Freud - Complete Works (453 page)

  
¹
Cf. the next essay in this
volume.

Totem And Taboo

2707

   It cannot be disputed that this
process of projection, which turns a dead man into a malignant
enemy, is able to find support in any real acts of hostility on his
part that may be recollected and felt as a grudge against him: his
severity, his love of power, his unfairness, or whatever else may
form the background of even the tenderest of human relationships.
But it cannot be such a simple matter as that. This factor alone
cannot explain the creation of demons by projection. The faults of
the dead no doubt provide a part of the explanation of the
survivors’ hostility; but they would not operate in this way
unless the survivors had first developed hostility on their own
account. The moment of death, moreover, would certainly seem to be
a most inappropriate occasion for recalling any justifiable grounds
of complaint that might exist. It is impossible to escape the fact
that the true determining factor is invariably
unconscious
hostility. A hostile current of feeling such as this against a
person’s nearest and dearest relatives may remain latent
during their lifetime, that is, its existence may not be betrayed
to consciousness either directly or through some substitute. But
when they die this is no longer possible and the conflict becomes
acute. The mourning which derives from an intensification of the
affectionate feelings becomes on the one hand more impatient of the
latent hostility and, on the other hand, will not allow it to give
rise to any sense of satisfaction. Accordingly, there follow the
repression of the unconscious hostility by the method of projection
and the construction of the ceremonial which gives expression to
the fear of being punished by the demons. When in course of time
the mourning runs its course, the conflict grows less acute, so
that the taboo upon the dead is able to diminish in severity or
sink into oblivion.

Totem And Taboo

2708

(4)

   Having thus explained the basis
of the exceedingly instructive taboo upon the dead, we must not
omit to add a few remarks that may help to increase our
understanding of taboo in general.

   The projection of unconscious
hostility on to demons in the case of the taboo upon the dead is
only a single instance of a number of processes to which the
greatest influence must be attributed in the shaping of the
primitive mind. In the case we have been dealing with, projection
served the purpose of dealing with an emotional conflict; and it is
employed in the same way in a large number of psychical situations
that lead to neuroses. But projection was not created for the
purpose of defence; it also occurs where there is no conflict. The
projection outwards of internal perceptions is a primitive
mechanism, to which, for instance, our sense perceptions are
subject, and which therefore normally plays a very large part in
determining the form taken by our external world. Under conditions
whose nature has not yet been sufficiently established, internal
perceptions of emotional and thought processes can be projected
outwards in the same way as sense perceptions; they are thus
employed for building up the external world, though they should by
rights remain part of the
internal
world. This may have some
genetic connection with the fact that the function of attention was
originally directed not towards the internal world but towards the
stimuli that stream in from the external world, and that that
function’s only information upon endopsychic processes was
received from feelings of pleasure and unpleasure. It was not until
a language of abstract thought had been developed, that is to say,
not until the sensory residues of verbal presentations had been
linked to the internal processes, that the latter themselves
gradually became capable of being perceived. Before that, owing to
the projection outwards of internal perceptions, primitive men
arrived at a picture of the external world which we, with our
intensified conscious perception, have now to translate back into
psychology.

Totem And Taboo

2709

   The projection of their own evil
impulses into demons is only one portion of a system which
constituted the
Weltanschauung
of primitive peoples, and
which we shall come to know as ‘animism’ in the
following essay. There we shall have to investigate that
system’s psychological characteristics, and we shall do so
once again by reference to the similar systems which we find
constructed by neurotics. For the moment I will only say that the
prototype of all such systems is what we have termed the
‘secondary revision’ of the content of dreams. And we
must not forget that, at and after the stage at which systems are
constructed, two sets of reasons can be assigned for every
psychical event that is consciously judged - one set belonging to
the system and the other set real but unconscious.¹

   Wundt (1906, 129) remarks that
‘among the activities attributed by myths all over the world
to demons, the harmful predominate, so that in popular belief bad
demons are clearly older than good ones’. It is quite
possible that the whole concept of demons was derived from the
important relation of the living to the dead. The ambivalence
inherent in that relation was expressed in the subsequent course of
human development by the fact that, from the same root, it gave
rise to two completely opposed psychical structures: on the one
hand fear of demons and ghosts and on the other hand veneration of
ancestors.² The fact that demons are always regarded as the
spirits of those who have died
recently
shows better than
anything the influence of mourning on the origin of the belief in
demons. Mourning has a quite specific psychical task to perform:
its function is to detach the survivors’ memories and hopes
from the dead. When this has been achieved, the pain grows less and
with it the remorse and self-reproaches and consequently the fear
of the demon as well. And the same spirits who to begin with were
feared as demons may now expect to meet with friendlier treatment;
they are revered as ancestors and appeals are made to them for
help.

  
¹
The projected creations of primitive men
resemble the personifications constructed by creative writers; for
the latter externalize in the form of separate individuals the
opposing instinctual impulses struggling within them.

  
²
In the course of psycho-analyses of
neurotics who suffer (or who suffered in their childhood) from fear
of ghosts, it is often possible to show without much difficulty
that the ghosts are disguises for the patient’s parents. Cf.
in this connection a paper upon ‘Sexual Ghosts’ by
Haeberlin (1912). Here the person concerned was not the
subject’s parent (who was dead) but someone else of erotic
significance to him.

Totem And Taboo

2710

   If we follow the changing
relations between survivors and the dead through the course of
ages, it becomes obvious that there has been an extraordinary
diminution in ambivalence. It is now quite easy to keep down the
unconscious hostility to the dead (though its existence can still
be traced) without any particular expenditure of psychical energy.
Where, in earlier times, satisfied hatred and pained affection
fought each other, we now find that a kind of scar has been formed
in the shape of piety, which declares ‘
de mortuis nil nisi
bonum
’. It is only neurotics whose mourning for the loss
of those dear to them is still troubled by obsessive
self-reproaches - the secret of which is revealed by
psycho-analysis as the old emotional ambivalence. We need not
discuss here how this alteration came about or how much share in it
is due to a constitutional modification and how much to a real
improvement in family relations. But this example suggests the
probability that
the psychical impulses of primitive peoples
were characterized by a higher amount of ambivalence than is to be
found in modern civilized man. It is to be supposed that as this
ambivalence diminished, taboo (a symptom of the ambivalence and a
compromise between two conflicting impulses) slowly disappeared
Neurotics, who are obliged to reproduce the struggle and the taboo
resulting from it, may be said to have inherited an archaic
constitution as an atavistic vestige; the need to compensate for
this at the behest of civilization is what drives them to their
immense expenditure of mental energy.

   And here we may recall the
obscure and puzzling statement by Wundt on the double meaning of
the word taboo: ‘sacred’ and ‘unclean’.
(See above.) Originally, according to him, the word did not possess
these two meanings, but described ‘what is demonic’,
‘what may not be touched’, thus stressing an important
characteristic common to both the extreme concepts. The
persistence, however (he added), of this common characteristic was
evidence that the ground covered by the two - the sacred and the
unclean - was originally one and did not become differentiated
until later.

Totem And Taboo

2711

   Our discussions, on the contrary,
lead us to the simple conclusion that the word ‘taboo’
had a double meaning from the very first and that it was used to
designate a particular kind of ambivalence and whatever arose from
it. ‘Taboo’ is itself an ambivalent word; and one feels
on looking back that the well-attested meaning of the word should
alone have made it possible to infer - what has actually been
arrived at as a result of extensive researches - that the
prohibitions of taboo are to be understood as consequences of an
emotional ambivalence. Study of the earliest languages has taught
us that there were once many such words, which expressed contrary
ideas and in a sense (though not in quite the same sense as the
word ‘taboo’) were ambivalent.¹ Slight
modifications in the pronunciation of the antithetical
‘primal word’ made it possible subsequently to give
separate verbal expression to the two contrary ideas which were
originally combined in it.

   The word ‘taboo’ met
with a different fate. As the importance of the ambivalence denoted
by it diminished, the word itself, or rather the words analogous to
it, fell out of use. I hope to be able, in a later connection, to
make it probable that a definite historical chain of events is
concealed behind the fate of this concept: that the word was at
first attached to certain quite specific human relations which were
characterized by great emotional ambivalence, and that its use then
spread on to other analogous relations.

   If I am not mistaken, the
explanation of taboo also throws light on the nature and origin of
conscience
. It is possible, without any stretching of the
sense of the terms, to speak of a taboo conscience or, after a
taboo has been violated, of a taboo sense of guilt. Taboo
conscience is probably the earliest form in which the phenomenon of
conscience is met with.

   For what is
‘conscience’? On the evidence of language it is related
to that of which one is ‘most certainly conscious’.
Indeed, in some languages the words for ‘conscience’
and ‘consciousness’ can scarcely be distinguished.

  
¹
Cf. my review of Abel’s
‘Antithetical Meaning of Primal Words’.

Totem And Taboo

2712

   Conscience is the internal
perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within
us. The stress, however, is upon the fact that this rejection has
no need to appeal to anything else for support, that it is quite
‘certain of itself’. This is even clearer in the case
of consciousness of guilt - the perception of the internal
condemnation of an act by which we have carried out a particular
wish. To put forward any reason for this would seem superfluous:
anyone who has a conscience must feel within him the justification
for the condemnation, must feel the self-reproach for the act that
has been carried out. This same characteristic is to be seen in the
savage’s attitude towards taboo. It is a command issued by
conscience; any violation of it produces a fearful sense of guilt
which follows as a matter of course and of which the origin is
unknown.¹

   Thus it seems probable that
conscience too arose, on a basis of emotional ambivalence, from
quite specific human relations to which this ambivalence was
attached; and that it arose under the conditions which we have
shown to apply in the case of taboo and of obsessional neurosis -
namely, that one of the opposing feelings involved shall be
unconscious and kept under repression by the compulsive domination
of the other one. This conclusion is supported by several things we
have learnt from the analysis of neuroses.

   In the first place, we have found
that a feature in the character of obsessional neurotics is a
scrupulous conscientiousness which is a symptom reacting against
the temptation lurking in their unconscious. If their illness
becomes more acute, they develop a sense of guilt of the most
intense degree. In fact, one may venture to say that if we cannot
trace the origin of the sense of guilt in obsessional neurotics,
there can be no hope of our
ever
tracing it. This task can
be directly achieved in the case of individual neurotic patients,
and we may rely upon reaching a similar solution by inference in
the case of primitive peoples.

  
¹
The sense of guilt in the case of taboos is
not in the least diminished if the violation occurs unwittingly.
(Cf. the instances above.) An interesting parallel is found in
Greek mythology: the guilt of Oedipus was not palliated by the fact
that he incurred it without his knowledge and even against his
intention.