Freud - Complete Works (443 page)

Totem And Taboo

2653

   And now we come at last to the
characteristic of the totemic system which has attracted the
interest of psycho-analysts. In almost every place where we find
totems we also find
a law against persons of the same totem
having sexual relations with one another and consequently against
their marrying
. This, then, is ‘exogamy’, an
institution related to totemism.

   Strictly enforced as it is, this
prohibition is a remarkable one. There is nothing in the concept or
attributes of the totem which I have so far mentioned to lead us to
anticipate it; so that it is hard to understand how it has become
involved in the totemic system. We cannot, therefore, feel
surprised that some investigators actually suppose that exogamy had
originally - in the earliest times and in its true meaning -
nothing to do with totemism, but became attached to it (without
there being any underlying connection)  at some time when
marriage restrictions became necessary. However this may be, the
bond between totemism and exogamy exists and is clearly a very firm
one.

   Some further considerations will
make the significance of this prohibition clearer:

   (
a
) The violation of the
prohibition is not left to what might be called the
‘automatic’ punishment of the guilty parties, as in the
case of other totem prohibitions, such as that against killing the
totem animal. It is avenged in the most energetic fashion by the
whole clan, as though it were a question of averting some danger
that threatened the whole community or some guilt that was pressing
upon it. A few sentences from Frazer (1910,
1
, 54) will show
how severely such misdeeds are treated by savages who are otherwise
far from being moral by our standards:

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

   (
b
) Since the same severe
punishment is inflicted in the case of passing love-affairs which
have not resulted in any children, it seems unlikely that the
reasons for the prohibition are of a practical nature.

   (
c
) Since totems are
hereditary and not changed by marriage, it is easy to follow the
consequences of the prohibition. Where, for instance, descent is
through the female line, if a man of the Kangaroo totem marries a
woman of the Emu totem, all the children, both boys and girls,
belong to the Emu clan. The totem regulation will therefore make it
impossible for a son of this marriage to have incestuous
intercourse with his mother or sisters, who are Emus like
himself.¹

  
¹
On the other hand, at all events so far as
this prohibition is concerned, the father, who is a Kangaroo, is
free to commit incest with his daughters, who are Emus. If the
totem descended through the
male
line, however, the Kangaroo
father would be prohibited from incest with his daughters (since
all his children would be Kangaroos), whereas the son would be free
to commit incest with his mother. These implications of totem
prohibitions suggest that descent through the female line is older
than that through the male, since there are grounds for thinking
that totem prohibitions were principally directed against the
incestuous desires of the son.

Totem And Taboo

2654

   (
d
) But a little more
reflection will show that exogamy linked with the totem effects
more (and therefore
aims
at more) than the prevention of
incest with a man’s mother and sisters. It makes sexual
intercourse impossible for a man with all the women of his own clan
(that is to say with a number of women who are not his
blood-relatives) by treating them all as though they
were
his blood-relatives. It is difficult at first sight to see the
psychological justification for this very extensive restriction,
which goes far beyond anything comparable among civilized peoples.
It may be gathered from this, however, that the part played by the
totem as common ancestor is taken very seriously. All those who are
descended from the same totem are blood relations. They form a
single family, and within that family even the most distant degree
of kinship is regarded as an absolute hindrance to sexual
intercourse.

   We see, then, that these savages
have an unusually great horror of incest, or are sensitive on the
subject to an unusual degree, and that they combine this with a
peculiarity which remains obscure to us - of replacing real
blood-relationship by totem kinship. This latter contrast must not,
however, be too much exaggerated, and we must remember that the
totem prohibitions include that against real incest as a special
case.

   The riddle of how it came about
that the real family was replaced by the totem clan must perhaps
remain unsolved till the nature of the totem itself can be
explained. At the same time, it is to be observed that if there
were a certain degree of freedom of sexual intercourse outside
marriage, blood-relationship, and consequently the prevention of
incest, would become so uncertain that the prohibition would stand
in need of a wider basis. It is therefore worth remarking that
Australian customs permit the occurrence, in certain social
situations and during certain festivals, of breaches in a
man’s exclusive conjugal rights over a woman.

   Linguistic usage in these
Australian tribes¹ exhibits a peculiarity which is no doubt
relevant here. For the terms used by them to express the various
degrees of kinship do not denote a relation between two individuals
but between an individual and a group. This is what L. H. Morgan
named the ‘classificatory’ system of relationship. Thus
a man uses the term ‘father’ not only for his actual
procreator but also for all the other men whom his mother might
have married according to tribal law and who therefore might have
procreated him; he uses the term ‘mother’ not only for
the woman who actually bore him but also for all the other women
who might have borne him without transgressing the tribal law; he
uses the terms ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ not
only for the children of his actual parents but also for the
children of all those persons who stand in the relation of parents
to him in the classificatory sense; and so on. Thus the kinship
terms which two Australians apply to each other do not necessarily
indicate any consanguinity, as ours would do: they represent social
rather than physical relationships. Something approaching the
classificatory system is to be found among us when, for instance,
children are encouraged to refer to all their parents’
friends as ‘Uncle’ or ‘Aunt’, or when we
speak in a metaphorical sense of ‘brothers in Apollo’
of ‘sisters in Christ’.

  
¹
As well as in most other totemic
communities.

Totem And Taboo

2655

   Though this use of words strikes
us as so puzzling, it is easily explained if we look on it as a
survival of the marriage institution which the Rev. L. Fison has
called ‘group marriage’ and which consists in a certain
number of men exercising conjugal rights over a certain number of
women. The children of such a group marriage would then justly
regard one another as brothers and sisters (though they were not
all born of the same mother) and would regard all the men in the
group as their fathers.

   Though some authors, such as
Westermarck (1901), have disputed the conclusions which others have
drawn from the existence of the classificatory system of
relationship, those who have the closest acquaintance with the
Australian natives are agreed in regarding that system as a
survival from the days of group marriage. Indeed, according to
Spencer and Gillen (1899), a certain form of group marriage exists
to this day in the Urabunna and Dieri tribes. Group marriage thus
preceded individual marriage among these peoples, and after its
disappearance left definite traces behind both in language and
customs.

   But when once we have put group
marriage in the place of individual marriage, the apparently
excessive degree of avoidance of incest which we have come across
among the same peoples becomes intelligible. Totemic exogamy, the
prohibition of sexual intercourse between members of the same clan,
appears to have been the appropriate means for preventing group
incest; it thus became established and persisted long after its
raison d’être
had ceased.

Totem And Taboo

2656

   It may seem that we have thus
discovered the motives the led the Australian natives to set up
their marriage restrictions; but we have now to learn that the
actual state of affairs reveals a far greater, and at first sight a
bewildering, complexity. For there are few races in Australia in
which the totem barrier is the sole prohibition. Most of them are
organized in such a way as to fall into two divisions, known as
marriage-classes or ‘phratries’. Each of these
phratries is exogamous and comprises a number of totem clans. As a
rule each phratry is further subdivided into two
‘sub-phratries’, the whole tribe being thus divided
into four, with the sub-phratries intermediate between the
phratries and the totem clans.

   The following diagram represents
the typical organization of an Australian tribe and corresponds to
the actual situation in very large number of cases:

   Here the twelve totem clans are
divided into four sub-phratries and two phratries. All the
divisions are exogamous.¹ Sub-phratries c and e form an
exogamous unit; and so also do sub-phratries d and f. The result
(and therefore the purpose) of these arrangements cannot be
doubted: they bring about a still further restriction on the choice
of marriage and on sexual liberty. Let us suppose that each clan
contains an equal number of members. Then, if only the twelve totem
clans existed, each member of a clan would have his choice among
11/12 of all the women in the tribe. The existence of the two
phratries reduces his choice to 6/12 or 1/2, for then a man of
totem α can only marry a woman of totems 1 to 6. With the
introduction of the four sub-phratries his choice is still further
reduced to 3/12 or 1/4, for in that case a man of totem αis
restricted in his choice of a wife to a woman of totems 4, 5 or
6.

  
¹
The number of totems is chosen
arbitrarily.

Totem And Taboo

2657

   The historical relation between
the marriage-classes (of which in some tribes there are as many as
eight) and the totem clans is completely obscure. It is merely
evident that these arrangements are directed towards the same aim
as totemic exogamy and pursue it still further. While, however,
totemic exogamy gives one the impression of being a sacred
ordinance of unknown origin - in short, of being a custom - the
complicated institution of the marriage-classes, with their
subdivisions and the regulations attaching to them, look more like
the result of deliberate legislation, which may perhaps have taken
up the task of preventing incest afresh because the influence of
the totem was waning. And, while the totemic system is, as we know,
the basis of all the other social obligations and moral
restrictions of the tribe, the significance of the phratries seems
in general not to extend beyond the regulation of marriage choice
which is its aim.

   The system of marriage-classes in
its furthest developments bears witness to an endeavour to go
beyond the prevention of natural and group incest and to forbid
marriage between still more distant groups of relatives. In this it
resembles the Catholic Church, which extended the ancient
prohibition against marriage between brothers and sisters to
marriage between cousins and even to marriage between those who
were merely spiritual relatives. (Cf. Lang, 1910-11.)

   It would be little to our purpose
if we were to follow in detail the extraordinarily involved and
obscure discussions on the origin and significance of the
marriage-classes and on their relation to the totem. For our
purpose it is enough to draw attention to the great care which is
devoted by the Australians, as well as by other savage peoples, to
the prevention of incest.¹ It must be admitted that these
savages are even more sensitive on the subject of incest than we
are. They are probably liable to a greater temptation to it and for
that reason stand in need of fuller protection.