Freud - Complete Works (458 page)

  
¹
I assume that at this early narcissistic
stage cathexes arising from libidinal and from other sources of
excitation may still be indistinguishable from one
another.

  
²
Cf. Schreber (1903) and Freud
(1911
c
).

  
³
In my paper on Schreber (Freud,
1911
c
).

Totem And Taboo

2736

   If we may venture to exploit our
hypothesis still further, we may inquire which essential part of
our psychological structure is reflected and reproduced in the
projective creation of souls and spirits. It could scarcely be
disputed that the primitive conception of a soul, however much it
may differ from the later, purely immaterial soul, is nevertheless
intrinsically the same; that is to say, it assumes that both
persons and things are of a double nature and that their known
attributes and modifications are distributed between their two
component portions. This original ‘duality’, to borrow
an expression from Herbert Spencer (1893), is identical with the
dualism proclaimed by our current distinction between soul and body
and by such ineradicable linguistic expressions of it as the use of
phrases like ‘beside himself’ or ‘coming to
himself’ in relation to fits of rage or fainting (ibid.,
144).

   When we, no less than primitive
man, project something into external reality, what is happening
must surely be this: we are recognizing the existence of two states
- one in which something is directly given to the senses and to
consciousness (that is, is
present
to them), and alongside
it another, in which the same thing is
latent
but capable of
re-appearing. In short, we are recognizing the co-existence of
perception and memory, or, putting it more generally, the existence
of
unconscious
mental processes alongside the
conscious
ones.¹ It might be said that in the last
analysis the ‘spirit’ of persons or things comes down
to their capacity to be remembered and imagined after perception of
them has ceased.

   It is not, of course, to be
expected that either the primitive or the present-day concept of a
‘soul’ will be separated from that of the other portion
of the personality by the same line of demarcation which our modern
science draws between conscious and unconscious mental activity.
The animistic soul unites properties from both sides. Its volatile
and mobile quality, its power of leaving the body and of taking
possession, temporarily or permanently, of another body - these are
characteristics which remind us unmistakably of the nature of
consciousness. But the way in which it remains concealed behind the
manifest personality is reminiscent of the unconscious;
immutability and indestructibility are qualities which we no longer
attribute to conscious but rather to unconscious processes, and we
regard the latter as the true vehicle of mental activity.

  
¹
Cf. my short paper on the use of the
concept ‘unconscious’ in psycho-analysis, first
published in the
Proceedings
of the Society for Psychical
Research in 1912.

Totem And Taboo

2737

   I have said that animism is a
system of thought, the first complete theory of the universe, and I
shall now go on to draw certain conclusions from the
psycho-analytic view of such systems. Every day of our lives our
experience is in a position to show us the principal
characteristics of a ‘system’. We have dreams during
the night and we have learnt how to interpret them during the day.
Dreams may, without contradicting their nature, appear confused and
disconnected. But they may, on the contrary, simulate the orderly
impressions of a real experience, they may make one event follow
from another and make one portion of their content refer to
another. Such a result can be more or less successfully achieved;
but it scarcely ever succeeds so completely as to leave no
absurdity, no rift in its texture, visible. When we come to submit
a dream to interpretation, we find that the erratic and irregular
arrangement of its constituent parts is quite unimportant from the
point of view of our understanding it. The essential elements in a
dream are the dream-thoughts, and these have meaning, connection
and order. But their order is quite other than that remembered by
us as present in the manifest dream. In the latter the connection
between the dream-thoughts has been abandoned and may either remain
completely lost or be replaced by the new connection exhibited in
the manifest content. The elements of the dream, apart from their
being condensed, are almost invariably arranged in a new order more
or less independent of their earlier arrangement. Finally, it must
be added that whatever the original material of the dream-thoughts
has been turned into by the dream-work is then subjected to a
further influence. This is what is known as ‘secondary
revision’, and its purpose is evidently to get rid of the
disconnectedness and unintelligibility produced by the dream-work
and replace it by a new ‘meaning’. But this new
meaning, arrived at by secondary revision, is no longer the meaning
of the dream-thoughts.

   The secondary revision of the
product of the dream-work is an admirable example of the nature and
pretensions of a system. There is an intellectual function in us
which demands unity, connection and intelligibility from any
material, whether of perception or thought, that comes within its
grasp; and if, as a result of special circumstances, it is unable
to establish a true connection, it does not hesitate to fabricate a
false one. Systems constructed in this way are known to us not only
from dreams, but also from phobias, from obsessive thinking and
from delusions. The construction of systems is seen most strikingly
in delusional disorders (in paranoia), where it dominates the
symptomatic picture; but its occurrence in other forms of
neuro-psychosis must not be overlooked. In all these cases it can
be shown that a rearrangement of the psychical material has been
made with a fresh aim in view; and the rearrangement may often have
to be a drastic one if the outcome is to be made to appear
intelligible from the point of view of the system. Thus a system is
best characterized by the fact that at least two reasons can be
discovered for each of its products: a reason based upon the
premises of the system (a reason, then, which may be delusional)
and a concealed reason, which we must judge to be the truly
operative and the real one.

Totem And Taboo

2738

   This may be illustrated by an
example from a neurosis. In my essay on taboo I mentioned a woman
patient of mine whose obsessional prohibitions showed the most
perfect agreement with a Maori taboo (
p. 2676
). This woman’s neurosis
was aimed at her husband and culminated in her defence against an
unconscious wish that he should die. Her manifest, systematic
phobia, however, related to the mention of death in general, while
her husband was entirely excluded from it and was never an object
of her conscious solicitude. One day she heard her husband giving
instructions that his razors, which had lost their edge, were to be
taken to a particular shop to be re-set. Driven by a strange
uneasiness, she herself set off for the shop. After reconnoitring
the ground, she came back and insisted that her husband should get
rid of the razors for good and all, since she had discovered that
next door to the shop he had named there was an undertaker’s
establishment: owing to the plan he had made, she said, the razors
had become inextricably involved with thoughts of death. This,
then, was the
systematic
reason for her prohibition. We may
be quite sure that, even without her discovery of the next-door
shop, the patient would have come home with a prohibition against
the razors. It would have been enough if she had met a hearse on
her way to the shop, or someone dressed in mourning or carrying a
funeral wreath. The net of possible determinants for the
prohibition was spread wide enough to catch the quarry in any
event; it merely depended on her decision whether to draw it
together or not. It could be shown that on other occasions she
would not put the determinants into operation, and she would
explain this by saying it had been ‘a better day’. The
real
cause of her prohibition upon the razors was, of
course, as it was easy to discover, her repugnance to attaching any
pleasurable feeling to the idea that her husband might cut his
throat with the newly ground razors.

   In just the same may, an
inhibition upon movement (an abasia or an agoraphobia) will
gradually become more complete and more detailed, when once that
system has succeeded in installing itself as a representative of an
unconscious wish and of the defence against the wish. Whatever
other unconscious phantasies and operative reminiscences may be
present in the patient force their way to expression as symptoms
along this same path, once it has been opened, and group themselves
into an appropriate new arrangement within the framework of the
inhibition upon movement. Thus it would be a vain and indeed a
foolish task to attempt to understand the complexities and details
of the symptoms of (for example) an agoraphobia on the basis of its
underlying premises; for the whole consistency and strictness of
the combination are merely
apparent
. Just as with the
façades of dreams, if we look more attentively we find the
most blatant inconsistency and arbitrariness in the structure of
symptoms. The real reason for the details of a systematic phobia of
this kind lies in concealed determinants, which need have nothing
to do with an inhibition upon movement; and that, too, is why these
phobias take such various and contradictory shapes in different
people.

Totem And Taboo

2739

   Let us now return to the
animistic system with which we are dealing. The insight we have
gained into
other
psychological systems enables us to
conclude that with primitive man, too, ‘superstition’
need not be the only or the real reason for some particular custom
or observance and does not excuse us from the duty of searching for
its hidden motives. Under the domination of an animistic system it
is inevitable that every observance and every activity shall have a
systematic basis, which nowadays we describe as
‘superstitious’. ‘Superstition’ - like
‘anxiety’, ‘dreams’ and
‘demons’ - is one of those provisional psychological
concepts which have crumbled under the impact of psycho-analytic
research. Once we have penetrated behind these constructions, which
are like screens erected as defences against correct understanding,
we begin to realize that the mental life and cultural level of
savages have not hitherto had all the recognition they deserve.

   If we take instinctual repression
as a measure of the level of civilization that has been reached, we
shall have to admit that even under the animistic system advances
and developments took place which are unjustly despised on account
of their superstitious basis. When we are told that the warriors in
a savage tribe practise the greatest continence and cleanliness
when they go on the war-path, the explanation is put forward that
their motive is ‘a fear lest the enemy should obtain the
refuse of their persons, and thus be enabled to work their
destruction by magic’ (Frazer, 1911
b
, 157); and an
analogous superstitious reason could be suggested for their
continence. None the less the fact remains that they have made an
instinctual renunciation; and we can understand the position better
if we suppose that the savage warrior submits to these restrictions
as a counter-measure because he is on the point of yielding
completely to the satisfaction of cruel and hostile impulses which
are as a rule prohibited to him. The same is true of the numerous
cases of sexual restrictions being imposed on anyone who is engaged
on difficult or responsible work (ibid., 200 f.). Though the
grounds alleged for these prohibitions may belong to a magical
context, yet the fundamental idea of gaining greater strength by
renouncing some instinctual satisfaction remains unmistakable; and
the hygienic root of the prohibition which lies alongside its
magical rationalization must not be overlooked. When the men of a
savage tribe go out on an expedition to hunt, to fish, to fight or
to gather precious plants, their wives left at home are subjected
to many oppressive restrictions, to which the savages themselves
ascribe a favourable influence, operating at a distance upon the
success of the expedition. But it requires very little penetration
to see that this factor which operates at a distance is nothing
other than the absent men’s longing thoughts of home, and
that behind these disguises lies a sound piece of psychological
insight that the men will only do their best if they feel
completely secure about the women whom they have left behind them
unguarded. Sometimes they will even themselves declare, without
alleging any magical reasons, that a wife’s infidelity in
marriage will bring to nothing the efforts of an absent husband
engaged on some responsible work.

Totem And Taboo

2740

   The countless taboo regulations
to which the women in savage communities are subject during
menstruation are said to be due to a superstitious horror of blood,
and this is no doubt in fact one of their determinants. But it
would be wrong to overlook the possibility that in this case the
horror of blood also serves aesthetic and hygienic purposes, which
are obliged in every case to cloak themselves behind magical
motives.