 introductory notes of Totem and Tabu. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Mary Schneider. Totem and Tabu resemblances between the psychic lives of savages and neurotics by Professor Dr. Sigmund Freud. Authorized English translation with introduction by A. A. Brill. introductory notes. Author's preface. The essays treated here appeared under the subtitle of this book in the first numbers of the periodical imago edited by me. They represent my first efforts to apply viewpoints and results of psychoanalysis to unexplained problems of racial psychology. In method this book contrasts with that of W. Wunt and the works of the Zurich psychoanalytic school. The former tries to accomplish the same object through assumptions and procedures from non-atalytic psychology while the latter follow the opposite course and strive to settle problems of individual psychology by referring to material of racial psychology. I am pleased to say that the first stimulus for my own works came from these two sources. I am fully aware of the shortcomings of these essays. I shall not touch upon those which are characteristic of first efforts and 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 cooperation. 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 gave 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 delucidation 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 religious 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 today 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. Translators introduction. When one reviews the history of psychoanalysis one finds that it had its inception in the study of morbid mental states. Beginning with the observation of hysteria and other neuroses, Professor Freud gradually extended his investigations to normal psychology and evolved new concepts and new methods of study. The neurotic symptoms were no longer imaginary troubles the nature of which one could not grasp but were conceived as mental and emotional maladjustments to one's environment. The stamp of degeneracy impressed upon neurotics by other schools of medicine was altogether eradicated. Deeper investigation showed conclusively that a person might become neurotic if subjected to certain environments and that there was no definite dividing line between normal and abnormal. The hysterical symptoms, obsessions, doubts, phobias, as well as hallucinations of the insane show the same mechanisms as those similar psychic structures which one constantly encounters in normal persons in the form of mistakes in talking, reading, writing, forgetting, dreams, and wit. The dream always highly valued by the populace and as much despised by the educated classes has a definite structure and meaning when subjected to analysis. Professor Freud's monumental work, The Interpretation of Dreams marked a new epoch in the history of mental science. One might use the same words in reference to his profound analysis of wit. Faulty psychic actions, dreams, and wit are products of the unconscious mental activity and like neurotic or psychotic manifestations represent efforts at adjustment to one's environment. The slip of the tongue shows that on account of unconscious inhibitions, the individual concerned is unable to express his true thoughts. The dream is a distorted or plain expression of those wishes which are prohibited in the waking state, 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 forever strives to express itself. Whenever the individual finds it is 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 fantasies when applied to the production of racial fantasies like myths and fairy tales seem to indicate that the first impulse to form myths was due to the same emotional strivings which produced dreams, fantasies, and symptoms. Further study in this direction has shown 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 acknowledging my indebtedness to Mr. Alfred B. Kuttner for the invaluable assistance he rendered in the translation of this work. A. A. Bril. End of the introductory notes. Chapter one of Totem and Taboo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud. Chapter one, 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 mediums 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 neighbors, 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 advance 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 rigor 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 small sets 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. Most rarely the totem is a plant or a force of nature, rain or 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 totem. 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 social obligations of an Australian. It extends on the one hand beyond the tribal relationship and on the other hand it supersedes consanguine relationships. The totem is not limited to district or locality. The members of a totem may live separated from one another and on friendly terms with adherence of other totems. Footnote. This very brief extract of the totemic system cannot be left without some elucidation and without discussing its limitations. The name totem or totem was first learned from the North American Indians by the Englishman Jay Long in 1791. The subject has gradually acquired great scientific interest and is called forth a copious literature. I refer especially to totemism and exogamy by J. G. Fraser four volumes 1910 and the books and articles of Andrew Lang for example the secret of totem 1905. The credit for having recognized the significance of totemism for the ancient history of man belongs to the Scotchman Jay Ferguson MacLennan. Exterior to Australia totemic institutions were found and are still observed among North American Indians as well as among the races of the Polynesian island group in East India and in a large part of Africa. Many traces and survivals otherwise hard to interpret lead to the conclusion that totemism also once existed among the aboriginal Aryan and Semitic races of Europe so that many investigators are inclined to recognize in totemism a necessary phase of human development through which every race has passed. How then did prehistoric man come to acquire totem? That is how did he come to make his descent from this or that animal foundation of his social duties and as we shall hear of his sexual restrictions as well. Many different theories have been advanced to explain this a review of which the reader may find in one's vulgar psychology. Volume two mythus under religion. I promise soon to make the problem of totemism a subject of special study in which an effort will be made to solve it by applying the psychoanalytic method. Not only is the theory of totemism controversial but the very facts concerning it are hardly to be expressed in such general statements as were attempted above. There is hardly an assertion to which one would not have to add exceptions and contradictions but it must not be forgotten that even the most primitive and conservative races are in a certain sense old and have a long period behind them during which whatever was aboriginal with them has undergone much development and distortion. Thus among those races who still events it we find totemism today in the most manifold states of decay and disintegration. We observe that fragments of it have passed over to other social and religious institutions where it may exist in fixed forms but far removed from its original nature. The difficulty then consists in the fact that it is not altogether easy to decide what in the actual conditions is to be taken as a faithful copy of the significant past and what is to be considered as a secondary distortion of it. End footnote. 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 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 have nothing to do with totemism but that it was added to 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 prohibitions of the totem for example 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 Fraser's book will show how seriously such trespasses are treated by these savages who according to our standard are otherwise very immoral. Quote in Australia the regular penalty for sexual intercourse with the person of a forbidden clan is death. It matters not whether the woman is of the same local group or has been captured in war from another tribe. A man of the wrong clan who uses her as his wife is hunted down and killed by his clansmen and so is the woman. Though in some cases if they succeed in eluding capture for a certain time the offense may be condoned. In the Tata Thigh 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 importance and are punished by death. Unquote. B. As the same severe punishment is also made it 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 sister who are emu like himself are therefore made impossible for a son of this marriage. Footnote. But the father who is a kangaroo is free at least under this prohibition to commit incest with his daughters who are emu. In the case of a paternal inheritance of the totem the father would be kangaroo as well as his children. Then incest with the daughter would be forbidden to the father and incest with the mother would be left open to the son. These consequences of the totem prohibition seem to indicate that the maternal inheritance is older than the paternal one for there are grounds for assuming that the totem prohibitions are directed first of all against the incestuous desires of the son. And footnote. 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 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 consanguously 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 role of the totem the animal as ancestor is taken very seriously. Everybody descended from the same totem is consanguinous. 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 in 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 become so uncertain that we cannot dispense with some other basis for the prohibition. It is therefore not superfluous to know 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 custom of these tribes as well as 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 relation 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 at 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 an indication of those marriage institutions which the reverend 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. Westermark in his history of human marriage oppose the conclusions which others have drawn from the existence of group relationship names the best authorities on the Australian savages are agreed that the classificatory relationship names must be considered as survivals from the period of group marriages and according to Spencer and Gillan in the native tribes of central Australia 1899 a certain form of group marriage can be established as still existing today among the tribes of the Urubuna and the Deiri. 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 that 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 freak trees. Each of these marriage groups is exogamous and includes a majority of totem groups. Usually each marriage group is again divided into two subclasses sub freightries and the whole tribe is therefore divided into four classes the subclasses thus standing between the freightries and the totem groups. The typical and often very intricate scheme of organization of an Australian tribe therefore looks as follows this is a description of the illustration that is within the text here. There are three levels to the illustration. The first level is labeled freightries and has two divisions small letter a and small letter b. Stemming from a are two elements small letter c and small letter d. From small b extend two elements letter e and letter f. c, d, e and f are labeled sub freightries. From each of c, d, e and f three further subcategories. From c alpha beta and gamma from d delta epsilon and eta from e one two and three from f four five and six. These last 12 are labeled totem. There is a dotted arcing line running from c to e and another from d to f. And description of the illustration. The 12 totem groups are brought under four subclasses and two main classes. All the divisions are exogamous. The subclass c forms an exogamous union 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 12 totem groups, assuming the same number of people in each group, every member of a group would have 11 twelfths of all the women of the tribe to choose from. The existence of the two freightries reduces this number to six twelfths or one half. A man of the totem alpha can only marry a woman from the groups one to six. With the introduction of the two subclasses, the selection sinks to three twelfths or one fourth. A man of the totem alpha must limit his marriage choice to the women of the totems four, five, or six. 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 accustomed, the complicated institutions of the marriage classes, with their subdivisions and the conditions attached to them, seem to spring from legislation with a definite aim in view. They have perhaps taken up afresh the task of incest prohibition because the influence of the totem was on the wane. And while the totem system is, as we know, the basis of all other social obligations and moral restrictions of the tribe, the importance of the freightries 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 brothers and sisters, two cousins, and invented for them the grades of spiritual kinship. It would hardly serve our purpose to go into the extraordinarily intricate and unsettled discussion concerning the origin and significance of the marriage classes, or to go more deeply into their relation to totemism. It is sufficient for our purposes to point out the great care expended by the Australians, as well as by other savage people, to prevent incest. 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 them. 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 behavior 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 the 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 Leber's island, one of the new Hebrides, the boy leaves his maternal home at a fixed age and moves to the clubhouse, where he then 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 sisters, 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 attain in New Caledonia. If brother and sister meet, she flees into the bush and he passes by without turning his head toward her. On the Gazella Peninsula in New Britain, a sister beginning with her marriage may no longer speak with her brother, nor does she utter his name but designates him by means of a circumlocution. In New Mecklenburg, some cousins are subject to such restrictions which also apply to brothers and sisters. They may neither approach each other, shake hands, nor give each other presence, though they may talk to each other at a distance of several paces. The penalty for incest with a sister is death through hanging. These rules of avoidance are especially severe in the Fiji Islands where they concern not only consanguine 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. Among the Bhattas of Sumatra, these laws of avoidance affect all near relationships. For instance, it would be most offensive for a Bhatan 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 their consanguineous intercourse, they do quite right to avoid all temptations by means of such prohibitions. Among the Burangos in Delagoa Bay in Africa, the most rigorous precautions are directed curiously enough against the sister-in-law, the wife of the brother of one's own wife. If a man meets this person who is so dangerous to him, he carefully avoids her. He does not dare to eat out of the same dish with her, he speaks only timidly to her, does not dare to enter her hut, and greets her only with a trembling voice. Among the Akamba, or Wakamba, in British East Africa, a law of avoidance is enforced 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 social intercourse with her father. The most widespread and strictest avoidance, which is perhaps the most interesting one for civilized races, is that which restricts the social relations between a man and his mother-in-law. It is quite general in Australia, but it is also enforced 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 Vana Lava or Port Patterson, a man will not even walk behind his mother-in-law along the beach until the rising tide has washed away the trace of her footsteps. But they may talk to each other at a certain distance. It is quite out of the question that he should ever pronounce the name of his mother-in-law or she his. On the Solomon Islands, beginning with his marriage, a man must neither see nor speak with his mother-in-law. If he meets her, he acts as if he did not know her and runs away as fast as he can in order to hide himself. Among the Zulu Kafirs 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 in each other at a considerable distance if they have some barrier between them as, for instance, the enclosure of a crawl. Neither may utter the other's name. 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. 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. The same objection was also raised against the conception of pheasant 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 behavior of the mother-in-law or the son-in-law to the former marriage by capture, quote, 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 thus custom continued after its origin had been forgotten, end quote. Crawley has found it easy to show how little this tentative explanation agrees with the details of actual observation. E. B. Tyler thinks that the treatment of the son-in-law and 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. A Zulu woman who was asked about basis for this prohibition showed great delicacy of feeling in her answer, quote, it is not right that he should see the breasts which nursed his wife, end quote. 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 quarreling and displeasure would often be avoided if they did exist and did not have to be reestablished by individuals. Many a European would 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 the 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 relationship 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 overvaluation. 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 psychosexual 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 of the wife's emotional life. The aging 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 necessary resignation imposed upon the individual through marriage. This emotional identification with the daughter may easily go so far with the mother that she 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-in-law 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 are 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 fantasy temptation brought about by unconscious intermediary lengths. 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 threat 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 threat 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. Psychoanalysis 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 role 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 auto rank which show an even larger scope to what extent the incest theme stands in the center of poetical interest and how it forms the material of poetry and 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. End of Chapter 1 Read by Mary Schneider Chapter 2 Part 1 of Totem and Taboo This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud Chapter 2 Taboo and the Ambivalence of Emotions Part 1 Section 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 Sacher was the same as the Taboo of the Polynesians. The egos of the Greeks and the Kurdish 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, Northern 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 of Taboo is designated in Polynesian by the word Noah. This 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 combinations 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 feeling 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. Wont 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. Footnote 11th edition this article also gives the most important references and footnote. Quote 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 violation of the prohibition. The converse of Taboo in Polynesia is no law 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 manna mysterious power inherent in a person or thing. 2. Communicated or indirect equally the result of manna but a. Acquired or be imposed by a priest, chief, or other person. 3. Intermediate where both factors are present as in the appropriation of a wife to or 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 that is 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 Taboo are many. 1. Direct Taboos aim at a protection of important persons chiefs, priests etc. and things against harm. 2. Be safeguarding of the weak Women, children, and common people generally from the powerful manna magical influence of chiefs and priests. 3. Providing against the dangers incurred by handling or coming in contact with corpses by eating certain food etc. 4. Guarding the chief acts of life births, initiation, marriage, and sexual functions against interference. 5. Securing human beings against the wrath or power of Gods and Spirits. Footnote this application of the Taboo can be omitted as not originally belonging in this connection in footnote. 6. Securing unborn infants and young children who stand in especially sympathetic relation with their parents from the consequences 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 the 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. Quote the violation of 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. Quote Persons are things which are regarded as Taboo may be compared to objects charged with electricity. They are the seed of tremendous power which is transmittable 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 Taboo depends partly on the strength of the magical influence inherent in the Taboo object or person. Partly on the strength of the opposing manner 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 achieved for priests they are more powerful than those imposed by a common person. End quote. 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 comprised 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 reader's 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 imposed 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 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 anyone 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 and clean and mysterious. Both this word in 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 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 pollination 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 W1 gives his interpretation of taboo especially as he promises to quote go back to the very roots of the taboo concepts end quote. W1t states that the idea of taboo includes all customs which express dread of particular objects connected with cultic ideas or of actions having reference to them. On another occasion he says quote 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 prescribed words end quote. Accordingly there would not be a single race or stage of culture which had escaped the injurious effects of taboo. W1t then shows why he finds it more practical to study the nature of taboo in the primitive states of Australian savages rather than in the higher culture of the Polynesian races In the case of the Australians he divides taboo prohibitions into three classes according as they concern animals, persons, or other objects. The animal taboo which consists essentially of the taboo against killing and eating forms the nucleus of totemism. The taboo of the second class which has human beings for its object is of an essentially different nature. To begin with it is restricted to conditions which bring about an unusual situation in life for the person tabooed. Thus young men at the feast of initiation women during menstruation and immediately after delivery newly born children the diseased and especially the dead are all taboo. The constantly used property of any person such as his clothes, tools, and weapons is permanently taboo for everybody else. In Australia the new name which a youth receives at his initiation into manhood becomes part of his own 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. One to 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. The real sources of taboo lie deeper than in the interests of the privileged classes. Quote. 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. End quote. New quote. The taboo, which originally was nothing more than the objectified fear of the demonic power thought to be concealed in the taboo object forbids the irritation of this power and demands the placation of the demon whenever the taboo has been knowingly or unknowingly violated. End quote. 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. Quote. But the commandment concealed behind taboo prohibitions which differ materially according to place and time have originally the meaning beware of the wrath of the demons. End quote. One therefore teaches that taboo is the expression and evolution of the belief of primitive races in demonic powers and that later taboo has disassociated itself from this origin and has remained 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 called one's explanation disappointing. One'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. One 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 one this was done through the transference of taboo prohibition 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 its aversion. Once further elucidations refer to the relation of taboo to lustration and sacrifice. Section two 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 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 compulsive 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 learned 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 interrelationships 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 original 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 of conscience exists that violation will be followed by unbearable disaster. The very most the 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 once we derive the name touching phobia or delir de touche. 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 someone 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 copulsion 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 neighboring things. We have already emphasized the same characteristics of contagion and transference in the description of taboo prohibitions. We also know that anyone 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 chief's breath conveyed through these intermediaries which surely die. End quote from Fraser the Golden Bow My patient demanded that a utensil which her husband had purchased and brought home should be removed unless it make 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 in 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 defense 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 symptoms of compulsion neurosis are most clearly manifested one in the lack of motivation of the commandments two in their enforcement through an inner need three in their capacity of displacement and in the danger of contagion from what is prohibited four 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 expect presently the carrying out of this very pleasurable act of touching was opposed by a prohibition from without footnote both the pleasure and the prohibition referred to touching one's own genitals and footnote the prohibition was accepted because it was supported by strong inner forces footnote the relation to beloved persons who imposed the prohibition and footnote 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 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 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 is thus undergone fixation lies in what one might call the ambivalent behavior footnote to use an excellent term coined by Bluler and footnote ambivalent behavior 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 role 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 in 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 prescribed 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 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 a 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 concern actions for which there existed a strong desire the prohibitions maintain 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 they are such innate ideas or whether these have brought about the fixation of the taboo by themselves or by cooperating 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 the taboo races they therefore assume an ambivalent attitude toward their taboo prohibitions if they're 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 anyone who knows the results of the psychoanalytic investigation of individuals of something quite definite which psychoanalysts call the central point of the infantile wish life and the nucleus of the later neurosis all other varieties of taboo phenomena which have led to the attempted classifications noted above become unified if we sum them up in the following sentence the basis of taboo is a forbidden action for which there exists a strong inclination in the unconscious we know without understanding it that whoever does what is prohibited and violates the taboo becomes himself taboo but how can we connect this fact with the other namely that the taboo adheres not only to persons who have done what is prohibited but also to persons who are in exceptional circumstances to these circumstances themselves and to impersonal things what can this dangerous attribute be which always remains the same under all these different conditions only one thing namely the propensity to arouse the ambivalence of man and to tempt him to violate the prohibition an individual who has violated a taboo becomes himself taboo because he has the dangerous property of tempting others to follow his example he arouses envy why should he be allowed to do what is prohibited to others he is therefore really contagious insofar 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 their conditions are taboo for one must not yield to the temptations which they offer now too we understand why the forces inherent in the manna of various persons can neutralize one another so that the manna 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 broke 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 so the secret meaning of a taboo prohibition cannot possibly be of so special a nature as in the case of an erosis we must not be astonished to find that touching plays a similar role in taboo prohibition as in the delir de touche 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 manna 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 canceled 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 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 the 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 section three 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 interpretation is evidently of no value unless it offers 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 defense 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 that is the sway of contrary tendencies exists also in the case of taboo regulations or if we should find among the 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 these 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 taboo is imposed by chiefs and priests to ensure their property and privileges but there still remains a large group of laws which we may undertake to investigate among these l.a. 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. Fraser in his great work the golden bow end of chapter two part one read by Mary Schneider