Freud - Complete Works (445 page)

Totem And Taboo

2664

   A man’s relation to his
mother-in-law is complicated by similar impulses, though they have
another source. It is regularly found that he chose his mother as
the object of his love, and perhaps his sister as well, before
passing on to his final choice. Because of the barrier that exists
against incest, his love is deflected from the two figures on whom
his affection was centred in his childhood on to an outside object
that is modelled upon them. The place of his own and his
sister’s mother is taken by his mother-in-law. He has an
impulse to fall back upon his original choice, though everything in
him fights against it. His horror of incest insists that the
genealogical history of his choice of an object for his love shall
not be recalled. His repudiation of this impulse is also
facilitated by the fact that his mother-in-law is only a
contemporary figure; he has not known her all his life, so that
there is no unchangeable picture of her preserved in his
unconscious. A streak of irritability and malevolence that is apt
to be present in the medley of his feelings leads us to suspect
that she does in fact offer him a temptation to incest; and this is
confirmed by the not uncommon event of a man openly falling in love
with the woman who is later to be his mother-in-law before
transferring his love to her daughter.

   I can see nothing against the
presumption that it is precisely this incestuous factor in the
relation that provides savages with the motive for their rules of
avoidance between son-in-law and mother-in-law. Thus the
explanation which we should adopt for these strictly enforced
avoidances among primitive peoples is that put forward by Fison,
which regards them merely as a further protection against possible
incest. The same explanation holds good of all other avoidances,
between both blood and tribal relations. The only difference would
be that in the case of blood relations the possibility of incest is
an immediate one and the intention to prevent it may be conscious;
in the other cases, including that of a man’s relation to his
mother-in-law, the possibility of incest would seem to be a
temptation in phantasy set in motion through the agency of
unconscious connecting links.

Totem And Taboo

2665

   There has been little opportunity
in the preceding pages for showing how new light can be thrown upon
the facts of social psychology by the adoption of a psycho-analytic
method of approach: for the horror of incest displayed by savages
has long been recognized as such and stands in need of no further
interpretation. All that I have been able to add to our
understanding of it is to emphasize the fact that it is essentially
an
infantile
feature and that it reveals a striking
agreement with the mental life of neurotic patients.
Psycho-analysis has taught us that a boy’s earliest choice of
objects for his love is incestuous and that those objects are
forbidden ones - his mother and his sister. We have learnt, too,
the manner in which, as he grows up, he liberates himself from this
incestuous attraction. A neurotic, on the other hand, invariably
exhibits some degree of psychical infantilism. He has either failed
to get free from the psychosexual conditions that prevailed in his
childhood or he has returned to them - two possibilities which may
be summed up as developmental inhibition and regression. Thus
incestuous fixations of libido continue to play (or begin once more
to play) the principal part in his unconscious mental life. We have
arrived at the point of regarding a child’s relation to his
parents, dominated as it is by incestuous longings, as the nuclear
complex of neurosis. This revelation of the importance of incest in
neurosis is naturally received with universal scepticism by adults
and normal people. Similar expressions of disbelief, for instance,
inevitably greet the writings of Otto Rank, which have brought more
and more evidence to show the extent to which the interest of
creative writers centres round the theme of incest and how the same
theme, in countless variations and distortions, provides the
subject-matter of poetry. We are driven to believe that this
rejection is principally a product of the distaste which human
beings feel for their early incestuous wishes, now over taken by
repression. It is therefore of no small importance that we are able
to show that these same incestuous wishes, which are later destined
to become unconscious, are still regarded by savage peoples as
immediate perils against which the most severe measures of defence
must be enforced.

Totem And Taboo

2666

II

TABOO
AND EMOTIONAL AMBIVALENCE

(1)

‘Taboo’ is a Polynesian word. It
is difficult for us to find a translation for it, since the concept
connoted by it is one which we no longer possess. It was still
current among the ancient Romans, whose ‘
sacer
’
was the same as the Polynesian ‘taboo’. So, too, the
‘
άγος
’
of the Greeks and the ‘
kadesh
’ of the Hebrews
must have had the same meaning as is expressed in
‘taboo’ by the Polynesians and in analogous terms by
many other races in America, Africa (Madagascar) and North and
Central Asia.

   The meaning of
‘taboo’, as we see it, diverges in two contrary
directions. To us it means, on the one hand, ‘sacred’,
‘consecrated’, and on the other ‘uncanny’,
‘dangerous’, ‘forbidden’,
‘unclean’. The converse of ‘taboo’ in
Polynesian is ‘
noa
’, which means
‘common’ or ‘generally accessible’. Thus
‘taboo’ has about it a sense of something
unapproachable, and it is principally expressed in prohibitions and
restrictions. Our collocation ‘holy dread’ would often
coincide in meaning with ‘taboo’.

   Taboo restrictions are distinct
from religious or moral prohibitions. They are not based upon any
divine ordinance, but may be said to impose themselves on their own
account. They differ from moral prohibitions in that they fall into
no system that declares quite generally that certain abstinences
must be observed and gives reasons for that necessity. Taboo
prohibitions have no grounds and are of unknown origin. Though they
are unintelligible to us, to those who are dominated by them they
are taken as a matter of course.

   Wundt (1906, 308) describes taboo
as the oldest human unwritten code of laws. It is generally
supposed that taboo is older than gods and dates back to a period
before any kind of religion existed.

Totem And Taboo

2667

   Since we need an impartial
account of taboo to submit to psycho-analytic examination, I shall
now give some extracts and summaries of portions of the article
‘Taboo’ in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
(1910-11),¹ the author of which was Northcote W. Thomas, the
anthropologist.

   ‘Properly speaking taboo
includes only (
a
) the sacred (or unclean) character of
person or things, (
b
) the kind of prohibition which results
from this character, and (
c
) the sanctity (or uncleanness)
which results from a violation of the prohibition. The converse of
taboo in Polynesia is
noa
and allied forms, which mean
"general" or "common". . . .

   ‘Various classes of taboo
in the wider sense may be distinguished: (i) natural or direct, the
result of
mana
(mysterious power) inherent in a person or
thing; (ii) communicated or indirect, equally the result of
mana
, but (
a
) acquired or (
b
) imposed by a
priest, chief or other person; (iii) intermediate, where both
factors are present, as in the appropriation of a wife to her
husband. .. .’ The term is also applied to other ritual
restrictions, but what is better described as a ‘religious
interdiction’ should not be referred to as taboo.

   ‘The objects of taboo are
many: (i) direct taboos aim at (
a
) the protection of
important persons-chiefs, priests, etc. - and things against harm;
(
b
) the safeguarding of the weak - women, children and
common people generally - from the powerful
mana
s (magical
influence) of chiefs and priests; (
c
) the provision against
the dangers incurred by handling or coming in contact with corpses,
by eating certain foods, etc.; (
d
) the guarding the chief
acts of life - birth, initiation, marriage and sexual functions,
etc., against interference; (
e
) the securing of human beings
against the wrath or power of gods and spirits;² (
f
)
the securing of unborn infants and young children, who stand in a
specially sympathetic relation with one or both parents, from the
consequences of certain actions, and more especially from the
communication of qualities supposed to be derived from certain
foods. (ii) Taboos are imposed in order to secure against thieves
the property of an individual, his fields, tools,
etc. . . .’

  
¹
This includes a bibliography of the chief
literature on the subject.

  
²
In the present context this use of the term
‘taboo’ may be disregarded as not being a primary
one.

Totem And Taboo

2668

   The punishment for the violation
of a taboo was no doubt originally left to an internal, automatic
agency: the violated taboo itself took vengeance. When, at a later
stage, ideas of gods and spirits arose, with whom taboo became
associated, the penalty was expected to follow automatically from
the divine power. In other cases, probably as a result of a further
evolution of the concept, society itself took over the punishment
of offenders, whose conduct had brought their fellows into danger.
Thus the earliest human penal systems may be traced back to
taboo.

   ‘The violation of a taboo
makes the offender himself taboo. . . .’
Certain of the dangers brought into existence by the violation may
be averted by acts of atonement and purification.

   The source of taboo is attributed
to a peculiar magical power which is inherent in persons and
spirits and can be conveyed by them through the medium of inanimate
objects. ‘Persons or things which are regarded as taboo may
be compared to objects charged with electricity; they are the seat
of a tremendous power which is transmissible by contact, and may be
liberated with destructive effect if the organisms which provoke
its discharge are too weak to resist it; the result of a violation
of a taboo depends partly on the strength of the magical influence
inherent in the taboo object or person, partly on the strength of
the opposing
mana
of the violator of the taboo. Thus, kings
and chiefs are possessed of great power, and it is death for their
subjects to address them directly; but a minister or other person
of greater
mana
than common can approach them unharmed, and
can in turn be approached by their inferiors without risk. . . . So
too indirect taboos depend for their strength on the
mana
of
him who imposes them; if it is a chief or a priest, they are more
powerful than those imposed by a common person. . . .’

   It is no doubt the
transmissibility of taboo which accounts for the attempts to throw
it off by suitable purificatory ceremonies.

   Taboos may be permanent or
temporary. Among the former are those attaching to priests and
chiefs, as well as to dead persons and anything belonging to them.
Temporary taboos may be attached to certain particular states, such
as menstruation and child-birth, to warriors before and after an
expedition, or to special activities such as fishing and hunting. A
general taboo may (like a Papal Interdict) be imposed upon a whole
region and may then last for many years.

Totem And Taboo

2669

   If I judge my readers’
feelings aright, I think it is safe to say that in spite of all
that they have now heard about taboo they still have very little
idea of the meaning of the term or of what place to give it in
their thoughts. This is no doubt due to the insufficiency of the
information I have given them and to my having omitted to discuss
the relation between taboo and superstition, the belief in spirits,
and religion. On the other hand, I am afraid a more detailed
account of what is known about taboo would have been even more
confusing, and I can assure them that in fact the whole subject is
highly obscure.

   What we are concerned with, then,
is a number of prohibitions to which these primitive races are
subjected. Every sort of thing is forbidden; but they have no idea
why, and it does not occur to them to raise the question. On the
contrary, they submit to the prohibitions as though they were a
matter of course and feel convinced that any violation of them will
be automatically met by the direst punishment. We have trustworthy
stories of how any unwitting violation of one of these prohibitions
is in fact automatically punished. An innocent wrong-doer, who may,
for instance, have eaten a forbidden animal, falls into a deep
depression, anticipates death and then dies in real earnest. These
prohibitions are mainly directed against liberty of enjoyment and
against freedom of movement and communication. In some cases they
have an intelligible meaning and are clearly aimed at abstinences
and renunciations. But in other cases their subject-matter is quite
incomprehensible; they are concerned with trivial details and seem
to be of a purely ceremonial nature.

   Behind all these prohibitions
there seems to be something in the nature of a theory that they are
necessary because certain persons and things are charged with a
dangerous power, which can be transferred through contact with
them, almost like an infection. The
quantity
of this
dangerous attribute also plays a part. Some people or things have
more of it than others and the danger is actually proportional to
the difference of potential of the charges. The strangest fact
seems to be that anyone who has transgressed one of these
prohibitions himself acquires the characteristic of being
prohibited - as though the whole of the dangerous charge had been
transferred over to him. This power is attached to all
special
individuals, such as kings, priests or new born
babies, to all
exceptional
states, such as the physical
states of menstruation, puberty or birth, and to all
uncanny
things, such as sickness and death and what is associated with them
through their power of infection or contagion.