscience could not be discovered through compulsion neurotic
patients, there would be no prospect of ever discovering it. This task
is successfully solved in the case of the individual neurotic, and we
are confident of finding a similar solution in the case of races.
In the second place we cannot help noticing that the sense of guilt
contains much of the nature of anxiety; without hesitation it may be
described as ‘conscience phobia’. But fear points to unconscious
sources. The psychology of the neuroses taught us that when wish
feelings undergo repression their libido becomes transformed into
anxiety. In addition we must bear in mind that the sense of guilt also
contains something unknown and unconscious, namely the motivation for
the rejection. The character of anxiety in the sense of guilt
corresponds to this unknown quantity.
If taboo expresses itself mainly in prohibitions it may well be
considered self-evident, without remote proof from the analogy with
neurosis that it is based on a positive, desireful impulse. For what
nobody desires to do does not have to be forbidden, and certainly
whatever is expressly forbidden must be an object of desire. If we
applied this plausible theory to primitive races we would have to
conclude that among their strongest temptations were desires to kill
their kings and priests, to commit incest, to abuse their dead and the
like. That is not very probable. And if we should apply the same theory
to those cases in which we ourselves seem to hear the voice of
conscience most clearly we would arouse the greatest contradiction. For
there we would assert with the utmost certainty that we did not feel the
slightest temptation to violate any of these commandments, as for
example, the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, and that we felt nothing
but repugnance at the very idea.
But if we grant the testimony of our conscience the importance it
claims, then the prohibition--the taboo as well as our moral
prohibitions--becomes superfluous, while the existence of a conscience,
in turn, remains unexplained and the connection between conscience,
taboo and neurosis disappears. The net result of this would then be our
present state of understanding unless we view the problem
psychoanalytically.
But if we take into account the following results of psychoanalysis, our
understanding of the problem is greatly advanced. The analysis of
dreams of normal individuals has shown that our own temptation to kill
others is stronger and more frequent than we had suspected and that it
produces psychic effects even where it does not reveal itself to our
consciousness. And when we have learnt that the obsessive rules of
certain neurotics are nothing but measures of self-reassurance and
self-punishment erected against the reinforced impulse to commit murder,
we can return with fresh appreciation to our previous hypothesis that
every prohibition must conceal a desire. We can then assume that this
desire to murder actually exists and that the taboo as well as the moral
prohibition are psychologically by no means superfluous but are, on the
contrary, explained and justified through our ambivalent attitude
towards the impulse to slay.
The nature of this ambivalent relation so often emphasized as
fundamental, namely, that the positive underlying desire is unconscious,
opens the possibility of showing further connections and explaining
further problems. The pyschic processes in the unconscious are not
entirely identical with those known to us from our conscious psychic
life, but have the benefit of certain notable liberties of which the
latter are deprived. An unconscious impulse need not have originated
where we find it expressed, it can spring from an entirely different
place and may originally have referred to other persons and relations,
but through the mechanism of _displacement_, it reaches the point where
it comes to our notice. Thanks to the indestructibility of unconscious
processes and their inaccessibility to correction, the impulse may be
saved over from earlier times to which it was adapted to later periods
and conditions in which its manifestations must necessarily seem
foreign. These are all only hints, but a careful elaboration of them
would show how important they may become for the understanding of the
development of civilization.
In closing these discussions we do not want to neglect to make an
observation that will be of use for later investigations. Even if we
insist upon the essential similarity between taboo and moral
prohibitions we do not dispute that a psychological difference must
exist between them. A change in the relations of the fundamental
ambivalence can be the only reason why the prohibition no longer appears
in the form of a taboo.
In the analytical consideration of taboo phenomena we have hitherto
allowed ourselves to be guided by their demonstrable agreements with
compulsion neurosis; but as taboo is not a neurosis but a social
creation we are also confronted with the task of showing wherein lies
the essential difference between the neurosis and a product of culture
like the taboo.
Here again I will take a single fact as my starting point. Primitive
races fear a punishment for the violation of a taboo, usually a serious
disease or death. This punishment threatens only him who has been guilty
of the violation. It is different with the compulsion neurosis. If the
patient wants to do something that is forbidden to him he does not fear
punishment for himself, but for another person. This person is usually
indefinite, but, by means of analysis, is easily recognized as some one
very near and dear to the patient. The neurotic therefore acts as if he
were altruistic, while primitive man seems egotistical. Only if
retribution fails to overtake the taboo violator spontaneously does a
collective feeling awaken among savages that they are all threatened
through the sacrilege, and they hasten to inflict the omitted punishment
themselves. It is easy for us to explain the mechanism of this
solidarity. It is a question of fear of the contagious example, the
temptation to imitate, that is to say, of the capacity of the taboo to
infect. If some one has succeeded in satisfying the repressed desire,
the same desire must manifest itself in all his companions; hence, in
order to keep down this temptation, this envied individual must be
despoiled of the fruit of his daring. Not infrequently the punishment
gives the executors themselves an opportunity to commit the same
sacrilegious act by justifying it as an expiation. This is really one of
the fundamentals of the human code of punishment which rightly presumes
the same forbidden impulses in the criminal and in the members of
society who avenge his offence.
Psychoanalysis here confirms what the pious were wont to say, that we
are all miserable sinners. How then shall we explain the unexpected
nobility of the neurosis which fears nothing for itself and everything
for the beloved person? Psychoanalytic investigation shows that this
nobility is not primary. Originally, that is to say at the beginning of
the disease, the threat of punishment pertained to one’s own person; in
every case the fear was for one’s own life; the fear of death being only
later displaced upon another beloved person. The process is somewhat
complicated but we have a complete grasp of it. An evil impulse--a death
wish--towards the beloved person is always at the basis of the formation
of a prohibition. This is repressed through a prohibition, and the
prohibition is connected with a certain act which by displacement
usually substitutes the hostile for the beloved person, and the
execution of this act is threatened with the penalty of death. But the
process goes further and the original wish for the death of the beloved
other person is then replaced by fear for his death. The tender
altruistic trait of the neurosis therefore merely _compensates_ for the
opposite attitude of brutal egotism which is at the basis of it. If we
designate as social those emotional impulses which are determined
through regard for another person who is not taken as a sexual object,
we can emphasize the withdrawal of these social factors as an essential
feature of the neurosis, which is later disguised through
overcompensation.
Without lingering over the origin of these social impulses and their
relation to other fundamental impulses of man, we will bring out the
second main characteristic of the neurosis by means of another example.
The form in which taboo manifests itself has the greatest similarity to
the touching phobia of neurotics, the _Délire de toucher_. As a matter
of fact this neurosis is regularly concerned with the prohibition of
sexual touching and psychoanalysis has quite generally shown that the
motive power which is deflected and displaced in the neurosis is of
sexual origin. In taboo the forbidden contact has evidently not only
sexual significance but rather the more, general one of attack, of
acquisition and of personal assertion. If it is prohibited to touch the
chief or something that was in contact with him it means that an
inhibition should be imposed upon the same impulse which on other
occasions expresses itself in suspicious surveillance of the chief and
even in physical ill-treatment of him before his coronation (see above).
_Thus the preponderance of sexual components of the impulse over the
social components is the determining factor of the neurosis._ But the
social impulses themselves came into being through the union of
egotistical and erotic components into special entities.
From this single example of a comparison between taboo and compulsion
neurosis it is already possible to guess the relation between individual
forms of the neurosis and the creations of culture, and in what respect
the study of the psychology of the neurosis is important for the
understanding of the development of culture.
In one way the neuroses show a striking and far-reaching correspondence
with the great social productions of art, religion and philosophy, while
again they seem like distortions of them. We may say that hysteria is a
caricature of an artistic creation, a compulsion neurosis, a caricature
of a religion, and a paranoic delusion, a caricature of a philosophic
system. In the last analysis this deviation goes back to the fact that
the neuroses are asocial formations; they seek to accomplish by private
means what arose in society through collective labour. In analysing the
impulse of the neuroses one learns that motive powers of sexual origin
exercise the determining influence in them, while the corresponding
cultural creations rest upon social impulses and on such as have issued
from the combination of egotistical and sexual components. It seems that
the sexual need is not capable of uniting men in the same way as the
demands of self preservation; sexual satisfaction is in the first place
the private concern of the individual.
Genetically the asocial nature of the neurosis springs from its original
tendency to flee from a dissatisfying reality to a more pleasurable
world of phantasy. This real world which neurotics shun is dominated by
the society of human beings and by the institutions created by them; the
estrangement from reality is at the same time a withdrawal from human
companionship.
CHAPTER III
ANIMISM, MAGIC AND THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT
1
It is a necessary defect of studies which seek to apply the point of
view of psychoanalysis to the mental sciences that they cannot do
justice to either subject. They therefore confine themselves to the rôle
of incentives and make suggestions to the expert which he should take
into consideration in his work. This defect will make itself felt most
strongly in an essay such as this which tries to treat of the enormous
sphere called animism[90].
Animism in the narrower sense is the theory of psychic concepts, and in
the wider sense, of spiritual beings in general. Animatism, the
animation theory of seemingly inanimate nature, is a further
subdivision which also includes animatism and animism. The name animism,
formerly applied to a definite philosophic system, seems to have
acquired its present meaning through E. B. Tylor[91].
What led to the formulation of these names is the insight into the very
remarkable conceptions of nature and the world of those primitive races
known to us from history and from our own times. These races populate
the world with a multitude of spiritual beings which are benevolent or
malevolent to them, and attribute the causation of natural processes to
these spirits and demons; they also consider that not only animals and
plants, but inanimate things as well are animated by them. A third and
perhaps the most important part of this primitive ‘nature philosophy’
seems far less striking to us because we ourselves are not yet far
enough removed from it, though we have greatly limited the existence of
spirits and to-day explain the processes of nature by the assumption of
impersonal physical forces. For primitive people believe in a similar
‘animation’ of human individuals as well. Human beings have souls which
can leave their habitation and enter into other beings; these souls are
the bearers of spiritual activities and are, to a certain extent,
independent of the ‘bodies’. Originally souls were thought of as being
very similar to individuals; only in the course of a long evolution did
they lose their material character and attain a high degree of
‘spiritualization’[92].
Most authors incline to the assumption that these soul conceptions are
the original nucleus of the animistic system, that spirits merely
correspond to souls that have become independent, and that the souls of
animals, plants and things were formed after the analogy of human souls.
How did primitive people come to the peculiarly dualistic fundamental
conceptions on which this animistic system rests? Through the
observation, it is thought, of the phenomena of sleep (with dreams) and
death which resemble sleep, and through the effort to explain these
conditions, which affect each individual so intimately. Above all, the
problem of death must have become the starting point of the formation of
the theory. To primitive man the continuation of
life--immortality--would be self-evident. The conception of death is
something accepted later, and only with hesitation, for even to us it is
still devoid of content and unrealizable. Very likely discussions have
taken place over the part which may have been played by other
observations and experiences in the formation of the fundamental
animistic conceptions such as dream imagery, shadows and reflections,
but these have led to no conclusion[93].
If primitive man reacted to the phenomena that stimulated his reflection
with the formation of conceptions of the soul, and then transferred
these to objects of the outer world, his attitude will be judged to be
quite natural and in no way mysterious. In view of the fact that
animistic conceptions have been shown to be similar among the most
varied races and in all periods, Wundt states that these “are the
necessary psychological product of the myth-forming consciousness, and
primitive animism may be looked upon as the spiritual expression of
man’s natural state in so far as this is at all accessible to our
observation”[94]. Hume has already justified the animation of the
inanimate in his _Natural History of Religions_, where he said: “There
is a universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like
themselves and to transfer to every object those qualities with which
they are familiarly acquainted and of which they are intimately
conscious”[95].
Animism is a system of thought, it gives not only the explanation of a
single phenomenon, but makes it possible to comprehend the totality of
the world from one point, as a continuity. Writers maintain that in the
course of time three such systems of thought, three great world systems
came into being: the animistic (mythological), the religious, and the
scientific. Of these animism, the first system is perhaps the most
consistent and the most exhaustive, and the one which explains the
nature of the world in its entirety. This first world system, of mankind
is now a psychological theory. It would go beyond our scope to show how
much of it can still be demonstrated in the life of to-day, either as a
worthless survival in the form of superstition, or in living form, as
the foundation of our language, our belief, and our philosophy.
It is in reference to the successive stages of these three world systems
that we say that animism in itself was not yet a religion but contained
the prerequisites from which religions were later formed. It is also
evident that myths are based upon animistic foundations, but the
detailed relation of myths to animism seem unexplained in some essential
points.
2
Our psychoanalytic work will begin at a different point. It must not be
assumed that mankind came to create its first world system through a
purely speculative thirst for knowledge. The practical need of mastering
the world must have contributed to this effort. We are therefore not
astonished to learn that something else went hand in hand with the
animistic system, namely the elaboration of directions for making
oneself master of men, animals and things, as well as of their spirits.
S. Reinach[96] wants to call these directions, which are known under the
names of ‘sorcery and magic’, the strategy of animism; With Mauss and
Hubert, I should prefer to compare them to a technique[97].
Can the conceptions of sorcery and magic be separated? It can be done if
we are willing on our own authority to put ourselves above the vagaries
of linguistic usage. Then sorcery is essentially the art of influencing
spirits by treating them like people under the same circumstances, that
is to say by appeasing them, reconciling them, making them more
favourably disposed to one, by intimidating them, by depriving them of
their power and by making them subject to one’s will; all that is
accomplished through the same methods that have been found effective
with living people. Magic, however, is something else; it does not
essentially concern itself with spirits, and uses special means, not
the ordinary psychological method. We can easily guess that magic is the
earlier and the more important part of animistic technique, for among
the means with which spirits are to be treated there are also found the
magic kind[98], and magic is also applied where spiritualization of
nature has not yet, as it seems to us, been accomplished.
Magic must serve the most varied purposes. It must subject the processes
of nature to the will of man, protect the individual against enemies and
dangers, and give him the power to injure his enemies. But the
principles on whose assumptions the magic activity is based, or rather
the principle of magic, is so evident that it was recognized by all
authors. If we may take the opinion of E. B. Tylor at its face value it
can be most tersely expressed in his words: “mistaking an ideal
connection for a real one”. We shall explain this characteristic in the
case of two groups of magic acts.
One of the most widespread magic procedures for injuring an enemy
consists of making an effigy of him out of any kind of material. The
likeness counts for little, in fact any object may be ‘named’ as his
image. Whatever is subsequently done to this image will also happen to
the hated prototype; thus if the effigy has been injured in any place he
will be afflicted by a disease in the corresponding part of the body.
This same magic technique, instead of being used for private enmity can
also be employed for pious purposes and can thus be used to aid the gods
against evil demons. I quote Frazer[99]: “Every night when the sun-god
Ra in ancient Egypt sank to his home in the glowing west he was assailed
by hosts of demons under the leadership of the archfiend Apepi. All
night long he fought them, and sometimes by day the powers of darkness
sent up clouds even into the blue Egyptian sky to obscure his light and
weaken his power. To aid the sun-god in this daily struggle, a ceremony
was daily performed in his temple at Thebes. A figure of his foe Apepi,
represented as a crocodile with a hideous face or a serpent with many
coils, was made of wax, and on it the demon’s name was written in green
ink. Wrapt in a papyrus case, on which another likeness of Apepi had
been drawn in green ink, the figure was then tied up with black hair,
spat upon, hacked with a stone knife and cast on the ground. There the
priest trod on it with his left foot again and again, and then burned it
in a fire made of a certain plant or grass. When Apepi himself had thus
been effectively disposed of, waxen effigies of each of his principle
demons, and of their fathers, mothers, and children, were made and burnt
in the same way. The service accompanied by the recitation of certain
prescribed spells, was repeated not merely morning, noon and night, but
whenever a storm was raging or heavy rain had set in, or black clouds
were stealing across the sky to hide the sun’s bright disk. The fiends
of darkness, clouds and rain, felt the injury inflicted on their images
as if it had been done to themselves; they passed away, at least for a
time, and the beneficent sun-god shone out triumphant once more”[100].
There is a great mass of magic actions which show a similar motivation,
but I shall lay stress upon only two, which have always played a great
rôle among primitive races and which have been partly preserved in the
myths and cults of higher stages of evolution: the art of causing rain
and fruitfulness by magic. Rain is produced by magic means, by imitating
it, and perhaps also by imitating the clouds and storm which produce it.
It looks as if they wanted to ‘play rain’. The Ainos of Japan, for
instance, make rain by pouring out water through a big sieve, while
others fit out a big bowl with sails and oars as if it were a ship,
which is then dragged about the village and gardens. But the
fruitfulness of the soil was assured by magic means by showing it the
spectacle of human sexual intercourse. To cite one out of many examples;
in some part of Java, the peasants used to go out into the fields at
night for sexual intercourse when the rice was about to blossom in order
to stimulate the rice to fruitfulness through their example[101]. At the
same time it was feared that proscribed incestuous relationships would
stimulate the soil to grow weeds and render it unfruitful[102].
Certain negative rules, that is to say magic precautions, must be put
into this first group. If some of the inhabitants of a Dayak village had
set out on a hunt for wild-boars, those remaining behind were in the
meantime not permitted to touch either oil or water with their hands, as
such acts would soften the hunters’ fingers and would let the quarry
slip through their hands[103]. Or when a Gilyak hunter was pursuing game
in the woods, his children were forbidden to make drawings on wood or in
the sand, as the paths in the thick woods might become as intertwined as
the lines of the drawing and the hunter would not find his way
home[104].
The fact that in these as in a great many other examples of magic
influence, distance plays no part, telepathy is taken as a matter of
course--will cause us no difficulties in grasping the peculiarity of
magic.
There is no doubt about what is considered the effective force in all
these examples. It is the _similarity_ between the performed action and
the expected happening. Frazer therefore calls this kind of magic
_imitative_ or _homœopathic_. If I want it to rain I only have to
produce something that looks like rain or recalls rain. In a later phase
of cultural development, instead of these magic conjurations of rain,
processions are arranged to a house of god, in order to supplicate the
saint who dwells there to send rain. Finally also this religious
technique will be given up and instead an effort will be made to find
out what would influence the atmosphere to produce rain.
In another group of magic actions the principle of similarity is no
longer involved, but in its stead there is another principle the nature
of which is well brought out in the following examples.
Another method may be used to injure an enemy. You possess yourself of
his hair, his nails, anything that he has discarded, or even a part of
his clothing, and do something hostile to these things. This is just as
effective as if you had dominated the person himself, and anything that
you do to the things that belong to him must happen to him too.
According to the conception of primitive men a name is an essential part
of a personality; if therefore you know the name of a person or a spirit
you have acquired a certain power over its bearer. This explains the
remarkable precautions and restrictions in the use of names which we
have touched upon in the essay on taboo[105]. In these examples
similarity is evidently replaced by relationship.
The cannibalism of primitive races derives its more sublime motivation
in a similar manner. By absorbing parts of the body of a person through
the act of eating we also come to possess the properties which belonged
to that person. From this there follow precautions and restrictions as
to diet under special circumstances. Thus a pregnant woman will avoid
eating the meat of certain animals because their undesirable properties,
for example, cowardice, might thus be transferred to the child she is
nourishing. It makes no difference to the magic influence whether the
connection is already abolished or whether it had consisted of only one
very important contact. Thus, for instance, the belief in a magic bond
which links the fate of a wound with the weapon which caused it can be
followed unchanged through thousands of years. If a Melanesian gets
possession of the bow by which he was wounded he will carefully keep it
in a cool place in order thus to keep down the inflammation of the
wound. But if the bow has remained in the possession of the enemy it
will certainly be kept in close proximity to a fire in order that the
wound may burn and become thoroughly inflamed. Pliny, in his _Natural
History_, <small>XXVIII</small>, advises spitting on the hand which has caused the
injury if one regrets having injured some one; the pain of the injured
person will then immediately be eased. Francis Bacon, in his _Natural
History_, mentions the generally accredited belief that putting a salve
on the weapon which has made a wound will cause this wound to heal of
itself. It is said that even to-day English peasants follow this
prescription, and that if they have cut themselves with a scythe they
will from that moment on carefully keep the instrument clean in order
that the wound may not fester. In June, 1902, a local English weekly
reported that a woman called Matilde Henry of Norwich accidentally ran
an iron nail into the sole of her foot. Without having the wound
examined or even taking off her stocking she bade her daughter to oil
the nail thoroughly in the expectation that then nothing could happen to
her. She died a few days later of tetanus[106] in consequence of
postponed antisepsis.
The examples from this last group illustrate Frazer’s distinction
between _contagious_ magic and _imitative_ magic. What is considered as
effective in these examples is no longer the similarity, but the
association in space, the contiguity, or at least the imagined
contiguity, or the memory of its existence. But since similarity and
contiguity are the two essential principles of the processes of
association of ideas, it must be concluded that the dominance of
associations of ideas really explains all the madness of the rules of
magic. We can see how true Tylor’s quoted characteristic of magic:
“mistaking an ideal connection for a real one”, proves to be. The same
may be said of Frazer’s idea, who has expressed it in almost the same
terms: “men mistook the order of their ideas for the order of nature,
and hence imagined that the control which they have, or seem to have,
over their thoughts, permitted them to have a corresponding control over
things”[107].
It will at first seem strange that this illuminating explanation of
magic could have been rejected by some authors as unsatisfactory[108].
But on closer consideration we must sustain the objection that the
association theory of magic merely explains the paths that magic
travels, and not its essential nature, that is, it does not explain the
misunderstanding which bids it put psychological laws in place of
natural ones. We are apparently in need here of a dynamic factor; but
while the search for this leads the critics of Frazer’s theory astray,
it will be easy to give a satisfactory explanation of magic by carrying
its association theory further and by entering more deeply into it.
First let us examine the simpler and more important case of imitative
magic. According to Frazer this may be practised by itself, whereas
contagious magic as a rule presupposes the imitative[109]. The motives
which impel one to exercise magic are easily recognized; they are the
wishes of men. We need only assume that primitive man had great
confidence in the power of his wishes. At bottom everything which he
accomplished by magic means must have been done solely because he wanted
it. Thus in the beginning only his wish is accentuated.
In the case of the child which finds itself under analogous psychic
conditions, without being as yet capable of motor activity, we have
elsewhere advocated the assumption that it at first really satisfies
its wishes by means of hallucinations, in that it creates the satisfying
situation through centrifugal excitements of its sensory organs[110].
The adult primitive man knows another way. A motor impulse, the will,
clings to his wish and this will which later will change the face of the
earth in the service of wish fulfilment is now used to represent the
gratification so that one may experience it, as it were, through motor
hallucination. Such a _representation_ of the gratified wish is
altogether comparable to the _play_ of children, where it replaces the
purely sensory technique of gratification. If play and imitative
representation suffice for the child and for primitive man, it must not
be taken as a sign of modesty, in our sense, or of resignation due to
the realization of their impotence, on the contrary; it is the very
obvious result of the excessive valuation of their wish, of the will
which depends upon the wish and of the paths the wish takes. In time the
psychic accent is displaced from the motives of the magic act to its
means, namely to the act itself. Perhaps it would be more correct to say
that primitive man does not become aware of the over-valuation of his
psychic acts until it becomes evident to him through the means
employed. It would also seem as if it were the magic act itself which
compels the fulfilment of the wish by virtue of its similarity to the
object desired. At the stage of animistic thinking there is as yet no
way of demonstrating objectively the true state of affairs, but this
becomes possible at later stages when, though such procedures are still
practised, the psychic phenomenon of scepticism already manifests itself
as a tendency to repression. At that stage men will acknowledge that the
conjuration of spirits avails nothing unless accompanied by belief, and
that the magic effect of prayer fails if there is no piety behind
it[111].
The possibility of a contagious magic which depends upon contiguous
association will then show us that the psychic valuation of the wish and
the will has been extended to all psychic acts which the will can
command. We may say that at present there is a general over-valuation of
all psychic processes, that is to say there is an attitude towards the
world which according to our understanding of the relation of reality to
thought must appear like an over-estimation of the latter. Objects as
such are over-shadowed by the ideas representing them; what takes place
in the latter must also happen to the former, and the relations which
exist between ideas are also postulated as to things. As thought does
not recognize distances and easily brings together in one act of
consciousness things spatially and temporally far removed, the magic
world also puts itself above spatial distance by telepathy, and treats a
past association as if it were a present one. In the animistic age the
reflection of the inner world must obscure that other picture of the
world which we believe we recognize.
Let us also point out that the two principles of association, similarity
and contiguity, meet in the higher unity of contact. Association by
contiguity is contact in the direct sense, and association by similarity
is contact in the transferred sense. Another identity in the psychic
process which has not yet been grasped by us is probably concealed in
the use of the same word for both kinds of associations. It is the same
range of the concept of contact which we have found in the analysis of
taboo[112].
In summing up we may now say that the principle which controls magic,
and the technique of the animistic method of thought, is ‘Omnipotence of
Thought’.
3
I have adopted the term ‘Omnipotence of Thought’ from a highly
intelligent man, a former sufferer from compulsion neurosis, who, after
being cured through psychoanalytic treatment, was able to demonstrate
his efficiency and good sense[113]. He had coined this phrase to
designate all those peculiar and uncanny occurrences which seemed to
pursue him just as they pursue others afflicted with his malady. Thus if
he happened to think of a person, he was actually confronted with this
person as if he had conjured him up; if he inquired suddenly about the
state of health of an acquaintance whom he had long missed he was sure
to hear that this acquaintance had just died, so that he could believe
that the deceased had drawn his attention to himself by telepathic
means; if he uttered a half meant imprecation against a stranger, he
could expect to have him die soon thereafter and burden him with the
responsibility for his death. He was able to explain most of these cases
in the course of the treatment, he could tell how the illusion had
originated, and what he himself had contributed towards furthering his
superstitious expectations[114]. All compulsion neurotics are
superstitious in this manner and often against their better judgment.
The existence of omnipotence of thought is most clearly seen in
compulsion neurosis, where the results of this primitive method of
thought are most often found or met in consciousness. But we must guard
against seeing in this a distinguishing characteristic of this neurosis,
for analytic investigation reveals the same mechanism in the other
neuroses. In every one of the neuroses it is not the reality of the
experience but the reality of the thought which forms the basis for the
symptom formation. Neurotics live in a special world in which, as I have
elsewhere expressed it, only the ‘neurotic standard of currency’ counts,
that is to say, only things intensively thought of or affectively
conceived are effective with them, regardless of whether these things
are in harmony with outer reality. The hysteric repeats in his attacks
and fixates through his symptoms, occurrences which have taken place
only in his phantasy, though in the last analysis they go back to real
events or have been built up from them. The neurotic’s guilty conscience
is just as incomprehensible if traced to real misdeeds. A compulsion
neurotic may be oppressed by a sense of guilt which is appropriate to a
wholesale murderer, while at the same time he acts towards his fellow
beings in a most considerate and scrupulous manner, a behaviour which he
evinced since his childhood. And yet his sense of guilt is justified; it
is based upon intensive and frequent death wishes which unconsciously
manifest themselves towards his fellow beings. It is motivated from the
point of view of unconscious thoughts, but not of intentional acts. Thus
the omnipotence of thought, the over-estimation of psychic processes as
opposed to reality, proves to be of unlimited effect in the neurotic’s
affective life and in all that emanates from it. But if we subject him
to psychoanalytic treatment, which makes his unconscious thoughts
conscious to him he refuses to believe that thoughts are free and is
always afraid to express evil wishes lest they be fulfilled in
consequence of his utterance. But through this attitude as well as
through the superstition which plays an active part in his life he
reveals to us how close he stands to the savage who believes he can
change the outer world by a mere thought of his.
The primary obsessive actions of these neurotics are really altogether
of a magical nature. If not magic they are at least anti-magic and are
destined to ward off the expectation of evil with which the neurosis is
wont to begin. Whenever I was able to pierce these secrets it turned out
that the content of this expectation of evil was death. According to
Schopenhauer the problem of death stands at the beginning of every
philosophy; we have heard that the formation of the soul conception and
of the belief in demons which characterize animism, are also traced back
to the impression which death makes upon man. It is hard to decide
whether these first compulsive and protective actions follow the
principle of similarity, or of contrast, for under the conditions of the
neurosis they are usually distorted through displacement upon some
trifle, upon some action which in itself is quite insignificant[115].
The protective formulæ of the compulsion neurosis also have a
counterpart in the incantations of magic. But the evolution of
compulsive actions may be described by pointing out how these actions
begin as a spell against evil wishes which are very remote from anything
sexual, only to end up as a substitute for forbidden sexual activity,
which they imitate as faithfully as possible.
If we accept the evolution of man’s conceptions of the universe
mentioned above, according to which the _animistic_ phase is
_succeeded_ by the _religious_, and this in turn by the _scientific_, we
have no difficulty in following the fortunes of the ‘omnipotence of
thought’ through all these phases. In the animistic stage man ascribes
omnipotence to himself; in the religious he has ceded it to the gods,
but without seriously giving it up, for he reserves to himself the right
to control the gods by influencing them in some way or other in the
interest of his wishes. In the scientific attitude towards life there is
no longer any room for man’s omnipotence; he has acknowledged his
smallness and has submitted to death as to all other natural necessities
in a spirit of resignation. Nevertheless, in our reliance upon the power
of the human spirit which copes with the laws of reality, there still
lives on a fragment of this primitive belief in the omnipotence of
thought.
In retracing the development of libidinous impulses in the individual
from its mature form back to its first beginnings in childhood, we at
first found an important distinction which is stated in the _Three
Contributions to the Theory of Sex_[116]. The manifestations of sexual
impulses can be recognized from the beginning, but at first they are not
yet directed to any outer object. Each individual component of the
sexual impulse works for a gain in pleasure and finds its gratification
in its own body. This stage is called _autoerotism_ and is distinguished
from the stage of object selection.
In the course of further study it proved to be practical and really
necessary to insert a third stage between these two or, if one prefers,
to divide the first stage of autoerotism into two. In this intermediary
stage, the importance of which increases the more we investigate it, the
sexual impulses which formerly were separate, have already formed into a
unit and have also found an object; but this object is not external and
foreign to the individual, but is his own ego, which is formed at this
period. This new stage is called _narcism_, in view of the pathological
fixation of this condition which may be observed later on. The
individual acts as if he were in love with himself; for the purposes of
our analysis the ego impulses and the libidinous wishes cannot yet be
separated from each other.
Although this narcistic stage, in which the hitherto dissociated sexual
impulses combine into a unity and take the ego as their object, cannot
as yet be sharply differentiated, we can already surmise that the
narcistic organization is never altogether given up again. To a certain
extent man remains narcistic, even after he had found outer subjects for
his libido, and the objects on which he bestows it represent, as it
were, emanations of the libido which remain with his ego and which can
be withdrawn into it. The state of being in love, so remarkable
psychologically, and the normal prototype of the psychoses, corresponds
to the highest stage of these emanations, in contrast to the state of
self-love.
This high estimation of psychic acts found among primitives and
neurotics, which we feel to be an overestimation, may now appropriately
be brought into relation to narcism, and interpreted as an essential
part of it. We would say that among primitive people thinking is still
highly sexualized and that this accounts for the belief in the
omnipotence of thought, the unshaken confidence in the capacity to
dominate the world and the inaccessibility to the obvious facts which
could enlighten man as to his real place in the world. In the case of
neurotics a considerable part of this primitive attitude had remained as
a constitutional factor, while on the other hand the sexual repression
occurring in them has brought about a new sexualization of the processes
of thought. In both cases, whether we deal with an original libidinous
investment of thought or whether the same process has been accomplished
regressively, the psychic results are the same, namely, intellectual
narcism and omnipotence of thought[117].
If we may take the now established omnipotence of thought among
primitive races as a proof of their narcism, we may venture to compare
the various evolutionary stages of man’s conception of the universe with
the stages of the libidinous evolution of the individual. We find that
the animistic phase corresponds in time as well as in content with
narcism, the religious phase corresponds to that stage of object finding
which is characterized by dependence on the parents, while the
scientific stage has its full counterpart in the individual’s stage of
maturity where, having renounced the pleasure principle and having
adapted himself to reality, he seeks his object in the outer world[118].
Only in one field has the omnipotence of thought been retained in our
own civilization, namely in art. In art alone it still happens that man,
consumed by his wishes, produces something similar to the gratification
of these wishes, and this playing, thanks to artistic illusion, calls
forth effects as if it were something real. We rightly speak of the
magic of art and compare the artist with a magician. But this comparison
is perhaps more important than it claims to be. Art, which certainly did
not begin as art for art’s sake, originally served tendencies which
to-day have for the greater part ceased to exist. Among these we may
suspect various magic intentions[119].
4
Animism, the first conception of the world which man succeeded in
evolving, was therefore psychological. It did not yet require any
science to establish it, for science sets in only after we have realized
that we do not know the world and that we must therefore seek means of
getting to know it. But animism was natural and self-evident to
primitive man; he knew how the things of the world were constituted, and
as man conceived himself to be. We are therefore prepared to find that
primitive man transferred the structural relations of his own psyche to
the outer world[120], and on the other hand we may make the attempt to
transfer back into the human soul what animism teaches about the nature
of things.
Magic, the technique of animism, clearly and unmistakably shows the
tendency of forcing the laws of psychic life upon the reality of things,
under conditions where spirits did not yet have to play any rôle, and
could still be taken as objects of magic treatment. The assumptions of
magic are therefore of older origin than the spirit theory, which forms
the nucleus of animism. Our psychoanalytic view here coincides with a
theory of R. R. Marett, according to which animism is preceded by a
pre-animistic stage the nature of which is best indicated by the name
Animatism (the theory of general animation). We have practically no
further knowledge of pre-animism, as no race has yet been found without
conceptions of spirits[121].
While magic still retains the full omnipotence of ideas, animism has
ceded part of this omnipotence to spirits and thus has started on the
way to form a religion. Now what could have moved primitive man to this
first act of renunciation? It could hardly have been an insight into the
incorrectness of his assumptions, for he continued to retain the magic
technique.
As pointed out elsewhere, spirits and demons were nothing but the
projection of primitive man’s emotional impulses[122]; he personified
the things he endowed with effects, populated the world with them and
then rediscovered his inner psychic processes outside himself, quite
like the ingenious paranoiac Schreber, who found the fixations and
detachments of his libido reflected in the fates of the ‘God-rays’ which
he invented[123].
As on a former occasion[124], we want to avoid the problem as to the
origin of the tendency to project psychic processes into the outer
world. It is fair to assume, however, that this tendency becomes
stronger where the projection into the outer world offers psychic
relief. Such a state of affairs can with certainty be expected if the
impulses struggling for omnipotence have come into conflict with each
other, for then they evidently cannot all become omnipotent. The morbid
process in paranoia actually uses the mechanism of projection to solve
such conflicts which arise in the psychic life. However, it so happens
that the model case of such a conflict between two parts of an
antithesis is the ambivalent attitude which we have analysed in detail
in the situation of the mourner at the death of one dea
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