Freud - Complete Works (462 page)

   The Arunta, as I have already
explained, eliminate the connection between the sexual act and
conception. At the moment at which a woman feels she is a mother, a
spirit, which has been awaiting reincarnation in the nearest totem
centre where the spirits of the dead collect, has entered her body.
She will bear this spirit as a child, and the child will have the
same totem as all the spirits waiting at that particular centre.
This theory of conception cannot explain totemism, since it
presupposes the existence of totems. But let us go back a step
further and suppose that originally the woman believed that the
animal, plant, stone or other object, with which her imagination
was occupied at the moment when she first felt she was a mother,
actually made its way into her and was later born in human form. In
that case the identity between a man and his totem would have a
factual basis in his mother’s belief and all the remaining
totem ordinances (with the exception of exogamy) would follow. A
man would refuse to eat this animal or plant because to do so would
amount to eating himself. He would, however, have a reason for
occasionally partaking of his totem in a ceremonial manner, because
in that way he might strengthen his identification with the totem,
which is the essence of totemism. Some observations made by Rivers
upon the natives of the Banks’ Islands² seemed to prove
a direct identification of human beings with their totem on the
basis of a similar theory of conception.

  
¹
‘It is unlikely that a community of
savages should deliberately parcel out the realm of nature into
provinces, assign each province to a particular band of magicians,
and bid all the bands to work their magic and weave their spells
for the common good.’ (Frazer, 1910,
4
,
57.)

  
²
Quoted by Frazer (1910,
2
, 89 ff.
and
4
, 59).

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2759

   Accordingly, the ultimate source
of totemism would be the savages’ ignorance of the process by
which men and animals reproduce their kind; and, in particular,
ignorance of the part played by the male in fertilization. This
ignorance must have been facilitated by the long interval between
the act of fertilization and the birth of the child (or the first
perception of its movements). Thus totemism would be a creation of
the feminine rather than of the masculine mind: its roots would lie
in ‘the sick fancies of pregnant women’.
‘Anything indeed that struck a woman at that mysterious
moment of her life when she first knows herself to be a mother
might easily be identified by her with the child in her womb. Such
maternal fancies, so natural and seemingly so universal, appear to
be the root of totemism.’ (Frazer, 1910,
4
, 63.)

   The main objection to this third
of Frazer’s theories is the same as has already been brought
against the second or sociological one. The Arunta seem to be far
removed from the beginnings of totemism. Their denial of paternity
does not appear to rest upon primitive ignorance; in some respects
they themselves make use of descent through the father. They seem
to have sacrificed paternity for the sake of some sort of
speculation designed to honour the souls of their ancestors.¹
They have enlarged the myth of the impregnation of a virgin by the
spirit into a general theory of conception; but that is no reason
why ignorance of the conditions governing fertilization should be
imputed to them any more than to the peoples of antiquity at the
time of the origin of the Christian myths.

   Another psychological theory of
the origin of totemism has been advanced by a Dutchman, G. A.
Wilken. It connects totemism with the belief in the transmigration
of souls. ‘The animal in which the souls of the dead are
thought by preference to be incarnate becomes a kinsman, an
ancestor, and as such is revered.’² It seems more
likely, however, that the belief in transmigration was derived from
totemism than vice versa.

  
¹
‘That belief is a philosophy far from
primitive.’ (Lang, 1905, 192.)

  
²
Quoted by Frazer (1910,
4
, 45
f.).

Totem And Taboo

2760

   Yet another theory of totemism is
held by some eminent American ethnologists, Franz Boas, C.
Hill-Tout, and others. It is based upon observations on North
American Indian totemic clans and maintains that the totem was
originally the guardian spirit of an ancestor, who acquired it in a
dream and transmitted it to his descendants. We have already heard
the difficulties which stand in the way of the view that totems are
inherited from single individuals; but apart from this, the
Australian evidence lends no support to the theory that totems are
derived from guardian spirits. (Frazer, 1910,
4
, 48 ff.)

   The last of the psychological
theories, that put forward by Wundt (1912, 190), is based upon two
facts. ‘In the first place, the original totem, and the one
which continues to remain most common, is the animal; and,
secondly, the earliest totem animals are identical with soul
animals.’ Soul animals (such as birds, snakes, lizards and
mice) are appropriate receptacles of souls which have left the
body, on account of their rapid movements or flight through the air
or of other qualities likely to produce surprise or alarm. Totem
animals are derived from the transformations of the
‘breath-soul’ into animals. Thus, according to Wundt,
totemism is directly connected with the belief in spirits, that is
to say with animism.

Totem And Taboo

2761

(
b
) and (
c
)
THE ORIGIN
OF EXOGAMY AND ITS RELATION TO TOTEMISM

   I have set out the different
theories about totemism in some detail, though even so compression
has been inevitable and I fear that my account may have suffered in
consequence. In what follows, however, I shall venture, for my
readers’ sake, to be still more condensed. The discussions on
the exogamy practised by totemic peoples are, owing to the nature
of the material with which they deal, particularly complicated and
diffuse one might even say confused. The purposes of the present
work make it possible for me to limit myself to tracing certain of
the main lines of dispute, while referring those who wish to enter
into the subject more deeply to the specialized writings from which
I have so frequently quoted.

   The attitude taken by an author
on the problems of exogamy must naturally depend to some extent on
the position he has adopted towards the various theories of
totemism. Some of the explanations of totemism exclude any
connection with exogamy, so that the two institutions fall
completely apart. Thus we find two opposing views: one which seeks
to maintain the original presumption that exogamy forms an inherent
part of the totemic system, and the other which denies that there
is any such connection and holds that the convergence between these
two features of the oldest cultures is a chance one. This latter
opinion has been adopted without qualification by Frazer in his
later works: ‘I must request the reader to bear constantly in
mind’, he writes, ‘that the two institutions of
totemism and exogamy are fundamentally distinct in origin and
nature, though they have accidentally crossed and blended in many
tribes.’ (Frazer, 1910,
1
, xii.) He gives an explicit
warning that the opposite view must be a source of endless
difficulties and misunderstandings.

   Other writers have, on the
contrary, found a means of regarding exogamy as an inevitable
consequence of the basic principles of totemism. Durkheim (1898,
1902 and 1905) has put forward the view that the taboo attached to
totems was bound to involve prohibition against practising sexual
intercourse with a woman of the same totem. The totem is of the
same blood as the man and consequently the ban upon shedding blood
(in connection with defloration and menstruation) prohibits him
from sexual relations with a woman belonging to his totem.¹
Andrew Lang (1905, 125), who agrees with Durkheim on this subject,
believes that the prohibition against women of the same clan might
operate even without any blood taboo. The general totem taboo
(which, for instance, forbids a man to sit under his own totem
tree) would, in Lang’s opinion, have been sufficient.
Incidentally, he complicates this with another explanation of
exogamy (see below) and omits to show how the two explanations are
related to each other.

  
¹
See the criticisms of Durkheim’s
views by Frazer (1910,
4
, 100 ff.).

Totem And Taboo

2762

   As regards the chronological
relations between the two institutions, most of the authorities
agree that totemism is the older of them and that exogamy arose
later.¹

   Of the theories which seek to
show that exogamy is independent of totemism I shall only draw
attention to a few which throw light on the attitude of the
different authors to the problem of incest.

   McLennan (1865) ingeniously
inferred the existence of exogamy from the vestiges of customs
which seemed to indicate the earlier practice of marriage by
capture. He formed a hypothesis that in the earliest times it had
been a general usage for men to obtain their wives from another
group and that marriage with a woman of their own group gradually
‘came to be considered improper because it was
unusual’. He accounted for the prevalence of exogamy by
supposing that the practice of killing the majority of female
children at birth had led to a scarcity of women in primitive
societies. We are not here concerned with the question of how far
these assumptions of McLennan’s are supported by the actual
findings. What interests us far more is the fact that his
hypotheses fail to explain why the male members of a group should
refuse themselves access to the few remaining women of their own
blood - the fact that he entirely overlooks the problem of incest.
(Frazer, 1910,
4
, 71-92.)

   Other students of exogamy, on the
contrary, and evidently with greater justice, have seen in exogamy
an institution for the prevention of incest.² When one
considers the gradually increasing complication of the Australian
restrictions upon marriage, it is impossible not to accept the
opinions of Morgan (1877), Frazer (1910,
4
, 105 ff.), Howitt
and Baldwin Spencer that those regulations bear (in Frazer’s
words) ‘the impress of deliberate design’ and that they
aimed at achieving the result they have in fact achieved. ‘In
no other way does it seem possible to explain in all its details a
system at once so complex and so regular.’ (Frazer, ibid.,
106.)

   It is interesting to observe that
the first restrictions produced by the introduction of
marriage-classes affected the sexual freedom of the
younger
generation (that is, incest between brothers and sisters and
between sons and mothers) whereas incest between fathers and
daughters was only prevented by a further extension of the
regulations.

  
¹
See, for instance, Frazer (1910,
4
,
75): ‘The totemic clan is a totally different social organism
from the exogamous clan, and we have good grounds for thinking that
it is far older.’

  
²
Cf. the first essay in this
work.

Totem And Taboo

2763

   But the fact that exogamous
sexual restrictions were imposed intentionally throws no light on
the motive which led to their imposition. What is the ultimate
source of the horror of incest which must be recognized as the root
of exogamy? To explain it by the existence of an instinctive
dislike of sexual intercourse with blood relatives - that is to
say, by an appeal to the fact that there is a horror of incest - is
clearly unsatisfactory; for social experience shows that, in spite
of this supposed instinct, incest is no uncommon event even in our
present-day society, and history tells us of cases in which
incestuous marriage between privileged persons was actually the
rule.

   Westermarck (1906-8,
2
,
368)¹ has explained the horror of incest on the ground that
‘there is an innate aversion to sexual intercourse between
persons living very closely together from early youth, and that, as
such persons are in most cases related by blood, this feeling would
naturally display itself in custom and law as a horror of
intercourse between near kin’. Havelock Ellis, though he
disputed the instinctiveness of the aversion, subscribed to this
explanation in the main: ‘The normal failure of the pairing
instinct to manifest itself in the case of brothers and sisters, or
of boys and girls brought up together from infancy, is a merely
negative phenomenon due to the inevitable absence in those
circumstances of the conditions which evoke the pairing
instinct. . . . Between those who have been brought
up together from childhood all the sensory stimuli of vision,
hearing and touch have been dulled by use, trained to the calm
level of affection, and deprived of their potency to arouse the
erethistic excitement which produces sexual tumescence.’

  
¹
In the same chapter he replies to various
objections which have been raised against his views.

Totem And Taboo

2764

   It seems to me very remarkable
that Westermarck should consider that this innate aversion to
sexual intercourse with those with whom one has been intimate in
childhood is also the equivalent in psychical terms of the
biological fact that inbreeding is detrimental to the species. A
biological instinct of the kind suggested would scarcely have gone
so far astray in its psychological expression that, instead of
applying to blood relatives (intercourse with whom might be
injurious to reproduction), it affected persons who were totally
innocuous in this respect, merely because they shared a common
home. I cannot resist referring, too, to Frazer’s admirable
criticism of Westermarck’s theory. Frazer finds it
inexplicable that to-day there should be scarcely any sexual
aversion to intercourse with house-mates, whereas the horror of
incest, which on Westermarck’s theory is only a derivative of
that aversion, should have increased so enormously. But some
further comments of Frazer’s go deeper, and these I shall
reproduce in full, since they are in essential agreement with the
arguments which I put forward in my essay on taboo: