 Tota man taboo resemblances between the psychic lives of savages and neurotics by professor Dr. Sigmund Freud translated by A. A. Brill. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Tota man taboo chapter 2 taboo and the ambivalence of emotion part 2. A. The treatment of enemies inclined as we may have been to ascribe to savage and semi-savage races uninhibited and remorseless cruelty towards their enemies. It is of great interest to us to learn that with them to 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 one reconciliation with the slain enemy, two restrictions, three acts of expiation and purifications of the manslayer, and four certain ceremonial rights. 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 practiced 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 quote from Fraser 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 spilled and your head would not have been cut off. And similar customs are found among the Palu in Celebes. The gallows sacrifice to the spirits of their dead enemies before they return to their home villages. Other races have found methods of making friends guardians and protectors out of their former enemies after they are dead. This consists in the tender treatment of the severed heads of which many wild tribes of Borneo boast. When the sea day acts 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 tidbits and cigars. The dead enemy is repeatedly untreated to hate his former friends and to bestow his love upon his new hosts because he has now become one of them. It would be a great mistake to think that any derision is attached to this treatment. Horrible though it may seem to us. Observers have been struck by the morning for the enemy after he has slain in Scout among several of the wild tribes of North America. When a Choctaw had killed an enemy, he began a month's morning during which he submitted himself to serious restrictions. The Dakota Indians mourned in the same way. One authority mentions that the Osaga Indians after morning for their own dead mourned for their bows as if they had been friends. Before proceeding to the other classes of taboo customs for the treatment of enemies, we must define our position in regard to a pertinent objection. Both Fraser 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 III. From this superstition, all the reconciliation rules as well as the restrictions and expiations which we shall discuss later can be logically deduced. Moreover, the ceremonies included in the fourth group also argue for this interpretation, since the only explanation of which they admit is the effort to drive away the spirits of the slain, which pursue the manslayers. Besides the savages themselves directly admit their fear of the spirits of their slain foes and trace back the taboo customs under discussion to this fear. The subjection 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 the subjection 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 behavior towards enemies. We see in them manifestations of repentance, a 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 into his mouth. Among some day act 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 Logia, 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 vitals 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 Toa Repe or Motu Motu tribes of 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 Fraser, 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 clubhouse, while the inhabitants of his village gather about him and celebrate his victory with songs and dances. He must not touch anyone, 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 an enrichment. 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 16 days, he was not allowed to touch meat or salt to look at a fire or to speak to anyone. He lived alone in the woods where he was weighted 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 17th 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 freeholder in medieval society really conveys a good idea of the taboo of savages. The current explanation of all these rules of reconciliation, restriction, expiation and purification combines two principles, namely the extension of the taboo of the dead to everything that has come into contact with him and the fear of the spirit of the slain. In what combination these two elements are to explain the ceremonial, whether they are to be considered as of equal value or whether one of them is primary and the other secondary and which one is nowhere stated, nor would this be an easy matter to decide. In contradistinction to all this, we emphasize the unity which our interpretation gains by reducing all these rules from the ambivalence of the emotion of savages toward their enemies. The taboo of rulers, the behavior of primitive races toward their chiefs, kings and priests is controlled by two principles which seem rather to supplement than to contradict each other. They must both be guarded and be guarded against. Both objects are accomplished through innumerable rules of taboo. Why one must guard against rulers is already known to us because they are the bearers of that mysterious and dangerous magic power which communicates itself by contact, like an electrical charge, bringing death and destruction to anyone 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 newbies 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 bear 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 and counter distinction 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 scruffy law whence it was called the king's evil. Neither Queen Elizabeth, nor any of her successors, renounced this part of the royal prerogative. Charles first 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 scruffy law attained their greatest vogue. This king is said to have touched close to 100,000 victims of scruffy law in the course of his reign. The crush of those seeking to be cured used to be so great that on one occasion, six or seven patients suffered death by suffocation instead of being healed. The skeptical king of Orange, William III, who became king of England after the banishment of the stewards, refused to exercise the spell. On the one occasion when he consented to practice the touch, he did so with the words, May God give you better health and more sense. The following account will bear witness to the terrible effect of touching by virtue of which a person, even though unintentionally, becomes active against his king or against what belongs to him. A chief of high rank and great holiness in New Zealand happened to leave the remains of his meal by the roadside. A young slave came along, a strong, healthy fellow who saw what was left over and started to eat it. Hardly had he finished when a horrified spectator informed him of his offense in eating the meal of the chief. The man had been a strong, brave warrior, but as soon as he heard this, he collapsed and was afflicted by terrible convulsions from which he died towards sunset of the following day. A Maori woman ate a certain fruit and then learned that it came from a place on which there was a taboo. She cried out that the spirit of the chief whom she had thus offended would surely kill her. This incident occurred in the afternoon and on the next day at 12 o'clock she was dead. The tinderbox 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 tinderbox was, they all died of fright. It is hardly astonishing that the need was felt to isolate dangerous persons like chiefs and priests by building a wall around them which made them inaccessible to others. We surmise that this wall, which originally was constructed out of taboo rules, still exists today 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 wheel and woe of his subjects. Strictly speaking, he is a person who regulates the course of the world. His people have to thank him not only for rain and sunshine, which allow the fruits of the earth to grow, but also for the wind, which brings the ships to their shores and for the solid ground on which they set their feet. These savage kings are endowed with a wealth of power and an ability to bestow happiness, which only God's 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 Fraser, 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. Worship is a God one day, he is killed as a criminal the next, but in this changed behavior 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 trampling 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 feathering and paralyzing a holy ruler through taboo ceremonial seems to have been reached to the life routine of the Mikado of Japan as it existed in earlier centuries. A description which is now over 200 years old relates quote from Kemper, history of Japan. 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 the body at that time has 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 all together 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 tranquility 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. End quote. 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 the shipping would be disturbed. It is his function to keep storms in check and in general to see to an even healthy condition of the atmosphere. The more powerful a king of Luongo is, says Bastion, 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 role among them. But two examples of taboos 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 de Alice, 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, comings and nail pairings had to be buried under a lucky tree. He could not touch the dead go into the open with a bare head and similar prohibitions. His wife, the flamenica also had her own prohibitions. She was not allowed to ascend more than three steps on a certain kind of stairs and on certain holidays, she could not comb her hair. The leather for her shoes could not be taken from any animal that had died a natural death, but only from one that had been slaughtered or sacrificed. When she heard thunder, she was unclean until she had made an expiatory sacrifice. The old kings of Ireland were subject to a series of very curious restrictions, the observance of which was expected to bring every blessing to the country, while their violation entailed every form of evil. The complete description of these taboos is given in the book of rights, of which the oldest manuscript copies bear the dates 1390 and 1418. The prohibitions are very detailed and concern certain activities specified places and times. In some cities, for instance, the king cannot stay on a certain day of the week, while at some specified hour this or that river may not be crossed, or again, there is a plane on which he cannot camp a full nine days, etc. Among many savage races, the severity of the taboo restrictions for the priest kings has had results of historic importance, which are especially interesting from our point of view. The honor of being a priest king ceased to be desirable. The person in line for the succession often used every means to escape it. Thus in Cambodia, where there is a fire and water king, it is often necessary to use force to compel the successor to accept the honor. On new way 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 honor. Thus it is related of a certain chief that he used to go armed day and night and resist by force every attempt to place him on the throne. Among the Negroes of Sierra Leon, the resistance against accepting the kingly honor was so great that most of the tribes were compelled to make strangers their kings. Fraser makes these conditions responsible for the fact that in the development of history, a separation of the original creased kingship into a spiritual and a secular power finally took place. Kings crushed by the burden of their holiness, became capable of exercising their power over real things and had to leave this to inferior but executive persons who were willing to renounce the honors of royal dignity. From these there grew up the secular rulers, while the spiritual overlordship, 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 canceled 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 an 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 a special 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 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 others. As a result of this, contradictions arise at which the intellect of savages takes no more offense 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, but the typical case of an ambivalent, effective 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 learned from Fraser that the savage timmies of Sierra Leone reserved 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 trade in the attitude of primitive races for 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 the 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 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 thralldom 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 San Gio 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 today to express themselves on this point. Why the emotional attitude toward 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. Fraser 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 Fraser himself does not consider his facts altogether convincing. Christian myths are said to have been still influenced by the aftereffects of this evolution of kings. End of chapter two, part two, read by Mary Schneider. Totem and taboo resemblances between the psychic lives of savages and neurotics by professor Dr. Sigmund Freud translated by A. A. Brill. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Totem and taboo, chapter two, taboo and the ambivalence of emotions, part three. See, 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 mourners for the dead. Among the Mary, anyone 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 his back. Occasionally, he could be fed by another person who helped him to his food without stretched 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 contains 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 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 priest kings were subject to the same restrictions during the exercise of holy functions. In the taboo of the dead on the island of Tonga the abatement and gradual abolition of the prohibitions through the individual's own taboo power are clearly shown. A person who touched the corpse of a dead chieftain was unclean for ten months. But if he was himself a chief he was unclean for only three, four or five months according to the rank of the 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 anyone 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. 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 shoe-swap 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 anyone 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 agotenos who live in 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 Maki'o, British New Guinea, a widower forfeits all civil rights and lives like an outlaw. He may not tend to 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. 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 Samajis in Siberia and the Todas in South India, the Mongolians of Tartary and the Tuaregs of Sahara, the Aeno of Japan and the Acamba in Nandi in Central Africa, the Tingwanese in the Philippines and the inhabitants of the Nicarbari Islands and of Madagascar in Borneo. 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 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. At first, it is not easy to guess why the mention of the name should be abominated but the dangers associated with it have called into being a whole series of interesting and important expedients to avoid this. Thus the Maasai 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 in Adelaide and in Counter 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 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 Guikuru 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. Furthermore, if the deceased had the same name as an animal or object, et cetera 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 Daprashover spent among the Abupans in Paraguay the name for Jaguar was changed three times and the words for crocodile thorns and animal slaughter underwent a similar fate. 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 reawaken the names of the deceased after a long period of mourning. They are bestowed upon children who are 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 to consistently conclude that when two things have identical names a deeper correspondence between them must exist. Numerous peculiarities of normal behavior 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. As was to be expected the compulsion neurotics behave just like savages in regard to names. They show the full complex sensitiveness toward 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 fantasy 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 handwriting so that she finally gave up writing. Thus it no longer seems strange to us that savages should consider a dead person's name as a part of his personality and that it should be subjected to the same taboo as the deceased. Calling a dead person by name can also be traced back to contact with him so that we can turn our attention to the more inclusive problem of why this contact is visited with such a severe taboo. The nearest explanation would point to the natural horror which a corpse inspires especially in view of the changes so soon noticeable after death. Morning for a dead person must also be considered as a sufficient motive for everything which has referenced to him. But horror of the corpse evidently does not cover all the details of taboo rules and morning can never explain to us why the mention of the dead is a severe insult to his survivors. On the contrary, morning loves to preoccupy itself with the deceased to elaborate his memory and preserve it for the longest possible time. Something besides morning 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 out from the statements of the morning 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 practice a host of ceremonies to keep him off and banish him. They look upon the mention of his name as a conjuration which must result in his immediate presence. 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. 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 one's expression from the fear of his soul now turned into a demon. With this understanding we approach one's conception who as we have heard sees the nature of taboo and the fear of demons. The assumption which this theory makes namely that immediately after death the beloved member of the 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. Westermark who in my opinion gives altogether too little consideration to taboo makes this statement. Quote, on the whole facts lead me to conclude that the dead are more frequently regarded as enemies than as friends and that Givans 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 members of their clan. End quote. Our client Paul 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. 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. This 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 rancor 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. Client Paul 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 Westermark, this question is easily answered. Quote, 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 them with diseases in order to be reunited 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. End quote. Our study of psychoneurotic disturbances points to a more comprehensive explanation which includes that of Westermark. When a wife loses her husband or a daughter or mother, it not infrequently happens that the survivor is afflicted with tormenting scruples called obsessive reproaches, which raise a 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 emotion. 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 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 defense against it is accomplished by displacement upon the object of hostility, namely the dead. We call this defense 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 defense 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 events 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-defense. We have learned to understand part of the taboo regulations as temptation fears. A dead person is defenseless, which must act as an incitement to satisfy hostile desires entertained against him. This temptation has to be opposed by the prohibition, but Westermark 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 in the unconscious mode of thinking, even a natural death is perceived as murder. The person was killed by evil wishes. Anyone 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. A little while ago, we challenged once 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 projection of hostile feelings which the survivor entertains towards the dead. The double feeling, tenderness and hostility against the deceased, which we consider well founded, endeavors 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 someone 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 would explain the origin of demons by projection. The offenses 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. Four, 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 defense. 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 Veltenchang, a 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 a 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 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. One to remarks that, quote, 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, end quote. 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. 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 has accomplished the grief and with it the remorse and reproach lessons 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 secretaries and demands de mor tuis neo-nissi banning. Only neurotics still blur the mourning for the loss of the dear ones with the attacks of compulsory approaches which psychoanalysis reveals as the old ambivalent emotional feeling. How this change was brought about into 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 won't offer us about the double meaning of the word taboo, namely holy and unclean. 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 discussions readily show 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. 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 planer 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 characteristic is evidenced 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. 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 enforced 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 neuroses. 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 and 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, desirable 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 apply 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 learned 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 psychic 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 someone very near and dear to the patient. The neurotic therefore acts as if he were altruistic, while the 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 punishments 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 someone 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 at 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 offense. 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 pertain 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 delir de touche. 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. 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 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 labor. In analyzing the impulses in 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 neuroses springs from its original tendency to flee from a dissatisfying reality to a more pleasurable world of fantasy. 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. This is the end of part three of chapter two and the end of chapter two as a whole, read by Mary Schneider.