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TOTEM AND TABOO
RESEMBLANCES BETWEEN THE PSYCHIC
LIVES OF SAVAGES AND NEUROTICS
BY
PROFESSOR DR. SIGMUND FREUD, LL.D.
Authorized English Translation
with Introduction by
A. A. BRILL, Ph.B., M.D.
Asst. Prof, of Psychiatry. N. Y. Post Graduate Medical
School; Lecturer in Psychoanalysis and Ab-
normal Psychologry. New York University:
former Chief of Clinic of Psychiatry,
Columbia University
NEW YORK
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
1918
Copyright, 1918, by
MOFFAT. YARD AND COMPANY
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The essays treated here appeared under the
subtitle of this book in the first numbers of the
periodical "Imago" edited by me. They repre-
sent my first efforts to apj)ly view-points and re-
sults of psychoanalysis to unexplained problems
of racial psychology. In method this book con-
trasts with that of W. Wundt and the works of
the Zurich Psychoanalytic School. The former
tries to accomplish the same object through as-
sumptions and procedures from non-analytic
psychology, while the latter follow the opposite
course and strive to settle problems of individual
psychology by referring to material of racial
psychology.^ I am pleased to say that the first
stimulus for my own works came from these two
sources.
I am fully aware of tlie shortcomings in these
essays. I shall not touch upon those which are
characteristic of first efforts at investigation.
The others, however, demand a word of explana-
iJung: Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Transformations
and Symbols of the Libido) translated by Dr. Beatrice Hinkle
under the title "The Psychology of the Unconscious," Moffat,
Yard & Co., and "Principles of Psychoanalysis, Nervous and Men-
tal Diseases," Monograph Series.
iii
iv PREFACE
tion. The four essays which are here collected
will be of interest to a wide circle of educated peo-
ple, but they can only be thoroughly understood
and judged by those who are really acquainted
with psychoanalysis as such. It is hoped that
they may serve as a bond between students of
ethnology, philology, folklore and of the allied
sciences, and psychoanalysts; they cannot, how-
ever, supply both groups the entire requisites for
such cooperation. They will not furnish the
former with sufficient insight into the new
psychological technique, nor will the psycho-
analysts acquire through them an adequate com-
mand over the material to be elaborated. Both
groups will have to content themselves with what-
ever attention they can stimulate here and there
and with the hope that frequent meetings be-
tween them will not remain unproductive for sci-
ence.
The two principle themes, totem and taboo,
which gave the name to this small book are not
treated alike here. The problem of taboo is pre-
sented more exhaustively, and the effort to solve
it is approached with perfect confidence. The
investigation of totemism may be modestly ex-
pressed as : "This is all that psychoanalytic study
can contribute at present to the elucidation of
the problem of totemism." This difference in
the treatment of the two subjects is due to the fact
PREFACE V
that taboo still exists in our midst. To be sure,
it is negatively conceived and directed to different
contents, but according to its psychological na-
ture, it is still nothing else than Kant's "Cate-
gorical Imperative," which tends to act compul-
sively and rejects all conscious motivations. On
the other hand, totemism is a religio-social insti-
tution which is alien to our present feelings ; it has
long been abandoned and replaced by new forms.
In the religions, morals, and customs of the
civilized races of today it has left only slight
traces, and even among those races where it is
still retained, it has had to undergo great
changes. The social and material progress of
the history of mankind could obviously change
taboo much less than totemism.
In this book the attempt is ventured to find the
original meaning of totemism through its infan-
tile traces, that is, through the indications in
which it reappears in the development of our
own children. The close connection between
totem and taboo indicates the further paths to the
hypothesis maintained here. And although this
hypothesis leads to somewhat improbable con-
clusions, there is no reason for rejecting the pos-
sibility that it comes more or less near to the
reality which is so hard to reconstruct.
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
When one reviews the history of psycho-
analysis ^ one finds that it had its inception in
the study of morbid mental states. Beginning
with the observation of hysteria and the other neu-
roses ^ Professor Freud gradually extended his
investigations to normal psychology and evolved
new concepts and new methods of study. The
neurotic symptoms were no longer imaginary
troubles the nature of which one could not grasp,
but were conceived as mental and emotional mal-
adjustments to one's environment. The stamp
of degeneracy impressed upon neurotics by other
schools of medicine was altogether eradicated.
Deeper investigation showed conclusively that a
person might become neurotic if subjected to cer-
tain environments, and that there was no definite
dividing line between normal and abnormal.
The hysterical symptoms, obsessions, doubts,
phobias, as well as hallucinations of the insane,
show the same mechanisms as those similar psy-
i"The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement," translated
by A. A. Brill. Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series.
2 "Selected Papers on Hysteria and Other Psychoneuroses,"
translated by A. A. Brill. Monograph Series,
viii TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
chic structures which one constantly encounters
in normal persons in the form of mistakes in talk-
ing, reading, writing, forgetting,^ dreams and
wit. The dream, always highly valued by the
populace, and as much despised by the edu-
cated classes, has a definite structure and mean-
ing when subjected to analysis. Professor
Freud's monumental work, The Interpretation
of Dreams,^ marked a new epoch in the history
of mental science. One might use the same
words in reference to his profound analysis of
wit.^
Faulty psychic actions, dreams and wit are
products of the unconscious mental activity, and
like neurotic or psychotic manifestations repre-
sent efforts at adjustment to one's environment.
The slip of the tongue shows that on account of
unconscious inhibitions the individual concerned
is unable to express his true thoughts ; the dream
is a distorted or plain expression of those wishes
which are prohibited in the waking states, and the
witticism, owing to its veiled or indirect way of
expression, enables the individual to obtain
pleasure from forbidden sources. But whereas
3 "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life," translated by A.
A. Brill. T. Fisher Unwin, London, and the Macmillan Co.,
N. Y.
4 Translated by A. A. Brill, George AUen, and Unwin, London,
and the Macmillan Co., N. Y.
6 "Wit and Its Relations to the Unconscious," translated by
A. A. BriU. Moffat, Yard and Co., N. Y.
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION ix
dreams, witticisms, and faulty actions give evi-
dences of inner conflicts which the individual
overcomes, the neurotic or psychotic symptom is
the result of a failure and represents a morbid
adjustment.
The aforementioned psychic formations are
therefore nothing but manifestations of the
struggle with reality, the constant effort to ad-
just one's primitive feelings to the demands of
civilization. In spite of all later development the
individual retains all his infantile psychic struc-
tures. Nothing is lost; the infantile wishes and
primitive impulses can always be demonstrated
in the grown up and on occasion can be brought
back to the surface. In his dreams the normal
person is constantly reviving his childhood, and
the neurotic or psychotic individual merges back
into a sort of psychic infantilism through his mor-
bid productions. The unconscious mental activ-
ity which is made up of repressed infantile mate-
rial forever strives to express itself. Whenever
the individual finds it impossible to dominate the
difficulties of the world of reality there is a re-
gression to the infantile, and psychic disturbances
ensue which are conceived as peculiar thoughts
and acts. Thus the civilized adult is the result
of his childhood or the sum total of his early im-
pressions; psychoanalysis thus confirms the old
saying: The child is father to the man.
X TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
It is at this point in the development of psycho-
analysis that the paths gradually broadened until
they finally culminated in this work. There
were many indications that the childhood of the
individual showed a marked resemblance to the
primitive history or the childhood of races. The
knowledge gained from dream analysis and
phantasies,^ when applied to the productions of
racial phantasies, like myths and fairy tales,
seemed to indicate that the fii'st impulse to form
myths was due to the same emotional strivings
which produced dreams, fancies and symptoms.^
Further study in this direction has thrown
much light on our gi-eat cultural institutions,
such as religion, morality, law and philosophy,
all of which Professor Freud has modestly
formulated in this volume and thus initiated a
new epoch in the study of racial psychology.
I take great j)leasure in acknowledging my
indebtedness to Mr. Alfred B. Kuttner for the
invaluable assistance he rendered in the transla-
tion of this work.
A. A. Brill.
6 Freud : "Leonardo Da Vinci," translated by A. A. Brill.
Moffat, Yard and Co., X. Y.
7 Cf. the works of Abraham, Spielrein, Jung, and Rank.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Savage's Dread of Incest .... 1
II Taboo and the x\mbivai.ence of Emotions '30
III Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of
Thought 124
IV The Infantile Recurrence of Totemism . 165
TOTEM AND TABOO
CHAPTER I
THE savage's dread OF INCEST
Primitive man is known to us by the stages of
development through which he has passed: that
is, through the inanimate monuments and imple-
ments which he has left behind for us, through
our knowledge of his art, his religion and his at-
titude towards life, which we have received either
directly or through the medium of legends, myths
and f aiiy-tales ; and through the remnants of his
ways of thinking that survive in our own manners
and customs. Moreover, in a certain sense he
is still our contemporary : there are people whom
we still consider more closely related to primitive
man than to ourselves, in whom we therefore
recognize the direct descendants and representa-
tives of earlier man. We can thus judge the
so-called savage and semi-savage races; their
psychic hfe assumes a peculiar interest for us, for
we can recognize in their psychic life a well-pre-
served, early stage of our own development.
2 TOTEM AND TABOO
If this assumption is correct, a comparison of
the "Psychology of Primitive Races" as taught
by folklore, with the psycholog}^ of the neurotic
as it has become known through psychoanalysis,
will reveal numerous points of correspondence
and throw new light on subjects that are more
or less familiar to us.
For outer as well as for inner reasons, I am
choosing for this comparison those tribes which
have been described by ethnographists as being
most backward and wretched: the aborigines of
the youngest continent, namely Australia, whose
fauna has also preserved for us so much that is
archaic and no longer to be found elsewhere.
The aborigines of Australia are looked upon
as a peculiar race which shows neither physical
nor linguistic relationship with its nearest neigh-
bors, the INIelanesian, Polynesian and IMalayan
races. The}^ do not build houses or permanent
huts; they do not cultivate the soil or keep any
domestic animals except dogs; and they do not
even know the art of pottery. They live exclu-
sively on the flesh of all sorts of animals which
they kill in the chase, and on the roots which they
dig. Kings or chieftains are unknown among
them, and all communal affairs are decided by
the elders in assembly. It is quite doubtful
whether they evince any traces of religion in the
form of worship of higher beings. The tribes
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST S
living in the interior who have to contend with
the greatest vicissitudes of Hf e owing to a scarcity
of water, seem in every way more primitive than
those who Hve near the coast.
We surely would not expect that these poor,
naked cannibals should be moral in their sex life
according to our ideas, or that they should have
imposed a high degree of restriction upon their
sexual impulses. And yet we learn that they
have considered it their duty to exercise the most
searching care and the most painful rigor in
guarding against incestuous sexual relations.
In fact their whole social organization seems to
serve this object or to have been brought into re-
lation with its attainment.
Among the Austrahans the system of Totem-
ism takes the place of all religious and social in-
stitutions. Australian tribes are divided into
smaller sejyts or clans, each taking the name of
its totem, Now what is a totem? As a rule it is
an animal, either edible and harmless, or danger-
ous and feared; more rarely the totem is a plant
or a force of nature (rain, water), which stands
in a peculiar relation to the whole clan. The
totem is first of all the tribal ancestor of the clan,
as well as its tutelary spirit and protector; it
sends oracles and, though otherwise dangerous,
the totem knows and spares its children. The
members of a totem are therefore under a sacred
4 TOTEM AND TABOO
obligation not to kill (destroy) their totem, to
abstain from eating its meat or from any other
enjoyment of it. Any violation of these prohibi-
tions is automatically pmiished. The character
of a totem is inherent not only in a single animal
or a single being but in all the members of the
species. From time to time festivals are held
at which the members of a totem represent or
imitate, in ceremonial dances, the movements and
characteristics of their totems.
The totem is hereditary either through the ma-
ternal or the paternal line; (maternal transmis-
sion probably always preceded and was only later
supplanted by the paternal) . The attachment to
a totem is the foundation of all the social obliga-
tions of an Australian : it extends on the one hand
beyond the tribal relationship, and on the other
hand it supersedes consanguinous relationship.^
The totem is not limited to district or to lo-
cality; the members of a totem may live sepa-
rated from one another and on friendly terms
with adherents of other totems.^
1 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. I, p. 53. "The
totem bond is stronger than the bond of blood or family in the
modern sense."
2 This very brief extract of the totemic system cannot be left
without some elucidation and without discussing its limitations.
The name Totem or Totam was first learned from the North
American Indians by the Englishman, J. Long, in 1791. The
subject has gradually acquired great scientific interest and has
called forth a copious literature. I refer especially to "Totemism
and Exogamy" by J. G. Frazer, 4 vols., 1910, and the books
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 5
And now, finally, we must consider that pe-
culiarity of the totemic system which attracts
the interest of the psychoanalyst. Almost every-
where the totem prevails there also exists the
and articles of Andrew Lang ("The Secret of Totem," 1905).
The credit for having recognized the significance of totemisra for
the ancient history of man belongs to the Scotchman, J. Ferguson
MacLennan {Fortnightly Review, 1869-70). Exterior to Aus-
tralia, totemic institutions were found and are still observed
among North American Indians, as well as among the races of
the Polynesian Islands group, in East India, and in a large part
of Africa. Many traces and survivals otherwise hard 'lo interpret
lead to the conclusion that totemisra also once existed among the
aboriginal Aryan and Semitic races of Europe, so that many in-
vestigators are inclined to recognize in totemisra a necessary phase
of human development through which every race has passed.
How then did prehistoric man come to acquire a totem; that
is, how did he come to make his descent from this or that animal
foundation of his social duties and, as we shall hear, of his sexual
restrictions as well? Many different theories have been advanced
to explain this, a review of which the reader may find in Wundt's
"Volkerpsychologie" (Vol. II, ]Mythus und Religion).
I promise soon to make the problem of totemisra a subject of
special study in which an effort will be made to solve it by apply-
ing the psychoanalytic method. (Cf. The fourth chapter of this
work.)
Not only is the theory of toteraism controversial, but the very
facts concerning it are hardly to be expressed in such general
statements as were attempted above. There is hardly an asser-
tion to which one would not have to add exceptions and contra-
dictions. But it must not be forgotten that even the most ])rim-
itive and conservative races are, in a certain sense, old, and have
a long period behind them during which whatsoever was aborig-
inal with them has undergone much development and distortion.
Thus among those races who still evince it, we find totemisra to-
day in the most manifold states of decay and disintegration; we
observe that fragments of it have passed over to other social and
religious institutions; or it raay exist in fixed forras but far re-
moved from its original nature. The difficulty then consists in
the fact that it is not altogether easy to decide what in the actual
conditions is to be taken as a faithful copy of the significant past
and v/hat is to be considered as a secondary distortion of it.
6 TOTEM AND TABOO
law that the members of the same totem are not
allowed to enter into sexual relations with each
other; that is, that they cannot mari^y each other.
This represents the exogamy which is associated
with the totem.
This sternly maintained prohibition is very re-
markable. There is nothing to account for it in
anything that we have hitherto learned from the
conception of the totem or from any of its at-
tributes; that is, we do not understand how it
happened to enter the system of totemism. We
are therefore not astonished if some investigators
simply assume that at first exogamy — both as to
its origin and to its meaning — had nothing to do
with totemism, but that it was added to it at
some time without any deeper association, when
marriage restrictions proved necessary. How-
ever that may be, the association of totemism
and exogamy exists, and proves to be very strong.
Let us elucidate the meaning of this prohibi-
tion through further discussion.
a) The violation of the prohibition is not left
to what is, so to speak, an automatic punishment,
as is the case with other violations of the prohibi-
tions of the totem (e.g., not to kill the totem
animal), but is most energetically avenged by
the whole tribe as if it were a question of warding
off a danger that threatens the community as a
whole or a guilt that weighs upon all. A few
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 7
sentences from Frazer's book^ will show how
seriously such trespasses are treated by these
savages who, according to our standard, are
otherwise very immoral.
"In Australia the regular penalty for sexual
intercourse with a person of a forbidden clan is
death. It matters not whether the woman is
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 offense 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 viola-
tions of these prohibitions ' are regarded with
the utmost abhorrence and are punished by
death' (Howitt)."
b) As the same severe punishment is also
meted out for temporary love affairs which have
not resulted in childbirth, the assumption of
other motives, perhaps of a practical nature, be-
comes improbable.
3 Frazer, 1. c. p. 54.
8 TOTEM AND TABOO
c) As the totem is hereditary and is not
changed by marriage, the results of the prohibi-
tion, for instance in the case of maternal heredity,
are easily perceived. If, for example, the man
belongs to a clan with the totem of the Kangaroo
and marries a woman of the Emu totem, the chil-
dren, both boys and girls, are all Emu. Accord-
ing to the totem law incestuous relations with his
mother and his sister, who are Emu like himself,
are therefore made impossible for a son of this
marriage.*
d) But we need only a reminder to realize
that the exogamy connected with the totem ac-
complishes more; that is, aims at more than the
prevention of incest with the mother or the sisters.
It also makes it impossible for the man to have
sexual union with all the women of his own group,
with a number of females, therefore, who are not
consanguinousty related to him, by treating all
these women like blood relations. The psycho-
logical justification for this extraordinary restric-
tion, which far exceeds anything comparable to
4 But the father, who is a Kangaroo, is free — at least under this
prohibition — to commit incest with his daughters, who are Emu.
In the case of paternal inheritance of the totem the father would
be Kangaroo as well as the children; then incest with the daugh-
ters would be forbidden to the father and incest with the mother
would be left open to the son. These consequences of the totem
prohibition seem to indicate that the maternal inheritance is older
than the paternal one, for there are grounds for assuming that the
totem prohibitions are directed first of all against the incestuous
desires of the son.
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 9
it among civilized races, is not, at first, evident.
All we seem to understand is that the role of the
totem (the animal) as ancestor is taken very seri-
ously. Everybody descended from the same
totem is consanguinous ; that is, of one family;
and in this family the most distant grades of re-
lationship are recognized as an absolute obstacle
to sexual union.
Thus these savages reveal to us an unusually
high grade of incest dread or incest sensitiveness,
combined with the peculiarity, which we do not
very well understand, of substituting the totem
relationship for the real blood relationship. But
we must not exaggerate this contradiction too
much, and let us bear in mind that the totem
prohibitions include real incest as a special case.
In what manner the substitution of the totem
group for the actual family has come about re-
mains a riddle, the solution of which is perhaps
bound up with the explanation of the totem it-
self. Of course it must be remembered that with
a certain freedom of sexual intercourse, extend-
ing beyond the limitations of matrimony, the
blood relationship, and with it also the prevention
of incest, becomes so uncertain that we cannot
dispense with some other basis for the prohibition.
It is therefore not superfluous to note that the
customs of Australians recognize social condi-
tions and festive occasions at which the exclusive
10 TOTEM AND TABOO
conjugal right of a man to a woman is violated.
The linguistic custom of these tribes, as well
as of most totem races, reveals a peculiarity which
undoubtedly is pertinent in this connection. For
the designations of relationship of which they
make use do not take into consideration the rela-
tion between two individuals, but between an
individual and his group ; they belong, according
to the expression of L. H. Morgan, to the "class-
ifying" system. That means that a man calls
not only his begetter "father" but also every other
man who, according to the tribal regulations,
might have married his mother and thus become
his father; he calls "mother" not only the woman
who bore him but also every other woman who
might have become his mother without violation
of the tribal laws; he calls "brothers" and "sis-
ters" not only the children of his real parents,
but also the children of all the persons named
who stand in the parental group relation with
him, and so on. The kinship names which two
Australians give each other do not, therefore,
necessarily point to a blood relationship between
them, as they would have to according to the
custom of our language ; they signify much more
the social than the physical relations. An ap-
proach to this classifying system is perhaps to be
found in our nursery, when the child is induced to
greet every male and female friend of the parents
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 11
as "uncle" and "aunt," or it may be found in a
transferred sense when we speak of "Brothers
in Apollo," or "Sisters in Christ."
The explanation of this linguistic custom,
which seems so strange to us, is simple if looked
upon as a remnant and indication of those mar-
riage institutions which the Rev. L. Fison has
called "group marriage," characterized by a num-
ber of men exercising conjugal rights over a
number of women. The children of this group
marriage would then rightly look upon each other
as brothers and sisters although not born of the
same mother, and would take all the men of the
group for their fathers.
Although a number of authors, as, for instance,
B. Westermarck in his "History of Human Mar-
riage," ^ oppose the conclusions which others have
drawn from the existence of group-relationship
names, the best authorities on the Australian
savages are agreed that the classificatory rela-
tionship names must be considered as survivals
from the period of group marriages. And, ac-
cording to Spencer and Gillen,*'' a certain form of
group marriage can be established as still exist-
ing to-day among the tribes of the Urabunna
and the Dieri. Group marriage therefore pre-
ceded individual marriage among these races
5 Second edition, 1902.
6 "The Native Tribes of Central Australia," London, 1899.
12 TOTEM AND TABOO
and did not disappear without leaving distinct
traces in language and custom.
But if we replace individual marriage, we can
then grasp the apparent excess of cases of incest
shunning which we have met among these same
races. The totem exogamy, or prohibition of
sexual intercourse between members of the same
clan, seemed the most appropriate means for the
prevention of group incest ; and this totem exog-
amy then became fixed and long survived its
original motivation.
Although we believe that we understand the
motives of the marriage restrictions among the
Australian savages, we have still to learn that
the actual conditions reveal a still more bewilder-
ing complication. For there are only few tribes
in Australia w^hich show no other prohibition be-
sides the totem barrier. ]\Iost of them are so
organized that they fall into two divisions which
have been called marriage classes, or phratries.
Each of these marriage groups is exogamous and
includes a majority of totem groups. Usually
each marriage group is again divided into two
sub-classes (sub-phratries) , and the whole tribe
is therefore divided into four classes; the sub-
classes thus standing between the phratries and
the totem gi^oups.
The typical and often very intricate scheme
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST
13
of organization of an Australian tribe therefore
looks as follows :
SUBPHRATRIES
Totem
a6Y 6 t y] 123 4-56
The twelve totem groups are brought under
four subclasses and two main classes. All the
divisions are exogamous/ The subclass c forms
an exogamous unit with e, and the subclass d
with f . The success or the tendency of these ar-
rangements is quite obvious ; they serve as a fur-
ther restriction on the marriage choice and on
sexual freedom. If there were only these twelve
totem groups — assuming the same number of
people in each group — every member of a group
would have ■^/i2 of all the women of the tribe to
choose from. The existence of the two phratries
reduces this number to %2 or Vz; a man of the
totem a can only marry a woman from the groups
1 to 6. With the introduction of the two sub-
classes the selection sinks to /12 or /4; a man of
7 The number of totems is arbitrarily chosen.
14 TOTEM AND TABOO
the totem « must limit his marriage choice to
the woman of the totems 4, 5, 6.
The historical relations of the marriage classes
— of which there are found as many as eight in
some tribes — are quite unexplained. We only
see that these arrangements seek to attain the
same object as the totem exogamy, and even
strive for more. But whereas the totem exog-
amy makes the impression of a sacred statute
which sprang into existence, no one knows how,
and is therefore a custom, the complicated insti-
tutions of the marriage classes, with their sub-
divisions and the conditions attached to them,
seem to spring from legislation with a definite
aim in view. They have perhaps taken up afresh
the task of incest prohibition because the influ-
ence of the totem was on the wane. And while
the totem system is, as we know, the basis of all
other social obligations and moral restrictions of
the tribe, the importance of the phratries gener-
ally ceases when the regulation of the marriage
choice at which they aimed has been accom-
plished.
In the further development of the classifica-
tion of the marriage system there seems to be a
tendency to go beyond the prevention of natural
and group incest, and to prohibit marriage be-
tween more distant group relations, in a manner
similar to the Catholic church, which extended
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 15
the marriage prohibitions always in force for
brother and sisters, to cousins, and invented for
them the grades of spiritual kinship.^
It would hardly serve our purpose to go into
the extraordinarily intricate and unsettled dis-
cussion concerning the origin and significance of
the marriage classes, or to go more deeply into
their relation to totemism. It is sufficient for our
purposes to point out the great care expended
by the Australians as well as by other savage
people to prevent incest.^ We must say that
these savages are even more sensitive to incest
than we, perhaps because they are more subject
to temptations than we are, and hence require
more extensive protection against it.
But the incest dread of these races does not
content itself with the creation of the institutions
described, which, in the main, seem to be directed
against group incest. We must add a series of
"customs" which watch over the individual be-
havior to near relatives in our sense, which are
maintained with almost religious severity and of
whose object there can hardly be any doubt.
These customs or custom prohibitions may be
called "avoidances." They spread far beyond
8 Article "Totemism" in Encyclopedia Britannica, eleventh edi-
tion, 1911 (A. Lang).
9 Storfer has recently drawn special attention to this point in
his monograph: "Parricide as a Special Case. Papers on Ap-
plied Psychic Investigation," No. 12, Vienna, 1911.
16 TOTEM AND TABOO
the Australian totem races. But here again I
must ask the reader to be content with a frag-
mentary excerpt from the abundant material.
Such restrictive prohibitions are directed in
]\Ielanesia against the relations of boys with their
mothers and sisters. Thus, for instance, on
Lepers Island, one of the Xew Hebrides, the boy
leaves his maternal home at a fixed age and
moves to the "clubhouse," where he then regu-
larly sleeps and takes his meals. He may still
visit his home to ask for food; but if his sister is
at home he must go away before he has eaten; if
no sister is about he may sit down to eat near the
door. If brother and sister meet b}^ chance in
the open, she must run away or turn aside and
conceal herself. If the boy recognizes certain
footprints in the sand as his sister's he is not to
follow them, nor is she to follow his. He will
not even mention her name and will guard against
using any current word if it forms part of her
name. This avoidance, which begins with the
ceremony of puberty, is strictly observed for life.
The reserve between mother and son increases
with age and generally is more obligatory on the
mother's side. If she brings him something to
eat she does not give it to him herself but puts it
down before him, nor does she address him in the
familiar manner of mother and son, but uses the
formal address. Similar customs obtain in New
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 17
Caledonia. If brother and sister meet, she flees
into the bush and he passes by without turning
his head toward her/^
On the Gazella Peninsula in Xew Britain a
sister, beginning with her marriage, may no
longer speak with her brother, nor does she utter
his name but designates him by means of a cir-
cumlocution/^
In Xew INIecklenburg some cousins are subject
to such restrictions, which also apply to brothers
and sisters. They may neither approach each
other, shake hands, nor give each other presents,
though they may talk to each other at a distance
of several paces. The penalty for incest with a
sister is death through hanging. ^^
These rules of avoidance are especially severe
in the Fiji Islands where they concern not only
consanguinous sisters but group sisters as well.
To hear that these savages hold sacred orgies in
M^hich persons of just these forbidden degrees
of kinship seek sexual union w^ould seem still
more peculiar to us, if we did not prefer to make
use of this contradiction to explain the prohibi-
tion instead of being astonished at it.^^
10 R. H. Codrington, "The Melanesians," also Frazer: "Totemism
and Exogamy," Vol. I, p. 77,
11 Frazer, 1. c. II, p. 124, according to Kleintischen : The In-
habitants of the Coast of the Gazelle Peninsula.
12 Frazer, 1. c. II, p. 131, according to P. G. Peckel in An-
thropes, 1908.
13 Fraser, 1. c. II, p. 147, according to the Rev. L. Fison.
18 TOTEM AND TABOO
Among the Battas of Sumatra these laws of
avoidance affect all near relationships. For in-
stance, it would be most offensive for a Battan
to accompany his own sister to an evening party.
A brother will feel most uncomfortable in the
company of his sister even when other persons are
also j^resent. If either comes into the house, the
other prefers to leave. Nor will a father remain
alone in the house with his daughter any more
than the mother with her son. The Dutch mis-
sionary who reported these customs added that
unfortunately he had to consider them well
founded. It is assumed without question by
these races that a man and a woman left
alone together will indulge in the most ex-
treme intimacy, and as they expect all kinds
of punishments and evil consequences from
consanguinous intercourse they do quite right
to avoid all temptations by means of such pro-
hibitions. ^"^
Among the Barongos in Delagoa Bay, in
Africa, the most rigorous precautions are di-
rected, curiously enough, against the sister-in-
law, the wife of the brother of one's own wife.
If a man meets this person who is so dangerous
to him, he carefully avoids her. He does not
dare to eat out of the same dish with her; he
speaks only timidly to her, does not dare to enter
.14 Frazer, 1. c. II, p. 189.
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 19
her hut, and greets her only with a trembhng
voice.^^
Among the Akamba (or Wakamba) in British
East Africa, a law of avoidance is in force which
one would have expected to encounter more fre-
quently. A girl must carefully avoid her own
father between the time of her puberty and her
marriage. She hides herself if she meets him
on the street and never attempts to sit down next
to him, behaving in this way right up to her en-
gagement. But after her marriage no further
obstacle is put in the way of her social intercourse
with her father. ^^
The most widespread and strictest avoidance,
which is perhaps the most interesting one for
civilized races, is that which restricts the social
relationsr between a man and his mother-in-law.
It is quite general in Australia, but it is also in
force among the JNIelanesian, Polynesian and
Negi^o races of Africa as far as the traces of
totemism and group relationship reach, and prob-
ably further still. Among some of these races
similar prohibitions exist against the harmless
social intercourse of a wife with her father-in-law,
but these are by far not so constant or so serious.
In a few cases both parents-in-law become ob-
jects of avoidance.
15 Frazer, 1. c. II, p. 388, accbrding to Junod.
16 Frazer, 1. c. II, p. 424.
20 TOTEM AND TABOO
As we are less interested in the ethnographic
dissemination than in the substance and the pur-
pose of the mother-in-law avoidance, I will here
also hmit myself to a few examples.
On the Banks Island these prohibitions are
very severe and painfully exact. A man will
avoid the proximity of his mother-in-law as she
avoids his. If they meet by chance on a path,
the woman steps aside and turns her back until
he is passed, or he does the same.
In Vanna Lava (Port Patterson) a man will
not even walk behind his mother-in-law along the
beach until the rising tide has washed away the
trace of her foot-steps. But they may talk to
each other at a certain distance. It is quite out
of the question that he should ever pronounce
the name of his mother-in-law, or she his.^^
On the Solomon Islands, beginning with his
marriage, a man must neither see nor speak with
his mother-in-law. If he meets her he acts as if
he did not know her and runs away as fast as he
can in order to hide himself. ^^
Among the Zulu Kaffii^s custom demands that
a man should be ashamed of his mother-in-law
and that he should do everything to avoid her
company. He does not enter a hut in which she
17 Frazer, 1. c. II, p. 76.
isFrazer, 1. c. II, p. 113, according to C. Ribbe: "Two Years
among the Cannibals of the Solomon Islands," 1905.
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 21
isj. and when they meet he or she goes aside, she
perhaps hiding behind a bush while he holds his
shield before his face. If they cannot avoid each
other and the woman has nothing with which to
cover herself, she at least binds a bunch of grass
around her head in order to satisfy the ceremon-
ial requirements. Conmiunication between them
must either be made through a third person or
else they may shout at each other at a consider-
able distance if they have some barrier between
them as, for instance, the enclosure of a kraal.
Neither may utter the other's name/^
Among the Basogas, a negro tribe living in the
region of the Nile sources, a man may talk to his
mother-in-law only if she is in another room of
the house and is not visible to him. IMoreover,
this race abominates incest to such an extent as
not to let it go unpunished even among domestic
animals. ^^
Whereas all observers have interpreted the
purpose and meaning of the avoidances between
near relatives as protective measures against in-
cest, different interpretations have been given for
those prohibitions which concern the relationship
with the mother-in-law. It was quite incompre-
hensible why all these races should manifest such
great fear of temptation on the part of the man
19 Frazer, I. c. II, p. 385.
20 Frazer, 1. c. II, p. 461.
22 TOTEM AND TABOO
for an elderly woman, old enough to be his
mother.^^
The same objection was also raised against the
conception of Fison who called attention to the
fact that certain marriage class systems show
a gap in that they make marriage between a man
and his mother-in-law theoretically not impossi-
ble and that a special guarantee was therefore
necessary to guard against this possibility.
Sir J. Lubbock, in his book "The Origin of
Civilization," traces back the behavior of the
mother-in-law toward the son-in-law to the
former "marriage by capture." "As long as the
capture of women actually took place, the in-
dignation of the parents was probably serious
enough. When nothing but symbols of this
form of marriage survived, the indignation of
the parents was also symbolized and this custom
continued after its origin had been forgotten."
Crawley has found it easy to show how little this
tentative explanation agrees with the details of
actual observation.
E. B. Tylor thinks that the treatment of the
son-in-law on the part of the mother-in-law is
nothing more than a form of "cutting" on the
part of the woman's family. The man counts as
a stranger, and this continues until the first child
is born. But even if no account is taken of cases
21 V. Crawley: "The Mystic Rose," London, 1903, p. 405.
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 23
in which this last condition does not remove the
prohibition, this explanation is subject to the ob-
jection that it does not throw any light on the
custom dealing with the relation between mother-
in-law and son-in-law, thus overlooking the sex-
ual factor, and that it does not take into account
the almost sacred loathing which finds expres-
sion in the laws of avoidance.^^
A Zulu woman who was asked about the basis
for this prohibition showed great delicacy of feel-
ing in her answer : "It is not right that he should
see the breasts which nursed his wife." ^^
It is known that also among civilized races the
relation of son-in-law and mother-in-law belongs
to one of the most difficult sides of family organ-
ization. Although laws of avoidance no longer
exist in the society of the white races of Europe
and America, much quarreling and displeasure
would often be avoided if they did exist and did
not have to be reestablished by individuals.
Many a European will see an act of high wis-
dom in the laws of avoidance which savage races
have established to preclude any understanding
between two persons who have become so closely
related. There is hardly any doubt that there
is something in the psychological situation of
22 Crawley, 1. c. p. 407.
23 Crawley, I. c. p. 401, according to Leslie: "Among the Zulus
and Amatongas," 1875.
24 TOTEM AND TABOO
mother-in-law and son-in-law which furthers hos-
tilities between them and renders living together
difficult. The fact that the witticisms of civil-
ized races show such a preference for this very-
mother-in-law theme seems to me to point to
the fact that the emotional relations between
mother-in-law and son-in-law are controlled by
components which stand in sharp contrast to each
other. I mean that the relation is really "ambi-
valent," that is, it is comj^osed of conflicting feel-
ings of tenderness and hostility.
A certain part of these feelings is evident.
The mother-in-law is unwilling to give up the
possession of her daughter; she distrusts the
stranger to whom her daughter has been deliv-
ered, and shows a tendency to maintain the dom-
inating position, to which she became accustomed
at home. On the part of the man, there is the
determination not to subject himself any longer
to any foreign will, his jealousy of all persons
who preceded him in the possession of his wife's
tenderness, and, last but not least, his aversion
to being disturbed in his illusion of sexual over-
valuation. As a rule such a disturbance eman-
ates for the most part from his mother-in-law
who reminds him of her daughter through so
many common traits but who lacks all the charm
of youth, such as beauty and that psychic spon-
taneity which makes his wife precious to him.
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 25
The knowledge of hidden psychic feelings
which psychoanalytic investigation of individuals
has given us, makes it possible to add other mo-
tives to the above. Where the psychosexual
needs of the woman are to be satisfied in marriage
and family life, there is always the danger of dis-
satisfaction through the premature termination
of the con j ugal relation, and the monotony in the
wife's emotional life. The ageing mother pro-
tects herself against this by living through the
lives of her children by identifying herself with
them and making their emotional experiences her
own. Parents are said to remain young with
their children, and this is, in fact, one of the most
valuable psychic benefits which parents derive
from their children. Childlessness thus elimin-
ates one of the best means to endure the neces-
sary resignation imposed upon the individual
through marriage. This emotional identifica-
tion with the daughter may easily go so far with
the mother that she also falls in love with the man
her daughter loves, which leads, in extreme cases,
to severe forms of neurotic ailments on account
of the violent psychic resistance against this emo-
tional ^predisposition. At all events the tendency
to such infatuation is very frequent with the
mother-in-law, and either this infatuation itself
or the tendency opposed to it joins the conflict
of contending forces in the psyche of the mother-
26 TOTEM AND TABOO
in-law. Very often it is just this harsh and sad-
istic component of the love emotion which is
tm-ned against the son-in-law in order better to
suppress the forbidden tender feelings.
The relation of the husband to his mother-in-
law is complicated through similar feelings which,
however, spring from other sources. The path
of object selection has normally led him to his
love object through the image of his mother and
perhaps of his sister ; in consequence of the incest
barriers his preference for these two beloved per-
sons of his childhood has been deflected and he
is then able to find their image in strange objects.
He now sees the mother-in-law taking the place
of his own mother and of his sister's mother, and
there develops a tendency to return to the primi-
tive selection, against which everything in him re-
sists. His incest dread demands that' he should
not be reminded of the genealogy of his love
selection; the actuality of his mother-in-law,
whom he had not known all his life like his mother
so that her picture can be preserved unchanged
in his unconscious, facilitates this rejection. An
added mixture of irritability and animosity in his
feelings leads us to suspect that the mother-in-
law actually represents an incest temptation for
the son-in-law, just as it not infrequently hap-
pens that a man falls in love with his subsequent
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 27
mother-in-law before his inchnation is trans-
ferred to her daughter.
I see no objection to the assumption that it is
just this incestuous factor of the relationship
which motivates the avoidance between son- and
mother-in-law among savages. Among the ex-
planations for the "avoidances" which these
primitive races observe so strictl}^ we would
therefore give preference to the opinion origin-
ally expressed by Fison, who sees nothing in these
regulations but a protection against possible in-
cest. This would also hold good for all the
other avoidances between those related by blood
or by marriage. There is only one difference,
namely, in the first case the incest is direct, so
that the purpose of the prevention might be con-
scious; in the other case, which includes the
mother-in-law relation, the incest would be a
phantasy temptation brought about by unconsci-
ous intermediary links.
We have had little opportunity in this exposi-
tion to show that the facts of folk psychology can
be seen in a new light through the application
of the psychoanalytic point of view, for the in-
cest dread of savages has long been known as
such, and is in need of no further interpreta-
tion. What we can add to the further apprecia-
tion of incest dread is the statement that it is a
28 TOTEM AND TABOO
subtle infantile trait and is in striking agreement
with the psychic life of the neurotic. Psycho-
analysis has taught us that the first object selec-
tion of the boy is of an incestuous nature and that
it is directed to the forbidden objects, the mother
and the sister; psychoanalysis has taught us also
the methods through which the maturing indi-
vidual frees himself from these incestuous at-
tractions. The neurotic, however, regularty
presents to us a piece of psychic infantilism; he
has either not been able to free himself from the
childlike conditions of psychosexuality, or else he
has returned to them ( inhibited development and
regression). Hence the incestuous fixations of
the libido still play or again are playing the main
role in his unconscious psychic life. We have
gone so far as to declare that the relation to the
parents instigated by incestuous longings, is the
central complex of the neurosis. This discovery
of the significance of incest for the neurosis nat-
urally meets with the most general incredulity
on the part of the grown-up, normal man; a
similar rejection will also meet the researches
of Otto Rank, which show in even larger scope to
what extent the incest theme stands in the center
of poetical interest and how it forms the material
of poetry in countless variations and distortions.
We are forced to believe that such a rejection
is above all the product of man's deep aversion
THE SAVAGE'S DREAD OF INCEST 29
to his former incest wishes which have since suc-
cumbed to repression. It is therefore of im-
portance to us to be able to show that man's in-
cest wishes, which later are destined to become
unconscious, are still felt to be dangerous by sav-
age races who consider them worthy of the most
severe defensive measures.
CHAPTER II
TABOO AND THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS
Taboo is a Polynesian word, the translation
of which provides difficulties for us because we
no longer possess the idea which it connotes. It
was still current with the ancient Romans: their
word "sacer" was the same as the taboo of the
Polynesians. The "ayos" of the Greeks and the
"Kodaush" of the Hebrews must also have sig-
nified the same thing which the Polynesians ex-
press through their word taboo and what many
races in America, Africa (Madagascar), North
and Central Asia express through analogous
designations.
For us the meaning of taboo branches off into
two opposite directions. On the one hand it
means to us sacred, consecrated : but on the other
hand it means, uncanny, dangerous, forbidden,
and unclean. The opposite for taboo is desig-
nated in Polynesian by the word noa and sig-
nifies something ordinary and generally accessi-
ble. Thus something like the concept of re-
serve inheres in taboo; taboo expresses itself es-
sentially in prohibitions and restrictions. Our
30
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 31
combination of "holy dread" would often ex-
press the meaning of taboo.
The taboo restrictions are different from re-
ligious or moral prohibitions. They are not
traced to a commandment of a god but really they
themselves impose their own 2:)rohibitions ; they
are differentiated from moral prohibitions by
failing to be included in a system which declares
abstinences in general to be necessary and gives
reasons for this necessity. The taboo prohibi-
tions lack all justification and are of unknown
origin. Though incomprehensible to us they are
taken as a matter of course by those who are un-
der their dominance.
Wundt ^ calls taboo the oldest unwritten code
of law of humanity. It is generally assumed
that taboo is older than the gods and goes back
to the pre-religious age.
As we are in need of an impartial presentation
of the subject of taboo before subjecting it to
psychoanalytic consideration I shall now cite
an excerpt from the article "Taboo" in the En-
cyclopedia Britannica written by the anthro-
pologist Northcote W. Thomas,^
"Properly speaking taboo includes only a) the
sacred (or unclean) character of persons or
1 Volkerpsychologie, II Band, "Mythus und Religion," 1906, II
p. 308.
2 Eleventh Edition, this article also gives the most important
references.
32 TOTEM AND TABOO
things, b) the kind of prohibition which results
from this character, and c) the sanctity (or un-
cleanliness) 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: 1. natm'al or direct, the
result of 'mana' (mysterious power) inherent in
a person or thing; 2. communicated or indirect,
equally the result of 'mana' but (a) acquired or
(b) imposed by a priest, chief or other person;
3. intermediate, where both factors are present,
as in the appropriation of a wife to her husband.
The term taboo is also applied to ritual prohibi-
tions of a different nature; but its use in these
senses is better avoided. It might be argued
that the term should be extended to embrace
cases in which the sanction of the prohibition is
the creation of a god or spirit, i.e., to religious
interdictions as distinguished from magical, but
there is neither automatic action nor contagion
in such a case, and a better term for it is religious
interdiction.
"The objects of taboo are many: 1. direct
taboos aim at (a) protection of important per-
sons — chiefs, priests, etc. — and things against
harm; (b) safeguarding of the weak — women,
children and common people generally — from the
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 33
powerful mana (magical influence) of chiefs and
priests; (c) providing against the dangers in-
curred by handling or coming in contact with
corpses, by eating certain food, etc.; (d) guard-
ing the chief acts of life — births, initiation, mar-
riage and sexual functions — against interference ;
(e) securing human beings against the wrath or
power of gods and spirits; ^ (f) securing unborn
infants and young children, who stand in a spe-
cially sympathetic relation with their parents,
from the consequence of certain actions, and more
especially from the communication of qualities
supposed to be derived from certain foods. 2.
Taboos are imposed in order to secure against
thieves the property of an individual, his fields,
tools, etc."
Other parts of the article may be summarized
as follows. Originally the punishment for the
violation of a taboo was probably left to an
inner, automatic arrangement. The violated
taboo avenged itself. Wherever the taboo was
related to ideas of gods and demons an auto-
matic punishment was expected from the power
of the godhead. In other cases, probably as a
result of a further development of the idea, so-
ciety took over the punishment of the offender,
whose action has endangered his companions.
3 This application of the taboo can be omitted as not originally
belonging in this connection.
34 . TOTEM AND TABOO
Thus man's first systems of punishment are also
connected with taboo.
"The violation of a taboo makes the offender
himself taboo." The author goes on to say that
certain dangers resulting from the violation of
a taboo may be exercised through acts of pen-
ance and ceremonies of j^urification.
A peculiar power inherent in persons and
ghosts, which can be transmitted from them to
inanimate objects is regarded as the source of
the taboo. This part of the article reads as fol-
lows : "Persons or things which are regarded as
taboo may be compared to objects charged with
electricity^; they are the seat of 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 re-
sist it; the result of a violation of a taboo de-
pends partly on the strength of the magical in-
fluence 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 opposes
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 35
them; if it is a chief or a priest, they are more
powerful than those imposed by a common per-
son."
The fact that a taboo is transmissible has surely
given rise to the effort of removing it through
expiatory ceremonies.
The author states that there are permanent
and temporary taboos. The former comprise
priest and chiefs as well as the dead and every-
thing that has belonged to them. Temporary
taboos attach themselves to certain conditions
such as menstruation and child-bed, the status
of the warrior before and after the expedition,
the activities of fishing and of the chase, and
similar activities. A general taboo may also be
imposed upon a large district like an ecclesias-
tical interdict, and may then last for years.
If I judge my readers' impressions correctly
I dare say that after hearing all that was said
about taboo they are far from knowing what to
understand by it and where to store it in their
minds. This is surely due to the insufficient in-
formation I have given and to the omission of
all discussions concerning the relation of taboo
to superstition, to belief in the soul, and to re-
ligion. On the other hand, I fear that a more
detailed description of what is known about taboo
would be still more confusing; I can therefore
assure the reader that the state of affairs is really
36 TOTEM AND TABOO
far from clear. We may say, however, that we
deal with a series of restrictions which these
primitive races impose upon themselves ; this and
that is forbidden without any apparent reason;
nor does it occur to them to question this matter,
for they subject themselves to these restrictions
as a matter of course and are convinced that any
transgression will be punished automatically in
the most severe manner. There are reliable re-
ports that innocent transgressions of such pro-
hibitions have actually been punished automatic-
ally. For instance, the innocent offender who
had eaten from a forbidden animal became deei)ty
depressed, expected his death and then actually
died. The prohibitions mostly concern matters
which are capable of enjoyment such as freedom
of movement and unrestrained intercourse; in
some cases they appear very ingenious, evidently
representing abstinences and renunciations; in
other cases their content is quite incomprehen-
sible, they seem to concern themselves with trifles
and give the impression of ceremonials. Some-
thing like a theory seems to underlie all these
prohibitions, it seems as if these prohibitions are
necessary because some persons and objects
possess a dangerous power which is transmitted
by contact with the object so charged, almost like
a contagion. The quantity of this dangerous
property is also taken into consideration. Some
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 37
persons or things have more of it than others
and the danger is precisely in accordance with the
charge. The most pecuhar part of it is that any
one who has violated such a prohibition assumes
the nature of the forbidden object as if he had
absorbed the whole dangerous charge. This
power is inherent in all persons who are more or
less prominent, such as kings, priests and the
newly born, in all exceptional physical states such
as menstruation, puberty and birth, in everything
sinister like illness and death and in everything
connected with these conditions by virtue of con-
tagion or dissemination.
However, the term "taboo" includes all per-
sons localities, objects and temporary conditions
which are carriers or sources of this mysterious
attribute. The prohibition derived from this at-
tribute is also designated as taboo, and lastly
taboo, in the literal sense, includes everything
that is sacred, above the ordinary, and at the
same time dangerous, unclean and mysterious.
Both this word and the system corresponding
to it express a fragment of psychic life which
really is not comprehensible to us. And indeed it
would seem that no understanding of it could be
possible without entering into the study of the
belief in spirits and demons which is so charac-
teristic of these low grades of culture.
Now why should we take any interest at all in
38 TOTEM AND TABOO
the riddle of taboo? Not only, I think, because
every psychological problem is well worth the
effort of investigation for its own sake, but for
other reasons as well. It may be surmised that
the taboo of Polynesian savages is after all not
so remote from us as we were at first inclined to
believe; the moral and customary prohibitions
which we ourselves obey may have some essen-
tial relation to this primitive taboo the explana-
tion of which may in the end throw light upon
the dark origin of our own "categorical impera-
tive."
We are therefore inclined to listen with keen
expectations when an investigator like W.
Wundt gives his interpretation of taboo, espe-
cially as he promises to "go back to the very roots
of the taboo concepts." ^
Wundt states that the idea of taboo "includes
all customs which express dread of particular ob-
jects connected with cultic ideas or of actions hav-
ing reference to them." ^
On another occasion he says: "In accordance
with the general sense of the word we under-
stand by taboo every prohibition laid down in
customs or manners or in expressly formulated
laws, not to touch an object or to take it for one's
own use, or to make use of certain proscribed
4 Volkerpsychologie, Vol. II, Religion unci Mythus, p. 300.
5 1. c. p. 237.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 39
words. ..." Accordingly there would not be
a single race or stage of culture which had es-
caped the injui'ious effects of taboo.
Wundt then shows why he finds it more prac-
tical to study the nature of taboo in the primi-
tive states of Australian savages rather than in
the higher culture of the Polynesian races. In
the case of the Australians he divides taboo pro-
hibitions into three classes according as they con-
cern animals, persons or other objects. The ani-
mal taboo, which consists essentially of the taboo
against killing and eating, forms the nucleus of
Totemism.^ The taboo of the second class,
which has human beings for its object, is of an
essentially different nature. To begin with it
is restricted to conditions which bring about an
unusual situation in life for the person tabooed.
Thus young men at the feast of initiation, women
during menstruation and immediately after de-
livery, newly born children, the diseased and es-
pecially the dead, are all taboo. The constantly
used property of any person, such as his clothes,
tools and weapons, is permanently taboo for
everybody else. In Australia the new name
which a youth receives at his initiation into man-
hood becomes part of his most personal property,
it is taboo and must be kept secret. The taboos
of the third class, which apply to trees, plants,
eComp. Chapter I.
40 TOTEM AND TABOO
houses and localities, are more variable and seem
only to follow the rule that anything which for
any reason arouses dread or is mysterious, be-
comes subject to taboo.
Wundt himself has to acknowledge that the
changes which taboo undergoes in the richer cul-
ture of the Polynesians and in the Malayan
Archipelago are not very profound. The
greater social differentiation of these races mani-
fests itself in the fact that chiefs, kings and
priests exercise an especially effective taboo and
are themselves exposed to the strongest taboo
compulsion.
But the real sources of taboo lie deeper than
in the interests of the privileged classes: ''They
begin where the most primitive and at the same
time the most enduring human impulses have
their origin, namely, in the fear of the effect of
demonic powers/^ '^ "The taboo, which origin-
ally was nothing more than the objectified fear
of the demonic power thought to be concealed
in the tabooed object, forbids the irritation of
this power and demands the placation of the
demon whenever the taboo has been knowingly or
unknowingly violated."
The taboo then gi'adually became an autonom-
ous power which has detached itself from demon-
ism. It becomes the compulsion of custom and
7 1. c. p. 307.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 41
tradition and finally of the law. "But the com-
mandment concealed behind taboo prohibitions
which differ materially according to place and
time, had originally the meaning: Beware of
the wrath of the demons."
Wundt therefore teaches that taboo is the ex-
pression and evolution of the belief of primi-
tive races in demonic powers, and that later
taboo has dissociated itself from this origin and
has remained a power sinij^ly because it was one
by virtue of a kind of a psychic persistence and
in this manner it became the root of our customs
and laws. As little as one can object to the first
part of this statement I feel, however, that I am
only voicing the impression of many of my read-
ers if I call Wundt's explanation disappointing.
Wundt's explanation is far from going back to
the sources of taboo concepts or to their deepest
roots. For neither fear nor demons can be ac-
cepted in psychology as finalities defying any
further deduction. It would be different if
demons really existed; but we know that, like
gods, they are only the product of the psychic
powers of man ; they have been created from and
out of something.
Wundt also expresses a number of important
though not altogether clear opinions about the
double meaning of taboo. According to him the
division between sacred and unclean does not yet
42 TOTEM AND TABOO
exist in the first primitive stages of taboo. For
this reason these conceptions entirely lack the
significance which they could only acquire later
on when they came to be contrasted. The ani-
mal, person, or place on which there is a taboo is
demonic, that is, not sacred and therefore not yet,
in the later sense, unclean. The expression
taboo is particularly suitable for this undifferen-
tiated and intermediate meaning of the demonic,
in the sense of something which may not be
touched, since it emphasizes a characteristic which
finally adlieres both to what is sacred and to
the unclean, namely, the dread of contact. But
the fact that this important characteristic is
permanently held in common points to the exist-
ence of an original agreement here between these
two spheres which gave way to a differentia-
tion only as the result of further conditions
through which both finally developed into op-
posites.
The belief associated with the original taboo,
according to which a demonic power concealed
in the object avenges the touching of it or its for-
bidden use by bewitching the offender was still
an entirely objectified fear. This had not yet
separated into the two forms which it assumed at
a more developed stage, namely, awe and aver-
sion.
How did this separation come about? Ac-
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 43
cording to Wundt, this was done through the
transference of taboo prohibitions from the
sphere of demons to that of theistic conceptions.
The antithesis of sacred and unclean coincides
with the succession of two mythological stages the
first of which did not entirely disappear when
the second was reached but continued in a state
of greatly lowered esteem which gradually turned
into contempt. It is a general law in m\i;hology
that a preceding stage, just because it has been
overcome and pushed back by a higher stage,
maintains itself next to it in a debased form so
that the objects of its veneration become objects
of aversion.^
Wundt's further elucidations refer to the re-
lation of taboo to lustration and sacrifice.
He who approaches the problem of taboo from
the field of psychoanalysis, which is concerned
with the study of the unconscious part of the
individual's psychic life, needs but a moment's
reflection to realize that these phenomena are by
no means foreign to him. He knows people who
have individually created such taboo prohibi-
tions for themselves, which they follow as strictly
as savages observe the taboos common to their
tribe or society. If he were not accustomed to
8 1. c. p. 313.
44 TOTEM AND TABOO
call these individuals "compulsion neurotics" he
would find the term "taboo disease" quite ap-
propriate for their malady. Psychoanalj^tic in-
vestigation has taught him the clinical etiology
and the essential part of the psychological
mechanism of this compulsion disease, so that
he cannot resist a]3plying what he has learnt
there to explain corresponding manifestations in
folk psychology.
There is one warning to which we shall have to
give heed in making this attempt. The similar-
ity between taboo and compulsion disease may
be purely superficial, holding good only for the
manifestations of both without extending into
their deeper characteristics. Nature loves to
use identical forms in the most widely different
biological connections, as, for instance, for coral
stems and plants and even for certain crystals
or for the formation of certain chemical precipi-
tates. It would certainly be both jDremature and
unprofitable to base conclusions relating to in-
ner relationships upon the correspondence of
merely mechanical conditions. We shall bear
this warning in mind without, however, giving up
our intended comparison on account of the pos-
sibility of such confusions.
The first and most striking correspondence be-
tween the compulsion prohibitions of neurotics
and taboo lies in the fact that the origin of these
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 45
prohibitions is just as unmotivated and enigma-
tic. They have appeared at some time or other
and must now be retained on account of an un-
conquerable anxiety. An external threat of
punishment is superfluous, because an inner cer-
tainty (a conscience) exists that violation will
be followed by unbearable disaster. The very
most that compulsion patients can tell us is the
vague premonition that some person of their
environment will suffer harm if they should vio-
late the prohibition. Of what the harm is to
consist is not known, and this inadequate in-
formation is more likely to be obtained during the
later discussions of the expiatory and defensive
actions than when the prohibitions themselves
are being discussed.
As in the case of taboo the nucleus of the neu-
rotic prohibition is the act of touching, whence
we derive the name touching phobia, or delire de
toucher. The prohibition extends not only to
direct contact with the body but also to the fig-
urative use of the phrase as "to come into con-
tact," or "be in touch with some one or some-
thing." Anything that leads the thoughts to
what is prohibited and thus calls forth mental
contact is just as much prohibited as immediate
bodily contact; this same extension is also found
in taboo.
Some prohibitions are easily understood from
46 TOTEM AND TABOO
their purpose but others strike us as incompre-
hensible, foolish and senseless. We designate
such commands as "ceremonials" and we find that
taboo customs show the same variations.
Obsessive prohibitions possess an extraordi-
nary capacity for displacement; they make use
of almost any form of connection to extend from
one object to another and then in turn make this
new object "impossible," as one of my patients
aptly puts it. This impossibility finalty lays an
embargo upon the whole world. The compul-
sion neurotics act as if the "impossible" persons
and things were the carriers of a dangerous con-
tagion which is ready to displace itself through
contact to all neighboring things. We have al-
ready emphasized the same characteristics of con-
tagion and transference in the description of
taboo prohibitions. We also know that any one
who has violated a taboo by touching something
which is taboo becomes taboo himself, and no one
may come into contact with him.
I shall put side by side two examples of trans-
ference or, to use a better term, displacement, one
from the life of the Maori, and the other from my
observation of a woman suffering from a com-
pulsion neurosis:
"For a similar reason a Maori chief would not
blow on a fire with his mouth; for his sacred
breath would communicate its sanctity to the
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 47
fire, which would pass it on to the meat in the
pot, which would pass it on to the man who ate
the meat, which was in the pot, which stood on
the fire, which was breathed on by the chief; so
that the eater, infected by the chief's breath con-
veyed through these intermediaries, would surely
die." ^
My patient demanded that a utensil which her
husband had purchased and brought home should
be removed lest it make the place where she lives
impossible. For she has heard that this object
was bought in a store which is situated, let us
say, in Stag Street. But as the word stag is
the name of a friend now in a distant city, whom
she has known in her youth under her maiden
name and whom she now finds "impossible," that
is taboo, the object bought in Vienna is just as
taboo as this friend with whom she does not want
to come into contact.
Compulsion prohibitions, like taboo prohibi-
tions, entail the most extraordinary renuncia-
tions and restrictions of life, but a part of these
can be removed by carrying out certain acts which
now also must be done because they have acquired
a compulsive character (obsessive acts) ; there is
no doubt that these acts are in the nature of
penances, expiations, defense reactions, and puri-
9 Frazer, "The Golden Bough," II, "Taboo and the Perils of the
Soul," 1911, p. 136.
48 TOTEM AND TABOO
fications. The most common of these obsessive
acts is washing with water (washing obsession).
A part of the taboo prohibitions can also be re-
placed in this way, that is to say, their violation
can be made good through such a "ceremonial,"
and here too lustration through water is the pre-
ferred way.
Let us now summarize the points in which the
correspondence between taboo customs and the
symptoms of compulsion neurosis are most
clearly manifested: 1. In the lack of motiva-
tion of the commandments, 2. in their enforce-
ment through an inner need, 3. in their capacity
of displacement and in the danger of contagion
from what is prohibited, 4. and in the causation
of ceremonial actions and commandments which
emanate from the forbidden.
However, psychoanalysis has made us familiar
with the clinical history as well as the psychic
mechanism of compulsion neurosis. Thus the
history of a typical case of touching phobia reads
as follows: In the very beginning, during the
early period of childhood, the person manifested
a strong pleasure in touching himself, the object
of which was much more specialized than one
would be inclined to expect. Presently the
carrying out of this very pleasurable act of
touching was opposed by a prohibition from
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 49
without. ^^ The prohibition was accepted be-
cause it was supported by strong inner forces ; ^^
it proved to be stronger than the impulse which
wanted to manifest itself through this act of
touching. But due to the primitive psychic con-
stitution of the child this prohibition did not suc-
ceed in abolishing the impulse. Its only suc-
cess lay in repressing the impulse ( the pleasure of
touching) and banishing it into the unconscious.
Both the prohibition and the impulse remained;
the impulse because it had only been repressed
and not abolished, the prohibition, because if it
had ceased the impulse would have broken
through into consciousness and would have been
carried out. An unsolved situation, a psychic
fixation, had thus been created and now every-
thing else emanated from the continued conflict
between prohibition and impulse.
The main characteristic of the psychic con-
stellation which has thus undergone fixation lies
in what one might call the ambivalent behavior ^^
of the individual to the object, or rather to an
action regardi-ng it. The individual constantly
wants to carry out this action (the act of touch-
ing) , he sees in it the highest pleasure, but he
10 Both the pleasure and the prohibition referred to touching
one's own genitals.
11 The relation to beloved persons who impose the prohibition.
12 To use an excellent term coined by Bleuler,
50 TOTEM AND TABOO
may not carry it out, and he even abominates it.
The opposition between these two streams can-
not be easily adjusted because — there is no other
way to express it — they are so locahzed in the
psychic hfe that they cannot meet. The pro-
hibition becomes fully conscious, while the sur-
viving pleasure of touching remains unconscious,
the person knowing nothing about it. If this
psychological factor did not exist the ambival-
ence could neither maintain itself so long nor
lead to such subsequent manifestations.
In the clinical history of the case we have em-
phasized the appearance of the prohibition in
early childhood as the determining factor ; but for
the further elaboration of the neurosis this role is
played by the repression which appears at this
age. On account of the repression which has
taken place, which is connected with forgetting
(amnesia), the motivation of the prohibition that
has become conscious remains unknown, and all
attempts to unravel it intellectually must fail,
as the point of attack cannot be found. The pro-
hibition owes its strength — its compulsive char-
acter — to its association with its unkno^vn coun-
terpart, the hidden and unabated pleasure, that
is to say, to an inner need into which conscious in-
sight is lacking. The transferability and repro-
ductive power of the prohibition reflect a process
which harmonizes with the unconscious pleasure
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 51
and is very much facilitated through the psy-
chological determinants of the unconscious. The
pleasure of the impulse constantly undergoes dis-
placement in order to escape the blocking which
it encounters and seeks to acquire surrogates for
the forbidden in the form of substitutive objects
and actions. For the same reason the prohibi-
tion also wanders and spreads to the new aims of
the proscribed impulse. Every new advance of
the repressed libido is answered by the prohibi-
tion with a new severity. The mutual inhibi-
tion of these two contending forces creates a
need for discharge and for lessening the existing
tension, in which we may recognize the motivation
for the compulsive acts. In the neurosis there
are distinctly acts of compromise which on the one
hand may be regarded as proofs of remorse and
efforts to expiate and similar actions ; but on the
other hand they are at the same time substitutive
actions which recompense the impulse for w^hat
has been forbidden. It is a law of neurotic dis-
eases that these obsessive acts serve the impulse
more and more and come nearer and nearer to the
original forbidden act.
We may now make the attempt to study taboo
as if it were of the same nature as the compulsive
prohibitions of our patients. It must naturally
be clearly understood that many of the taboo pro-
hibitions which we shall study are already second-
62 TOTEM AND TABOO
ary, displaced and distorted, so that we shall have
to be satisfied if we can shed some light upon the
earliest and most important taboo prohibitions.
We must also remember that the differences in
the situation of the savage and of the neurotic
may be important enough to exclude complete
correspondence and prevent a point by point
transfer from one to the other such as would be
possible if we were dealing with exact copies.
First of all it must be said that it is useless to
question savages as to the real motivation of their
prohibitions or as to the genesis of taboo. Ac-
cording to our assumption they must be incapable
of telhng us anything about it since this motiva-
tion is "unconscious" to them. But following the
model of the compulsive prohibition we shall con-
struct the history of taboo as follows: Taboos
are very ancient prohibitions which at one time
were forced upon a generation of primitive
people from without, that is, they probably were
forcibly impressed upon them by an earlier gen-
eration. These prohibitions concerned actions
for which there existed a strong desire. The pro-
hibitions maintained themselves from generation
to generation, perhaps only as the result of a tra-
dition set up by paternal and social authority.
But in later generations they have perhaps al-
ready become "organized" as a piece of inherited
psychic property. Whether there are such
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 63
"innate ideas" or whether these have brought
about the fixation of the taboo by themselves or
by cooperating with education no one could de-
cide in the particular case in question. The per-
sistence of taboo teaches, however, one thing,
namely, that the original pleasure to do the for-
bidden still continues among taboo races. They
therefore assume an ambivalent attitude toward
their taboo prohibitions ; in their unconscious they
would hke nothing better than to transgress them
but they are also afraid to do it ; they are afraid
just because they would like to transgress, and
the fear is stronger than the pleasure. But in
every individual of the race the desire for it is
unconscious, just as in the neurotic.
The oldest and most important taboo prohi-
bitions are the two basic laws of totemism: namely
not to kill the totem animal and to avoid sexual
intercourse with totem companions of the other
sex.
It would therefore seem that these must have
been the oldest and strongest desires of mankind.
We cannot understand this and therefore we can-
not use these examples to test our assumptions as
long as the meaning and the origin of the totemic
system is so wholly unknown to us. But the very
wording of these taboos and the fact that they
occur together will remind any one who knows the
results of the psychoanalytic investigation of in-
64 TOTEM AND TABOO
dividuals, of something quite definite which psy-
choanalysts call the central point of the infantile
wish life and the nucleus of the later neurosis. ^^
All other varieties of taboo phenomena which
have led to the attempted classifications noted
above become unified if we sum them up in the
following sentence : The basis of taboo is a for-
bidden action for which there exists a strong incli-
nation in the unconscious.
We know, without understanding it, that who-
ever does what is prohibited and violates the
taboo, becomes himself taboo. But how can we
connect this fact with the other, namely that the
taboo adheres not only to persons who have done
what is prohibited but also to persons who are in
exceptional circumstances, to these circumstances
themselves, and to impersonal things? What
can this dangerous attribute be, which always re-
mains the same under all these different con-
ditions ? Only one thing, namely, the propensity
to arouse the ambivalence of man and to tempt
him to violate the prohibition.
An individual who has violated a taboo becomes
himself taboo because he has the dangerous prop-
erty of tempting others to follow his example.
He arouses envy ; why should he be allowed to do
what is prohibited to others? He is therefore
really contagious, in so far as every example in-
13 See Chapter IV Totemism, etc.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 55
cites to imitation, and therefore he himself must
be avoided.
But a person may become permanently or tem-
porarily taboo without having violated any
taboos, for the simple reason that he is in a con-
dition which has the property of inciting the for-
bidden desires of others and of awakening the
ambivalent conflict in them. JMost of the excep-
tional positions and conditions have this character
and possess this dangerous power. The king or
chieftain rouses envy of his prerogatives; every-
body would perhaps like to be king. The dead,
the newly born, and women when they are in-
capacitated, all act as incitements on account of
their peculiar helplessness, while the individual
who has just reached sexual maturity tempts
through the promise of a new pleasure. There-
fore all these persons and all these conditions are
taboo, for one must not yield to the temptations
which they offer.
Now, too, we understand why the forces inher-
ent in the "mana" of various persons can neutral-
ize one another so that the mana of one individual
can partly cancel that of the other. The taboo of
a king is too strong for his subject because the
social difference between them is too great. But
a minister, for example, can become the harmless
mediator between them. Translated from the
language of taboo into the language of normal
56 TOTEM AND TABOO
psychology this means: the subject who shrinks
from the tremendous temptation which contact
with the king creates for him can brook the inter-
course of an official, whom he does not have to
envy so much and whose position perhaps seems
attainable to him. The minister, on his part, can
moderate his envy of the king by taking into con-
sideration the power that has been granted to him.
Thus smaller differences in the magic power that
lead to temptation are less to be feared than ex-
ceptionally big differences.
It is equally clear how the violation of certain
taboo prohibitions becomes a social danger which
must be punished or expiated by all the members
of society lest it harm them all. This danger
really exists if we substitute the known impulses
for the unconscious desires. It consists in the
possibility of imitation, as a result of which
society would soon be dissolved. If the others
did not punish the violation they would perforce
become aware that they want to imitate the evil
doer.
Though the secret meaning of a taboo prohi-
bition cannot possibly be of so special a nature as
in the case, of a neurosis, we must not be aston-
ished to find that touching plays a similar role in
taboo prohibition as in the delire de toucher. To
touch is the beginning of every act of possession,
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 67
of every attempt to make use of a person or thing.
We have interpreted the power of contagion
which inheres in the taboo as the property of lead-
ing into temptation, and of inciting to imitation.
This does not seem to be in accord with the fact
that the (Tontagiousness of the taboo is above all
manifested in the transference to objects which
thus themselves become carriers of the taboo.
This transferability of the taboo reflects what
is found in the neurosis, namety, the constant
tendency of the unconscious impulse to become
displaced through associative channels upon new
objects. Our attention is thus drawn to the fact
that the dangerous magic power of the "mana"
corresponds to two real faculties, the capacity of
reminding man of his forbidden wishes, and the
apparently more important one of tempting him
to violate the prohibition in the service of these
wishes. Both functions reunite into one, how-
ever, if we assume it to be in accord with a primi-
tive psychic life that with the awakening of a
memory of a forbidden action there should also be
combined the awakening of the tendency to carry
out the action. ^lemory and temptation then
again coincide. We must also admit that if the
example of a person who has violated a prohi-
bition leads another to the same action, the dis-
obedience of the prohibition has been transmitted
58 TOTEM AND TABOO
like a contagion, just as the taboo is transferred
from a person to an object, and from this to
another.
If the violation of a taboo can be condoned
through expiation or penance, which means, of
course, a renunciation of a possession or a hberty,
we have the proof that the observance of a taboo
regulation was itself a renunciation of something
really wished for. The omission of one renuncia-
tion is cancelled through a renunciation at some
other point. This would lead us to conclude that,
as far as taboo ceremonials are concerned, pen-
ance is more primitive than purification.
Let us now summarize what understanding we
have gained of taboo through its comparison with
the compulsive prohibition of the neurotic.
Taboo is a very primitive prohibition imposed
from without (by an authority) and directed
against the strongest desires of man. The desire
to violate it continues in the unconscious; per-
sons who obey the taboo have an ambivalent feel-
ing toward what is affected by the taboo. The
magic power attributed to taboo goes back to its
ability to lead man into temptation; it behaves
like a contagion, because the example is con-
tagious, and because the prohibited desire be-
comes displacing in the unconscious upon some-
thing else. The expiation for the violation of a
taboo through a renunciation proves that a renun-
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 59
ciation is at the basis of the observance of the
taboo.
3
We may ask what we have gained from the
comparison of taboo with compulsion neurosis
and what value can be claimed for the interpre-
tation we have given on the basis of this compari-
son? Our interpretation is evidently of no value
unless it offers an advantage not to be had in
any other way and unless it affords a better un-
derstanding of taboo than was otherwise possible.
We might claim that we have already given proof
of its usefulness in what has been said above ; but
we shall have to try to strengthen our proof by
continuing the explanation of taboo prohibitions
and customs in detail.
But we can avail ourselves of another method.
We can shape our investigation so as to ascertain
whether a part of the assumptions which we have
transferred from the neurosis to the taboo, or the
conclusions at which we have thereby arrived can
be demonstrated directly in the phenomena of
taboo. We must decide, however, what we want
to look for. The assertion concerning the gene-
sis of taboo, namely, that it was derived from a
primitive prohibition which was once imposed
from without, cannot, of course, be proved. We
shall therefore seek to confirm those psycholog-
60 TOTEM AND TABOO
ical conditions for taboo with which we have
become acquainted in the case of compulsion neu-
rosis. How did we gain our knowledge of these
psychological factors in the case of neurosis?
Through the analytical study of the symptoms,
especially the compulsive actions, the defense re-
actions and the obsessive commands. These
mechanisms gave every indication of having been
derived from ambivalent impulses or tendencies,
they either represented simultaneously the wish
and counter-wish or they served preponderantly
one of the two contrary tendencies. If we should
now succeed in showing that ambivalence, i. e., the
sway of contrary tendencies, exists also in the
case of taboo regulations or if we should find
among the taboo mechanisms some which like
neurotic obsessions give simultaneous expression
to both currents, we would have established what
is practically the most important point in the
psychological correspondence between taboo and
compulsion neurosis.
We have already mentioned that the two fun-
damental taboo prohibitions are inaccessible to
our analysis because they belong to totemism ; an-
other part of the taboo rules is of secondary origin
and cannot be used for our purpose. For among
these races taboo has become the general form of
law giving and has helped to promote social ten-
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 61
dencies which are certainly younger than taboo
itself, as for instance, the taboos imposed by
chiefs and priests to insure their property and
privileges. But there still remains a large group
of laws which we may undertake to investigate.
Among these I lay stress on those taboos which
are attached a) to enemies, b) to chiefs, and c)
to the dead ; the material for our investigation is
taken from the excellent collection of J. G.
Frazer in his great work, "The Golden
Bough." ^*
a) the treatment of enemies
Inclined as we may have been to ascribe to
savage and semi-savage races uninhibited and re-
morseless cruelty towards their enemies, it is of
great interest to us to learn that with them, too,
the killing of a person compels the observation of
a series of rules which are associated with taboo
customs. These rules are easily brought under
four groups; they demand 1. reconciliation with
the slain enemy, 2. restrictions, 3. acts of expia-
tion, and purifications of the manslayer, and 4.
certain ceremonial rites. The incomplete reports
do not allow us to decide with certainty how gen-
eral or how isolated such taboo customs may be
14 Third Edition, Part II, "Taboo and the Perils of the Soul,"
1911.
62 TOTEM AND TABOO
among these races, but this is a matter of indiffer-
ence as far as our interest in these occurrences is
concerned. Still, it may be assumed that we are
dealing with widespread customs and not with
isolated peculiarities.
The reconciliation customs practiced on the
island of Timor, after a victorious band of war-
riors has returned with the severed heads of the
vanquished enemy, are especially significant be-
cause the leader of the expedition is subject to
heavy additional restrictions. ''At the solemn
entry of the victors, sacrifices are made to con-
ciliate the souls of the enemy; otherwise one
would have to expect harm to come to the vic-
tors. A dance is given and a song is sung in
which the slain enemy is mourned and his for-
giveness is implored: *Be not angry,' they say,
'because your head is here with us; had we been
less lucky, our heads might have been exposed in
your village. We have offered the sacrifice ^to
appease you. Your spirit may now rest and
leave us at peace. Why were you our enemy?
Would it not have been better that we should re-
main friends? Then your blood would not have
been spilt and your head would not have been
cut off.' " ''
Similar customs are found among the Palu in
Celebes ; the Gallas sacrifice to the spirits of their
15 Frazer, 1. c. p. 166.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 63
dead enemies before they return to their home
villages/^
Other races have found methods of making
friends, guardians and protectors out of their for-
mer enemies after they are dead. This consists
in the tender treatment of the severed heads, of
which many wild tribes of Borneo boast. When
the See-Dayaks of Sarawak bring home a head
from a war expedition, they treat it for months
with the greatest kindness and courtesy and ad-
dress it with the most endearing names in their
language. The best morsels from their meals are
put 'into its mouth, together with titbits and
cigars. The dead enemy is repeatedly entreated
to hate his former friends and to bestow his love
upon his new hosts because he has now become
one of them. It would be a great mistake to
think that any derision is attached to this treat-
ment, horrible though it may seem to us.^^
Observers have been struck by the mourning
for the enemy after he is slain and scalped, among
several of the wild tribes of North America.
When a Choctaw had killed an enemy he began a
month's mourning during which he submitted
himself to serious restrictions. The Dakota In-
dians mourned in the same way. One authority
16 Paulitschke, "Ethnography of Northeast Africa."
17 Frazer, "Adonis, Attis, Osiris," p. 248, 1907. According to
Hugh Low, Sarawak, London, 1848.
64. TOTEM AND TABOO
mentions that the Osaga Indians after mourning
for their own dead mourned for their foes as if
they had been friends. ^^
Before proceeding to the other classes of taboo
customs for the treatment of enemies, we must
define our position in regard to a pertinent objec-
tion. Both Frazer as well as other authorities
may well be quoted against us to show that the
motive for these rules of reconciliation is quite
simple and has nothing to do with "ambivalence."
These races are dominated by a superstitious fear
of the spirits of the slain, a fear which was also
familiar to classical antiquity, and which the
great British dramatist brought upon the stage
in the hallucinations of JNIacbeth and Richard the
Third. From this superstition all the reconcilia-
tion rules as well as the restrictions and expia-
tions which we shall discuss later can be logically
deduced; moreover, the ceremonies included in
the fourth group also argue for this interpreta-
tion, since the only explanation of which they
admit is the effort to drive away the spirits of the
slain which pursue the manslayers.^^ Besides,
the savages themselves directly admit their fear
of the spirits of their slain foes and trace back
the taboo customs under discussion to this fear.
18 J. O. Dorsay, see Frazer, "Toboo, etc.," p. 181.
19 Frazer, "Taboo," p. 166 to 174. These ceremonies consist of
hitting shields, shouting, bellowing and making noises with various
instruments, etc.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 65
This objection is certainly pertinent and if it
were adequate as well we would gladly spare our-
selves the trouble of our attempt to find a further
explanation. We postpone the consideration of
this objection until later and for the present
merely contrast it to the interpretation derived
from our previous discussion of taboo. All these
rules of taboo lead us to conclude that other im-
pulses besides those that are merely hostile find
expression in the behavior towards enemies. We
see in them manifestations of repentance, of re-
gard for the enemy, and of a bad conscience
for having slain him. It seems that the com-
mandment. Thou shalt not slay, which could
not be violated without punishment, existed
also among these savages, long before any
legislation was received from the hands of a
god.
We now return to the remaining classes of
taboo rules. The restrictions laid upon the vic-
torious manslayer are unusually frequent and
are mostly of a serious nature. In Timor (com-
pare the reconciliation customs mentioned above)
the leader of the expedition cannot return to his
house under any circumstances. A special hut
is erected for him in which he spends two months
engaged in the observance of various rules of
purification. During this period he may not see
his wife or nourish himself; another person must
66 TOTEM AND TABOO
put his food into his mouth.^^ Among some
Dayak tribes warriors returning from a success-
ful expedition must remain sequestered for sev-
eral days and abstain from certain foods; they
may not touch iron and must remain away from
their wives. In Logea, an island near New
Guinea, men who have killed an enemy or have
taken part in the killing, lock themselves up in
their houses for a week. They avoid every inter-
course with their wives and friends, they do not
touch their victuals with their hands and live on
nothing but vegetable foods which are cooked
for them in special dishes. As a reason for this
last restriction it is alleged that they must smell
the blood of the slain, otherwise they would sicken
and die. Among the Toaripi- or JNIotumotu-
tribes in New Guinea a manslayer must not ap-
proach his wife and must not touch his food with
his lingers. A second person must feed him with
special food. This continues until the next new
moon.
I avoid the complete enumeration of all the
cases of restrictions of the victorious slayer men-
tioned by Frazer, and emphasize only such cases
in which the character of taboo is especially no-
ticeable or where the restriction appears in con-
20 Frazer, "Taboo," p. 166, according to S. Mueller, "Reisen en
Onderzoekingen in den Indischen Archipel," Amsterdam, 1857.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 67
nection with expiation, purification and cere-
monial.
Among the Monmnbos in German New
Guinea a man who has killed an enemy in combat
becomes "unclean," the same word being em-
ployed which is applied to women during men-
struation or confinement. For a considerable
period he is not allowed to leaA e the men's club-
house, while the inhabitants of his village gather
about him and celebrate his victory with songs
and dances. He must not touch any one, not
even his wife and children ; if he did so they would
be afflicted with boils. He finally becomes clean
through washing and other ceremonies.
Among the Natchez in North America young
warriors who had procured their first scalp were
bound for six months to the observance of certain
renunciations. They were not allowed to sleep
with their wives or to eat meat, and received only
fish and maize pudding as nourishment. When a
Choctaw had killed and scalped an enemy he
began a period of mourning for one month, dur-
ing which he was not allowed to comb his hair.
When his head itched he was not allowed to
scratch it with his hand but used a small stick for
this purpose.
After a Pima Indian had killed an Apache he
had to submit himself to severe ceremonies of
68 TOTEM AND TABOO
purification and expiation. During a fasting
period of sixteen days he was not allowed to touch
meat or salt, to look at a fire or to speak to any
one. He lived alone in the woods, where he was
waited upon by an old woman who brought him a
small allowance of food; he often bathed in the
nearest river, and carried a lump of clay on his
head as a sign of mourning. On the seventeenth
day there took place a public ceremony through
which he and his weapons were solemnly purified.
As the Pima Indians took the manslayer taboo
much more seriously than their enemies and, un-
like them, did not postpone expiation and purifi-
cation until the end of the expedition, their
prowess in war suffered very much through their
moral severity or what might be called their piety.
In spite of their extraordinary bravery they
proved to be unsatisfactory allies to the Ameri-
cans in their wars against the Apaches.
The detail and variations of these expiatory
and purifying ceremonies after the killing of an
enemy would be most interesting for purposes of
a more searching study but I need not enumerate
any more of them here because they cannot fur-
nish us with any new points of view. I might
mention that the temporary or permanent isola-
tion of the professional executioner, which was
maintained up to our time, is a case in point.
The position of the "free-holder" in mediaeval
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 69
society really conveys a good idea of the "taboo"
of savages. ^^
The current explanation of all these rules of
reconciliation, restriction, expiation and purifica-
tion, combines two principles, namely, the exten-
sion of the taboo of the dead to everything that
has come into contact with him, and the fear of
the spirit of the slain. In what combination
these two elements are to explain the ceremonial,
whether they are to be considered as of equal
value or whether one of them is primary and the
other secondary, and which one, is nowhere stated,
nor would this be an easy matter to decide. In
contradistinction to all this we emphasize the
unity which our interpretation gains by deducing
all these rules from the ambivalence of the emo-
tion of savages towards their enemies.
b) the taboo of rulers
The behavior of primitive races towards their
chiefs, kings, and priests, is controlled by two
principles which seem rather to supplement than
to contradict each other. They must both be
guarded and be guarded against. ^^
Both objects are accomplished through in-
numerable rules of taboo. Why one must guard
21 For these examples see Frazer, "Taboo," p. 165-170, "Man-
slayers Tabooed."
22 Frazer, "Taboo," p. 132. "He must not only be guarded, he
must also be guarded against."
70 TOTEM AND TABOO
against rulers is already known to us; because
thej^ are the bearers of that mysterious and dan-
gerous magic power which communicates itself
by contact, like an electric charge, bringing death
and destruction to any one not protected by a
similar charge. All direct or indirect contact
with this dangerous sacredness is therefore
avoided, and where it cannot be avoided a cere-
monial has been found to ward off the dreaded
consequences. The Nubas in East Africa, for
instance, believe that they must die if they enter
the house of their priest-king, but that they
escape this danger if, on entering, they bare the
left shoulder and induce the king to touch it with
his hand. Thus we have the remarkable case of
the king's touch becoming the healing and protec-
tive measure against the very dangers that arise
from contact with the king; but it is probably a
question of the healing power of the intentional
touching on the king's part in contradistinction
to the danger of touching him, in other words, of
the opposition between passivity and activity
towards the king.
Where the healing power of the royal touch is
concerned we do not have to look for examples
among savages. In comparatively recent times
the kings of England exercised this power upon
scrofula, whence it was called "The King's Evil."
Neither Queen Elizabeth nor any of her sue-
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 71
cessors renounced this part of the royal preroga-
tive. Charles I is said to have healed a hundred
sufferers at one time, in the year 1633. Under
his dissolute son Charles II, after the great
English revolution had passed, royal healings of
scrofula attained their greatest vogue.
This king is said to have touched close to a
hundred thousand victims of scrofula in the
course of his reign. The crush of those seeking
to be cured used to be so great that on one occa-
sion six or seven patients suffered death by suffo-
cation instead of being healed. The skeptical
king of Orange, William III, who became king
of England after the banishment of the Stuarts,
refused to exercise the spell; on the one occasion
when he consented to practice the touch, he did
so with the words: "May God give you better
health and more sense." -^
The following account will bear witness to the
terrible effect of touching by virtue of which a
person, even though unintentionally, becomes
active against his king or against what belongs to
him. A chief of high rank and great holiness in
New Zealand happened to leave the remains of
his meal by the roadside. A young slave came
along, a strong, health}^ fellow, who saw what
was left over and started to eat it. Hardly had
he finished when a horrified spectator informed
23 Frazer, The Magic Art I, p. 3G8.
72 TOTEM AND TABOO
him of his offense in eating the meal of the chief.
The man had been a strong, brave, warrior, but
as soon as he heard this he collapsed and was
afflicted by terrible convulsions, from which he
died towards sunset of the following day.^^ A
JNIaori woman ate a certain fruit and then learned
that it came from a place on which there was a
taboo. She cried out that the spirit of the chief
whom she had thus offended would surely kill
her. This incident occurred in the afternoon and
on the next day at twelve o'clock she was dead.^^
The tinder box of a ]Maori chief once cost several
persons their lives. The chief had lost it and
those who found it used it to light their pipes.
When they learned whose property the tinder
box was they all died of f right. ^^
It is hardly astonishing that the need was felt
to isolate dangerous persons like chiefs and
priests, by building a wall around them which
made them inaccessible to others. We surmise
that this wall, which originally was constructed
out of taboo rules, still exists to-day in the form
of court ceremony.
But probably the greater part of this taboo of
the rulers cannot be traced back to the need of
24 "Old New Zealand," by a Pakeha Maori (London, 1884), see
Frazer, "Taboo," p. 135.
25 w. Brown, "New Zealand and Its Aborigines" (London,
1845), Frazer, ibid.
26 Frazer, 1. c.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 75
guarding against them. The other point of view
in the treatment of privileged persons, the need
of guarding them from dangers with which they
are threatened, has had a distinct share in the
creation of taboo and therefore of the origin of
court etiquette.
The necessity of guarding the king from every
conceivable danger arises from his great impor-
tance for the weal and woe of his subjects.
Strictly speaking, he is a person who regulates
the course of the world ; his people have to thank
him not only for rain and sunshine, which allow
the fruits of the earth to grow, but also for the
wind which brings the ships to their shores and for
the solid ground on which they set their feet.^^
These savage kings are endowed with a wealth
of power and an ability to bestow happiness
which only gods possess; certainly in later
stages of civilization none but the most servile
courtiers would play the hypocrite to the extent
of crediting their sovereigns with the possession
of attributes similar to these.
It seems like an obvious contradiction that per-
sons of such perfection of power should them-
selves require the greatest care to guard them
against threatening dangers, but this is not the
only contradiction revealed in the treatment of
royal persons on the part of savages. These
27 Frazer, "Taboo." "The Burden of Royalty," p. 7.
74, TOTEM AND TABOO
races consider it necessary to watch over their
kings to see that they use their powers in the right
way ; they are by no means sure of their good in-
tentions or of their conscientiousness. A strain
of mistrust is mingled with the motivation of the
taboo rules for the king. "The idea that early
kingdoms are despotisms," says Frazer,^^ "in
which the peoj)le exist only for the sovereign, is
wholly inapplicable to the monarchies we are con-
sidering. On the contrary, the sovereign in them
exists only for his subjects; his life is only valu-
able so long as he discharges the duties of his
position by ordering the course of nature for his
people's benefit. So soon as he fails to do so,
the care, the devotion, the religious homage which
they had hitherto lavished on him cease and are
changed into hatred and contempt; he is igno-
miniously dismissed and may be thankful if he
escapes with his life. Worshiped as a god one
day, he is killed as a criminal the next. But in
this changed behavior of the people there is noth-
ing capricious or inconsistent. On the contrary,
their conduct is quite consistent. If their king
is their god he is, or should be, also their pre-
server ; and if he will not preserve them he must
make room for another who will. So long, how-
ever, as he answers their expectations, there is no
limit to the care which they take of him, and which
28 L c, p. 7.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 75
they compel him to take of himself. A king of
this sort lives hedged in by ceremonious etiquette,
a network of prohibitions and observances, of
which the intention is not to contribute to his dig-
nity, much less to his comfort, but to restrain him
from conduct which, by disturbing the harmony
of nature, might involve himself, his people, and
the universe in one common catastrophe. Far
from adding to his comfort, these observances,
by trammeling his everj'- act, annihilate his free-
dom and often render the very life, which it is
their object to preserve, a burden and sorrow to
him."
One of the most glaring examples of thus fet-
tering and paralyzing a holy ruler through taboo
ceremonial seems to have been reached in the life
routine of the Mikado of Japan, as it existed in
earlier centuries. A description which is now over
two hundred years old ^^ relates: "He thinks
that it would be very prejudicial to his dignity
and holiness to touch the ground with his feet;
for this reason when he intends to go anywhere,
he must be carried thither on men's shoulders.
Much less will they suffer that he should expose
his sacred person to the open air, and the sun is
not thought worthy to shine on his head. There
is such a holiness ascribed to all the parts of his
body that he dares to cut off neither his hair,
29 Kaempfer, "History of Japan," see in Frazer, 1. c, p. 3.
76 TOTEM AND TABOO
nor his beard, nor his nails. However, lest he
should grow too dirty, they may clean him in the
night when he is asleep; because they say that
what is taken from his body at that time, hath
been stolen from him, and that such a theft does
not prejudice his holiness or dignity. In ancient
times, he was obliged to sit on the throne for some
hours every morning, with the imperial crown on
his head; but to sit altogether like a statue with-
out stirring either hands or feet, head or eyes, nor
indeed any part of his body, because by this
means, it was thought that he could preserve
peace and tranquility in his empire; for if un-
fortunately, he turned himself on one side or
other, or if he looked a good while towards any
part of his dominion, it was apprehended that
war, famine, fire or some other great misfortune
was near at hand to desolate the country."
Some of the taboos to which barbarian kings
are subject vividly recall the restrictions placed
on murderers. On Shark Point at Cape Padron
in Lower Guinea (West Africa), a priest-king
called Kukulu lives alone in a woods. He is not
allowed to touch a woman or to leave his house
and cannot even rise out of his chair, in which he
must sleep in a sitting position. If he should lie
down the wind would cease and shipping would
be disturbed. It is his function to keep storms in
check and, in general, to see to an even, healthy
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 77
condition of the atmosphere.^*^ The more pow-
erful a king of Loango is, says Bastian, the more
taboos he must observe. The heu^ to the throne
is also bound to them from childhood on; they
accumulate about him while he is growing up, and
by the time of his accession he is suffocated by
them.
Our interest in the matter does not require us
to take up more space to describe more fully the
taboos that cling to royal and priestly dignity.
We merely add that restrictions as to freedom of
movement and diet play the main role among
them. But two examples of taboo ceremonial
taken from civilized nations, and therefore from
much higher stages of culture, will indicate to
what an extent association with these privileged
persons tends to preserve ancient customs.
The Flamen Dialis, the high-priest of Jupiter
in Rome, had to observe an extraordinarily large
number of taboo rules. He was not allowed to
ride, to see a horse or an armed man, to wear a
ring that was not broken, to have a knot in his
garments, to touch wheat flour or leaven, or even
to mention by name a goat, a dog, raw meat,
beans and ivy ; his hair could only be cut by a free
man and with a bronze knife, his hair combings
and nail parings had to be buried under a lucky
30 Bastian, "The German Expedition to the Coast of Loango."
Jena 1874, cited by Frazer, 1. c, p. 5.
78 TOTEM AND TABOO
tree; he could not touch the dead, go into the
open with bare head, and similar prohibitions.
His wife, the Flaminica, also had her own pro-
hibitions: she was not allowed to ascend more
than three steps on a certain kind of stairs and
on certain holidays she could not comb her hair;
the leather for her shoes could not be taken from
any animal that had died a natural death but only
from one that had been slaughtered or sacrificed ;
when she heard thunder she was unclean until she
had made an expiatory sacrifice /''
The old kings of Ireland were subject to a
series of very curious restrictions, the observance
of which was expected to bring every blessing to
the country while their violation entailed every
form of evil. The complete description of these
taboos is given in the Book of Rights, of which
the oldest manuscript copies bear the dates 1390
and 1418. The prohibitions are very detailed
and concern certain activities at specified places
and times; in some cities, for instance, the king
cannot stay on a certain day of the week, while
at some specified hour this or that river may not
be crossed, or again there is a plane on which he
cannot camp a full nine days, etc.^^
Among many savage races the severity of the
taboo restrictions for the priest-kings has had re-
sults of historic importance which are especially
31 Frazer, 1. c, p. 13, 32 Frazer, I.e., p. 11,
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 79
interesting from our point of view. The honor
of being a priest-king ceased to be desirable; the
person in hne for the succession often used every
means to escape it. Thus in Combodscha, where
there is a fire and water king, it is often necessary
to use force to compel the successor to accept the
honor. On Nine or Savage Island, a coral
island in the Pacific Ocean, monarchy actually
came to an end because nobody was willing to un-
dertake the responsible and dangerous office. In
some parts of West Africa a general council is
held after the death of the king to determine upon
the successor. The man on whom the choice
falls is seized, tied and kept in custody in the
fetich house until he has declared himself willing
to accept the crown. Sometimes the presump-
tive successor to the throne finds ways and means
to avoid the intended honor; thus it is related of
a certain chief that he used to go armed day and
night and resist by force every attempt to place
him on the throne.^^ Among the negroes of
Sierra Leone the resistance against accepting the
kingly honor was so great that most of the tribes
were compelled to make strangers their kings.
Frazer makes these conditions responsible for
the fact that in the development of history a sep-
aration of the original priest-kingship into a spir-
33 A. Bastian, "The German Expedition on the Coast of
Lonago," cited by Frazer, 1. c, p. 18.
80 TOTEM AND TABOO
itual and a secular power finally took place.
Kings, crushed by the burden of then' holiness,
became incapable of exercising their power over
real things and had to leave this to inferior but
executive persons who were willing to renounce
the honors of royal dignity. From these there
grew up the secular rulers, while the spiritual
over-lordship, which was now of no practical im-
portance, was left to the former taboo kings. It
is well known to what extent this hypothesis finds
confirmation in the history of old Japan.
A survey of the picture of the relations of
primitive peoples to their rulers gives rise to the
expectation that our advance from description
to psychoanalytic understanding will not be
difficult. These relations are of an involved
nature and are not free from contradictions.
Rulers are granted great privileges which are
practically cancelled by taboo prohibitions in
regard to other privileges. They are privileged
persons, they can do or enjoy what is withheld
from the rest through taboo. But in contrast
to this freedom they are restricted by other taboos
which do not affect the ordinary individual.
Here, therefore, is the first contrast, which
amounts almost to a contradiction, between an
excess of freedom and an excess of restriction as
applied to the same persons. They are credited
with extraordinary magic powers and contact
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 81
with their person or their property is therefore
feared, while on the other hand the most bene-
ficial effect is expected from these contacts.
This seems to be a second and an especially glar-
ing contradiction; but we have already learned
that it is only apparent. The king's touch, exer-
cised by him with benevolent intention, heals and
protects; it is only when a common man touches
the king or his royal effects that the contact be-
comes dangerous, and this is probably because
the act may recall aggressive tendencies. An-
other contradiction which is not so easily solved
is expressed in the fact that great power over the
processes of nature is ascribed to the ruler and
yet the obligation is felt to guard him with espe-
cial care against threatening dangers, as if his
own power, which can do so much, were incapa-
ble of accomplishing this. A further difficulty
in the relation arises because there is no confi-
dence that the ruler will use his tremendous
power to the advantage of his subjects as well
as for his own protection; he is therefore dis-
trusted and surveillance over him is considered to
be justified. The taboo etiquette, to which the
life of the king is subject, simultaneously serves
all these objects of exercising a tutelage over the
king, of guarding hun against dangers, and of
guarding his subjects against danger which he
brings to them.
82 TOTEM AND TABOO
We are inclined to give the following explana-
tion of the complicated and contradictory rela-
tion of primitive peoples to their rulers.
Through superstition as well as through other
motives, various tendencies find expression in
the treatment of kings, each of which is devel-
oped to the extreme without regard to the others.
As a result of this, contradictions arise at which
the intellect of savages takes no more offense
than a highly civilized person would, as long as
it is only a question of religious matters or of
"loyalty."
That would be so far so good; but the psycho-
analytic technique may enable us to penetrate
more deeply into the matter and to add some-
thing about the nature of these various tenden-
cies. If we subject the facts as stated to analy-
sis, just as if they formed the symptoms of a
neurosis, our first attention would be directed
to the excess of anxious worry which is said to be
the cause of the taboo ceremonial. The occur-
rence of such excessive tenderness is very com-
mon in the neurosis and especially in the
compulsion neurosis upon which we are draw-
ing primarily for our comparison. We now
thoroughly understand the origin of this tender-
ness. It occurs wherever, besides the predomi-
nant tenderness, there exists a contrary but un-
conscious stream of hostility, that is to say, wher-
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 83
ever the typical case of an ambivalent affective
attitude is realized. The hostility is then cried
down by an excessive increase of tenderness
which is expressed as anxiety and becomes com-
pulsive because otherwise it would not suffice for
its task of keeping the unconscious opposition
in a state of repression. Every psychoanalj^st
knows how infallibly this anxious excess of ten-
derness can be resolved even under the most im-
probable circumstances, as for instance, when it
appears between mother and child, or in the case
of affectionate married people. Applied to the
treatment of privileged persons this theory of an
ambivalent feeling would reveal that their ven-
eration, their very deification, is opposed in the
unconscious by an intense hostile tendency, so
that, as we had expected, the situation of an
ambivalent feeling is here realized. The dis-
trust which certainly seems to contribute to the
motivation of the royal taboo, would be another
direct manifestation of the same unconscious hos-
tility. Indeed the ultimate issues of this con-
flict show such a diversity among different races
that we would not be at a loss for examples in
which the proof of such hostility would be much
easier. We learn from Frazer ^^ that the savage
Timmes of Sierra Leona reserve the right to ad-
3*1. c. p. 18. According to Zwefel et Monstier, "Voyage aux
Sources du Niger," 1880.
84 TOTEM AND TABOO
minister a beating to their elected king on the
evening before his coronation, and that they
make use of this constitutional right with such
thoroughness that the unhappy ruler sometimes
does not long survive his accession to the throne ;
for this reason the leaders of the race have made
it a rule to elect some man against whom they
have a particular grudge. Nevertheless, even in
such glaring cases the hostility is not acknowl-
edged as such, but is expressed as if it were a
ceremonial.
Another trait in the attitude of primitive races
towards their rulers recalls a mechanism which is
universally present in mental disturbances, and
is openly revealed in the so-called delusions of
persecution. Here the importance of a particu-
lar person is extraordinarily heightened and his
omnipotence is raised to the improbable in order
to make it easier to attribute to him the responsi-
bility for everything painful which happens to
the patient. Savages really do not act differ-
ently tow^ards their rulers when they ascribe to
them power over rain and shine, wind and
weather, and then dethrone or kill them because
nature has disappointed their expectation of a
good hunt or a ripe harvest. The prototype
which the paranoiac reconstructs in his persecu-
tion mania, is found in the relation of the child
to its father. Such omnipotence is regularly at-
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 85
tributed to the father in the imagination of the
son, and distrust of the father has been shown
to be intimately connected with the highest es-
teem for him. When a paranoiac names a per-
son of his acquaintance as his "persecutor," he
thereby elevates him to the paternal succession
and brings him under conditions which enable him
to make him responsible for all the misfortune
which he experiences. Thus this second analogy
between the savage and the neurotic may allow
us to surmise how much in the relation of the sav-
age to his ruler arises from the infantile attitude
of the child to its father.
But the strongest support for our point of
view, which seeks to compare taboo prohibitions
with neurotic symptoms, is to be found in the
taboo ceremonial itself, the sigTiificance of which
for the status of kinship has already been the sub-
ject of our previous discussion. This ceremonial
unmistakably reveals its double meaning and its
origin from ambivalent tendencies if only we are
willing to assume that the effects it produces are
those which it intended from the very beginning.
It not only distinguishes kings and elevates them
above all ordinary mortals, but it also makes
their life a torture and an unbearable burden and
forces them into a thraldom which is far worse
than that of their subjects. It would thus be
the correct counterpart to the compulsive ac-
86 TOTEM AND TABOO
tion of the neurosis, in which the suppressed im-
pulse and the impulse which suppreses it meet
in mutual and simultaneous satisfaction. The
compulsive action is nominally a protection
against the forbidden action; but we would say
that actually it is a repetition of what is for-
bidden. The word "nominally" is here applied
to the conscious whereas the word "actually"
applies to the unconscious instance of the psychic
life. Thus also the taboo ceremonial of kings
is nominally an expression of the highest venera-
tion and a means of guarding them; actually it
is the punishment for their elevation, the revenge
which their subjects take upon them. The ex-
periences which Cervantes makes Sancho Panza
undergo as governor on his island have evidently
made him recognize this interpretation of courtly
ceremonial as the only correct one. It is very
possible that this point would be corroborated if
we could induce kings and rulers of to-day to
express themselves on this point.
Why the emotional attitude towards rulers
should contain such a strong unconscious share of
hostility is a very interesting problem which, how-
ever, exceeds the scope of this book. We have
already referred to the infantile father-complex;
we may add that an investigation of the early
history of kingship would bring the decisive ex-
planations. Frazer has an impressive discus-
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 87
sion of the theory that the first kings were
strangers who, after a short reign, were destined
to be sacrificed at solemn festivals as representa-
tives of the deity; but Frazer himself does not
consider his facts altogether convincing.^^
Christian myths are said to have been still in-
fluenced by the after-effects of this evolution of
kings.
c) THE TABOO OF THE BEAD
We know that the dead are mighty rulers : we
may be surprised to learn that they are regarded
as enemies.
Among most primitive people the taboo of the
dead displays, if we may keep to our infection
analogy, a peculiar virulence. It manifests it-
self in the first place, in the consequences which
result from contact with the dead, and in the
treatment of the mourners for the dead. Among
the jNIaori any one who had touched a corpse or
who had taken part in its interment, became ex-
tremely unclean and was almost cut off from in-
tercourse with his fellow beings; he was, as we
say, boycotted. He could not enter a house, or
approach persons or objects without infecting
them with the same properties. He could not
even touch his food with his own hands, which
35 Frazer, "The Magic Act and the Evolution of Kings," 2 vols.,
1911. (The Golden Bough.)
88 TOTEM AND TABOO
were now unclean and therefore quite useless to
him. His food was put on the ground and he
had no alternative except to seize it as best he
could, with his lips and teeth, while he held his
hands behind on his back. Occasionally he could
be fed by another person who helped him to his
food with outstretched arms so as not to touch the
unfortunate one himself, but this assistant was
then in turn subjected to almost equally oppres-
sive restrictions. Almost every village con-
tained some altogether disreputable individual,
ostracised by society, whose wretched existence
depended upon people's charity. This creature
alone was allowed within arm's length of a per-
son who had fulfilled the last duty towards the
deceased. But as soon as the period of segrega-
tion was over and the person rendered unclean
through the corpse could again mingle with his
fellow-beings, all the dishes which he had used
during the dangerous period were broken and all
his clothing was thrown away.
The taboo customs after bodily contact with
the dead are the same all over Polynesia, in
Melanesia, and in a part of Africa; their most
constant feature is the prohibition against han-
dling one's food and the consequent necessity of
being fed by somebody else. It is noteworthy
that in Polynesia, or perhaps only in Hawaii,^^
86 Frazer, "Taboo," p. 138, etc.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 89
priest-kings were subject to the same restrictions
during the exercise of holy functions. In the
taboo of the dead on the Island of Tonga the
abatement and gradual abohtion of the prohibi-
tions through the individual's own taboo power
are clearly shown. A person who touched the
cor2)se of a dead chieftain was unclean for ten
months ; but if he was himself a chief, he was un-
clean for only three, four, or five months, accord-
ing to the rank of the deceased; if it was the
corpse of the idolized head-chief even the greatest
chiefs became taboo for ten months. These sav-
ages are so certain that any one who violates these
taboo rules must become seriously ill and die, that
according to the opinion of an observer, they have
never yet dared to convince themselves of the con-
trary.^ ^
The taboo restrictions imposed upon persons
whose contact with the dead is to be understood
in the transferred sense, namely the mourning
relatives such as widows and widowers, are es-
sentially the same as those mentioned above, but
they are of greater interest for the point we are
trying to make. In the rules hitherto men-
tioned we see only the typ'ical expression of the
virulence and power of diffusion of the taboo;
in those about to be cited we catch a gleam of
37 W. Mariner, "The Natives of the Tonga Islands," 1818, see
Frazer, 1. c, p. 140.
90 TOTEM AND TABOO
the motives, including both the ostensible ones
and those which may be regarded as the underly-
ing and genuine motives.
Among the Shuswap in British-Columbia wid-
ows and widowers have to remain segregated dur-
ing their period of mourning; they must not use
their hands to touch the body or the head and
all utensils used by them must not be used by
any one else. No hunter will want to approach
the hut in which such mourners live, for that
would bring misfortune; if the shadow of one
of the mourners should fall on him he would be-
come ill. The mourners sleep on thorn bushes,
with which they also surround their beds. This
last precaution is meant to keep off the sj)irit
of the deceased; plainer still is the reported
custom of other North American tribes where
the widow, after the death of her husband, has
to wear a kind of trousers of dried grass in or-
der to make herself inaccessible to the approach
of the spirit. Thus it is quite obvious that touch-
ing "in the transferred sense" is after all un-
derstood only as bodily contact, since the spirit
of the deceased does not leave his kin and does
not desist from "hovering about them" during
the period of mourning.
Among the Agutainos, who live on Palawan,
one of the Philippine Islands, a widow may not
leave her hut for the first seven or eight days
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 91
after her husband's death, except at night, when
she need not expect encounters. Whoever sees
her is in danger of immediate death and there-
fore she herself warns others of her approach by
hitting the trees with a wooden stick with every
step she takes; these trees all wither. Another
observation explains the nature of the danger in-
herent in a widow. In the district of JNIekeo,
British Xew Guinea, a widower forfeits all civil
rights and lives like an outlaw. He may not tend
a garden, or show himself in public, or enter the
village or go on the street. He slinks about like
an animal, in the high grass or in the bushes, and
must hide in a thicket if he sees anybody, espe-
cially a woman, approaching. This last hint
makes it easy for us to trace back the danger of
the widower or widow to the danger of tempta-
tion. The husband who has lost his wife must
evade the desire for a substitute; the widow has
to contend with the same wish and beside this, she
may arouse the desire of other men because she
is without a master. Every such satisfaction
through a substitute rims contrary to the inten-
tion of mourning and would cause the anger of
the spirit to flare up.^^
38 The same patient whose "impossibilities" I have correlated
with taboo, (see above, p. 47) acknowledged that she always
became indignant when she met anybody on the street who was
dressed in mourning. "Such people should be forbidden to go
out!" she said.
92 TOTEM AND TABOO
One of the most surprising, but at the same
time one of the most instructive taboo customs
of mourning among primitive races is the prohi-
bition against pronouncing the name of the de-
ceased. This is very widespread, and has been
subjected to many modifications with important
consequences.
Aside from the Austrahans and the Polynes-
ians, who usually show us taboo customs in their
best state of preservation, we also find this pro-
hibition among races so far apart and unrelated
to each other as the Samojedes in Siberia and
the Todas in South India, the JNIongolians of
Tartary and the Tuaregs of the Sahara, the Aino
of Japan and the Akamba and Nandi in Central
Africa, the Tinguanes in the Philippines and the
inhabitants of the Nikobari Islands and of Mada-
gascar and Borneo.^^ Among some of these
races the prohibition and its consequences hold
good only for the period of mourning while in
others it remains permanent; but in all cases it
seems to diminish with the lapse of time after the
death.
The avoidance of the name of the deceased is.
as a rule kept up with extraordinary severity.
Thus, among many South American tribes, it is
considered the gravest insult to the survivors to
pronounce the name of the deceased in their pres-
39 Frazer, 1. c, p. 353.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 93
ence, and the penalty set for it is no less than
that for the slaying itself .^*^ At first it is not easy
to guess why the mention of the name should be
so abominated, but the dangers associated with
it have called into being a whole series of inter-
esting and important expedients to avoid this.
Thus the Masai in Africa have hit upon the eva-
sion of changing the name of the deceased imme-
diately upon his death; he may now be men-
tioned without dread by this new name, while all
the prohibitions remain attached to the old name.
It seems to be assumed that the ghost does not
know his new name and will not find it out. The
Australian tribes on Adelaide and Encounter
Bay are so consistently cautious that when a
death occurs almost every person who has the
same name as the deceased or a very similar one,
exchanges it for another. Sometimes by a fur-
ther extension of the same idea as seen among
several tribes in Victoria and in North America
all the relatives of the deceased change their
names regardless of whether their names resemble
the name of the deceased in sound. Among the
Guaycuru in Paraguay the chief used to give
new names to all the members of the tribe, on
such sad occasions, which they then remembered
as if they had always had them.*^
40 Frazer, 1. c, p. 35^, etc.
41 Frazer, 1. c, p. 357, according to an old Spanish observer,
1732.
94 TOTEM AND TABOO
Furthermore, if the deceased had the same
name as an animal or object, etc. some of the
races just enumerated thought it necessary to
give these animals and objects new names, in
order not to be reminded of the deceased when
they mentioned them. Through this there must
have resulted a never ceasing change of vocabul-
ary, which caused a good deal of difficulty for
the missionaries, especially where the interdiction
upon a name was permanent. In the seven years
which the missionary Dobrizhofer spent among
the Abipons in Paraguay, the name for jaguar
was changed three times and the words for croco-
dile, thorns and animal slaughter underwent a
similar fate.^^ But the dread of pronouncing a
name which has belonged to a deceased person
extends also to the mention of everything in
which the deceased had any part, and a further
important result of this process of suppression is
that these races have no tradition or any histor-
ical reminiscences, so that we encounter the great-
est difficulties in investigating their past history.
Among a number of these primitive races com-
pensating customs have also been established in
order to re-awaken the names of the deceased
after a long period of mourning; they are be-
stowed upon children, who were regarded as re-
incarnations of the dead.
42 Frazer, 1. c, p. 360.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 95
The strangeness of this taboo on names dimin-
ishes if we bear in mind that the savage looks
upon his name as an essential part and an impor-
tant possession of his personality, and that he
ascribes the full significance of things to words.
Our children do the same, as I have shown else-
where, and therefore they are never satisfied with
accepting a meaningless verbal similarity, but
consistently conclude that when two things have
identical names a deeper correspondence between
them must exist. Numerous peculiarities of
normal behavior may lead civilized man to con-
clude that he too is not yet as far removed as he
thinks from attributing the importance of things
to mere names and feeling that his name has be-
come peculiarly identified with his person. This
is corroborated by psychoanalytic experiences,
where there is much occasion to point out the im-
portance of names in unconscious thought activ-
ity.^ ^ As was to be expected, the compulsion
neurotics behave just like savages in regard to
names. They show the full "complex sensitive-
ness" towards the utterance and hearing of spe-
cial words (as do also other neurotics) and de-
rive a good many, often serious, inhibitions from
their treatment of their own name. One of these
taboo patients, whom I knew, had adopted the
avoidance of wilting down her name for fear that
43 Stekel, Abraham.
96 TOTEM AND TABOO
it might get into somebody's hands who thus
would come into possession of a piece of her per-
sonahty. In her frenzied faithfulness, which
she needed to protect herself against the tempta-
tions of her phantasy, she had created for herself
the commandment, "not to give away anything
of her personality." To this belonged first of all
her name, then by further application her hand-
writing, so that she finally gave up writing.
Thus it no longer seems strange to us that sav-
ages should consider a dead person's name as a
part of his personality and that it should be sub-
jected to the same taboo as the deceased. Call-
ing a dead person by name can also be traced back
to contact with him, so that we can turn our at-
tention to the more inclusive problem of why this
contact is visited with such a severe taboo.
The nearest explanation would point to the
natural horror which a corpse inspires, especially
in view of the changes so soon noticeable after
death. Mourning for a dead person must also
be considered as a sufiicient motive for everything
which has reference to him. But horror of the
corpse evidently does not cover all the details of
taboo rules, and mourning can never explain to
us why the mention of the dead is a severe insult
to his survivors. On the contrary, mourning
loves to preoccupy itself with the deceased, to
elaborate his memory, and preserve it for
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 97
the longest possible time. Something besides
mourning must be made responsible for the pecu-
liarities of taboo customs, something which evi-
dently serves a different purpose. It is this very
taboo on names which reveals this still unknown
motive, and if the customs did not tell us about
it we would find it out from the statements of
the mourning savages themselves.
For they do not conceal the fact that they fear
the presence and the return of the spirit of a
dead person; they practice a host of ceremonies
to keep him off and banish him.'*^ They look
upon the mention of his name as a conjuration
which must result in his immediate presence.*^
They therefore consistently do everything to
avoid conjuring and awakening a dead person.
They disguise themselves in order that the spirit
may not recognize them,^^ they distort either his
name or their own, and become infuriated when
a ruthless stranger incites the spirit against his
survivors by mentioning his name. We can
hardly avoid the conclusion that they suffer, ac-
cording to Wundt's expression, from the fear
of "his soul now turned into a demon." '*^
4* Frazer, 1. c, p. 353, cites the Tuaregs of the Sahara as an
example of such an acknowledgment.
*5 Perhaps this condition is to be added: as long as any part of
his physical remains exist. Frazer, 1. c, p. 373.
46 "On the Nikobar Islands," Frazer, 1. c, p. 382.
47 Wundt, "Religion and Myth," Vol. II, p. 49.
98 TOTEM AND TABOO
With this understanding we approach Wundt's
conception who, as we have heard, sees the nature
of taboo in the fear of demons.
The assumption which this theory makes,
namely, that inmiediately after death the be-
loved member of a family becomes a demon, from
whom the survivors have nothmg but hostility to
expect, so that they must protect themselves by
every means from his evil desires, is so peculiar
that our first impulse is not to believe it. Yet
almost all comj^etent authors agree as to this in-
terpretation of primitive races. Westermarck,*^
who, in my opinion, gives altogether too little
consideration to taboo, makes this statement:
"On the whole facts lead me to conclude that the
dead are more frequently regarded as enemies
than as friends and that Jevons and Grant Allen
are wrong in their assertion that it was formerly
believed that the malevolence of the dead was as
a rule directed only against strangers, while they
were paternally concerned about the life and
4S ''The Origin and Development of Moral Conceptions," see sec-
tion entitled ''Attitude Towards the Dead," Vol. II, p. 4^4. Botli
the notes and the text show an abundance of corroborating, and
often very characteristic testimony, e. g., the Maori believed that
"the nearest and most beloved relatives changed their nature after
death and bore ill-will even to their former favorites." The Aus-
tral negroes believe that every dead person is for a long time
malevolent; the closer the relationship the greater the fear. The
Central Eskimos are dominated by the idea that the dead come to
rest very late and that at first they are to be feared as mis-
chievous spirits who frequently hover about the village to spread
illness, death and other evils. (Boas.)
THE AMBIVALENXE OF EMOTIONS 99
welfare of their descendants and the members
of their clan."
R. Kleinpaul has written an impressive book
in which he makes use of the remnants of the old
belief in souls among civihzed races to show the
relation between the living and the dead.^^ Ac-
cording to him too, this relation cuhninates in the
conviction that the dead, tliirsting for blood,
draw the hving after them. The living did not
feel themselves safe from the persecutions of
the dead until a body of water had been put
between tliem. That is why it was preferred
to bury the dead on islands or to bring them
to the other side of a river, the expressions "here"
and "beyond" originated in this way. Later
moderation has restricted the malevolence of
tlie dead to those categories where a peculiar
right to feel rancor had to be admitted, such as
the murdered who pursue their murderer as evil
spirits, and those who, like brides, had died with
their longings unsatisfied. Kleinpaul believes
that originally, however, the dead were all vam-
pires, who bore ill-will to the living, and strove
to harm them and deprive them of life. It was
the corpse that first furnished the concex:)tion of
an evil spirit.
The hypothesis that those whom we love best
49 R. Kleinpaul: "The Living and the Dead in Folklore, Re-
ligion and Myth," 1898.
100 TOTEM AND TABOO
turn into demons after death obviously allows us
to put a further question. What prompted
primitive races to ascribe such a change of senti-
ment to the beloved dead? Why did they make
demons out of them? According to Wester-
marck this question is easily answered.^^ "As
death is usually considered the v^^orst calamity
that can overtake man, it is believed that the
deceased are very dissatisfied with their lot.
Primitive races believe that death comes only
through being slain, whether by violence or by
magic, and this is considered already sufficient
reason for the soul to be vindictive and irritable.
The soul presumably envies the living and longs
for the company of its former kin; we can there-
fore understand that the soul should seek to kill
them with diseases in order to be re-united with
them. . . .
". . . A further explanation of the malevo-
lence ascribed to souls lies in the instinctive fear
of them, which is itself the result of the fear of
death."
Our study of psychoneurotic disturbances
points to a more comprehensive explanation
which includes that of Westermarck.
When a wife loses her husband, or a daughter
her mother, it not infrequently happens that the
survivor is afflicted with tormenting scruples,
BO 1. c, p. 426.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 101
called "obsessive reproaches" which raise the
question whether she herself has not been guilty
through carelessness or neglect, of the death of
the beloved person. No recalling of the care
with which she nursed the invalid, or direct refu-
tation of the asserted guilt can put an end to
the torture, which is the pathological expression
of mourning and which in time slowly subsides.
Psychoanalytic investigation of such cases has
made us acquainted with the secret mainsprings
of this affliction. We have ascertained that these
obsessive reproaches are in a certain sense justi-
fied and therefore are immune to refutation or
objections. Not that the mourner has really
been guilty of the death or that she has really
been careless, as the obsessive reproach asserts;
but still there was something in her, a wish of
which she herself was unaware, which was not dis-
pleased with the fact that death came, and which
would have brought it about sooner had it been
strong enough. The reproach now reacts
against this unconscious wish after the death of
the beloved person. Such hostility, hidden in
the unconscious behind tender love, exists in al-
most all cases of intensive emotional allegiance
to a particular person, indeed it represents the
classic case, the prototype of the ambivalence of
human emotions. There is always more or less
of this ambivalence in everybody's disposition;
102 TOTEM AND TABOO
normally it is not strong enough to give rise to
the obsessive reproaches we liave described.
But where there is abundant predisposition for
it, it manifests itself in the relation to those we
love most, precisel}^ where you would least ex-
pect it. The disposition to compulsion neurosis,
which we have so often taken for comparison with
taboo problems, is distinguished by a particularly
high degree of this original ambivalence of emo-
tion.
We now know how to explain the supposed
demonism of recently departed souls and the
necessity of being protected against their hostil-
ity through taboo rules. By assuming a similar
high degree of ambivalence in the emotional life
of primitive races such as psychoaimlysis ascribes
to persons suffering from compulsion neurosis,
it becomes comprehensible that the same kind of
reaction against the hostility latent in the uncon-
scious behind the obsessive reproaches of the
neurotic should also be necessar}^ here after the
painful loss has occurred. But this hostility,
which is painfull}^ felt in the unconscious in the
form of satisfaction with the demise, experiences
a different fate in the case of primitive man: the
defense against it is accomplished by displace-
ment upon the object of hostility, namely the
dead. We call this defense process, frequent
both in normal and diseased psychic life, a pro-
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 103
jection. The survivor will deny that he has ever
entertained hostile impulses toward the beloved
dead; but now the soul of the deceased enter-
tains them and will try to give vent to them dur-
ing the. entire period of mourning. In spite of
the successful defense through projection, the
punitive and remorseful character of this emo-
tional reaction manifests itself in being afraid,
in self-imposed renunciations and in subjection
to restrictions which are partly disguised as pro-
tective measures against the hostile demon.
Thus we find again that taboo has grown out of
the soil of an ambivalent emotional attitude.
The taboo of the dead also originates from the
opposition between the conscious grief and the
unconscious satisfaction at death. If this is the
origin of the resentment of spirits it is self-evi-
dent that just the nearest and formerly most be-
loved survivors have to fear it most.
As in neurotic symptoms, the taboo regulations
also evince opposite feelings. Their restrictive
character expresses mourning, while they also
betray very clearly what they are trying to con-
ceal, namely, the hostility towards the dead,
which is now motivated as self-defense. We
have learnt to understand part of the taboo regu-
lations as temptation fears. A dead person is
defenseless, which must act as an incitement to
satisfy hostile desires entertained against him;
104 TOTEM AND TABOO
this temptation has to be opposed by the prohi-
bition.
But Westermarck is right in not admitting any
difference in the savage's conception between
those who have died by violence and those who
have died a natural death. As will be shown
later,^^ in the unconscious mode of thinking even
a natural death is perceived as murder; the per-
son was killed by evil wishes. Any one inter-
ested in the origin and meaning of dreams deal-
ing with the death of dear relatives such as par-
ents and brothers and sisters will find that the
same feeling of ambivalence is responsible for the
fact that the dreamer, the child, and the savage
all have the same attitude towards the dead."^^
A little while ago we challenged Wundt's con-
ception, who explains the nature of taboo through
the fear of demons, and yet v/e have just agreed
with the explanation which traces back the taboo
of the dead to a fear of the soul of the dead after
it has turned into a demon. This seems like a
contradiction, but it will not be difficult for us to
explain it. It is true that we have accepted the
idea of demons, but we know that this assump-
tion is not something final which psychology can-
not resolve into further elements. We have, as
it were, exposed the demons by recognizing them
51 Cf. Chap. III.
B2 Freud, "The Interpretation of Dreams."
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 105
as mere projections of hostile feelings which the
survivor entertains towards the dead.
The double feeling — tenderness and hostility
— against the deceased, which we consider well
founded, endeavors to assert itself at the time
of bereavement as mourning and satisfaction. A
conflict must ensue between these contrary feel-
ings and as one of them, namely the hostility, is
altogether or for the greater part unconscious,
the conflict cannot result in a conscious difference
in the form of hostility or tenderness as, for in-
stance, when we forgive an injury inflicted upon
us by some one we love. The process usually ad-
justs itself through a special psychic mechanism,
which is designated in psychoanalysis as projec-
tion. This unknown hostility, of which we are
ignorant and of which we do not wish to know, is
projected from our inner perception into the
outer world and is thereby detached from our
own person and attributed to the other. Not we,
the survivors, rejoice because we are rid of the de-
ceased, on the contrary, we mourn for him; but
now, curiously enough, he has become an evil
demon who would rejoice in our misfortune and
who seeks our death. The survivors must now
defend themselves against this evil enemy; they
are freed from inner oppression, but they have
only succeeded in exchanging it for an affliction
from without.
106 TOTEM AND TABOO
It is not to be denied that this process of pro-
jection, which turns the dead into malevolent
enemies, finds some support in the real hostilities
of the dead which the survivors remember and
with which they really can reproach the dead.
These hostilities are harshness, the desire to dom-
inate, injustice, and whatever else forms the back-
ground of even the most tender relations between
men. But the process cannot be so simple that
this factor alone could explain the origin of
demons by projection. The offenses of the dead
certainly motivate in part the hostility of the sur-
vivors, but they would have been ineffective if
they had not given rise to this hostility and the
occasion of death would surely be the least suit-
able occasion for awakening the memory of the
reproaches which justly could have been brought
against the deceased. We cannot dispense with
the unconscious hostility as the constant and
really impelling motive. This hostile tendency
towards those nearest and dearest could remain
latent during their lifetime, that is to say, it could
avoid betraying itself to consciousness either
directly or indirectly through any substitutive
formation. However, when the person who was
simultaneously loved and hated died, this was no
longer possible, and the conflict became acute.
The mourning originating from the enhanced
tenderness, became on the one hand more intol-
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 107
erant of the latent hostility, while on the other
hand it could not tolerate that the latter should
not give origin to a feeling of pure gratification.
Thus there came about the repression of the un-
conscious hostility through projection, and the
formation of the ceremonial in which fear of pun-
ishment by demons finds expression. With the
termination of the period of mourning, the con-
flict also loses its acuteness so that the taboo of
the dead can be abated or sink into oblivion.
4
Having thus explained the basis on which the
very instructive taboo of the dead has grown up,
we must not miss the opportunity of adding a few
observations which may become important for the
understanding of taboo in general.
The projection of unconscious hostility upon
demons in the taboo of the dead is only a single
example from a whole series of processes to which
we must grant the greatest influence in the form-
ation of primitive psychic life. In the foregoing
case the mechanism of projection is used to settle
an emotional conflict; it serves the same purpose
in a large number of psychic situations which lead
to neuroses. But projection is not specially cre-
ated for the purpose of defense, it also comes into
being where there are no conflicts. The projec-
tion of inner perceptions to the outside is a primi-
108 TOTEM AND TABOO
tive mechanism which, for instance, also influ-
ences our sense perceptions, so that it normally
has the greatest share in shaping our outer world.
Under conditions that have not yet been suf-
ficiently determined even inner perceptions of
ideational and emotional processes are projected
outwardly, like sense perceptions, and are used
to shape the outer world, whereas they ought to
remain in the inner world. This is perhaps
genetically connected with the fact that the func-
tion of attention was originally directed not
towards the inner world, but to the stimuli
streaming in from the outer world, and only re-
ceived reports of pleasure and pain from the
endopsychic processes. Only with the develop-
ment of the language of abstract thought
through the association of sensory remnants of
word representations with inner processes, did the
latter gradually become capable of perception.
Before this took place primitive man had devel-
oped a picture of the outer world through the out-
ward projection of inner perceptions, which we,
with our reenforced conscious perception, must
now translate back into psychology.
The projection of their own evil impulses upon
demons is only a part of what has become the
world system ("Weltanschauung") of primitive
man which we shall discuss later as "animism."
We shall then have to ascertain the psychological
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 109
nature of such a system formation and the points
of support which we shall find in the analysis
of these system formations will again bring us
face to face with the neurosis. For the present
we merely wish to suggest that the "secondary
elaboration" of the dream content is the proto-
type of all these system formations.^^ And let
us not forget that beginning at the stage of sys-
tem formation there are two origins for every act
judged by consciousness, namely the systematic,
and the real but unconscious origin.^^
Wundt ^^ remarks that "among the influences
which myth everywhere ascribes to demons the
evil ones preponderate, so that according to the
religions of races evil demons are evidently older
than good demons." Now it is quite possible
that the whole concej)tion of demons was derived
from the extremely important relation to the
dead. In the further course of human develop-
ment the ambivalence inherent in this relation
then manifested itself by allowing two altogether
contrary psychic formations to issue from the
same root, namely, the fear of demons and of
ghosts, and the reverence for ancestors.^^ Noth-
53 Freud, "The Interpretation of Dreams."
54 The projection creations of primitive man resemble the per-
sonifications through which the poet projects his warring impulses
out of himself, as separated individuals.
55 "Myth and Religion," p. 1~^9.
56 In the psychoanalysis of neurotic persons who suffer, or have
suffered, in their childhood from the fear of ghosts, it is often not
110 TOTEM AND TABOO
ing testifies so much to the influence of mourning
on the origin of belief in demons as the fact that
demons were always taken to be the spirits of
persons not long dead. Mourning has a very dis-
tinct psychic task to perform, namely, to detach
the memories and expectations of the sur\^ivors
from the dead. When this work is accomplished
the grief, and with it the remorse and reproach,
lessens, and therefore also the fear of the demon.
But the very spirits which at first were feared as
demons now serve a friendlier purpose ; they are
revered as ancestors and appealed to for help in
times of distress.
If we survey the relation of survivors to the
dead through the course of the ages, it is very evi-
dent that the ambivalent feeling has extraordi-
narily abated. We now find it easy to suppress
whatever unconscious hostility towards the dead
there may still exist without any special psychic
effort on our part. Where formerly satisfied
hate and painful tenderness struggled with each
other, we now find piety, which appears like a
cicatrice and demands : De mortuis nil nisi bene.
Only neurotics still blur the mourning for the loss
of their dear ones with attacks of compulsive re-
diflScult to expose these ghosts as the parents. Compare also in
this connection the communication of P. Haeberlin, "Sexual
Ghosts" ("Sexual Problems," Feb., 1912), where it is a question
of another erotically accentuated person, but where the father was
dead.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 111
preaches which psychoanalysis reveals as the old
ambivalent emotional feeling. How this change
was brought about, and to what extent constitu-
tional changes and real improvement of familiar
relations share in causing the abatement of the
ambivalent feeling, need not be discussed here.
But this example would lead us to assume that
the psychic wipulses of primitive man possessed
a higher degree of ambivalence than is found at
present aviong civilized human beings. With
the decline of this ambivalence the taboo, as the
compromise symptom of the ambivalent conflict,
also slowly disappeared. Neurotics who are
compelled to reproduce this conflict, together with
the taboo resulting from it, may be said to have
brought with them an atavistic remnant in the
form of an archaic constitution the compensation
of which in the interest of cultural demands en-
tails the most prodigious psychic efforts on their
part.
At this point we may recall the confusing in-
formation which Wundt offered us about the
double meaning of the word taboo, namely, holy
and unclean. (See above.) It was supjiosed
that originally the word taboo did not yet mean
holy and unclean but signified something de-
monic, something which may not be touched, thus
emphasizing a characteristic common to both ex-
tremes of the later conception; this persistent
112 TOTEM AND TABOO
common trait proves, however, that an original
correspondence existed between what was holy
and what was unclean, which only later became
differentiated.
In contrast to this, our discussions readily show
that the double meaning in question belonged to
the word taboo from the very beginning and that
it serves to designate a definite ambivalence as
well as everything which has come into existence
on the basis of this ambivalence. Taboo is itself
an ambivalent word and by way of supplement,
we may add that the established meaning of this
word might of itself have allowed us to guess
what we have found as the result of extensive in-
vestigation, namely, that the taboo prohibition is
to be explained as the result of an emotional
ambivalence. A study of the oldest languages
has taught us that at one time there were many
such words which included their own contrasts
so that they were in a certain sense ambivalent,
though perhaps not exactly in the same sense as
the word taboo. ^^ Slight vocal modifications of
this primitive word containing two opposite
meanings later served to create a separate lin-
guistic expression for the two opposites originally
united in one word.
57 Compare my article on Abel's "Gegensinn des Urworte" in
the "Jahrbuch fiir Psyclioanalytische und Psychopathologische
Forschungen," Bd. II, 1910,
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 113
The word taboo has had a different fate; with
the diminished importance of the ambivalence
which it connotes it has itself disappeared, or
rather, the words analogous to it have vanished
from the vocabulary. In a later connection I
hope to be able to show that a tangible historic
change is probably concealed behind the fate of
this conception; that the word at first was asso-
ciated with definite human relations which were
characterized by great emotional ambivalence
from which it expanded to other analogous re-
lations.
Unless we are mistaken, the understanding of
taboo also throws fight upon the nature and
origin of conscience. Without stretching ideas
we can speak of a taboo conscience and a taboo
sense of guilt after the violation of a taboo.
Taboo conscience is probably the oldest form in
which we meet the phenomenon of conscience.
For what is "conscience"? According to
linguistic testimony it belongs to what we know
most surely; in some languages its meaning is
hardly to be distinguished from consciousness.
Conscience is the inner perception of objections
to definite wish impulses that exist in us ; but the
emphasis is put upon the fact that this rejection
does not have to depend on anything else, that it
is sure of itself. This becomes even plainer in
the case of a guilty conscience, where we become
114 TOTEM AND TABOO
aware of the inner condemnation of such acts
which realized some of our definite wish impulses.
Confirmation seems superfluous here; whoever
has a conscience must feel in himself the justifica-
tion of the condemnation, and the reproach for
the accomplished action. But this same charac-
ter is evinced by the attitude of savages towards
taboo. Taboo is a command of conscience, the
violation of which causes a terrible sense of guilt
which is as self-evident as its origin is unknown.^^
It is therefore probable that conscience also
originates on the basis of an ambivalent feeling
from quite definite human relations which contain
this ambivalence. It probably originates under
conditions which are in force both for taboo and
the compulsion neurosis, that is, one component
of the two contrasting feelings is unconscious and
is kept repressed by the compulsive domination
of the other component. This is confirmed by
many things which we have learned from our
analysis of neuroses. In the first place the char-
acter of compulsion neurotics shows a predomi-
nant trait of painful conscientiousness which is a
symptom of reaction against the temptation
58 It is an interesting parallel that the sense of guilt resulting
from the violation of a taboo is in no way diminished if the viola-
tion took place unwittingly (see examples above), and that even in
the Greek myth the guilt of Oedipus is not cancelled by the fact
that it was incurred without his knowledge and will and even
against them.
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 115
which lurks in the unconscious, and which de-
velops into the highest degrees of guilty con-
science as their illness grows worse. Indeed, one
may venture the assertion that if the origin of
guilty conscience could not be discovered through
compulsion neurotic patients, there would be no
prospect of ever discovering it. This task is suc-
cessfully solved in the case of the individual neu-
rotic, and we are confident of finding a similar so-
lution in the case of races.
In the second place we cannot help noticing
that the sense of guilt contains much of the nature
of anxiety ; without hesitation it may be described
as "conscience phobia." But fear points to un-
conscious sources; The psychology of the neu-
roses taught us that when wish feelings undergo
repression their libido becomes transformed into
anxiety. In addition we must bear in mind that
the sense of guilt also contains something un-
known and unconscious, namely the motivation
for the rejection. The character of anxiety in
the sense of guilt corresponds to this unknown
quantity.
If taboo expresses itself mainly in prohibitions
it may well be considered self-evident, without
remote proof from the analogy with neurosis
that it is based on a positive, desireful impulse.
For what nobody desires to do does not have to
be forbidden, and certainly whatever is expressly
116 TOTEM AND TABOO
forbidden must be an object of desire. If we
applied this plausible theory to primitive races
we would have to conclude that among their
strongest temptations were desires to kill their
kings and priests, to commit incest, to abuse their
dead and the like. That is not very prob-
able. And if we should apply the same theory to
those cases in which we ourselves seem to hear the
voice of conscience most clearly we would arouse
the greatest contradiction. For there we would
assert with the utmost certainty that we did not
feel the slightest temptation to violate any of
these commandments, as for example, the com-
mandment : Thou shalt not kill, and that we felt
nothing but repugnance at the very idea.
But if we grant the testimony of our conscience
the importance it claims, then the prohibition —
the taboo as well as our moral prohibitions — be-
comes superfluous, while the existence of a con-
science, in turn, remains unexplained and the con-
nection between conscience, taboo and neurosis
disappears. The net result of this would then
be our present state of understanding unless we
view the problem psychoanalytically.
But if we take into account the following re-
sults of psychoanalysis, our understanding of the
problem is greatly advanced. The analysis of
dreams of normal individuals has shown that our
own temptation to kill others is stronger and more
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 117
frequent than we had suspected and that it pro-
duces psychic effects even where it does not reveal
itself to our consciousness. And when we have
learnt that the obsessive rules of certain neurotics
are nothing but measures of self -reassurance and
self -punishment erected against the reenforced
impulse to commit murder, we can return with
fresh appreciation to our previous hypothesis that
every prohibition must conceal a desire. We can
then assume that this desire to murder actually
exists and that the taboo as well as the moral pro-
hibition are psychologically by no means super-
fluous but are, on the contrary, explained and
justified through our ambivalent attitude towards
the impulse to slay.
The nature of this ambivalent relation so often
emphasized as fundamental, namely, that the
positive underlying desire is unconscious, opens
the possibility of showing further connections and
explaining further problems. The psychic
processes in the unconscious are not entirely iden-
tical with those known to us from our conscious
psychic life, but have the benefit of certain notable
liberties of which the latter are deprived. An
unconscious impulse need not have originated
where we find it expressed, it can spring from an
entirely different place and ma}^ originally have
referred to other persons and relations, but
through the mechanism of displacement, it
118 TOTEM AND TABOO
reaches the point where it comes to our notice.
Thanks to the indestructibility of unconscious
processes and their inaccessibility to correction,
the impulse may be saved over from earlier times
to which it was adapted to later periods and con-
ditions in which its manifestations must neces-
sarily seem foreign. These are all only hints, but
a careful elaboration of them would show how
important they may become for the understand-
ing of the development of civilization.
In closing these discussions we do not want to
neglect to make an observation that will be of use
for later investigations. Even if we insist upon
the essential similarity between taboo and moral
prohibitions we do not dispute that a psycholog-
ical difference must exist between them. A
change in the relations of the fundamental am-
bivalence can be the only reason why the prohi-
bition no longer appears in the form of a taboo.
In the analytical consideration of taboo phe-
nomena we have hitherto allowed ourselves to be
guided by their demonstrable agreements with
compulsion neurosis ; but as taboo is not a neuro-
sis but a social creation we are also confronted
with the task of showing wherein lies the essential
difference between the neurosis and a product of
culture like the taboo.
Here again I will take a single fact as my start-
ing point. Primitive races fear a punishment for
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 119
the violation of a taboo, usually a serious disease
or death. This punishment threatens only him
who has been guilty of the violation. It is differ-
ent with the compulsion neurosis. If the patient
wants to do something that is forbidden to him
he does not fear punishment for himself, but for
another person. This person is usually indefi-
nite, but, by means of analysis, is easily recog-
nized as some one very near and dear to the pa-
tient. The neurotic therefore acts as if he were
altruistic, while primitive man seems egotistical.
Only if retribution fails to overtake the taboo vio-
lator spontaneously does a collective feeling
awaken among savages that they are all threat-
ened through the sacrilege, and they hasten to in-
flict the omitted punishment themselves. It is
easy for us to explain the mechanism of this
solidarity. It is a question of fear of the con-
tagious example, the temptation to imitate, that is
to say, of the capacity of the taboo to infect. If
some one has succeeded in satisfying the repressed
desire, the same desire must manifest itself in all
his companions; hence, in order to keep down this
temptation, this envied individual must be de-
spoiled of the fruit of his daring. Not infre-
quenth^ the punishment gives the executors them-
selves an opportunity to commit the same sacri-
legious act by justifying it as an expiation. This
is reallv one of the fundamentals of the human
120 TOTEM AND TABOO
code of punishment which rightly presumes the
same forbidden impulses in the criminal and in
the members of society who avenge his offense.
Psychoanalysis here confirms what the pious
were wont to say, that we are all miserable sin-
ners. How then shall we explain the unexpected
nobility of the neurosis which fears nothing for
itself and everything for the beloved person?
Psychoanalytic investigation shows that this no-
bility is not primary. Originall}^ that is to say
at the beginning of the disease, the threat of pun-
ishment pertained to one's own person; in ever}^
case the fear was for one's own life; the fear of
death being only later displaced upon another
beloved person. The process is somewhat com-
plicated but we have a complete grasp of it. An
evil impulse — a death wish — towards the beloved
person is always at the basis of the formation of
a prohibition. This is rei)ressed through a pro-
hibition, and the prohibition is connected with a
certain act which by displacement usually substi-
tutes the hostile for the beloved person, and the
execution of this act is threatened with the pen-
alty of death. But the process goes further and
the original wish for the death of the beloved
other person is then replaced by fear for his death.
The tender altruistic trait of the neurosis there-
fore merely compensates for the opposite attitude
of brutal egotism which is at the basis of it. If
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 121
we designate as social those emotional impulses
which are determined through regard for another
person who is not taken as a sexual object, w^e can
emphasize the withdrawal of these social factors
as an essential feature of the neurosis, which is
later disguised through over-compensation.
Without lingering over the origin of these
social impulses and their relation to other funda-
mental impulses of man, we will bring out the sec-
ond main characteristic of the neurosis by means
of another example. The form in which taboo
manifests itself has the greatest similarity to the
touching phobia of neurotics, the Delire de
toucher. As a matter of fact this neurosis is reg-
ularly concerned with the prohibition of sexual
touching and psychoanalysis has quite generally
shown that the motive power w^hich is deflected
and displaced in the neurosis is of sexual origin.
In taboo the forbidden contact has evidently not
only sexual significance but rather the more gen-
eral one of attack, of acquisition and of personal
assertion. If it is prohibited to touch the chief
or something that was in contact with him it
means that an inhibition should be imposed upon
the same impulse which on other occasions ex-
presses itself in suspicious surveillance of the
chief and even in physical ill-treatment of him
before his coronation. (See above.) Thus the
preponderance of sexual components of the im-
122 TOTEM AND TABOO
pulse over the social components is the detennin-
ing factor of the neurosis. But the social im-
pulses themselves came into being through the
union of egotistical and erotic components into
special entities.
From this single example of a comparison be-
tween taboo and compulsion neurosis it is already
possible to guess the relation between individual
forms of the neurosis and the creations of culture,
and in what respect the study of the psychology
of the neurosis is important for the understanding
of the development of culture.
In one way the neuroses show a striking and
far-reaching correspondence with the great social
productions of art, religion and philosophy, while
again they seem like distortions of them. We
may say that hysteria is a caricature of an artistic
creation, a compulsion neurosis, a caricature of a
religion, and a paranoic delusion a caricature of a
philosophic system. In the last analysis this
deviation goes back to the fact that the neuroses
are asocial formations ; they seek to accomplish by
private means what arose in society through col-
lective labor. In analyzing the impulse of the
neuroses one learns that motive powers of sexual
origin exercise the determining influence in them,
while the corresponding cultural creations rest
upon social impulses and on such as have issued
from the combination of egotistical and sexual
THE AMBIVALENCE OF EMOTIONS 123
comjDonents. It seems that the sexual need is not
capable of uniting men in the same way as the
demands of self preservation; sexual satisfaction
is in the first place the private concern of the
individual.
Genetically the asocial nature of the neurosis
springs from its original tendency to flee from a
dissatisfying reahty to a more pleasurable world
of phantasy. This real world which neurotics
shun is dominated by the society of human beings
and by the institutions created by them: the
estrangement from reahty is at the same time a
withdrawal from human companionship.
CHAPTER III
ANIMISM, MAGIC AND THE OMNIPOTENCE OF
THOUGHT
It is a necessary defect of studies which seek
to apj)ly the point of view of psychoanalysis to
the mental sciences that they cannot do justice to
either subject. They therefore confine them-
selves to the role of incentives and make sugges-
tions to the expert which he should take into con-
sideration in his work. This defect will make
itself felt most strongly in an essay such as this
which tries to treat of the enormous sphere called
animism.^
Animism in the narrower sense is the theory of
psychic concepts and in the wider sense, of spir-
itual beings in general. Animatism, the anima-
tion theory of seemingly inanimate nature, is a
further subdivision which also includes animatism
1 The necessary crowding of the material also compels us to dis-
pense with a thorough bibliography. Instead of this the reader is
referred to the well-known works of Herbert Spencer, J. G. Fra-
zer, A. Lang, E. B. Tylor and W. Wundt, from which all the
statements concerning animism and magic are taken. The inde-
pendence of the author can manifest itself only in the choice of
the material and of opinions.
124
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 125
and animism. The name animism, formerly ap-
plied to a definite j^hilosophic system, seems to
have acquired its present meaning through E. B.
Tylor.^
What led to the formulation of these names is
the insight into the very remarkable conce]3tions
of nature and the world of those primitive races
known to us from history and from our own
times. These races populate the world with a
multitude of spiritual beings which are benevolent
or malevolent to them, and attribute the causation
of natural processes to these spirits and demons ;
they also consider that' not only animals and
plants, but inanimate things as well are animated
by them. A third and perhaps the most impor-
tant part of this primitive "nature philosophy"
seems far less striking to us because we ourselves
are not yet far enough removed from it, though
we have greatly limited the existence of spirits
and to-day explain the processes of natm^e by the
assumption of impersonal physical forces. For
primitive people believe in a similar "animation"
of human individuals as well. Human beings
have souls which can leave their habitation and
enter into other beings ; these souls are the bearers
of spiritual activities and are, to a certain extent,
independent of the "bodies." Originally souls
2E. B. Tvlor, ''Primitive Culture," Vol. I, p. i25, fourth ed.,
1903. W. Wundt, "INIyth and Religion," Vol. IT, p. 173, 1906.
126 TOTEM AND TABOO
were thought of as being very similar to individ-
uals; only in the course of a long evolution did
they lose their material character and attain a
high degree of "spiritualization." ^
Most authors incline to the assumption that
these soul conceptions are the original nucleus
of the animistic system, that spirits merely corre-
spond to souls that have become independent, and
that the souls of animals, plants and things were
formed after the analogy of human souls.
How did primitive people come to the pecul-
iarly dualistic fundamental conceptions on which
this animistic system rests? Through the obser-
vation, it is thought, of the phenomena of sleep
(with dreams) and death which resemble
sleep, and through the effort to explain these
conditions, which affect each individual so inti-
mately. Above all, the problem of death must
have become the starting point of the formation
of the theory. To primitive man the continua-
tion of life — immortality — would be self-evident.
The conception of death is something accepted
later, and only with hesitation, for even to us it is
still devoid of content and unrealizable. Very
likely discussions have taken place over the part
which may have been played by other observa-
tions and experiences in the formation of the
fundamental animistic conceptions such as dream
8 Wundt 1. c, Chapter IV, "Die Seelenvorstellungen."
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 127
imagery, shadows and reflections, but these have
led to no conclusion.^
If primitive man reacted to the phenomena that
stimulated his reflection with the formation of
conceptions of the soul, and then transferred
these to objects of the outer world, his attitude
will be j udged to be quite natural and in no way
mysterious. In view of the fact that animistic
conceptions have been shown to be similar among
the most varied races and in all periods, Wundt
states that these "are the necessary psychological
product of the myth forming consciousness, and
primitive animism may be looked upon as the
spiritual expression of man's natural state in so
far as this is at all accessible to our observation." ^
Hume has already justified the animation of the
inanimate in his "Natural History of Religions,"
where he said: "There is a universal tendency
among mankind to conceive all beings like them-
selves and to transfer to every object those qual-
ities with which they are familiarly acquainted
and of which they are intimately conscious." ^
Animism is a system of thought, it gives noi:
only the explanation of a single phenomenon, but
makes it possible to comprehend the totality of
4 Compare, besides Wundt and H. Spencer and the instructive
article in the "Encyclopedia Britannica," 1911 (Animism,
Mythology, and so forth).
5 1. c, p. 154.
<» See Tylor, "Primitive Culture," Vol. I, p. 477.
128 TOTEM AND TABOO
the world from one point, as a continuity. Writ-
ers maintain that in the course of time three such
systems of thought, three gTcat world systems
came into being: the animistic (mythological),
the religious, and the scientific. Of these ani-
mism, the first system is perhaps the most con-
sistent and the most exhaustive, and the one which
explains the nature of the world in its entirety.
This first world system of mankind is now a psy-
chological theory. It would go beyond our
scope to show how much of it can still be demon-
strated in the life of to-day, either as a worthless
survival in the form of superstition, or in living
form, as the foundation of our language, our
belief, and our philosophy.
It is in reference to the successive stages of
these three world systems that we say that anim-
ism in itself was not yet a religion but contained
the prerequisites from which religions were later
formed. It is also evident that myths are based
upon animistic foundations, but the detailed rela-
tion of myths to animism seem unexplained in
some essential points.
2
Our psychoanalytic work will begin at a differ-
ent point. It must not be assumed that mankind
came to create its first world system through a
purely speculative thirst for knowledge. The
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 129
practical need of mastering the world must have
contributed to this effort. We are therefore not
astonished to learn that something else went hand
in hand with the animistic system, namely the
elaboration of directions for making oneself mas-
ter of men, animals and things, as well as of their
spirits. S. Reinach^ wants to call these direc-
tions, which are known under the names of
"sorcery and magic," the strategy of animism;
With jNIauss and Hubert, I should prefer to com-
pare them to a technique.^
Can the conceptions of sorcery and magic be
separated? It can be done if we are willing on
our own authority to put ourselves above the
vagaries of linguistic usage. Then sorcery is
essentially the art of influencing spirits by treat-
ing them like people under the same circum-
stances, that is to say by appeasing them, recon-
ciling them, making them more favorably dis-
posed to one, by intimidating them, by depriving
them of their power and by making them sub j ect
to one's will ; all that is accomplished through the
same methods that have been found effective with
living people. Magic, however, is something
else; it does not essentially concern itself with
spirits, and uses special means, not the ordinary
7"Cultes, Mythes et Religions," T. 11, Introduction, p. XV,
1909.
8 "Annee Sociologique," Seventh Vol., 1904.
130 TOTEM AND TABOO
j)sychological method. We can easily guess that
magic is the earlier and the more important part
of animistic technique, for among the means with
which spirits are to be treated there are also found
the magic kind,^ and magic is also applied where
spiritualization of nature has not yet, as it seems
to us, been accomplished.
Magic must serve the most varied puri:)oses.
It must subject the processes of nature to the will
of man, protect the individual against enemies
and dangers, and give him the power to injure
his enemies. But the principles on whose as-
simiptions the magic activity is based, or rather
the principle of magic, is so evident that it was
recognized by all authors. If we may take the
opinion of E. B. Tylor at its face value it can be
most tersely expressed in his words: ^'mistaking
an ideal connection for a real one." We shall
explain this characteristic in the case of two
groups of magic acts.
One of the most widespread magic procedures
for injuring an enem}^ consists of making an
effigy of him out of any kind of .material. The
likeness counts for little, in fact any object may
be "named" as his image. Whatever is subse-
quently done to this image will also happen to
9 To frighten away a ghost with noise and cries is a form of
pure sorcery; to force him to do something by taking his name is
to employ magic against him.
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 131
the hated prototype; thus if the effigy has been
injured in any place he will be afflicted by a dis-
ease in the corresponding part of the body. This
same magic technique, instead of being used for
private enmity can also be employed for pious
purposes and can thus be used to aid the gods
against evil demons. I quote Frazer: ^^ "Ev-
eiy night when the sun-god Ra in ancient Egypt
sank to his home in the glowing west he was
assailed by hosts of demons under the leadership
of the archfiend Apepi. All night long he fought
them, and sometimes by day the powers of dark-
ness sent up clouds even into the blue Egyptian
sky to obscure his light and weaken his power.
To aid the sun-god in this daily struggle, a cere-
mony was daily performed in his temple at
Thebes. A figure of his foe Apepi, represented
as a crocodile with a hideous face or a serpent
w^ith many coils, was made of wax, and on it the
demon's name was written in green ink. Wrapt
in a papyrus case, on which another likeness of
Apepi had been drawn in green ink, the figure
was then tied up with black Iiair, spat upon,
hacked with a stone knife and cast on the ground.
There the priest trod on it with his left foot again
and again, and then burned it in a fire made of a
certain plant or grass. When Apepi himself had
thus been effectively disposed of, waxen effigies
10 " The Magic Art," II, p. 67.
132 TOTEM AND TABOO
of each of his principal demons, and of their
fathers, mothers, and children, were made and
burnt in the same way. The service, accom-
panied by the recitation of certain prescribed
spells, was repeated not merely morning, noon
and night, but whenever a storm was raging or
heavy rain had set in, or black clouds were steal-
ing across the sky to hide the sun's bright disk.
The fiends of darkness, clouds and rain, felt the
injury inflicted on their images as if it had been
done to themselves ; they passed away, at least for
a time, and the beneficent sun-god shone out tri-
umphant once more." ^^
There is a great mass of magic actions which
show a similar motivation but I shall lay stress
upon only two, which have always played a great
role among primitive races and which have been
partly preserved in the myths and cults of higher
stages of evolution: the art of causing rain and
fruitfulness by magic. Rain is produced by
magic means, by imitating it, and perhaps also
by imitating the clouds and storm which produce
it. It looks as if they wanted to "play rain."
The Ainos of Japan, for instance, make rain by
11 The Biblical prohibition against making an image of anything
living hardly sprang from any fundamental rejection of plastic
art, but was probably meant to deprive magic, which the Hebraic
religion proscribed, of one of its instruments. Frazer, 1. c, p. 87,
note.
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 133
pouring out water through a big sieve, while
others fit out a big bowl with sails and oars as
if it were a ship, which is then dragged about
the village and gardens. But the fruitfulness of
the soil was assured by magic means by showing
it the spectacle of human sexual intercourse. To
cite one out of many examples; in some part of
Java, the peasants used to go out into the fields
at night for sexual intercourse when the rice
was about to blossom in order to stimulate the
rice to fruitfulness through their ex ample. ^^ At
the same time it was feared that proscribed in-
cestuous relationships would stimulate the soil
to grow weeds and render it unfruitful.^^
Certain negative rules, that is to say magic
precautions, must be put into this first group.
If some of the inhabitants of a Dayak village had
set out on a hunt for wild-boars, those remaining
behind were in the meantime not permitted to
touch either oil or water with their hands, as such
acts would soften the hunters' fingers and would
let the quarry slip through their hands. ^^ Or
when a Gilyak hunter was pursuing game in the
woods, his children were forbidden to make draw-
ings on wood or in the sand, as the paths in the
12 " The Magic Art," II, p. 98.
13 An echo of this is to be found in the "Oedipus Rex" of
Sophocles.
14 "The Magic Art," p. 120.
134 TOTEM AND TABOO
thick woods might become as intertwined as the
lines of the drawing, and the hunter would not
find his way home/^
The fact that in these as in a great many other
examples of magic influence, distance plays no
part, telepathy is taken as a matter of course —
will cause us no difficulties in grasping the pecul-
iarity of magic.
There is no doubt about what is considered the
effective force in all these examples. It is the
similarity between the performed action and the
expected happening. Frazer therefore calls this
kind of magic imitative or hoineopatJiic, If I
want it to rain I only have to produce something
that looks like rain or recalls rain. In a later
phase of cultural development, instead of these
magic conjurations of rain, processions are ar-
ranged to a house of god, in order to supplicate
the saint who dwells there to send rain. Finally
also this religious technique will be given up and
instead an effort will be made to find out what
would influence the atmosphere to produce rain.
In another group of magic actions the prin-
ciple of similarity is no longer involved, but in its
stead there is another principle the nature of
which is well brought out in the following exam-
ples.
Another method may be used to injure an
15 1. c, p. 122.
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 135
enemy. You possess yourself of his hair, his
nails, anything that he has discarded, or even a
part of his clothing, and do something hostile
to these things. This is just as effective as if
you had dominated the person himself, and any-
thing that you do to the things that belong to
him must happen to him too. According to the
conception of primitive men a name is an essen-
tial part of a personality; if therefore you know
the name of a person or a spirit you have ac-
quired a certain power over its bearer. This
explains the remarkable precautions and restric-
tions in the use of names which we have touched
upon in the essay on taboo. ^^ In these examples
similarity is evidently replaced by relationship.
The cannibalism of primitive races derives its
more sublime motivation in a similar manner.
By absorbing parts of the body of a person
through the act of eating we also come to possess
the properties which belonged to that person.
From this there follow precautions and restric-
tions as to diet under special circumstances.
Thus a pregnant woman will avoid eating the
meat of certain animals because their undesir-
able properties, for example, cowardice, might
thus be transferred to the child she is nourishing.
It makes no difference to the magic influence
whether the connection is already abolished or
16 See preceding chapter, p. 92.
136 TOTEM AND TABOO
whether it had consisted of only one very im-
portant contact. Thus, for instance, the belief
in a magic bond which links the fate of a woun(ic^^
with the weapon which caused it can be followed
unchanged tlirough thousands of years. If a
Melanesian gets possession of the bow by which .
he was wounded he will carefully keep it in a cool
place in order thus to keep down the inflamma-
tion of the wound. But if the bow has remained
in the possession of the enemy it will certainly be
kept in close proximity to a fire in order that
the wound may burn and become thoroughly
inflamed. Plin,y, in his Natural History
XXVIII, advises spitting on the hand which
has caused the injury if one regrets having in-
jured some one; the pain of the injured person
will then immediately be eased. Francis Bacon,
in his Natural History, mentions the generally
accredited belief that putting a salve on the
weapon which has made a wound will cause this
wound to heal of itself. It is said that even to-
day Enghsh peasants follow this prescription,
and that if they have cut themselves with a scythe
they will from that moment on carefully keep the
instrument clean in order that the wound may
not fester. In June, 1902, a local Enghsh
weekly reported that a woman called Matilde
Henry of Norwich accidentally ran an iron nail
into the sole of her foot. Without having the
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 137
wound examined or even taking off her stocking
she bade her daughter to oil the nail thoroughly,
in tlie expectation that then nothing could hap-
pen to her. She died a few days later of
tetanus ^" in consequence of postponed antisepsis.
The examples from this last group illustrate
Frazer's distinction between contagious magic
and imitative magic. What is considered as
effective in these examples is no longer the simi-
larity, but the association in space, the contiguity,
or at least the imagined contiguity, or the mem-
ory of its existence. But since similarity and
contiguity are the two essential principles of the
processes of association of ideas, it must be con-
cluded that the dominance of associations of ideas
really explains all the madness of the rules of
magic. We can see how true Tylor's quoted
characteristic of magic: "mistaking an ideal con-
nection for a real one," proves to be. The same
may be said of Frazer's idea, who has expressed
it in almost the same terms: "men mistook the
order of their ideas for the order of nature, and
hence imagined that the control which they have,
or seem to have, over their thoughts, permitted
them to have a corresponding control over
things." ^^
It will at first seem strange that this illuminat-
17 Frazer, "The Magic Art," p. 201-203.
18 " The Magic Art," p. 420.
138 TOTEM AND TABOO
ing explanation of magic could have been re-
jected by some authors as unsatisfactory/^
But on closer consideration we must sustain the
objection that the association theory of magic
merely explains the paths that magic travels, and
not its essential nature, that is, it does not ex-
plain the misunderstanding which bids it put
psychological laws in place of natural ones. We
are apparently in need here of a dynamic factor ;
but while the search for this leads the critics of
Frazer's theory astray, it will be easy to give a
satisfactory explanation of magic by carrying
its association theory further and by entering
more deeply into it.
First let us examine the simpler and more im-
portant case of imitative magic. According to
Frazer this may be practiced by itself, whereas
contagious magic as a rule presupposes the imi-
tative.^^ The motives which impel one to ex-
ercise magic are easily recognized; they are the
wishes of men. We need onl}^ assume that
primitive man had great confidence in the power
of his wishes. At bottom everything which he
accomplished by magic means must have been
done solely because he wanted it. Thus in the
beginning only his wish is accentuated.
19 Compare the article "Magic" (N. T. W.) "Encyclopedia
Britannica, 11th Ed.
20 1. c, p. 54.
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 139
In the case of the child which finds itself un-
der analogous psychic conditions, without be-
ing as yet capable of motor activity, we have
elsewhere advocated the assumption that it at
first really satisfies its wishes by means of hal-
lucinations, in that it creates the satisfying sit-
uation through centrifugal excitements of its
sensory organs.^^ The adult primitive man
knows another way. A motor impulse, the will,
clings to his wish and this will which later will
change the face of the earth in the service of wish
fulfillment is now used to represent the gratifica-
tion so that one ma}^ experience it, as it were,
through motor hallucination. Such a repixsen-
tation of the gratified wish is altogether compar-
able to the pZa?/ of children, where it replaces the
purely sensory technique of gratification. If
play and imitative representation suffice for the
child and for primitive man, it must not be taken
as a sign of modest}^ in our sense, or of resigna-
tion due to the realization of their impotence, on
the contrary, it is the very obvious result of the
excessive valuation of their wish, of the will which
depends upon the wish and of the paths the wish
takes. In time the psychic accent is displaced
from the motives of the magic act to its means,
namely to the act itself. Perhaps it would be
21 Formulation of two principles of psychic activity, "Jahrb. fUr
Psychoanalyt. Forschungen," Vol. Ill, 1912, p. 2.
140 TOTEM AND TABOO
more correct to say that primitive man does not
become aware of the over-valuation of his psychic
acts until it becomes evident to him through the
means employed. It would also seem as if it
were the magic act itself which compels the ful-
fillment of the wish by virtue of its similarity
to the object desired. At the stage of animistic
thinking there is as yet no way of demonstrating
objectively the true state of affairs, but this
becomes possible at later stages when, though
such procedures are still practiced, the psychic
phenomenon of skepticism already manifests it-
self as a tendency to repression. At that stage
men will acknowledge that the conjuration of
spirits avails nothing unless accompanied by be-
lief, and that the magic effect of prayer fails if
there is no piety behind it.^^
The possibility of a contagious magic which
depends upon contiguous association will then
show us that the psychic valuation of the wish and
the will has been extended to all psychic acts
which the will can command. We may say that
at present there is a general over-valuation of all
psychic processes, that is to say there is an atti-
tude towards the world which according to our
understanding of the relation of reality to
22 The King in "Hamlet" (Act III, Scene 4):
"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below,
Words without thoughts never to heaven go."
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 141
thought must appear Hke an over-estimation of
the latter. Objects as such are over-shadowed
by the ideas representing them ; what takes place
in the latter must also happen to the former and
the relations which exist between ideas are also
postulated as to things. As thought does not
recognize distances and easily brings together in
one act of consciousness things spatially and tem-
porally far removed, the magic world also puts
itself above spatial distance by telepathy, and
treats a past association as if it were a present
one. In the animistic age the reflection of the
inner world must obscure that other picture of
the world which we believe we recognize.
Let us also point out that the two principles of
association, similarity and contiguity, meet in
the higher unity of contact. Association by con-
tiguity is contact in the direct sense, and associa-
tion by similarity is contact in the transferred
sense. Another identity in the psychic process
which has not yet been grasped by us is probably
concealed in the use of the same word for both
kinds of associations. It is the same range of the
concept of contact which we have found in the
analysis of taboo.^^
In summing up we may now say that the prin-
ciple which controls magic, and the technique of
23 Compare Chapter II.
142 TOTEM AND TABOO
the animistic method of thought, is "Omnipotence
of Thought."
3
I have adopted the term "Omnipotence of
Thought" from a highly inteUigent man, a
former sufferer from compulsion neurosis, who,
after being cured through psychoanalytic treat-
ment, was able to demonstrate his efficiencj^ and
good sense.^^ He had coined this phrase to
designate all those peculiar and uncanny occur-
rences which seemed to pursue him just as they
pursue others afflicted with his malady. Thus
if he happened to think of a person, he was actu-
ally confronted with this person as if he had con-
jured him up; if he inquired suddenly about the
state of health of an acquaintance whom he had
long missed he was sure to hear that this ac-
quaintance had just died, so that he could believe
that the deceased had drawn his attention to him-
self by telepathic means; if he uttered a half
meant imprecation against a stranger, he could
expect to have him die soon thereafter and bur-
den him with the responsibility for his death.
He was able to explain most of these cases in the
course of the treatment, he could tell how the
illusion had originated, and what he himself had
24 Remarks upon a case of Compulsion Neurosis, "Jahrb. fiir
Psychoanalyt. und Psychopath. Forschungen," Vol. I, 1909.
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 143
contributed towards furthering his superstitious
expectations.^^ All compulsion neurotics are
superstitious in this manner and often against
their better judgment.
The existence of omnipotence of thought is
most clearly seen in compulsion neurosis, where
the results of tliis primitive method of thought
are most often found or met in consciousness.
But we must guard against seeing in this a dis-
tinguishing characteristic of this neurosis, for
analytic investigation reveals the same mechan-
ism in the other neuroses. In every one of the
neuroses it is not the reality of the experience but
the reality of the thought which forms the basis
for the symptom formation. Neurotics live in a
special world in which, as I have elsewhere ex-
pressed it, only the "neurotic standard of cur-
rency" counts, that is to say, only things inten-
sively thought of or affectively conceived are ef-
fective with them, regardless of whether these
things are in harmony with outer reality. The
hysteric repeats in his attacks and fixates through
his sj^mptoms, occurrences which have taken place
only in his phantasy, though in the last analysis
they go back to real events or have been built up
from them. The neurotic's guilty conscience is
25 We seem to attribute the character of the "uncanny" to all
such Impressions which seek to confirm the omnipotence of
thought and the animistic method of thought in general, though
our judgment has long rejected it.
144. TOTEM AND TABOO
just as incomprehensible if traced to real mis-
deeds. A compulsion neurotic may be oppressed
by a sense of guilt which is appropriate to a
wholesale murderer, while at the same time he
acts towards his fellow beings in a most consider-
ate and scrupulous manner, a behavior which he
evinced since his childhood. And yet his sense
of guilt is justified; it is based upon intensive and
frequent death wishes which unconsciously mani-
fest themselves towards his fellow beings. It is
motivated from the point of view of unconscious
thoughts, but not of intentional acts. Thus the
omnipotence of thought, the over-estimation of
psychic processes as opposed to reality, proves to
be of unhmited effect in the neurotic's affective
life and in all that emanates from it. But if we
subject him to psychoanalytic treatment, which
makes his unconscious thoughts conscious to him,
he refuses to believe that thoughts are free and
is always afraid to express evil wishes lest
they be fulfilled in consequence of his utterance.
But through this attitude as well as through the
superstition which plays an active part in his life
he reveals to us how close he stands to the sav-
age who believes he can change the outer world
by a mere thought of his.
The primary obsessive actions of these neu-
rotics are really altogether of a magical nature.
If not magic they are at least anti-magic and are
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 145
destined to ward off the expectation of evil with
which the neurosis is wont to begin. Whenever
I was able to pierce these secrets it turned out
that the content of this expectation of evil was
death. According to Schopenhauer the problem
of death stands at the beginning of every philoso-
phy; we have heard that the formation of the
soul conception and of the belief in demons which
characterize animism, are also traced back to the
impression which death makes upon man. It is
hard to decide whether these first compulsive and
protective actions follow the principle of similar-
ity, or of contrast, for under the conditions of
the neurosis they are usually distorted through
displacement upon some trifle, upon some action
which in itself is quite insignificant.^^ The pro-
tective formulas of the compulsion neurosis also
have a counterpart in the incantations of magic.
But the evolution of compulsive actions may be
described by pointing out how these actions be-
gin as a spell against evil wishes which are very
remote from anything sexual, only to end up as a
substitute for forbidden sexual activity, which
they imitate as faithfully as possible.
If we accept the evolution of man's concep-
tions of the universe mentioned above, according
to which the animistic phase is succeeded by the
26 The following discussions will yield a further motive for this
displacement upon a trivial action.
146 TOTEM AND TABOO
religious, and this in turn by the scientific, we
have no difficulty in following the fortunes of the
"omnipotence of thought" through all these
phases. In the animistic stage man ascribes om-
nipotence to himself ; in the religious he has ceded
it to the gods, but without seriously giving it up,
for he reserves to himself the right to control the
gods by influencing them in some way or other in
the interest of his wishes. In the scientific at-
titude towards life there is no longer any room
for man's omnipotence ; he has acknowledged his
smallness and has submitted to death as to all
other natural necessities in a spirit of resignation.
Nevertheless, in our reliance upon the power of
the human spirit which copes with the laws of
realit}^ there still lives on a fragment of this
prmiitive belief in the omnipotence of thought.
In retracing the development of libidinous im-
pulses in the individual from its mature form
back to its first beginnings in childhood, we at
first found an important distinction which is
stated in the "Three Contributions to the Theory
of Sex." ^^ The manifestations of sexual im-
pulses can be recognized from the beginning but
at first they are not yet directed to any outer
object. Each individual component of the sex-
ual impulse works for a gain in pleasure and
finds its gratification in its own body. This stage
27 Monograph Series, 1916,
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 147
is called autoerotism and is distinguished from
the stage of object selection.
In the course of further study it proved to be
practical and really necessary to insert a third
stage between these two or, if one prefers, to
divide the first stage of autoerotism into two. In
this intermediary stage, the importance of which
increases the more we investigate it, the sexual
impulses which formerly were separate, have al-
ready formed into a unit and have also found an
object; but this object is not external and foreign
to the individual, but is his own ego, which is
formed at this period. This new stage is called
narcism, in view of the j)athological fixation of
this condition which may be observed later on.
The individual acts as if he were in love with
himself; for the purposes of our analysis the ego
impulses and the hbidinous wishes cannot yet be
separated from each other.
Although this narcistic stage, in which the hith-
erto dissociated sexual impulses combine into a
unity and take the ego as their object, cannot as
yet be sharply differentiated, we can already
surmise that the narcistic organization is never
altogether given up again. To a certain extent
man remains narcistic, even after he has found
outer objects for his libido, and the objects upon
which he bestows it represent, as it were, emana-
tions of the libido which remain with his ego and
148 TOTEM AND TABOO
which can be withdrawn into it. The state of
being in love, so remarkable psychologically, and
the normal prototype of the psychoses, corre-
sponds to the highest stage of these emanations,
in contrast to the state of self-love.
This high estimation of psychic acts found
among primitives and neurotics, which we feel to
be an overestimation, may now appropriately be
brought into relation to narcism, and interpreted
as an essential part of it. We would say that
among primitive people thinking is still highly
sexualized and that this accounts for the belief
in the omnipotence of thought, the unshaken
confidence in the capacity to dominate the world
and the inaccessibility to the obvious facts which
could enlighten man as to his real place in the
world. In the case of neurotics a considerable
part of this primitive attitude has remained as
a constitutional factor, while on the other hand
the sexual repression occurring in them has
brought about a new sexualization of the proc-
esses of thought. In both cases, whether we deal
with an original libidinous investment of thought
or whether the same process has been accom-
plished regressively, the psychic results are the
same, namely, intellectual narcism and omnipo-
tence of thought.^^
28 It is almost an axiom with writers on this subject, that a sort
of "Solipsism or Berkleianism" (as Professor Sully terms it as
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 149
If we may take the now established omnipo-
tence of thought among primitive races as a
proof of their narcism, we may venture to com-
pare the various evolutionary stages of man's
conception of the universe with the stages of the
libidinous evolution of the individual. We find
that the animistic phase corresponds in time as
well as in content with narcism, the religious
phase corresponds to that stage of object finding
which is characterized by dependence on the par-
ents, while the scientific stage has its full counter-
part in the individual's state of maturity where,
having renounced the pleasure principle and hav-
ing adapted himself to reality, he seeks his ob-
ject in the outer world.^^
Only in one field has the omnipotence of
thought been retained in our own civilization,
namely in art. In art alone it still happens that
man, consumed by his wishes, produces some-
thing similar to the gratification of these wishes
and this playing, thanks to artistic illusion, calls
forth affects as if it were something real. We
rightly speak of the magic of art and compare the
artist with a magician. But this comparison is
he finds it in the child) operates in the savage to make him refuse
to recognize death as a fact. — Marett, "Pre-animistic Religion,
Folklore," Vol. XI, 1900, p. 178.
29 We merely wish to indicate here that the original narcism of
the child is decisive for the interpretation of its character de-
velopment and that it precludes the assumption of a primitive
feeling of inferiority for the child.
150 TOTEM AND TABOO
perhaps more important than it claims to be.
Art, which certainly did not begin as art for art's
sake, originally served tendencies which to-day
have for the greater part ceased to exist.
Among these we may suspect various magic in-
tentions.^^
Animism, the first conception of the world
which man succeeded in evolving, was therefore
psychological. It did not yet require any
science to estabhsh it, for science sets in only after
we have realized that we do not know the world
and that we must therefore seek means of getting
to know it. But animism was natural and self-
evident to primitive man ; he knew how the things
of the world were constituted, and as man con-
ceived himself to be. We are therefore prepared
to find that primitive man transferred the struc-
30 S. Reinach, "L'art et la Magie," in the collection, "Cultes,
Mythes et Religions," Vol. I, p. 1:35-136. Reinach thinks that the
primitive artists who have left us the scratched or painted animal
pictures in the caves of France did not want to "arouse" pleasure,
but to "conjure things." He explains this by showing that these
drawings are in the darkest and most inaccessible part of the
caves and that representations of feared beasts of prey are absent.
"Les modernes parlent souvent, par hyperbole, de la magie du
pinceau ou du ciseau d'un grand artiste et, en general, de la
magie de Tart. Entendu en sense propre, qui est celui d'une con-
strainte mystique exercee par la volonte de Thomme sur d'autres
volontes ou sur les choses, cette expression n'est plus admissible;
mais uous avons vu qu'elle etait autrefois rigouresement vraie, du
moins dans I'opinion des artistes" (p. 136).
THE OMXIPOTEXCE OF THOUGHT 151
tural relations of his own psyche to the outer
world,^^ and on the other hand we may make the
attempt to transfer back into the human soul
what animism teaches about the nature of things.
Magic, the technique of animism, clearly and
unmistakably shows the tendency of forcing the
laws of psychic life upon the reality of things,
under conditions where spirits did not yet have
to play any role, and could still be taken as
objects of magic treatment. The assumptions
of magic are therefore of older origin than the
spirit theory, which forms the nucleus of ani-
mism. Our psychoanalytic view here coincides
with a theory of R. I^. IMarett, according to
which animism is preceded by a pre-animistie
stage the nature of which is best indicated by
the name Animatism (the theory of general ani-
mation) . We have practically no further knowl-
edge of pre-animism, as no race has yet been
found without conceptions of spirits.^ -
While magic still retains the full omnipotence
of ideas, animism has ceded part of this omnipo-
tence to spirits and thus has started on the way
to form a religion. Xow what could have moved
primitive man to this first act of renunciation?
It could hardly have been an insight into the in-
31 Recognized through so-called endopsychic perceptions.
32 R. R. Marett, 'Tre-animistic RelVion, Folklore," Vol. XI,
No. 2, London, 1900. — Comp. Wundt, "Myth and Religion," Vol.
II, p. 171.
152 TOTEM AND TABOO
correctness of his assumptions, for he continued
to retain the magic technique.
As pointed out elsewhere, spirits and demons
were nothing but the projection of primitive
man's emotional impulses ;^^ he personified the
things he endowed with affects, populated the
world with them and then rediscovered his inner
psychic processes outside himself, quite like the
ingenious paranoiac Schreber, w^ho found the
fixations and detachments of his libido reflected
in the fates of the "God-rays" which he in-
vented.^*
As on a former occasion,^^ we want to avoid the
problem as to the origin of the tendency to pro-
ject psychic processes into the outer world. It
is fair to assume, however, that this tendency be-
comes stronger where the projection into the
outer world offers psychic relief. Such a state
of affairs can with certainty be expected if the
impulses struggling for omnipotence have come
into conflict with each other, for then they evi-
dently cannot all become omnipotent. The mor-
33 We assume that in this early narcistic stage feelings from
libidinous and other sources of excitement are perhaps still indis-
tinguishably combined with each other.
34 Schreber, "Denwiirdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken," 1903. —
Freud, Psychoanalytic Observations concerning an autobiog-
raphically described case of Paranoia, "Jahrbuch fiir Psycho-
analyt. Forsch," Vol. Ill, 1911.
35 Compare the latest communication about the Schreber case,
p. 59.
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 153
bid process in paranoia actually uses the mechan-
ism of projection to solve such conflicts which
arise in the psychic life. However, it so hap-
pens that the model case of such a conflict be-
tween two parts of an antithesis is the ambivalent
attitude which we have analyzed in detail in the
situation of the mourner at the death of one dear
to him. Such a case appeals to us as especially
fitted to motivate the creation of projection
formations. Here again we are in agreement
with those authors who declare that evil spirits
were the first born among spirits, and who find
the origin of soul conceptions in the impression
which death makes upon the survivors. We dif-
fer from them only in not putting the intellec-
tual problem which death imposes upon the living
into the foreground, instead of which we trans-
fer the force which stimulates inquiry to the con-
flict of feelings into which this situation plunges
the survivor.
The first theoretical accomplishment of man,
the creation of spirits, would therefore Sjjring
from the same source as the first moral restric-
tions to which he subjects himself, namely, the
rules of taboo. But the fact that they have the
same source should not prejudice us in favor of
a simultaneous origin. If it really were the situa-
tion of the survivor confronted by the dead which
first caused primitive man to reflect, so that he
154 TOTEM AND TxVBOO
was compelled to surrender some of his omnipo-
tence to spirits and to sacrifice a part of the free
will of his actions, these cultm'al creations would
be a first recognition of the avdyK-,]^ which opposes
man's narcism. Primitive man would bow to
the superior power of death with the same ges-
ture with which he seems to deny it.
If we have the courage to follow our assump-
tions further, we may ask what essential part of
our psychological structure is reflected and re-
viewed in the projection formation of souls and
spirits. It is then difficult to dispute that the
primitive conception of the soul, though still far
removed from the later and wholly immaterial
soul, nevertheless shares its nature and therefore
looks upon a person or thing as a duality, over
the two elements of which the known properties
and changes of the whole are distributed. This
origin duality, we have borrowed the term from
Herbert Spencer,^^ is already identical with the
dualism which manifests itself in our customary
separation of spirit from body, and whose inde-
structible linguistic manifestations we recognize,
for instance, in the description of a person who
faints or raves as one who is "beside himself." ^'^
The thing which we, just like primitive man,
project into outer reality, can hardly be anything
36 "Principles of Sociology," Vol. I.
37 Herbert Spencer, 1. c, p. 179.
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 155
else than the recognition of a state in which a
given thing is present to the senses and to con-
sciousness, next to which another state exists in
which the thing is latent, but can reappear, that
is to say, the co-existence of perception and mem-
ory, or, to generahze it, the existence of uncon-
scious psychic processes next to conscious ones.^^
It might be said that in the last analysis the
"spirit" of a person or a thing is the faculty of
remembering and representing the object, after
he or it was withdrawn from conscious i)ercep-
tion.
Of course we must not expect from either the
primitive or the current conception of the "soul"
that its line of demarcation from other parts
should be as marked as that which contemporary
science draws between conscious and unconscious
psychic activity. The animistic soul, on the con-
trary, unites determinants from both sides. Its
flightiness and mobility, its faculty of leaving
the body, of permanently or temporarily taking
possession of another body, all these are char-
acteristics which remind us unmistakably of the
nature of consciousness. But the way in which
it keeps itself concealed behind the personal ap-
pearance reminds us of the unconscious; to-day
38 Compare my short paper: "A Note on the Unconscious in
Psychoanalysis," in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research, Part LXVI, Vol. XXVI, London, 191^.
156 TOTEM AND TABOO
we no longer ascribe its unchangeableness and
indestructibility to conscious but to unconscious
processes and look upon these as the real bear-
ers of psychic activity.
We said before that animism is a system of
thought, the first complete theory of the world;
we now want to draw certain inferences through
psychoanalytic interpretation of such a system.
Our everyday experience is capable of constantly
showing us the main characteristics of the "sys-
tem." We di'cam during the night and have
learnt to interpret the dream in the daytime.
The dream can, without being untrue to its na-
ture, appear confused and incoherent ; but on the
other hand it can also imitate the order of im-
pressions of an experience, infer one occurrence
from another, and refer one part of its content
to another. The dream succeeds more or less
in this, but hardly ever succeeds so completely
that an absurdity or a gap in the structure does
not appear somewhere. If we subject the dream
to interpretation we find that this unstable and
irregular order of its components is quite un-
important for our understanding of it. The es-
sential part of the dream are the dream thoughts,
which have, to be sure, a significant, coherent
order. But their order is quite different from
that which we remember from the manifest con-
tent of the dream. The coherence of the dream
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 157
thoughts has been abolished and may either re-
main altogether lost or can be replaced by the
new coherence of the dream content. Besides
the condensation of the dream elements there is
almost regularly a re-grouping of the same which
is more or less independent of the former order.
We say in conclusion, that what the dream-work
has made out of the material of the dream
thoughts has been subjected to a new influence,
the so-called "secondary elaboration," the object
of which evidently is to do away with the inco-
herence and incomprehensibility caused by the
dream- work, in favor of a new "meaning." This
new meaning which has been brought about by
the secondary elaboration is no longer the mean-
ing of the dream thoughts.
The secondary elaboration of the product of
the dream-work is an excellent example of the
nature and the pretensions of a system. An in-
tellectual function in us demands the unification,
coherence and comprehensibility of ever}i:hing
perceived and thought of, and does not hesitate
to construct a false connection if, as a result of
special circimistances, it cannot grasp the right
one. We know such system formations not only
from the dream, but also from phobias, from com-
pulsive thinking and from the types of delusions.
The system formation is most ingenious in de-
lusional states (paranoia) and dominates the
168 TOTEM AND TABOO
clinical picture, but it also must not be overlooked
in other forms of neuropsychoses. In every case
we can show that a re-arrangement of the psychic
material takes place, which may often be quite
violent, provided it seems comprehensible from
the point of view of the system. The best indi-
cation that a system has been formed then lies
in the fact that each result of it can be shown to
have at least two motivations one of which
springs from the assumptions of the system and
is therefore eventually delusional, — and a hid-
den one which, however, we must recognize as
the real and effective motivation.
An example from a neurosis may serve as il-
lustration. In the chapter on taboo I mentioned
a patient whose compulsive prohibitions corre-
spond very neatly to the taboo of the Maori.^^
The neurosis of this woman was directed against
her husband and culminated in the defense
against the unconscious wish for his death. But
her manifest systematic phobia concerned the
mention of death in general, in which her hus-
band was altogether eliminated and never be-
came the object of conscious solicitude. One
day she heard her husband give an order to have
his dull razors taken to a certain shop to have
them sharpened. Impelled by a peculiar un-
rest she went to the shop herself and on her re-
8» p. 26.
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 159
turn from this reconnoiter she asked her husband
to lay the razors aside for good because she had
discovered that there was a warehouse of coffins
and funeral accessories next to the shop he men-
tioned. She claimed that he had intentionally
brought the razors into permanent relation with
the idea of death. This was then the systematic
motivation of the prohibition, but we may be
sure that the patient would have brought home
the prohibition relating to the razors even if she
had not discovered this warehouse in the neigh-
borhood. For it would have been sufficient if on
her way to the shop she had met a hearse, a
person in mourning, or somebody carrying a
wreath. The net of determinants was spread
out far enough to catch the prey in any case, it
was simply a question whether she should pull it
in or not. It could be estabhshed with certainty
that she did not mobilize the determinants of the
prohibition in other circumstances. She would
then have said that it had been one of her "better
days." The real reason for the prohibition of
the razor was, of course, as we can easily guess,
her resistance against a pleasurably accentuated
idea that her husband might cut his throat with
the sharpened razors.
In much the same way a motor inhibition, an
abasia or an agoraphobia, becomes perfected and
detailed if the symptom once succeeds in repre-
160 TOTEM AND TABOO
senting an unconscious wish and of imposing a
defense against it. All the patient's remaining
unconscious phantasies and effective reminis-
cences strive for symptomatic expression through
this outlet, when once it has been opened, and
range themselves appropriately in the new order
within the sphere of the disturbance of gait. It
would therefore be a futile and really foolish way
to begin to try to understand the sympto-
matic structure and the details of, let us say, an
agoraphobia, in terms of its basic assumptions.
For the whole logic and strictness of connection
is only apparent. Sharper observation can re-
veal, as in the formation of the facade in the
di-eam, the greatest inconsistency and arbitrari-
ness in the symptom formation. The details of
such a systematic phobia take their real motiva-
tion from concealed determinants which must
have nothing to do with the inhibition in gait;
it is for this reason that the form of such a phobia
varies so and is so contradictory in different
people.
If we now attempt to retrace the system of
animism with which we are concerned, we may
conclude from our insight into other psycho-
logical systems that "superstition" need not be
the only and actual motivation of such a single
rule or custom even among primitive races, and
that we are not relieved of the obligation of seek-
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 161
ing for concealed motives. Under the domi-
nance of an animistic system it is absolutely es-
sential that each rule and activity should receive
a systematic motivation which we to-day call
"superstitious." But "superstition," like "anxi-
ety/' "dreams," and "demons," is one of the pre-
liminaries of psychology which have been dis-
sipated by psychoanalytic investigation. If we
get behind these structures, which like a screen
conceal understanding, we realize that the psychic
life and the cultural level of savages have hitherto
been inadequately appreciated.
If we regard the repression of impulses as a
measure of the level of culture attained, we must
admit that under the animistic system too, prog-
ress and evolution have taken place, which un-
justly have been under-estimated on account of
their superstitious motivation. If we hear that
the warriors of a savage tribe impose the great-
est chastity and cleanliness upon themselves as
soon as they go upon the war-path,^^ the obvious
explanation is that they dispose of their refuse
in order that the enemy may not come into posses-
sion of this part of their person in order to harm
them by magical means, and we may surmise
analogous superstitious motivations for their ab-
stinence. Nevertheless the fact remains that the
impulse is renounced and we probably under-
go Frazer, "Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, p. 158.
162 TOTEM AND TABOO
stand the case better if we assume that the sav-
age warrior imposes such restrictions upon him-
self in compensation, because he is on the point
of allowing hunself the full satisfaction of cruel
and hostile impulses otherwise forbidden. The
same holds good for the numerous cases of sex-
ual restriction while he is pre-occupied with diffi-
cult or responsible tasks.^^ Even if the basis of
these prohibitions can be referred to some asso-
ciation with magic, the fundamental conception
of gaining greater strength by foregoing grati-
fication of desires nevertheless remains unmistak-
able, and besides the magic rationalization of the
prohibition, one must not neglect its hygienic
root. When the men of a savage tribe go away
to hunt, fish, make war or collect valuable plants,
the women at home are in the meantime subjected
to numerous oppressive restrictions which, ac-
cording to the savages themselves, exert a sym-
pathetic effect upon the success of the far away
expedition. But it does not require much acu-
men to guess that this element acting at a dis-
tance is nothing but a thouglit of home, the
longing of the absent, and that these disguises
conceal the sound psychological insight that the
men will do their best only if they are fully as-
sured of the whereabouts of their guarded
41 Frazerj 1. c, p. 200.
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF THOUGHT 163
women. On other occasions the thought is di-
rectly expressed without magic motivation, that
the conjugal infidelity of the wife thwarts the
absent husband's eiForts.
The countless taboo rules to which the women
of savages are subject during their menstrual
periods are motivated by the superstitious dread
of blood which in all probability actually deter-
mines it. But it would be wrong to overlook the
possibility that this blood dread also serves
aesthetic and hygienic purposes which in every
case have to be covered b}^ magic motivations.
We are probably not mistaken in assuming
that such attempted explanations expose us to
the reproach of attributing a most improbable
delicacy of psychic activities to contemporary
savages.
But I think that we may easily make the same
mistake with the psychology of these races who
have remained at the animistic stage that we
made with the psychic life of the child, which we
adults understood no better and whose richness
and fineness of feeling we have therefore so
greatly undervalued.
I want to consider another group of hitherto
unexplained taboo rules because they admit of
an explanation with which the psychoanalyst is
familiar. Under certain conditions it is forbid-
164 TOTEM AND TABOO
den to many savage races to keep in the house
sharp weapons and instruments for cutting.^ ^
Frazer cites a German superstition that a knife
must not be left lying with the edge pointing up-
ward because God and the angels might injure
themselves with it. May we not recognize in this
taboo a premonition of certain "symptomatic
actions " ^^ for which the sharp weapon might be
used by unconscious evil impulses?
42 Frazer, 1. c, p. 237.
43 Freud, "Psychopatholo^^ of Everyday Life," p. 215, trans,
by A. A. Brill (The Macmillan Company, N. Y., and T. Fisher
Unwin, London).
CHAPTER IV
THE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM
The reader need not fear that psychoanalysis,
which first revealed the regular over-determina-
tion of psychic acts and formations, will be
tempted to derive anything so complicated as
religion from a single source. If it necessarily
seeks, as in duty bound, to gain recognition for
one of the sources of this institution, it by no
means claims exclusiveness for this source or
even first rank among the concurring factors.
Only a synthesis from various fields of research
can decide what relative importance in the gene-
sis of religion is to be assigned to the mechanism
which we are to discuss ; but such a task exceeds
the means as well as the intentions of the psy-
choanalyst.
1
The first chapter of this book made us ac-
quainted with the conception of totemism. We
heard that totemism is a system which takes the
place of religion among certain primitive races
in Australia, America, and Africa, and furnishes
the basis of social organization. We know that
165
166 TOTEM AND TABOO
in 1869 the Scotchman MacLennan attracted
general interest to the phenomena of totemism,
which until then had been considered merely as
curiosities, by his conjecture that a large number
of customs and usages in various old as well as
modern societies were to be taken as remnants
of a totemic epoch. Science has since then full}^
recognized this significance of totemism. I
quote a passage from the "Elements of the
Psychology of Races" by W. Wundt (1912), as
the latest utterance on this question: ^ "Tak-
ing all this together it becomes highly probable
that a totemic culture was at one time the pre-
liminary stage of every later evolution as well as
a transition stage between the state of primitive
man and the age of gods and heroes."
It is necessary for the purposes of this chapter
to go more deeply into the nature of totemism.
For reasons that will be evident later I here give
preference to an outline by S. Reinach, who in
the year 1900 sketched the following Code dii
totemism in twelve articles, like a catechism of
the totemic religion: ^
1. Certain animals must not be killed or eaten,
but men bring up individual animals of these
species and take care of them.
ip. 139.
2 "Revue Scientifique," October, 1900, reprinted in the four
volume work of the author, "Cultes, Mythes et Religions," 1908,
Tome I, p. 17.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 167
2. An animal that dies accidentally is
mourned and bm'ied with the same honors as a
member of the tribe.
3. The prohibition as to eating sometimes re-
fers only to a certain part of the animal.
4. If pressure of necessity compels the killing
of an animal usually spared, it is done with ex-
cuses to the animal and the attempt is made to
mitigate the violation of the taboo, namely the
killing, through various tricks and evasions.
5. If the animal is sacrificed by ritual, it is
solemnly mourned.
6. At specified solemn occasions, like religious
ceremonies, the skins of certain animals are
donned. Where totemism still exists, these are
totem animals.
7. Tribes and individuals assume the names of
totem animals.
8. Many tribes use pictures of animals as
coats of arms and decorate their weapons with
them; the men paint animal pictures on their
bodies or have them tattooed.
9. If the totem is one of the feared and
dangerous animals it is assumed that the animal
will spare the members of the tribe named after
it.
10. The totem animal protects and warns the
members of the tribe.
11. The totem animal foretells the future to
168 TOTEM AND TABOO
those faithful to it and serves as their leader.
12. The members of a totem tribe often be-
lieve that they are connected with the totem
animal by the bond of common origin.
The value of this catechism of the totem re-
ligion can be more appreciated if one bears in
mind that Reinach has here also incorporated all
the signs and clews which lead to the conclusion
that the totemic system had once existed. The
peculiar attitude of this author to the problem
is shown by the fact that to some extent he neg-
lects the essential traits of totemism, and we
shall see that of the two main tenets of the totem-
istic catechism he has forced one into the back-
ground and completely lost sight of the other.
In order to get a more correct picture of the
characteristics of totemism we turn to an author
who has devoted four volumes to the theme,
combining the most complete collection of the
observations in question with the most thorough
discussion of the problems they raise. We shall
remain indebted to J. G. Frazer, the author
of "Totemism and Exogamy," ^ for the pleasure
and information he affords, even though psy-
choanalytic investigation may lead us to results
which differ widely from his.^
3 1910.
4 But it may be well to show the reader beforehand how diflBcult
it is to establish the facts in this field.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 169
"A totem," wrote Frazer in his first essay ,^
*'is a class of material objects which a savage re-
gards with superstitious respect, believing that
there exists between him and every member of
the class an intimate and altogether special rela-
tion. The connection between a person and his
In the first place those who collect the observations are not
identical with those who digest and discuss them; the first are
travelers and missionaries, while the others are scientific men who
perhaps have never seen the objects of their research. — It is not
easy to establish an understanding with savages. Not all the
observers were familiar with the languages but had to use the
assistance of interpreters or else had to communicate with the
people they questioned in the auxiliary language of pidgin-Eng-
lish. Savages are not communicative about the most intimate
affairs of their culture and unburden themselves only to those for-
eigners who have passed many years in their midst. From
various motives they often give wrong or misleading information.
(Compare Frazer, "The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism
Among the Australian Aborigines," Fortnightly Review, 1905,
"Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. I, p. 150). — It must not be for-
gotten that primitive races are not young races but really are as
old as the most civilized, and that we have no right to expect that
they have preserved their original ideas and institutions for our
information without any evolution or distortion. It is certain, on
the contrary, that far-reaching changes in all directions have
taken place among primitive races, so that we can never unhes-
itatingly decide which of their present conditions and opinions
have preserved the original past, having remained petrified, as it
were, and which represent a distortion and change of the original.
It is due to this that one meets the many disputes among authors
as to what proportion of the peculiarities of a primitive culture
is to be taken as a primary, and what as a later and secondary
manifestation. To establish the original conditions, therefore,
always remains a matter of construction. Finally, it is not easy
to adapt oneself to the ways of thinking of primitive races. For
like children, we easily misunderstand them, and are always in-
clined to interpret their acts and feelings according to our own
psychic constellations.
5 "Totemism," Edinburgh, 1887, reprinted in the first volume of
his great study, "Totemism and Exogamy."
no TOTEM AND TABOO
totem is mutually beneficent; the totem protects
the man and the man shows his respect for the
totem in various ways, by not killing it if it be
an animal, and not cutting or gathering it if it
be a plant. As distinguished from a fetich, a
totem is never an isolated individual but always
a class of objects, generally a species of animals
or of plants, more rarely a class of inanimate
natural objects, very rarely a class of artificial
objects."
At least three kinds of totem can be distin-
guished :
1. The tribal totem which a whole tribe shares
and which is hereditary from generation to gen-
eration,
2. The sex totem which belongs to all the
masculine or feminine members of a tribe to the
exclusion of the opposite sex, and
3. The individual totem which belongs to the
individual and does not descend to his successors.
The last two kinds of totem are of compara-
tively little importance compared to the tribal
totem. Unless we are mistaken they are recent
formations and of little importance as far as the
nature of the taboo is concerned.
The tribal totem (clan totem) is the object of
veneration of a group of men and women who
take their name from the totem and consider
themselves consanguinous offspring of a com-
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 171
mon ancestor, and who are firmly associated with
each other through common obhgations towards
each other as well as by the behef in their totem.
Totemism is a religious as well as a social
system. On its religious side it consists of the
relations of mutual respect and consideration
between a .person and his totem, and on its social
side it is composed of obligations of the members
of the clan towards each other and towards other
tribes. In the later history of totemism these
two sides show a tendency to part company; the
social system often survives the religious and
conversely remnants of totemism remain in the
religion of countries in which the social system
based upon totemism has disappeared. In the
present state of our ignorance about the origin
of totemism we cannot say with certainty how
these two sides were originally combined. But
there is on the whole a strong probability that in
the beginning the two sides of totemism were
indistinguishable from each other. In other
words, the further we go back the clearer it be-
comes that a member of a tribe looks upon him-
self as being of the same genus as his totem and
makes no distinction between his attitude to-
wards the totem and his attitude towards his
tribal companions.
In the special description of totemism as a
religious system, Frazer lays stress on the fact
172 TOTEM AND TABOO
that the members of a tribe assume the name
of their totem and also as a rule believe that they
are descended from it. It is due to this behef
that they do not hunt the totem animal or kill
or eat it, and that they deny themselves eveiy
other use of the totem if it is not an animal.
The prohibitions against killing or eating the
totem are not the only taboos affecting it ; some-
times it is also forbidden to touch it and even to
look at it; in a number of cases the totem must
not be called by its right name. Violation of the
taboo prohibitions which protect the totem is
punished automatically by serious disease or
death.«
Specimens of the totem animals are sometimes
raised by the clan and taken care of in cap-
tivity/ A totem animal found dead is mourned
and buried like a member of the clan. If a totem
animal had to be killed it was done with a pre-
scribed ritual of excuses and ceremonies of ex-
piation.
The tribe expected protection and forbear-
ance from its totem. If it was a dangerous
animal, (a beast of prey or a poisonous snake),
it was assumed that it would not harm, and
where this assumption did not come true the per-
6 Compare the chapter on Taboo.
"^ Just as to-day we still have the wolves in a cag:e at the steps of
the Capitol in Rome and the bears in the pit at Berne,
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 173
son attacked was expelled from the tribe.
Frazer thinks that oaths were originally ordeals,
many tests as to descent and genuineness being
in this way left to the decision of the totem.
The totem helps in case of illness and gives the
tribe premonitions and warnings. The appear-
ance of the totem animal near a house was often
looked upon as an announcement of death.
The totem had come to get its relative.^
A member of a clan seeks to emphasize his re-
lationship to the totem in various significant
ways ; he imitates an exterior similarity by dress-
ing himself in the skin of the totem animal, by
having the picture of it tattooed upon himself,
and in other ways. On the solemn occasions of
birth, initiation into manhood or funeral obse-
quies this identification with the totem is carried
out in deeds and words. Dances in which all
the members of the tribe disguise themselves as
their totem and act like it, serve various magic
and religious purposes. Finally there are the
ceremonies at which the totem animal is killed
in a solemn manner.^
The social side of totemism is primarily ex-
pressed in a sternly observed commandment and
in a tremendous restriction. The members of
a totem clan are brothers and sisters, pledged to
8 Like the legend of the white woman in many noble families.
9 1. c, p. 45. — See the discussion of sacrifice further on.
174. TOTEM AND TABOO
help and protect each other; if a member of the
clan is slain by a stranger the whole tribe of the
slayer must answer for the murder and the clan
of the slain man shows its solidarity in the de-
mand for expiation for the blood that has been
shed. The ties of the totem are stronger than
our ideas of family ties, with which they do not
altogether coincide, since the transfer of the
totem takes place as a rule through maternal
inheritance, paternal inheritance possibly not
counting at all in the beginning.
But the corresponding taboo restriction con-
sists in the prohibition against members of the
same clan marrying each other or having any
kind of sexual intercourse whatsoever with each
other. This is the famous and enigmatic
eocogamy connection with totemism. We have
devoted the whole first chapter of this book to
it, and therefore need only mention here that
this exogamy springs from the intensified incest
dread of primitive races, that it becomes entirely
comprehensible as a security against incest in
group marriages, and that at first it accomplishes
the avoidance of incest for the younger genera-
tion and only in the course of further develop-
ment becomes a hindrance to the older genera-
tion as well.^^
To this presentation of totemism by Frazer,
10 See Chapter I.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 175
one of the earliest in the literature on the sub-
ject, I will now add a few excerpts from one of
the latest summaries. In the "Elements of the
Psychology of Races" w^iich appeared in 1912,
W. Wundt says: ^^ "The totem animal is con-
sidered the ancestral animal. 'Totem' is there-
fore both a group name and a birth name and
in the latter aspect this name has at the same
time a mythological meaning. But all these
uses of the conception play into each other and
the particular meanings may recede so that in
some cases the totems have become almost a
mere nomenclature of the tribal divisions, while
in others the idea of the descent or else the
cultic meaning of the totem remains in the fore-
ground. . . . The conception of the totem de-
teiTnines the t7ihal arrangement and the tribal
organization. These norms and their establish-
ment in the belief and feelings of the members
of the tribe account for the fact that originally
the totem animal was certainly not considered
merely a name for a group division but that it
usually was considered the progenitor of the cor-
responding division. . . . This accounted for
the fact that these animal ancestors enjoyed a
cult. . . . This animal cult expresses itself
primarily in the attitude towards the totem ani-
mal, quite aside from special ceremonies and
11 p. 116.
176 TOTEM AND TABOO
ceremonial festivities: not only each individual
animal but eveiy representative of the same
species was to a certain degree a sanctified ani-
mal; the member of the totem was forbidden to
eat the flesh of the totem animal or he was al-
lowed to eat it only under special circumstances.
This is in accord with the significant contra-
dictory phenomenon found in this connection,
nameh^ that under certain conditions there was
a kind of ceremonial consumption of the totem
flesh. . . ."
". . . But the most important social side of
this totemic tribal arrangement consists in the
fact that it was connected with certain rules of
conduct for the relations of the groups with each
other. The most important of these were the
rules of conjugal relations. This tribal di-
vision is thus connected with an important phe-
nomenon which first made its appearance in the
totemic age, namely with exogamy."
If we wish to arrive at the characteristics of
the original totemism by sifting through every-
thing that may correspond to later development
or decline, we find the following essential facts:
The totems were originally only animals and
were considered the ancestors of single tribes.
The totem was hereditary only through the
female line; it was forbidden to kill the totem
(or to eat it, which under primitive conditions
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 177
amounts to the same thing) ; memhers of a totem
xcere forbidden to have sexual intercourse with
each other}^
It may now seem strange to us that in the
Code du totemisme which Reinach has dra^^n up
the one principal taboo, namely exogamy, does
not appear at all while the assmnption of the
second taboo, namely the descent from the to-
tem animal, is only casually mentioned. Yet
Reinach is an author to whose work in this field
we owe much and I have chosen his presentation
in order to prepare us for the differences of
opinion among the authors, which will now oc-
cupy our attention.
2
The more convinced we became that totemism
had regularly formed a phase of every culture,
12 The conclusion which Frazer draws about totemism in his
second work on the subject ("The Origin of Totemism," Fort-
night Review, 1899) agrees with this text: "Thus, totemism has
commonly been treated as a primitive system both of religion and
of society. As a system of religion it embraces the mystic union
of the savage with his totem; as a system of society it comprises
the relations in which men and women of the same totem stand to
each other and to the members of other totemic groups. And
corresponding to these two sides of the system are two rough-and-
ready tests or canons of totemism: first, the rule that a man may
not kill or eat his totem animal or plant, and second, the rule that
he may not marry or cohabit with a woman of the same totem."
(p. 101.) Frazer then adds something which takes us into the
midst of the discussion about totemism: "Whether the two sides
— the religious and the social — have always coexisted or are essen-
tially independent, is a question which has been variously
answered."
178 TOTEM AND TABOO
the more urgent became the necessity of arriving
at an understanding of it and of casting light
upon the riddle of its nature. To be sure, eveiy-
thing about totemism is in the nature of a riddle ;
the decisive questions are the origin of the totem,
the motivation of exogamy (or rather of the in-
cest taboo which it represents) and the relation
between the two, the totem organization and the
incest prohibition. The understanding should
be at once historical and psychological; it should
inform us under what conditions this peculiar
institution developed and to what psj^chic needs
of man it has given expression.
The reader will certainly be astonished to
hear from how many different points of view
the answer to these questions has been attempted
and how far the opinions of expert investigators
vary. Almost everything that might be asserted
in general about totemism is doubtful; even the
above statement of it, taken from an article by
Frazer in 1887, cannot escape the criticism that
it expresses an arbitrary preference of the author
and would be challenged to-day by Frazer him-
self, who has repeatedly changed his view on the
subject.^^
13 In connection with such a change of opinion Frazer made this
excellent statement: *'That my conclusions on these difficult ques-
tions are final, I am not so foolish as to pretend. I have changed
my views repeatedly, and I am resolved to change them again with
every change of the evidence, for like a chameleon the enquirer
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 179
It is quite obvious that the nature of totemism
and exogamy could be most readily grasped if
we could get into closer touch with the origin
of both institutions. But in judging the state of
affairs we must not forget the remark of Andrew
Lang, that even primitive races have not pre-
served these original forms and the conditions
of their origin, so that we are altogether depend-
ent upon hypotheses to take the place of the
observation we lack.^^ Among the attempted
explanations some seem inadequate from the
very beginning in the j udgment of the psycholo-
gist. They are altogether too rational and do
not take into consideration the effective character
of what they are to explain. Others rest on
assumptions which observation fails to verify;
while still others appeal to facts which could bet-
ter be subjected to another interpretation. The
refutation of these various opinions as a rule
hardly presents any difficulties; the authors are,
as usual, stronger in the criticism which they
practice on each other than in their own work.
The final result as regards most of the points
treated is a non liquet. It is therefore not sur-
should shift his colours with the shifting colours of the ground he
treads." Preface to Vol. I, "Totemism and Exogamy," 1910.
14 "By the nature of the case, as the origin of totemism lies far
beyond our powers of historical examination or of experiment, we
must have recourse as regards this matter, to conjecture," Andrew
Lang, "Secret of the Totem," p. 27.— "Nowhere do we see abso-
lutely primitive man, and a totemic system in the making," p. -29.
180 TOTEM AND TABOO
prising that most of the new Hterature on the
subject, which we have largely omitted here,
shows the unmistakable effort to reject a gen-
eral solution of totemic problems as mifeasible.
(See, for instance, B. Golden weiser in the Jour-
nal of American Folklore XXIII, 1910. Re-
viewed in the Britannica Year Book 1913.) I
have taken the liberty of disregarding the
chronological order in stating these contra-
dictory hypotheses.
a) The Origin of Totemism
The question of the origin of totemism can
also be formulated as follows: How did primi-
tive people come to select the names of animals,
plants and inanimate objects for themselves and
their tribes ? ^^
The Scotchman, MacLennan, who discovered
totemism and exogamy for science,^ ^ refrained
from publishing his views of the origin of totem-
ism. According to a communication of Andrew
Lang ^^ he was for a time inclined to trace totem-
ism back to the custom of tattooing. I shall di-
vide the accepted theories of the derivation of
15 At first probably only animals.
16 "The Worship of Animals and Plants," Fortnic/htly Review,
1869-1870. "Primitive Marriage," 1865; both works reprinted in
"Studies in Ancient History," 1876; second edition, 1886.
17 "The Secret of the Totem," 1905, p. 34.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 181
totemism into three groups, «) nominalistic, P)
sociological, v) psychological.
a) The Nominalistic Theories
The information about these theories will jus-
tify their summation under the headings I have
used.
Garcilaso de La Vega, a descendant of the
Peruvian Inkas, who wTote the history of his
race in the seventeenth century is already said
to have traced back what was known to him
about totemic phenomena to the need of the
tribes to differentiate themselves from each other
by means of names. ^^ The same idea appears
centuries later in the "Ethnology" of A. K.
Keane where totems are said to be derived from
heraldic badges through which individuals, fam-
ilies and tribes wanted to differentiate them-
selves.^^
Max Miiller expresses the same opinion about
the meaning of the totem in his "Contributions to
the Science of Mythology." ^^ A totem is said to
be, 1. a mark of the clan, 2. a clan name, 3. the
name of the ancestor of the clan, 4. the name of
the object which the clan reveres. J. Pikler
wrote later, in 1899, that men needed a perma-
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 According to Andrew Lang.
182 TOTEM AND TABOO
nent name for communities and individuals that
could be preserved in writing. . . . Thus totem-
ism arises, not from a religious, but from a pro-
saic everyday need of mankind. The giving of
names, which is the essence of totemism, is a
result of the technique of primitive writing.
The totem is of the nature of an easily repre-
sented writing symbol. But if savages first bore
the name of an animal they deduced the idea of
relationship from this animal.^^
Herbert Spencer,^^ also, thought that the
origin of totemism was to be found in the giving
of names. The attributes of certain individuals,
he showed, had brought about their being named
after animals so that they had come to have
names of honor or nicknames which continued in
their descendants. As a result of the indef-
initeness and incomprehensibility of primitive
languages, these names are said to have been
taken by later generations as proof of their de-
scent from the animals themselves. Totemism
would thus be the result of a mistaken reverence
for ancestors.
Lord Avebury (better known under his for-
mer name. Sir John Lubbock) has expressed
21 Pikler and Somlo, *'The Origin of Totemism," 1901. The au-
thors rightly call their attempt at explanation a "Contribution to
the materialistic theory of History."
22 "The Origin of Animal Worship," Fortnightly Review, 1870.
"Principles of Psychology," Vol. I, paragraphs 169 to 176.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 183
himself quite similarly about the origin of
totemism, though without emphasizing the mis-
understanding. If we want to explain the
veneration of animals we must not forget how
often human names are borrowed from animals.
The children and followers of a man w^ho was
called bear or lion naturally made this their an-
cestral name. In this way it came about that
the animal itself came to be respected and finally
venerated.
Fison has advanced what seems an irrefutable
objection to such a derivation of the totem name
from the names of individuals.-^ He shows
from conditions in Australia that the totem is
always the mark of a group of people and never
of an individual. But if it were otherwise, if
the totem was originally the name of a single
individual, it could never, with the system of
maternal inheritance, descend to his children.
The theories thus far stated are evidently
inadequate. They may explain how animal
names came to be applied to primitive tribes but
they can never explain the importance attached to
the giving of names which constitutes the to-
temic system. Tlie most noteworthy theory of
this gi^oup has been developed by Andrew Lang
in his books. Social Origins, 1903, and The
23 Kamilaroi and Kurmai, p. 165, 1880 (Lang, "Secret of the
Totem," etc.).
184 TOTEM AND TABOO
Secret of the Totem, 1905. This theory still
makes naming the center of the problem, but it
uses two interesting psychological factors and
thus may claim to have contributed to the final
solution of the riddle of totemism.
Andrew Lang holds that it does not make any
difference how clans acquired their animal
names. It might be assumed that one day they
awoke to the consciousness that they had them
without being able to account from where they
came. The origin of these names had been for-
gotten. In that case they would seek to acquire
more information by pondering over their names,
and with their conviction of the importance of
names they necessarily came to all the ideas
that are contained in the totemic system. For
primitive men, as for savages of to-day and
even for our children,-^ a name is not indifferent
and conventional as it seems to us, but is some-
thing important and essential. A man's name is
one of the main constituents of his person and per-
haps a part of his psyche. The fact that they had
the same names as animals must have led primi-
tive men to assume a secret and important bond
between their persons and the particular animal
species. What other bond than consanguinity
could it be? But if the similarity of names once
led to this assumption it could also account di-
24 See the chapter on Taboo, p. 95.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 185
rectly for all the totemic prohibitions of the blood
taboo, including exogamy.
"No more than these three things — a group
animal name of unknown origin; belief in a
transcendental connection between all bearers,
human and bestial, of the same name ; and belief
in the blood superstitions — were needed to give
rise to all the totemic creeds and practices, in-
cluding exogamy," (Secret of The Totem, p.
126.)
Lang's explanation extends over two periods.
It derives the totemic system of psychological
necessity from the totem names, on the assump-
tion that the origin of the naming has been for-
gotten. The other part of the theory now seeks
to clear up the origin of these names. We shall
see that it bears an entirely different stamp.
This other part of the Lang theory is not
markedly different from those which I have
called "nominalistic." The practical need of
differentiation compelled the individual tribes to
assume names and therefore they tolerated the
names which every tribe ascribed to the other.
This "naming from without" is the peculiarity
of Lang's construction. The fact that the
names which thus originated were borrowed
from animals is not further remarkable and need
not have been felt by primitive men as abuse or
derision. Besides, Lang has cited numerous
186 TOTEM AND TABOO
cases from later epochs of history in which names
given from without that were first meant to be
derisive were accepted by those nicknamed and
voluntarily born, (The Guises, Whigs and
Tories). The assumption that the origin of
these names was forgotten in the course of time
connects this second part of the Lang theory
with the first one just mentioned.
^) The Sociological Theories
S. Reinach, who successfully traced the relics
of the totemic system in the cult and customs of
later periods, though attaching from the very
beginning only slight value to the factor of de-
scent from the totem animal, once made the
casual remark that totemism seemed to him to
be nothing but ''uiie hypertrophie de V instinct
social/' ^^
The same interpretation seems to permeate
the new work of E. Durkheim, Les formes
elementaires de la vie religieuse; Le systcme
totemique en Australie, 1912. The totem is the
visible representative of the social religion of
these races. It embodies the community, which
is the real object of veneration.
Other authors have sought a more intimate
reason for the share which social impulses have
played in the formation of totemic institutions.
25 1. c, Vol. I, p. 41.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 187
Thus A. C. Haddon has assumed that every
primitive tribe originally lived on a particular
plant or animal species and perhaps also traded
with this food and exchanged it with other tribes.
It then was inevitable that a tribe should become
known to other tribes by the name of the animal
which played such weighty role with it. At the
same time this tribe would develop a special
familiarity with this animal, and a kind of in-
terest for it which, however, was based upon the
psychic motive of man's most elementary and
pressing need, namely, hunger.^^
The objections against this most rational of
all the totem theories are that such a state of the
food supply is never found among primitive men
and probably never existed. Savages are the
more omnivorous the lower they stand in the so-
cial scale. Besides, it is incomprehensible how
such an exclusive diet could have developed an
almost religious relation to the totem, culminat-
ing in an absolute abstention from the preferred
food.
The first of the three theories about the origin
of totemism which Frazer stated was a psycho-
logical one. We shall report it elsewhere.
Frazer's second theory, which we will discuss
here, originated under the influence of an im-
26 Address to the Anthropological Section, British Association,
Belfast, 190;?. According to Frazer, 1. c. Vol. IV, p. 50,
188 TOTEM AND TABOO
portant publication by two investigators of the
inhabitants of Central Australia.^'
Spencer and Gillen describe a series of pe-
culiar institutions, customs, and opinions of a
group of tribes, the so-called Arunta nation, and
Frazer subscribes to their opinion that these
peculiarities are to be looked upon as character-
istics of a primary state and that they can explain
the first and real meaning of totemism.
In the Arunta tribe itself (a part of the
Ai'unta nation) these peculiarities are as fol-
lows :
1. They have the division into totem clans
but the totem is not hereditary but is individually
determined (as will be shown later) .
2. The totem clans are not exogamous, and
the marriage restrictions are brought about by
a highly developed division into marriage classes
which have nothing to do with the totems.
3. The function of the totem clan consists of
carrying out a ceremony which in a subtle magic
manner brings about an increase of the edible
totem. (This ceremony is called InticMuma.)
4. The Aruntas have a peculiar theory about
conception and re-birth. They assume that the
spirits of the dead who belonged to their totem
wait for their re-bu^th in definite localities and
27 "The Native Tribes of Central Australia" by Baldwin Spen-
cer and H. J. Gillen, London, 1891.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISxM 189
penetrate into the bodies of the women who pass
such a spot. When a child is born the mother
states at which spirit abode she thinks she con-
ceived her child. This determines the totem of
the child. It is further assumed that the spirits
(of the dead as well as of the re-born) are bound
to peculiar stone amulets, called Churinga,
which are found in these places.
Two factors seem to have induced Frazer to
believe that the oldest form of totemism had
been found in the institution of the Aruntas.
In the first place the existence of certain myths
which assert that the ancestors of the Aruntas
always lived on their totem animal, and that they
married no other women except those of their own
totem. Secondly, the apparent disregard of the
sexual act in their theory of conception. People
who had not yet realized that conception was the
result of the sexual act might well be considered
the most backward and primitive people li\dng
to-day.
Frazer, in having recourse to the InticJiiuma
ceremony to explain totemism, suddenly saw the
totemic system in a totally different light as a
thoroughly practical organization for accom-
plishing the most natural needs of man. ( Com-
pare Haddon above.^^) The system was simply
28 There is nothinjr vague or mystical about it, nothing of that
metaphysical haze which some writers love to conjure up over tlie
190 TOTEM AND TABOO
an extraordinary piece of "cooperative magic."
Primitive men formed what might be called a
magic production and consumption club. Each
totem clan undertook to see to the cleanHness of
a certain article of food. If it were a question of
inedible totems like harmful animals, rain, wind,
or similar objects, it was the duty of the totem
clan to dominate this part of nature and to ward
off its injuriousness. The efforts of each clan
were for the good of all the others. As the clan
could not eat its totem or could eat only a very
little of it, it furnished this valuable product for
the rest and was in turn furnished with what
these had to take care of as their social totem
duty. In the light of this interpretation fur-
nished by the Tntichiuma ceremony, it appeared
to Frazer as if the prohibition against eating the
totem had misled obsei^i^ers to neglect the more
important side of the relation, namely the com-
mandment to supply as much as possible of the
edible totem for the needs of others.
Frazer accepted the tradition of the Aruntas
that each totem clan had originally lived on its
totem without any restriction. It then became
difficult to imderstand the evolution that fol-
lowed through which savages were satisfied to
humblest beginnings of human speculation but which is utterly-
foreign to the simple, sensuous, and concrete modes of the savage.
("Totemism and Exogamy," I., p. 117.)
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 191
insure the totem for others while they themselves
abstained from eating it. He then assumed that
this restriction was by no means the result of a
kind of religious respect, but came about through
the observation that no animal devoured its own
kind, so that this break in the identification with
the totem was injurious to the power which
savages sought to acquire over the totem. Or
else it resulted from the endeavor to make the
being favorably disposed by sparing it. Frazer
did not conceal the difficulties of this explana-
tion from himself,-^ nor did he dare to indicate
in what way the habit of marrying within the
totem, which the myths of the Aruntas pro-
claimed, was converted into exogamy.
Frazer 's theory based on the Tnticliiuma,
stands and falls with the recognition of the
primitive nature of the Arunta institutions.
But it seems impossible to hold to this in the fact
of the objections advanced by Durkheim ^^ and
Lang.^^ The Aruntas seem on the contrary to
be the most developed of the Australian tribes
and to represent rather a dissolution stage of
totemism than its beginning. The mj'ths that
made such an impression on Frazer because they
emphasize, in contrast to prevailing institutions
29 I. C, p. 120.
30"L*annee Sociologique," Vol. I, V, VIII, and elsewhere. See
especially the chapter, "Sur le Totemisme," Vol. V, 1901.
31 "Social Origins and the Secret of the Totem."
192 TOTEM AND TABOO
of to-day, that the Aruntas are free to eat the
totem and to marry within it, easily explain
themselves to us as wish phantasies which are
projected into the past, like the myths of the
Golden Age.
y) The Psychological Theories
Frazer's first psychological theories, formed
before his acquaintance wil^ the observations of
Spencer and Gillen, were based upon the belief
in an "outward soul." ^^ The totem was meant
to represent a safe place of refuge where the
soul is deposited in order to avoid the dangers
which threaten it. After primitive man had
housed his soul in his totem he himself became
invulnerable and he naturally took care himself
not to harm the bearer of his soul. But as he
did not know which individual of the species in
question was the bearer of his soul he was con-
cerned in sparing the whole species. Frazer
himself later gave up this derivation of totemism
from the belief in souls.
When he became acquainted with the obser-
vations of Spencer and Gillen he set up the other
social theory which has just been stated, but he
himself then saw that the motive from which he
had derived totemism was altogether too "ra-
tional" and that he had assumed a social organi-
32 "The Golden Bough," II, p. 332.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 193
zation for it which was altogether too complicated
to be called primitive.^^ The magic cooperative
companies now appeared to him rather as the
fruit than as the germ of totemism. He sought
a simpler factor for the derivation of totemism
in the shape of a primitive superstition behind
these forms. He then found this original factor
in the remarkable concex)tion theory of the
Aruntas.
As already stated, the Aruntas establish no
connection between conception and the sexual
act. If a woman feels herself to be a mother it
means that at that moment one of the spirits
from the nearest spirit abode who has been
watching for a re-birth, has penetrated into her
body and is born as her child. This child has
the same totem as all the spirits that lurk in that
particular locahty. But if we are willing to go
back a step further and assmne that the woman
originally believed that the animal, plant, stone
or other object which occupied her fancy at the
moment when she first felt herself pregnant had
really penetrated into her and was being born
through her in human form, then the identity
of a human being with his totem would really
33 "It is unlikely that a community of savages should deliber-
ately 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 conunon good."
"Totemism and Exogamy," Vol. IV, p. 57.
194. TOTEM AND TABOO
be founded on the belief of the mother, and all
the other totem commandments (with the ex-
ception of exogamy) could easily be derived
from this belief. Men would refuse to eat the
particular animal or plant because it would be
just like eating themselves. But occasionally
the}^ would be impelled to eat some of their totem
in a ceremonial manner because they could thus
strengthen their identification with the totem,
which is the essential part of totemism. W. H.
R. Rivers' observations among the inhabitants
of the Bank Islands seemed to prove men's di-
rect identification with their totems on the basis
of such a conception theor3^^^
The ultimate sources of totemism would then
be the ignorance of savages as to the process of
procreation among human beings and animals;
especially their ignorance as to the role which
the male plays in fertilization. This ignorance
must be facilitated by the long interval which
is interposed between the fertilizing act and the
birth of the child or the sensation of the child's
first movements. Totemism is therefore a crea-
tion of the feminine mind and not of the mascu-
line. The sick fancies of the pregnant woman
are the roots of it. "Anything indeed that
struck a woman at that mysterious moment of
her life when she first knows herself to be a
34 "Totemism and Exogamy," II, p. 89, and IV, p. 59.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 195
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.^^
The main objection to this third theory of
Frazer's is the same which has already been ad-
vanced against his second, sociological theory.
The Aruntas seem to be far removed from the
beginnings of totemism. Their denial of father-
hood does not apparently rest upon primitive
ignorance; in many cases they even have pater-
nal inheritance. They seem to have sacrificed
fatherhood to a kind of a speculation which
strives to honor the ancestral spirits. ^*^ Though
they raise the myth of immaculate conception
through a spirit to a general theory of concep-
tion, we cannot for that reason credit them with
ignorance as to the conditions of procreation any
more than we could the old races who lived dur-
ing the rise of the Christian myths.
Another psychological theory of the origin of
totemism has been formulated by the Dutch
writer, G. A. Wilcken. It establishes a con-
nection between totemism and the migration of
souls. "The animal into which, according to
general belief, the souls of the dead passed, be-
35 "Totemism and Exogamy," IV, p. 63.
3G "That belief is a philosophy far from primitive," Andrew
Lang, "Secret of the Totem," p. 192.
196 TOTEM AND TABOO
came a blood relative, an ancestor, and was
revered as such." But the belief in the soul's
migration to animals is more readily derived
from totemism than inversely .^^
Still another theory of totemism is advanced
by the excellent American ethnologists, Franz
Boas, Hill-Tout, and others. It is based on
observations of totemic Indian tribes and asserts
that the totem is originally the guardian spirit of
an ancestor who has acquired it through a dream
and handed it on to his descendants. We have
already heard the difficulties which the derivation
of totemism through inheritance from a single
individual offers; besides, the Australian obser-
vations seem by no means to support the tracing
back of the totem to the guardian spirit.^^
Two facts have become decisive for the last of
the psychological theories as stated by Wundt;
in the first place, that the original and most
widely known totem object was an animal,
and secondly, that the earliest totem animals
corresponded to animals which had a soul.^'^
Such animals as birds, snakes, lizards, mice
are fitted by their extreme mobility, their
flight through the air, and by other character-
istics which arouse surprise and fear, to become
37 Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy," IV, p. 45.
38 Frazer, 1. c, p. 48.
39 Wundt, "Elemente der Volker Psychologic," p. 190.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 197
the bearers of souls which leave their bodies.
The totem animal is a descendant of the animal
transformations of the spirit-soul. Thus with
Wundt totemism is directly connected with the
belief in souls or with animism.
b) and c) The Origin of Eocogamy and Its Re-
lation to Totemism
I have put forth the theories of totemism with
considerable detail and yet I am afraid that I
have not made them clear enough on account of
the condensation that was constantly necessary.
In the interest of the reader I am taking the lib-
erty of further condensing the other questions
that arise. The discussions about the exogamy
of totem races become especially complicated
and untractable, one might even say confused,
on account of the nature of the material used.
Fortunately the object of this treatise permits
me to limit myself to pointing out several guide-
posts and referring to the frequently quoted
writings of experts in the field for a more
thorough pursuit of the subject.
The attitude of an author to the problems of
exogamy is of course not independent of the
stand he has taken toward one or the other of
the totem theories. Some of these explanations
of totemism lack all connection with exogamy
so that the two institutions are entirely separ-
198 TOTEM AND TABOO
ated. Thus we find here two opposing views,
one of which chngs to the original HkeHhood that
exogamy is an essential part of the totemic sys-
tem while the other disputes such a connection
and believes in an accidental combination of these
two traits of the most ancient cultures. In his
later works Frazer has emphatically stood for
this latter point of view.
"I must request the reader to bear constantly
in mind 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." (Totemism and
Exogamy I, Preface XII.)
He warns directly against the opposite view
as being a source of endless difficulties and mis-
understandings. In contrast to this, many au-
thors have found a way of conceiving exogamy
as a necessary consequence of the basic views on
totemism. Durkheim ^^ has shown in his writ-
ings how the taboo, which is attached to the
totem, must have entailed the prohibition against
putting a woman of the same totem to sexual
uses. The totem is of the isame blood as the
human being and for this reason the blood bann
(in reference to defloration and menstruation)
forbids sexual intercourse with a woman of the
40"L'annee Sociologique;' 1898-1904.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 199
same totem. ^^ Andrew Lang, who here agrees
with Diirkheim, goes so far as to believe that the
blood taboo was not necessary to bring about the
prohibition in regard to the women of the same
tribe.^^ The general totem taboo which, for in-
stance, forbids any one to sit in the shadow of the
totem tree, would have sufficed. Andrew Lang
also contends for another derivation of exogamy
(see below) and leaves it in doubt how these two
explanations are related to each other.
As regards the temporal relations, the ma-
jority of authors subscribe to the opinion that
totemism is the older institution and that ex-
ogamy came later. ^^
Among the theories which seek to explain
exogamy independently of totemism only a few
need be mentioned in so far as they illustrate
different attitudes of the authors towards the
problem of incest.
MacLennan ^^ had ingeniously guessed that
exogamy resulted from the remnants of customs
pointing to earlier forms of female rape. He
assumed that it was the general custom in an-
41 See Frazer's "Criticism of Durkheim, Totemism and Exog-
amy," p. 101.
42 "Secret," etc., p. 125.
43 See Frazer, 1. c. IV, p. 75 : "The totemie clan is a totally
different social organism from the exogamous class, and we have
good grounds for thinking that it is far older."
44 « Primitive Marriage," 1865.
200 TOTEM AND TABOO
cient times to procure women from strange
tribes so that marriage with a woman from the
same tribe gradually became "improper because
it was unusual." He sought the motive for the
exogamous habit in the scarcity of women among
these tribes, which had resulted from the custom
of killing most female children at birth. We
are not concerned here with investigating
whether actual conditions corroborate MacLen-
nan's assumptions. We are more interested in
the argument that these premises still leave it
unexplained why the male members of the tribe
should have made these few women of their blood
inaccessible to themselves, as well as in the man-
ner in which the incest problem is here entirely
neglected.*^
Other writers have on the contrary assumed,
and evidently with more right, that exogamy is
to be interpreted as an institution for the pre-
vention of incest.^^
If we survey the gradually increasing compli-
cation of Austrahan marriage restrictions we
can hardly help agreeing with the opinion of
Morgan, Frazer, Hewitt and Baldwin Spencer,^"^
that these institutions bear the stamp of "deliber-
ate design," as Frazer puts it, and that they were
45 Frazer, 1. c, p. 73 to 92.
46 Compare Chapter I.
47 Morgan, "Ancient Society," 1877. — Frazer, "Totemism and
Exogamy," IV, p. 105.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 201
meant to do what they have actually accom-
plished. "In no other way does it seem possible
to explain in all its details a system at once so
complex and so regular." *^
It is of interest to point out that the first re-
strictions which the introduction of marriage
classes brought about affected the sexual free-
dom of the younger generation, in other words,
incest between brothers and sisters and between
sons and mothers, while incest between father
and daughter was only abrogated by more
sweeping measures.
However, to trace back exogamous sexual
restrictions to legal intentions does not add any-
thing to the understanding of the motive which
created these institutions. From what source,
in the final analysis, springs the dread of incest
which must be recognized as the root of exogamy?
It evidently does not suffice to appeal to an
instinctive aversion against sexual intercourse
with blood relatives, that is to say, to the fact of
incest dread, in order to explain the dread of
incest, if social experience shows that, in spite of
this instinct, incest is not a rare occurrence even
in our society, and if the experience of history
can acquaint us with cases in which incestuous
marriage of privileged persons was made the
rule.
48 Frazer, 1. c, p. 106.
20S TOTEM AND TABOO
Westermarck ^^ advanced the following to ex-
plain the dread of incest: "that an innate aver-
sion against sexual intercourse exists between
persons who live together from childhood and
that this feeling, since such persons are as a rule
consanguinous, finds a natural expression in
custom and law through the abhorrence of sex-
ual intercourse between those closely related."
Though Havelock Elhs disputed the instinctive
character of this aversion in his "Studies in the
Psychology of Sex," he otherwise supported the
same explanation in its essentials by declaring:
"The normal absence of the manifestation of the
pairing instinct where brothers and sisters or
boys and girls living together from childhood
are concerned, is a purely negative phenomenon
due to the fact that under these circumstances
the antecedent conditions for arousing the
mating instinct must be entirely lacking. . . .
For persons who have grown up together from
childhood habit has dulled the sensual attraction
of seeing, hearing and touching and has led it
into a channel of quiet attachment, robbing
it of its power to call forth the necessary ere-
thistic excitement required to produce sexual
tumescence."
49 "Origin and Development of Moral Conceptions," Vol. II,
"Marriage," 1909. See also there the author's defense against
familiar objections.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 203
It seems to me very remarkable that Wester-
marck looks upon this innate aversion to sexual
intercourse with persons with whom we have
shared childhood as being at the same time a
psychic representative of the biological fact that
inbreeding means injury to the species. Such
a biological instinct would hardly go so far astray
in its psychological manifestation as to af-
fect the companions of home and hearth which
in this respect are quite harmless, instead of the
blood relatives which alone are injurious to
procreation. And I cannot resist citing the
excellent criticism which Frazer opposes to
Westermarck's assertion. Frazer finds it in-
comprehensible that sexual sensibility to-day is
not at all opposed to sexual intercourse with
companions of the hearth and home while the
dread of incest, which is said to be nothing but
an offshoot of this reluctance, has nowadays
grown to be so overpowering. But other re-
marks of Frazer's go deeper and I set them
down here in unabbreviated form because they
are in essential agreement with the arguments
developed in my chapter on taboo.
*'It is not easy to see why any deep human
instinct should need reinforcement through law.
There is no law commanding men to eat and
drink, or forbidding them to put their hands in
the fire. Men eat and drink and keep their
204 TOTEM AND TABOO
hands out of the fire instinctively, for fear of
natural, not legal penalties, which would he en-
tailed by violence done to these instincts. The
law only forbids men to do what their instincts
incline them to do; what nature itself prohibits
and punishes it would be superfluous for the law
to prohibit and punish. Accordingly we may
always safely assume that crimes forbidden by
law are crimes which many men have a natural
propensity to commit. If there were no such
propensity there would be no such crimes, and
if no such crimes were committed, what need to
forbid them? Instead of assuming therefore,
from the legal prohibition of incest, that there is
a natural aversion to incest we ought rather to
assume that there is a natural instinct in favor
of it, and that if the law represses it, it does so
because civilized men have come to the conclu-
sion that the satisfaction of these natural in-
stincts is detrimental to the general interests
of society." ^^
To this valuable argument of Frazer's I can
add that the experiences of psychoanalysis make
the assumption of such an innate aversion to in-
cestuous relations altogether impossible. They
have taught, on the contrary, that the first sexual
impulses of the young are regularly of an incest-
uous nature and that such repressed impulses
50 1. c, p. 97.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 205
play a role which can hardly be overestimated
as the motive power of later nem^oses.
The interpretation of incest dread as an in-
nate instinct must therefore be abandoned. The
same holds true of another derivation of the in-
cest prohibition which counts many supporters,
namely, the assumption that primitive races very
soon observed the dangers with which inbreed-
ing threatened their race and that they therefore
had decreed the incest prohibition with a con-
scious purpose. The objections to this at-
tempted explanation crowd upon each other .^^
Not only must the prohibition of incest be older
than all breeding of domestic animals from which
men could derive experience of the effect of in-
breeding upon the characteristics of the breed,
but the harmful consequences of inbreeding are
not estabUshed beyond all doubt even to-day and
in man they can be shown only with difficulty.
Besides, everything that we know about con-
temporaneous savages makes it very improbable
that the thoughts of their far-removed ancestors
should already have been occupied with pre-
venting injury to their later descendants. It
sounds almost ridiculous to attribute hygienic
and eugenic motives such as have hardly yet
found consideration in our culture, to these
51 Compare Durkheim, "La prohibition de I'inceste." "L'annee
Sociologique,' I, 1896-97,
206 TOTEM AND TABOO
children of the race who lived without thought
of the morrow.^ ^
And finally it must be pointed out that a pro-
hibition against inbreeding as an element weak-
ening to the race, which is imposed from practical
hygienic motives, seems quite inadequate to
explain the deep abhorrence which our society
feels against incest. This dread of incest, as I
have shown elsewhere,^ ^ seems to be even more
active and stronger among primitive races living
to-day than among the civilized.
In inquiring into the origin of incest dread it
could be expected that here also there is the
choice between possible explanations of a socio-
logical, biological, and psychological nature in
which the psychological motives might have to
be considered as representative of biological
forces. Still, in the end, one is compelled to
subscribe to Frazer's resigned statement, namely,
that we do not know the origin of incest dread
and do not even know how to guess at it. None
of the solutions of the riddle thus far advanced
seems satisfactory to us.^^
I must mention another attempt to explain the
62 Charles Darwin says about savages : "They are not likely to
reflect on distant evils to their progeny."
53 See Chapter I.
54 "Thus the ultimate origin of exogamy and with it the law of
incest — since exogamy was devised to prevent incest — remains a
problem nearly as dark as ever." "Totemism and Exogamy," I,
p. 165.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 207
origin of incest dread which is of an entirely-
different nature from those considered up to
now. It might be called a historic explanation.
This attempt is associated with a hypothesis
of Charles Darwin about the primal social state
of man. From the habits of the higher apes
Darwin concluded that man, too, lived originally
in small hordes in which the jealousy of the old-
est and strongest male prevented sexual promis-
cuity. "We may indeed conclude from what we
know of the jealousy of all male quadrupeds,
armed, as many of them are, with special wea-
pons for battling with their rivals, that promis-
cuous intercourse in a state of nature is extremely
improbable. ... If we therefore look back
far enough into the stream of time and judging
from the social habits of man as he now exists,
the most probable view is that he originally lived
in small communities, each with a single wife, or
if powerful with several, whom he jealously de-
fended against all other men. Or he may not
have been a social animal and yet have lived with
several wives, like the gorilla; for all the natives
*'agree that only the adult male is seen in a band;
when the young male grows up a contest takes
place for masterj^ and the strongest, by killing
and driving out the others, establishes himself
as the head of the community (Dr. Savage in
the Boston Journal of Natural History, Vol.
208 TOTEM AND TABOO
V, 1845-47) . The younger males being thus
driven out and wandering about would also, when
at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too
close inbreeding within the limits of the same
family." ^'
Atkinson ^^ seems to have been the first to rec-
ognize that these conditions of the Darwinian
primal horde would in practice bring about the
exogamy of the young men. Each one of those
driven away could found a similar horde in
which, thanks to jealousy of the chief, the same
prohibition as to sexual intercourse obtained, and
in the course of time these conditions would have
brought about the rule which is now knoA\Ti as
law: no sexual intercourse with the members
of the horde. After the advent of totemism the
rule would have changed into a different form:
no sexual intercourse within the totem.
Andrew Lang ^^ declared himself in agree-
ment with this explanation of exogamy. But
in the same book he advocates the other theory of
Durkheim which explains exogamy as a conse-
quence of the totem laws. It is not altogether
easy to combine the two interpretations; in the
first case exogamy would have existed before
55 "The Origin of Man," Vol. II, Chapter 20, pp. 603-604.
56 "Primal Law," London, 1903 (with Andrew Lang, "Social
Origins").
57 "Secret of the Totem, pp. 114, 143.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 209
totemism; in the second case it would be a con-
sequence of it.^^
3
Into this darkness psychoanal}i:ic experience
throws one single ray of light.
The relation of the child to animals has much
in common with that of primitive man. The
child does not yet show any trace of the pride
which afterwards moves the adult civilized man
to set a sharp dividing line between his own
nature and that of all other animals. The child
unhesitatingly attributes full equality to ani-
mals; he probably feels himself more closely
related to the animal than to the undoubtedly
mysterious adult, in the freedom with which he
acknowledges his needs.
58 "If it be granted that exogamy existed in practice, on the
lines of Mr. Darwin's theory, before the totem beliefs lent to the
practice a sacred sanction, our task is relatively easy. The first
practical rule would be that of the jealous sire: "Xo males to
touch the females in my camp," with expulsion of adolescent sons.
In e^.ux of time that rule, become habitual, would be, "No mar-
riages within the local group." Next let the local groups receive
names such as Emus, Crows, Opossums, Snipes, and the rule
becomes, "No marriage within the local group of animal name; no
Snipe to marry a Snipe." But, if the primal groujjs were not
exogamous they would become so as soon as totemic myths and
taboos were developed out of the animal, vegetable, and other
names of small local groups." "Secret of the Totem," p. 143.
(The italics above are mine). — In his last expression on the sub-
ject, ("Folklore," December, 1911) Andrew Lang states, however,
that he has given up the derivation of exogamy out of the "gen-
eral totemic" taboo.
210 TOTEM AND TABOO
Not infrequently a curious disturbance mani-
fests itself in this excellent understanding be-
tween cliild and animal. The child suddenly
begins to fear a certain animal species and to
protect himself against seeing or touching any in-
dividual of this species. There results the clini-
cal picture of an animal 'phohia, which is one of
the most frequent among the psychoneurotic dis-
eases of this age and perhaps the earliest form
of such an ailment. The phobia is as a rule in
regard to animals for which the child has until
then shown the liveliest interest and has nothing
to do with the individual animal. In cities the
choice of animals which can become the object
of phobia is not great. They are horses, dogs,
cats, more seldom birds, and strikingly often
very small animals like bugs and butterflies.
Sometimes animals which are known to the child
only from picture books and fairy stories become
objects of the senseless and inordinate anxiety
which is manifested with these phobias; it is sel-
dom possible to learn the manner in which such
an unusual choice of anxiety has been brought
about. I am indebted to Dr. Karl Abraham
for the report of a case in which the child itself
explained its fear of wasps by saying that the
color and the stripes of the body of the wasp had
made it think of the tiger of which, from all that
it had heard, it might well be afraid,
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 211
The animal phobias have not yet been made
the object of careful analytical investigation,
although they very much merit it. The difficul-
ties of analyzing children of so tender an age
have probably been the motive of such neglect.
It cannot therefore be asserted that the general
meaning of these illnesses is known, and I myself
do not think that it would turn out to be the same
in all cases. But a number of such phobias di-
rected against larger animals have proved acces-
sible to analysis and have thus betrayed their
secret to the investigator. In every case it was
the same: the fear at bottom was of the father,
if the children examined were boys, and was
merely displaced upon the animal.
Every one of any experience in psychoanalysis
has undoubtedly seen such cases and has received
the same impression from them. But I can re-
fer to only a few detailed reports on the subject.
This is an accident of the literature of such cases,
from which the conclusion should not be drawn
that our general assertion is based on merely scat-
tered observation. For instance I mention an
author, M. Wulff of Odessa, who has veiy in-
telligently occupied himself with the neuroses of
childhood. He tells, in relating the history of
an illness, that a nine year old boy suffered from
a dog phobia at the age of four. "When he saw
a dog running by on the street he wept and cried :
212 TOTEM AND TABOO
*Dear dog, doa't touch me, I will be good.' "
By ''being good" he meant "not to play violin
any more" (to practice onanism) .^^^
The same author later sums up as follows:
"His dog phobia is really his fear of the father
displaced upon the dog, for his peculiar expres-
sion : *Dog, I will be good' — that is to say, I will
not masturbate — really refers to the father, who
has forbidden masturbation." He then adds
something in a note which fully agrees with my
experience and at the same time bears witness to
the abundance of such experiences : "such phobias
(of horses, dogs, cats, chickens and other domes-
tic animals) are, I think, at least as prevalent as
pavor nocturnus in childhood, and usually reveal
themselves in the analysis as a displacement of
fear from one of the parents to animals. I am
not prepared to assert that the wide-spread mouse
and rat phobia has the same mechanism."
I reported the "Analysis of the Phobia of a
five-year-old Boy" ^^ which the father of the
little patient had put at my disposal. It was a
fear of horses as a result of which the boy refused
to go on the street. He expressed his apprehen-
sion that the horse would come into the room and
bite him. It proved that this was meant to be
58a M. Wulff, "Contributions to Infantile Sexuality," Zentralbl.
f. Psychoanalyze, 1912, II, Nr. I, p. 15.
69 "Little Hans," translated by A. A. Brill, Moffat, Yard & Co.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 213
the punishment for his wish that the horse should
fall over (die). After assurances had relieved
the boy of his fear of his father, it proved that he
was fighting against wishes whose content was
the absence (departure or death) of the father.
He indicated only too plainly that he felt the
father to be his rival for the favor of the mother,
upon whom his budding sexual wishes were by
dark premonitions directed. He therefore had
the typical attitude of the male child to its par-
ents which we call the "Oedipus complex" in
which we recognize the central complex of the
neuroses in general. Through the analysis of
"Little John" we have learnt a fact which is very
valuable in relation to totemism, namely, that
under such conditions the child displaces a part
of its feelings from the father upon some animal.
Analysis showed the paths of association,
both significant and accidental in content, along
w^hich such a displacement took place. It also
allowed one to guess the motives for the dis-
placement. The hate which resulted from the
rivalry for the mother could not permeate the
boy's psychic life without being inhibited ; he had
to contend with the tenderness and admiration
which he had felt for his father from the begin-
ning, so that the child assumed a double or am-
bivalent emotional attitude towafds the father
and relieved himself of this ambivalent conflict
214 TOTEM AND TABOO
by displacing his hostile and anxious feelings
upon a substitute for the father. The displace-
ment could not, however, relieve the conflict by
bringing about a smooth division between the
tender and the hostile feelings. On the con-
trary, the conflict was continued in reference to
the object to which displacement has been made
and to which also the ambivalence spreads.
There was no doubt that little John had not only
fear, but respect and interest for horses. As
soon as his fear was moderated he identified him-
self with the feared animal; he jumped around
like a horse, and now it was he who bit the
father.^^ In another stage of solution of the
phobia he did not scruple to identify his parents
with other large animals.^ ^
We may venture the impression that certain
traits of totemism return as a negative expres-
sion in these animal phobias of children. But
we are indebted to S. Ferenczi for a beautiful
individual observation of what must be called
a case of positive totemism in the child.^^ It is
true that with the little Arpad, whom Ferenczi
reports, the totemic interests do not awaken in
direct connection with the Oedipus complex, but
on the basis of a narcistic premise, namely, the
60 1. c, p. 41.
61 "The Phantasy of the Giraffe," 1. c, p. 30.
62 S. Ferenczi, "Contributions to Psychoanalysis," p. 204, trans-
lated by Ernest Jones, R. G. Badger, Boston, 1916.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 215
fear of castration. But whoever looks atten-
tively through the history of little John will also
find there abundant proof that the father was
admired as the possessor of large genitals and
was feared as threatening the child's own geni-
tals. In the Oedipus as well as in the castration
complex the father plays the same role of feared
opponent to the infantile sexual interests. Cas-
tration and its substitute through blinding is the
punishment he threatens.^ ^
When little Arpad was two and a half years
old he once tried, w^hile at a summer resort,
to urinate into the chicken coop, and on this
occasion a chicken bit his penis or snapped at
it. When he returned to the same place a year
later he became a chicken himself, was inter-
ested only in the chicken coop and in eveiy-
thing that occurred there, and gave up human
speech for cackling and crowing. During the
period of observation, at the age of five, he spoke
again, but his speech was exclusively about
chickens and other fowl. He played with no
other toy and sang only songs in which there was
something about poultry. His behavior to-
wards his totem animal was subtly ambivalent,
expressing itself in immoderate hating and
63 Compare the communications of Reitler, Ferenczi, Rank and >
Eder about the substitution of blindness in the Oedipus myth for
castration. Intern. Zeitschrift f. arzte. Psychoanalyze, 1913, I,
No. <2.
S16 TOTEM AND TABOO
loving. He loved best to play killing chickens.
"The slaughtering of poultry was quite a festi-
val for him. He could dance around the ani-
mals' bodies for hours at a time in a state of
intense excitement." ^* But then he kissed and
stroked the slaughtered animal, and cleaned and
caressed the chicken effigies which he himself had
ill-used.
Arpad himself saw to it that the meaning of
his curious activit}^ could not remain hidden.
At times he translated his wishes from the to-
temic method of expression back into that of
everyday life. "Now I am small, now I am a
chicken. When I get bigger I shall be a fowl.
When I am bigger still, I shall be a cock." On
another occasion he suddenly expressed the wish
to eat a "potted mother," (by analogy, potted
fowl). He was very free with open threats of
castration against others, just as he himself had
received them on account of onanistic preoccupa-
tion with his penis.
According to Ferenczi there was no doubt as
to the source of his interest in the activities of the
chicken yard: "The continual sexual activity
between cock and hen, the laying of eggs and the
creeping out of the young brood" ^^ satisfied his
sexual curiosity which really was directed to-
wards human family life. His object wishes
64 Ferenczi, 1. c, p. 209. ^5 Ferenczi, 1. c, p. 212.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 217
have been formed on the model of chicken life
when we find him saying to a woman neighbor:
*'I am going to marry you and your sister and
my three cousins and the cook ; no, instead of the
cook I'll marry my mother."
We shall be able to complete our consideration
of these obsei^ations later; at present we will
only point out two traits that show a valuable
correspondence with totemism: the complete
identification with the totem animal,^^ and the
ambivalent affective attitude towards it. In
view of these observations we consider ourselves
justified in substituting the father for the totem
animal in the male's formula of totemism. We
then notice that in doing so we have taken no new
or especially daring step. For primitive men
say it themselves and, as far as the totemic sys-
tem is still in effect to-day, the totem is called
ancestor and primal father. We have only
taken literally an expression of these races
which ethnologists did not know what to do with
and were therefore inclined to put it into the
background. Psychoanalysis warns us, on the
contrary, to emphasize this very point and to
connect it with the attempt to explain totemism.^^
66 Frazer finds that the essence of totemism is in this identifica-
tion: "Totemism is an identification of a man with his totem."
"Totemism and Exogamy," IV, p. 5.
67 I am indebted to Otto Rank for the report of a case of dog
phobia in an intelligent young man whose explanation of how he
218 TOTEM AND TABOO
The first result of our substitution is very
remarkable. If the totem animal is the father,
then the two main commandments of totemism,
the two taboo rules which constitute its nu-
cleus, — not to kill the totem animal and not to
use a woman belonging to the same totem for
sexual purposes, — agree in content with the two
crimes of Oedipus, who slew his father and took
his mother to wife, and also with the child's two
primal wishes whose insufficient repression or
whose re-awakening forms the nucleus of per-
haps all neuroses. If this similarity is more
than a deceptive play of accident it would per-
force make it possible for us to shed light upon
the origin of totemism in prehistoric times. In
other words, we should succeed in making it prob-
able that the totemic system resulted from the
conditions underlying the Oedipus complex, just
as the animal phobia of "little John" and the
poultry perversion of "little Arpad" resulted
from it. In order to trace this possibility we
shall in what follows study a peculiarity of the
totemic system or, as we may say, of the totemic
religion, which until now could hardly be brought
into the discussion.
acquired his ailment sounds remarkably like the totem theory of
the Aruntas mentioned above. He had heard from his father that
his mother at one time during her pregnancy had been frightened
by a dog.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 219
W. Robertson Smith, who died in 1894, was
a physicist, philologist, Bible critic, and archae-
ologist, a many-sided as well as keen and free
thinking man, expressed the assumption in his
work on the "Religion of the Semites," ^^ pub-
lished in 1889, that a peculiar ceremony, the so-
called totein feast, had, from the very beginning,
formed an integral part of the totemic system.
For the support of this supposition he had at
his disposal at that time only a single description
of such an act from the year 500 A. D. ; he knew,
however, how to give a high degree of probability
to his assumption through his analysis of the
nature of sacrifice among the old Semites. As
sacrifice assumes a godlike person we are dealing
here with an inference from a higher phase of
religious rite to its lowest phase in totemism.
I shall now cite from Robertson Smith's ex-
cellent book ^^ those statements about the origin
and meaning of the sacrificial rite which are of
great interest to us; I shall omit the only too
numerous tempting details as well as the parts
dealing with all later developments. In such
an excerpt it is quite impossible to give the
68 "The Religion of the Semites," Second Edition, London, 1907.
69 W. Robertson Smith, "The Religion of the Semites," 2d Edi-
tion, London, 1907.
220 TOTEM AND TABOO
reader any sense of the lucidity or of the argu-
mentative force of the original.
Robertson Smith shows that sacrifice at the
altar was the essential part of the rite of old
religions. It plays the same role in all religions,
so that its origin must be traced back to very
general causes whose effects were everywhere the
same.
But the sacrifice — the holy action KaA^oyr)
(sacrificium lepovpyta) — originally meant some-
thing different from what later times understood
by it : the offering to the deity in order to recon-
cile him or to incline him to be favorable. The
profane use of the word was afterwards derived
from the secondary sense of self-denial. As is
demonstrated the first sacrifice was nothing else
than "an act of social fellowship between the
deity and his worshipers."
Things to eat and drink were brought as sacri-
fice; man offered to his god the same things on
which he himself lived, flesh, cereals, fruits, wine
and oil. Only in regard to the sacrificial flesh
did there exist restrictions and exceptions. The
god partakes of the animal sacrifices with his
worshipers while the vegetable sacrifices are left
to him alone. There is no doubt that animal
sacrifices are older and at one time were the only
forms of sacrifice. The vegetable sacrifices re-
sulted from the offering of the first-fruits and
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 221
correspond to a tribute to the lord of the soil and
the land. But animal sacrifice is older than
agriculture.
Linguistic survivals make it certain that the
part of the sacrifice destined for the god was
looked upon as his real food. This conception
became offensive with the progressive dema-
terialization of the deity, and was avoided by
offering the deity only the hquid part of the
meal. Later the use of fire, which made the
sacrificial flesh ascend in smoke from the altar,
made it possible to prepare human food in such
a way that it was more suitable for the deity.
The drink sacrifice was originally the blood of
the sacrificed animals; wine was used later as a
substitute for the blood. Primitive man looked
upon wine as the "blood of the grape," as our
poets still call it.
The oldest form of sacrifice, older than the use
of fire and the knowledge of agriculture, was
therefore the sacrifice of animals, whose flesh and
blood the god and his worshipers ate together.
It was essential that both participants should
receive their share of the meal.
Such a sacrifice was a public ceremony, the
celebration of a whole clan. As a matter of fact
all religion was a public affair, religious duty
was a part of the social obligation. Sacrifice
and festival go together among all races, each
222 TOTEM AND TABOO
sacrifice entails a holiday and no holiday can be
celebrated without a sacrifice. The sacrificial
festival was an occasion for joyously transcend-
ing one's own interests and emphasizing social
community and community with god.
The ethical power of the public sacrificial
feast was based upon primal conceptions of the
meaning of eating and drinking in common. To
eat and drink with some one was at the same time
a symbol and a confirmation of social community
and of the assumption of mutual obligations;
the sacrificial eating gave direct expression to
the fact that the god and his worshipers are
conmiunicants, thus confirming all their other
relations. Customs that to-day still are in force
among the Arabs of the desert prove that the
binding force resulting from the common meal
is not a religious factor but that the subsequent
mutual obligations are due to the act of eating
itself. Whoever has shared the smallest bite
with such a Beduin, or has taken a swallow of
his milk, need not fear him any longer as an
enemy, but may be sure of his protection and
help. Not indeed, forever, strictly speaking this
lasts only while it may be assumed that the food
partaken remains in the body. So realistically is
the bond of union conceived; it requires repeti-
tion to strengthen it and make it endure.
' But why is this binding power ascribed to
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 223
eating and drinking in common? In the most
primitive societies there is only one unconditional
and never failing bond, that of kinship. The
members of a community stand by each other
jointly and severally, a kin is a group of persons
whose life is so bound into a physical unity that
they can be considered as parts of a common
life. In case of the murder of one of this kin
they therefore do not say: the blood of so and
so has been spilt, but our blood has been spilt.
The Hebraic phrase by which the tribal relation
is acknowledged is: "Thou art my bone and
my flesh." Kinship therefore signifies having
part in a general substance. It is natural then
that it is based not only upon the fact that we
are a part of the substance of our mother who
has borne us, and whose milk nourished us, but
also that the food eaten later through which the
body is renewed, can acquire and strengthen
kinship. If one shared a meal with one's god
the conviction was thus expressed that one was
of the same substance as he, no meal was there-
fore partaken with any one recognized as a
stranger.
The sacrificial repast was therefore originally
a feast of the kin, following the rule that only
those of kin could eat together. In our society
the meal unites the members of the family; but
the sacrificial repast has nothing to do with the
224 TOTEM AND TABOO
family. Kinship is older than family life; the
oldest families known to us regularly comprised
persons who belonged to various bonds of kin-
ship. The men married women of strange clans
and the children inherited the clan of the mother ;
there was no kinship between the man and the
rest of the members of the family. In such a
family there was no common meal. Even to-
day savages eat apart and alone, and the relig-
ious prohibitions of totemism as to eating often
make it impossible for them to eat with their
wives and children.
Let us now turn to the sacrificial animal.
There was, as we have heard, no meeting of the
kin without animal sacrifice, but, and this is sig-
nificant, no animal was slaughtered except for
such a solemn occasion. Without any hesita-
tion the people ate fruits, game and the milk of
domestic animals, but religious scruples made it
impossible for the individual to kill a domestic
animal for his own use. There is not the least
doubt, says Robertson Smith, that eveiy sacri-
fice was originalh^ a clan sacrifice, and that the
killing of a sacrificial animal originalh^ belonged
to those acts which were forbidden to the indi-
vidual and were only justified if the whole kin
assumed the responsibility. Primitive men had
only one class of actions which were thus charac-
terized, namely, actions which touched the holi-
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 225
ness of the kin's common blood. A life which no
individual might take and which could be sacri-
ficed only through the consent and participation
of all the members of the clan was on the same
plane as the life of a member of the kin. The
rule that every guest of the sacrificial repast
must partake of the flesh of the sacrificial animal,
had the same meaning as the rule that the execu-
tion of a guilty member of the kin must be
performed by the whole kin. In other words:
the sacrificial animal was treated like one of kin;
the sacrificing community, its god, and the sacri-
ficial animal were of the same blood, and the
members of a clan.
On the basis of much evidence Robertson
Smith identifies the sacrificial animal with the
old totem animal. In a later age there were
two kinds of sacrifices, those of domestic animals
which usually were also eaten, and the unusual
sacrifice of animals which were forbidden as
being unclean. Further investigation then
shows that these unclean animals were holy and
that they were sacrificed to the gods to whom
they were holy, that these animals were origin-
ally identified with the gods themselves and that
at the sacrifice the worshipers in some way em-
phasized their blood relationship to the god and
to the animal. But this difference between usual
and "mystic" sacrifices does not hold good for
226 TOTEM AND TABOO
still earlier times. Originally all animals were
holy, their meat was forbidden and might be
eaten only on solemn occasions, with the partici-
pation of the whole kin. The slaughter of the
animal amounted to the spilling of the kin's
blood and had to be done with the same precau-
tions and assurances against reproach.
The taming of domestic animals and the rise
of cattle-breeding seems everywhere to have put
an end to the pure and rigorous totemism of
earliest times.^^ But such holiness as still clung
to domestic animals in what was now a "pas-
toral" religion, is sufficiently distinct for us
to recognize its totemic character. Even in late
classical times the rite in several localities pre-
scribed flight for the sacrificer after the sacrifice,
as if to escape revenge. In Greece the idea must
once have been general that the killing of an ox
was really a crime. At the Athenian festival
of the Bouphonia a formal trial to which all the
participants were summoned, was instituted after
the sacrifice. Finally it was agreed to put the
blame for the murder upon the knife, which was
then cast into the sea.
In spite of the dread which protects the life
of the animal as being of kin, it became necessary
70 "The inference is that the domestication to which totemism
leads (when there are any animals capable of domestication) is
fatal to totemism." Jevons, "An Introduction to the History of
Religion," 1911, fifth edition, p. 120.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 227
to kill it from time to time in solemn conclave,
and to divide its flesh and blood among the mem-
bers of the clan. The motive which commands
this act reveals the deepest meaning of the es-
sence of sacrifice. We have heard that in later
times every eating in common, the participation
in the same substance which entered into their
bodies, established a holy bond between the com-
municants; in oldest times this meaning seemed
to be attached only to participation in the sub-
stance of a holy sacrifice. The holy mystery of
the sacrificial death was justified in that only in
this way coidd the holy bond he established which
united the participants with each other and with
their godJ^
This bond was nothing else than the life of the
sacrificial animal which lived on its flesh and
blood and was shared by all the participants by
means of the sacrificial feast. Such an idea was
the basis of all the blood bonds through which
men in still later times became pledged to each
other. The thoroughly realistic conception of
consanguinity as an identity of substance makes
comprehensible the necessity of renewing it from
time to time through the physical process of the
sacrificial repast.
We will now stop quoting from Robertson
Smith's train of thought in order to give a
71 1. c, p. 313.
228 TOTEM AND TABOO
condensed summary of what is essential in it.
When the idea of private property came into
existence sacrifice was conceived as a gift to the
deity, as a transfer from the property of man
to that of the god. But this interpretation left
all the peculiarities of the sacrificial ritual unex-
plained. In oldest times the sacrificial animal
itself had been holy and its life inviolate ; it could
be taken only in the presence of the god, with the
whole tribe taking part and sharing the guilt in
order to furnish the holy substance through the
eating of which the members of the clan assured
themselves of their material identity with each
other and with the deity. The sacrifice was a
sacrament, and the sacrificial animal itself was
one of the kin. In reality it was the old totem
animal, the primitive god himself through the
slaying and eating of whom the members of the
clan revived and assured their similarity with the
god.
From this analysis of the nature of sacrifice
Robertson Smith drew the conclusion that the
periodic killing and eating of the totem before
the period when the anthropomorphic deities
were venerated was an important part of totem
religion. The ceremonial of such a totem feast
was preserved for us, he thought, in the de-
scription of a sacrifice in later times. Saint
Nilus tells of a sacrificial custom of the Beduins
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 229
in the desert of Sinai towards the end of the
fourth century A. D. The victim, a camel, was
bound and laid upon a rough altar of stones ; the
leader of the tribe made the participants walk
three times around the altar to the accompani-
ment of song, inflicted the first wound upon the
animal and greedily drank the spurting blood;
then the whole community threw itself upon the
sacrifice, cut off pieces of the palpitating flesh
with their swords and ate them raw in such haste
that in a short interval between the rise of the
morning star, for whom this sacrifice was meant,
and its fading before the rays of the sun, the
whole sacrificial, animal, flesh, skin, bones, and
entrails, were devoured. According to every
testimony this barbarous rite, which speaks of
great antiquity, was not a rare custom but the
general original form of the totem sacrifice,
which in later times underwent the most varied
modifications.
Many authors have refused to grant any
weight to this conception of the totem feast be-
cause it could not be strengthened by direct ob-
servation at the stage of totemism. Robertson
Smith himself has referred to examples in which
the sacramental meaning of sacrifices seems cer-
tain, such as the human sacrifices of the Aztecs
and others which recall the conditions of the
totem feast, the bear sacrifices of the bear tribe
2S0 TOTEM AND TABOO
of the Ouataouaks in America, and the bear fes-
tival of the Ainus in Japan. Frazer has given
a full account of these and similar cases in the
two divisions of his great work that have last
appeared/^ An Indian tribe in California
which reveres the buzzard, a large bird of prey,
kills it once a year with solemn ceremony, where-
upon the bird is mourned and its skin and feath-
ers preserved. The Zuni Indians in New
Mexico do the same thing with their holy turtle.
In the Intichiuma ceremonies of Central Aus-
tralian tribes a trait has been observed which fits
in excellently with the assumptions of Robertson
Smith. Every tribe that practices magic for
the increase of its totem, which it cannot eat
itself, is bound to eat a part of its totem at the
ceremony before it can be touched by the other
tribes. According to Frazer the best example
of the sacramental consumption of the otherwise
forbidden totem is to be found among the Bini
in West Africa, in connection with the burial
ceremony of this tribe."^^
But we shall follow Robertson Smith in the
assumption that the sacramental killing and the
common consumption of the otherwise forbidden
72 "The Golden Bough," Part V, "Spirits of the Corn and of the
Wild," 1912, in the chapters: "Eating the God and Killing the
Divine Animal."
73 Frazer, "Totem and Exogamy," Vol. II, p. 590.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 231
totem animal was an important trait of the totem
religion J ^
Let us now envisage the scene of such a totem
meal and let us embellish it further with a few
probable features which could not be adequately
considered before. Thus we have the clan,
which on a solemn occasion kills its totem in a
cruel manner and eats it raw, blood, flesh, and
bones. At the same time the members of the
clan, disguised in imitation of the totem, mimic
it in sound and movement as if they wanted to
emphasize their common identity. There is also
the conscious realization that an action is being
carried out which is forbidden to each individual
and which can only be justified through the par-
ticipation of all, so that no one is allowed to ex-
clude himself from the killing and the feast.
After the act is accomplished the murdered ani-
mal is bewailed and lamented. The death la-
mentation is compulsive, being enforced by the
fear of a threatening retribution, and its main
purpose is, as Robertson Smith remarks on an
analogous occasion, to exculpate oneself from
responsibility for the slaying.^ ^
74 I am not ignorant of the objections to this theory of sacrifice
as expressed by Marillier, Hubert, Mauss and others, but they
have not essentially impaired the theories of Robertson Smith.
75 "Religion of the Semites," 2nd Edition, 190T, p. 412.
232 TOTEM AND TABOO
But after this mourning there follows loud
festival gaiety accompanied by the unchaining
of every impulse and the permission of every
gratification. Here we find an easy insight into
the nature of the holiday,
A holiday is a permitted, or rather a prescribed
excess, a solemn violation of a prohibition. Peo-
ple do not commit the excesses which at all times
have characterized holidays, as a result of an or-
der to be in a holiday mood, but because in the
very nature of a holiday there is excess ; the holi-
day mood is brought about by the release of what
is otherwise forbidden.
But what has mourning over the death of the
totem animal to do with the introduction of this
holiday spirit? If men are happy over the slay-
ing of the totem, which is otherwise forbidden
to them, why do they also mourn it?
We have heard that members of a clan become
holy through the consumption of the totem and
thereby also strengthen their identification with
it and with each other. The fact that they have
absorbed the holy life with which the substance
of the totem is charged may explain the holiday
mood and everything that results from it.
Psychoanalysis has revealed to us that the
totem animal is really a substitute for the father,
and this really explains the contradiction that it
is usually forbidden to kill the totem animal, that
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 233
the killing of it results in a holiday and that the
animal is killed and yet mourned. The ambiva-
lent emotional attitude which to-day still marks
the father complex in our children and so often
continues into adult life also extended to the
father substitute of the totem animal.
But if we associate the translation of the totem
as given by psychoanalysis, with the totem feast
and the Darwinian hypothesis about the primal
state of human society, a deeper understanding
becomes possible and a hypothesis is offered
which may seem phantastic but which has the
advantage of establishing an unexpected unity
among a series of hitherto separated phenomena.
The Darwinian conception of the primal horde
does not, of course, allow for the beginnings of
totemism. There is only a violent, jealous
father who keeps all the females for himself and
drives away the growing sons. This primal
state of society has nowhere been observed. The
most primitive organization we know, which to-
day is still in force with certain tribes, is associa-
tions of men consisting of members with equal
rights, subject to the restrictions of the totemic
system, and founded on matriarchy, or descent
through the motherJ^ Can the one have re-
76 For a recent contribution compare, "The Whole House of The
Chilkat," by G. T. Emmons, American Museum Journal, Vol.
XVI, No. 7. (Translator.)
2S4 TOTEM AND TABOO
suited from the other, and how was this possible?
By basing our argument upon the celebration
of the totem we are in a j)osition to give an
answer: One day " the expelled brothers joined
forces, slew and ate the father, and thus put an
end to the father horde. Together the}^ dared
and accomplished what would have remained
impossible for them singly. Perhaps some ad-
vance in culture, like the use of a new weapon,
had given them the feeling of superiority. Of
course these cannibalistic savages ate their vic-
tim. This violent primal father had surely been
the envied and feared model for each of the
brothers. Xow they accomplished their identi-
fication with him by devouring him and each
acquired a part of his strength. The totem
feast, which is perhaps mankind's first celebra-
tion, would be the repetition and commemoration
of this memorable, criminal act with which so
many things began, social organization, moral
restrictions and religion.*^ ^
77 The reader will avoid the erroneous impression which this ex-
position may call forth by taking into consideration the conclud-
ing sentence of the subsequent chapter.
78 The seemingly monstrous assumption that the tyrannical
father was overcome and slain by a combination of the expelled
sons has also been accepted by Atkinson as a direct result of
the conditions of the Darwinian primal horde. "A youthful band
of brothers living together in forced celibacy, or at most in poly-
androus relation with some single female captive. A horde as yet
weak in their impubescence they are, but they would, when
strength was gained with time, inevitably wrench by combined
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 235
In order to find these results acceptable, quite
aside from our supposition, we need only assume
that the group of brothers banded together were
dominated by the same contradictory feelings
towards the father which we can demonstrate as
the content of ambivalence of the father complex
in all our children and in neurotics. They hated
the father who stood so powerfully in the way
of their sexual demands and their desire for
power, but they also loved and admired him.
attacks renewed again and again, both wife and life from the
paternal tyrant" ("Primal Law," pp. 920—221). Atkinson, who
spent his life in New Caledonia and had unusual opportunities to
study the natives, also refers to the fact that the conditions of
the primal horde which Darwin assumes can easily be observed
among herds of wild cattle and horses and regularly lead to the
killing of the father animal. He then assumes further that a
disintegration of the horde took place after the removal of the
father through embittered fighting among the victorious sons,
which thus precluded the origin of a new organization of society:
"An ever recurring violent succession to the solitary paternal
tyrant by sons, whose parricidal hands were so soon again
clenched in fratricidal strife" (p. 228). Atkinson, who did not
have the suggestions of psychoanalysis at his command and did
not know the studies of Robertson Smith, finds a less violent
transition from the primal horde to the next social stage in which
many men live together in peaceful accord. He attributes it to
maternal love that at first only the youngest sons and later others
too remain in the horde, who in return for this toleration ac-
knowledge the sexual prerogative of the father by the restraint
which they practice towards the mother and towards their sisters.
So much for the very remarkable theory of Atkinson, its essen-
tial correspondence with the theory here expounded, and its point
of departure which makes it necessary to relinquish so much else.
I must ascribe the indefiniteness, the disregard of time interval,
and the crowding of the material in the above exposition to a re-
straint which the nature of the subject demands. It would be
just as meaningless to strive for exactness in this material as it
would be unfair to demand certainty here.
236 TOTEM AND TABOO
After they had satisfied their hate by his removal
and had carried out their wish for identification
with him, the suppressed tender impulses had to
assert themselves.'^ This took place in the form
of remorse, a sense of guilt was formed which
coincided here with the remorse generally felt.
The dead now became stronger than the living
had been, even as we observe it to-day in the
destinies of men. What the father's presence
had formerly prevented they themselves now
prohibited in the psychic situation of "subsequent
obedience" which we know so well from psycho-
analysis. They undid their deed by declaring
that the killing of the father substitute, the
totem, was not allowed, and renounced the fruits
of their deed by denying themselves the liberated
women. Thus they created the two funda-
mental taboos of totemism out of the sense of
guilt of the son, and for this very reason these
had to correspond with the two repressed wishes
of the Oedipus complex. Whoever disobeyed
became guilty of the two only crimes which
troubled primitive society .^^
79 This new emotional attitude must also have been responsible
for the fact that the deed could not brinj? full satisfaction to any
of the perpetrators. In a certain sense it had been in vain. For
none of the sons could carry out his original wish of taking the
place of the father. But failure is, as we know, much more favor-
able to moral reaction than success.
80 "Murder and incest, or offences of like kind against the
sacred law of blood are in primitive society the only crimes of
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 237
The two taboos of totemism with which the
morahty of man begins are psychologically not
of equal value. One of them, the sparing of the
totem animal, rests entirely upon emotional mo-
tives; the father had been removed and nothing
in reality could make up for this. But the other,
the incest prohibition, had, besides, a strong prac-
tical foundation. Sexual need does not unite
men, it separates them. Though the brothers
had joined forces in order to overcome the father,
each was the other's rival among the women.
Each one wanted to have them all to himself like
the father, and in the fight of each against the
other the new organization would have perished.
For there was no longer any one stronger than
all the rest who could have successfully assumed
the role of the father. Thus there was nothing
left for the brothers, if they w^anted to live
together, but to erect the incest prohibition — per-
haps after many difficult experiences — through
which they all equally renounced the women
whom they desired, and on account of whom they
had removed the father in the first place. Thus
they saved the organization which had made them
strong and which could be based upon the homo-
sexual feelings and activities which probably
manifested themselves among them during the
which the community as such takes cognizance . . ." "Religion of
the Semites;' p. 419.
238 TOTEM AND TABOO
time of their banishment. Perhaps this situa-
tion also formed the germ of the institution of
the mother right discovered by Bachofen, which
was then abrogated by the patriarchal family ar-
rangement.
On the other hand the claim of totemism to be
considered the first attempt at a religion is con-
nected with the other taboo which protects the
life of the totem animal. The feelings of the
sons found a natural and appropriate substitute
for the father in the animal, but their compul-
sory treatment of it expressed more than the
need of showing remorse. The surrogate for
the father was perhaps used in the attempt to
assuage the burning sense of guilt, and to bring
about a kind of reconciliation with the father.
The totemic system was a kind of agreement
with the father in which the latter granted every-
thing that the child's phantasy could expect from
him, protection, care, and forbearance, in return
for which the pledge was given to honor his life,
that is to say, not to repeat the act against the
totem through which the real father had per-
ished. Totemism also contained an attempt at
justification. "If the father had treated us like
the totem we should never have been tempted
to kill him." Thus totemism helped to gloss
over the real state of affairs and to make one
forget the event to which it owed its origin.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 239
In this connection some features were formed
which henceforth determined the character of
every rehgion. The totem rehgion had issued
from the sense of guilt of the sons as an attempt
to palhate this feeling and to conciliate the in-
jured father through subsequent obedience. All
later religions prove to be attempts to solve the
same problem, varying only in accordance with
the stage of culture in which they are attempted
and according to the paths which they take ; they
are all, however, reactions aiming at the same
great event with which culture began and which
ever since has not let mankind come to rest.
There is still another characteristic faithfully
preserved in religion which already appeared in
totemism at this time. The ambivalent strain
was probably too great to be adjusted by any
arrangement, or else the psychological conditions
are entirely unfavorable to any kind of settle-
ment of these contradictory feelings. It is cer-
tainly noticeable that the ambivalence attached
to the father complex also continues in totemism
and in religions in general. The religion of
totemism included not only manifestations of
remorse and attempts at reconciliation, but also
serves to commemorate the triumph over the fa-
ther. The gratification obtained thereby creates
the commemorative celebration of the totem feast
at which the restrictions of subsequent obedience
240 TOTEM AND TABOO
are susj)ended, and makes it a duty to repeat the
crime of parricide through the sacrifice of the
totem animal as often as the benefits of this deed,
namely, the appropriation of the father's prop-
erties, threaten to disappear as a result of the
changed influences of life. We shall not be sur-
prised to find that a part of the son's defiance
also reappears, often in the most remarkable dis-
guises and inversions, in the formation of later
religions.
If thus far we have followed, in religion and
moral precepts — but little differentiated in to-
temism — the consequences of the tender impulses
towards the father as they are changed into re-
morse, we must not overlook the fact that for the
most part the tendencies which have impelled
to parricide have retained the victory. The so-
cial and fraternal feelings on which this great
change is based, henceforth for long periods
exercises the greatest influence upon the devel-
opment of society. They find expression in the
sanctification of the common blood and in the em-
phasis upon the solidarity of life within the clan.
In thus ensuring each other's lives the brothers
express the fact that no one of them is to be
treated by the other as they all treated the father.
They preclude a repetition of the fate of
the father. The socially established prohibition
against fratricide is now added to the prohibition
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 241
against killing the totem, which is based on re-
ligious grounds. It will still be a long time
before the commandment discards the restriction
to members of the tribe and assumes the simple
phraseology: Thou shalt not kill. At first the
brother clan has taken the place of the father
horde and was guaranteed by the blood bond.
Society is now based on complicity in the common
crime, religion on the sense of guilt and the con-
sequent remorse, while morality is based partly
on the necessities of society and partly on the
expiation which this sense of guilt demands.
Thus psychoanalysis, contrary to the newer
conceptions of the totemic system and more in
accord with older conceptions, bids us argue for
an intimate connection between totemism and
exogamy as well as for their simultaneous origin.
6
T am under the influence of many strong
motives which restrain me from the attempt to
discuss the further development of religions from
their beginning in totemism up to their present
state. I shall follow out only two threads as I
see them appearing in the weft with especial
distinctness: the motive of the totem sacrifice
and the relation of the son to the father.^^
81 Compare "Transformations and Symbols of the Libido," by
C. G. Jung, in which some dissenting points of view are repre-
sented.
242 TOTEM AND TABOO
Robertson Smith has shown us that the old
totem feast returns in the original form of sac-
rifice. The meaning of the rite is the same:
sanctification through participation in the com-
mon meal. The sense of guilt, which can only
be allayed through the solidarity of all the par-
ticipants, has also been retained. In addition
to this there is the tribal deity in whose supposed
presence the sacrifice takes place, who takes part
in the meal like a member of the tribe, and with
whom identification is effected by the act of eat-
ing the sacrifice. How does the god come into
this situation which originally was foreign to
him?
The answer might be that the idea of god had
meanwhile appeared, — no one knows whence —
and had dominated the whole religious life, and
that the totem feast, like ever}i:hing else that
wished to survive, had been forced to fit itself
into the new system. However, psychoanalytic
investigation of the individual teaches with es-
pecial emphasis that god is in every case modeled
after the father and that our personal relation
to god is dependent upon our relation to our
physical father, fluctuating and changing with
him, and that god at bottom is nothing but an
exalted father. Here also, as in the case of
totemism, psychoanalysis advises us to believe
the faithful, who call god father just as they
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 243
called the totem their ancestor. If psychoanaly-
sis deserves any consideration at all, then the
share of the father in the idea of a god must be
very important, quite aside from all the other
origins and meanings of god upon which psycho-
analysis can throw no light. But then the father
would be represented twice in primitive sacrifice,
first as god, and secondly as the totem-animal-
sacrifice, and we must ask, with all due regard
for the limited number of solutions which psy-
choanalysis offers, whether this is possible and
what the meaning of it may be.
We know that there are a number of relations
of the god to the holy animal (the totem and the
sacrificial animal) : 1. Usually one animal is
sacred to every god, sometimes even several ani-
mals. 2. In certain, especially holy, sacrifices,
the so-called "mystical" sacrifices, the very ani-
mal which had been sanctified through the god
was sacrificed to him.^^ 3. The god was often
revered in the form of an animal, or from another
point of view, animals enjoyed a godlike rever-
ence long after the period of totemism. 4. In
myths the god is frequently transformed into an
animal, often into the animal that is sacred to
him. From this the assumption was obvious
that the god himself was the animal, and that he
had evolved from the totem animal at a later
82 Robertson Smith, "Religion of the Semites."
244 TOTEM AND TABOO
stage of religious feeling. But the reflection
that the totem itself is nothing but a gubstitute
for the father relieves us of all further discussion.
Thus the totem may have been the first form of
the father substitute and the god a later one in
which the father regained his human form. Such
a new creation from the root of all religious evo-
lution, namely, the longing for the father, might
become possible if in the course of time an essen-
tial change had taken place in the relation to the
father and perhaps also to the animal.
Such changes are easily divined even if we dis-
regard the beginning of a psychic estrangement
from the animal as well as the disintegration of
totemism through animal domestication.^^ The
situation created by the removal of the father
contained an element which in the course of time
must have brought about an extraordinary in-
crease of longing for the father. For the broth-
ers who had joined forces to kill the father had
each been animated by the wish to become like
the father and had given expression to this wish
by incorporating parts of the substitute for him
in the totem feast. In consequence of the pres-
sure which the bonds of the brother clan exer-
cised upon each member, this wish had to remain
unfulfilled. No one could or was allowed to at-
tain the father's perfection of power, which was
83 See above, p. 127.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 245
the thing they had all sought. Thus the bitter
feeling against the father which had incited to
the deed could subside in the course of time, while
the longing for him gi^ew, and an ideal could
arise having as a content the fullness of power
and the freedom from restriction of the con-
quered primal father, as well as the willingness
to subject themselves to him. The original
democratic equality of each member of the tribe
could no longer be retained on account of the
interference of cultural changes; in consequence
of which there arose a tendency to revive the old
father ideal in the creation of gods through the
veneration of those individuals who had dis-
tinguished themselves above the rest. That a
man should become a god and that a god should
die, which to-day seems to us an outrageous pre-
sumption, was still by no means offensive to the
conceptions of classical antiquity.^* But the
deification of the murdered father from whom
the tribe now derived its origin, was a much more
serious attempt at expiation than the former
covenant with the totem.
84 "To US moderns, for whom the breach which divides the
human and divine has deepened into an impassable gulf, such
mimicry may appear impious, but it was otherwise with the
ancients. To their thinking gods and men were akin, for many
families traced their descent from a divinity, and the deification
of a man probably seemed as little extraordinary to them as the
canonization of a saint seems to a modern Catholic." Frazer,
"The Golden Bough," I; "The Magic Art and the Evolution of
Kings," II, p. 177.
246 TOTEM AND TABOO
In this evolution I am at a loss to indicate the
place of the gi^eat maternal deities who perhaps
everywhere preceded the paternal deities. But
it seems certain that the change in the relation to
the father was not restricted to religion but logi-
cally extended to the other side of human life
influenced by the removal of the father, namely,
the social organization. With the institution of
paternal deities the fatherless society gradually
changed into a patriarchal one. The family was
a reconstruction of the former primal horde and
also restored a great part of their former rights
to the fathers. Now there were patriarchs again
but the social achievements of the brother clan
had not been given up and the actual difference
between the new family patriarchs and the un-
restricted primal father was great enough to in-
sure the continuation of the religious need, the
preservation of the unsatisfied longing for the
father.
The father therefore really appears twice in
the scene of sacrifice before the tribal god, once
as the god and again as the totem-sacrificial-ani-
mal. But in attempting to understand this sit-
uation we must beware of interpretations which
superficially seek to translate it as an allegory,
and which forget the historical stages in the pro-
cess. The twofold presence of the father corre-
sponds to the two successive meanings of the
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 247
scene. The ambivalent attitude towards the
father as well as the victory of the son's tender
emotional feelings over his hostile ones, have
here found plastic expression. The scene of
vanquishing the father, his greatest degradation,
furnishes here the material to represent his high-
est triumph. The meaning which sacrifice has
quite generally acquired is found in the fact that
in the very same action which continues the mem-
ory of this misdeed it offers satisfaction to the
father for the ignominy put upon him.
In the further development the animal loses its
sacredness and the sacrifice its relation to the
celebration of the totem; the rite becomes a sim-
ple offering to the deity, a self-deprivation in
favor of the god. God himself is now so exalted
above man that he can be communicated with
only through a priest as intermediary. At the
same time the social order produces godlike kings
who transfer the patriarchal system to the state.
It must be said that the revenge of the deposed
and reinstated father has been very cruel ; it cul-
minated in the dominance of authority. The
subjugated sons have used the new relation to
disburden themselves still more of their sense
of guilt. Sacrifice, as it is now constituted, is
entirely beyond their responsibility. God him-
self has demanded and ordained it. Myths in
which the god himself kills the animal that is
248 TOTEM AND TABOO
sacred to him, which he himself really is, belong
to this phase. This is the greatest possible de-
nial of the great misdeed with which society and
the sense of guilt began. There is an unmis-
takable second meaning in this sacrificial demon-
stration. It expresses satisfaction at the fact
that the earlier father substitute has been aban-
doned in favor of the higher conception of god.
The superficial allegorical translation of the
scene here roughly corresponds with its psycho-
analytic interpretation by saying that the god
is represented as overcoming the animal part of
his nature.^^
But it would be erroneous to believe that in
this period of renewed patriarchal authority the
hostile impulses which belong to the father com-
plex had entirely subsided. On the contrary,
the first phases in the domination of the two new
substitutive formations for the father, those of
gods and kings, plainly show the most ener-
getic expression of that ambivalence which is
characteristic of religion.
85 It is known that the overcoming of one generation of gods by
another in mythology represents the historical process of the sub-
stitution of one religious system by another, either as the result
of conquest by a strange race or by means of a psychological
development. In the latter case the myth approaches the
"functional phenomena" in H. Silberer's sense. That the god
who kills the animal is a symbol of the libido, as asserted by
C. G. Jung (1. c), presupposes a different conception of the
libido from that hitherto held, and at any rate seems to me
questionable.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 249
In his great work, "The Golden Bough,"
Frazer has expressed the conjecture that the first
kings of the Latin tribes were strangers who
played the part of a deity and were solemnly
sacrificed in this role on specified holidays. The
yearly sacrifice (self-sacrifice is a variant) of a
god seems to have been an important feature of
Semitic religions. The ceremony of human sac-
rifice in various, parts of the inhabited world
makes it certain that these human beings ended
their lives as representatives of the deity. This
sacrificial custom can still be traced in later times
in the substitution of an inanimate imitation
(doll) for the living person. The theanthropic
god sacrifice into which unfortunately I cannot
enter with the same thoroughness with which the
animal sacrifice has been treated throws the clear-
est light upon the meaning of the older forms of
sacrifice. It acknowledges with unsurpassable
candor that the object of the sacrificial action has
always been the same, being identical with what
is now revered as a god, namely with the father.
The question as to the relation of animal to
human sacrifice can now be easily solved. The
original animal sacrifice was already a substitute
for a human sacrifice, for the solemn killing of the
father, and when the father substitute regained
its human form, the animal substitute could
also be retransformed into a human sacrifice.
250 TOTEM AND TABOO
Thus the memory of that first great act of
sacrifice had proved to be indestructible despite
all attempts to forget it, and just at the moment
when men strove to get as far away as possible
from its motives, the undistorted repetition of it
had to appear in the form of the god sacrifice.
I need not fully indicate here the develoj^ments
of religious thought which made this return pos-
sible in the form of rationalizations. Robertson
Smith who is, of course, far removed from the
idea of tracing sacrifice back to this great event
of man's primal history, says that the ceremony
of the festivals in which the old Semites cele-
brated the death of a deity were interpreted as
a "commemoration of a mythical tragedy" and
that the attendant lament was not characterized
by spontaneous sympathy, but displayed a com-
pulsive character, something that was imposed
by the fear of a divine wrath.^*^ We are in a
position to acknowledge that this interpretation
was correct, the feelings of the celebrants being
well explained by the basic situation.
We may now accept it as a fact that in the
86 "Religion of the Semites," pp. 412-413. "The mourning is
not a spontaneous expression of sympathy with the divine tragedy,
but obligatory and enforced by fear of supernatural anger. And
a chief object of the mourners is to disclaim responsibility for the
god's death — a point which has already come before us in con-
nection with theanthropic sacrifices, such as the *ox-murder at
Athens.' "
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 251
further development of religions these two in-
citing factors, the son's sense of guilt and his
defiance, were never again extinguished. Every
attempted solution of the religious problem and
every kind of reconciliation of the two opposing
psychic forces gradually falls to the ground,
probably under the combined influence of cul-
tural changes, historical events, and inner psj^chic
transformations.
The endeavor of the son to put himself in
place of the father god, appeared with greater
and greater distinctness. With the introduction
of agriculture the importance of the son in the
patriarchal family increased. He was embold-
ened to give new expression to his incestuous
libido which found symbolic satisfaction in labor-
ing over mother earth. There came into exist-
ence figures of gods like Attis, Adonis, Tammuz,
and others, spirits of vegetation as well as youth-
ful divinities who enjoyed the favors of maternal
deities and committed incest with the mother in
defiance of the father. But the sense of guilt
which was not allayed through these creations,
was expressed in myths which visited these youth-
ful lovers of the maternal goddesses with short
life and punishment through castration or
through the wrath of the father god appearing
in animal form. Adonis was killed by the boar,
25^ TOTEM AND TABOO
the sacred animal of Aphrodite; Attis, the lover
of Kybele, died of castration.^' The lamenta-
tion for these gods and the joy at their resur-
rection have gone over into the ritual of another
son which divinity was destined to survive long.
When Christianity began its entry into the
ancient world it met with the competition of the
religion of Mithras and for a long time it was
doubtful which deity was to be the victor.
The bright figure of the youthful Persian god
has eluded our understanding. Perhaps we
may conclude from the illustrations of INIithras
slaying the steers that he represented the son
who carried out the sacrifice of the father by him-
self and thus released the brothers from their
oppressing comphcity in the deed. There was
another way of allaying this sense of guilt and
this is the one that Christ took. He sacrificed
87 The fear of castration plays an extraordinarily big role in
disturbing the relations to the father in the case of our youthful
neurotics. In Ferenczi's excellent study we have seen how the
boy recognized his totem in the animal which snaps at his little
penis. When children learn about ritual circumcision they iden-
tify it with castration. To my knowledge the parallel in the
psychology of races to this attitude of our children has not yet
been drawn. The circumcision which was so frequent in primor-
dial times among primitive races belongs to the period of initia-
tion in which its meaning is to be found; it has only secondarily
been relegated to an earlier time of life. It is very interesting
that among primitive men circumcision is combined with or re-
placed by the cutting off of the hair and the drawing of teeth,
and that our children, who cannot know anything about this,
really treat these two operations as equivalents to castration when
they display their fear of them.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 253
his own life and thereby redeemed the brothers
from primal sin.
The theory of primal sin is of Orphic origin;
it was preserved in the mysteries and thence
penetrated into the philosophic schools of Greek
antiquity.^^ Men were the descendants of
Titans, who had killed and dismembered the
young Dionysos-Zagreus ; the weight of this
crime oppressed them. A fragment of Anax-
imander says that the unity of the world was
destroyed by a primordial crime and everything
that issued frOxOi it must carry on the punishment
for this crime.- ^ Although the features of band-
ing together, killing, and dismembering as ex-
pressed in the deed of the Titans very clearly
recall the totem sacrifice described by St. Nilus —
as also many other myths of antiquity, for ex-
ample, the death of Orpheus himself — we are
nevertheless disturbed here by the variation ac-
cording to which a youthful god was murdered.
In the Christian myth man's original sin is
undoubtedly an offense against God the Father,
and if Christ redeems mankind from the weight
of original sin by sacrificing his own life, he
forces us to the conclusion that this sin was
murder. According to the law of retaliation
which is deeply rooted in human feeling, a mur-
88 Reinach, "Cultes, Mythes, et Religions," II, p. 75.
89"Une sorte de peche proethnique," 1. c, p. 76.
254. TOTEM AND TABOO
der can be atoned only by the sacrifice of another
life; the self-sacrifice points to a blood-guilt.^^
And if this sacrifice of one's own life brings about
a reconciliation with god, the father, then the
crime which must be expiated can only have been
the murder of the father.
Thus in the Christian doctrine mankind most
unreservedly acknowledges the guilty deed of
primordial times because it now has found the
most complete expiation for this deed in the
sacrificial death of the son. The reconciliation
with the father is the more thorough because
simultaneously with this sacrifice there follows
the complete renunciation of woman, for whose
sake mankind rebelled against the father. But
now also the psychological fatality of ambival-
ence demands its rights. In the same deed which
offers the greatest possible expiation to the
father, the son also attains the goal of his wishes
against the father. He becomes a god himself
beside or rather in place of his father. The re-
ligion of the son succeeds the religion of the
father. As a sign of this substitution the old
totem feast is revived again in the form of com-
munion in which the band of brothers now eats
the flesh and blood of the son and no longer that
of the father, the sons thereby identifying them-
»oThe suicidal impulses of our neurotics regularly prove to be
self-punishments for death wishes directed against others.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 255
selves with him and becoming holy themselves.
Thus thi'ough the ages we see the identity of the
totem feast with the animal sacrifice, the thean-
thropic hmnan sacrifice, and the Christian euch-
arist, and in all these solemn occasions we recog-
nize the after-effects of that crime which so op-
pressed men but of which they must have been so
proud. At bottom, however, the Christian com-
munion is a new setting aside of the father, a rej)-
etition of the crime that must be expiated. We
see how well justified is Frazer's dictum that "the
Christian communion has absorbed within itself
a sacrament which is doubtless far older than
Christianity." '"-
■ 7
A process like the removal of the primal father
by the band of brothei's must have left ineradi-
cable traces in the history of mankind and must
have expressed itself the more frequently in
numerous substitutive formations the less it itself
was to be remembered.^^ I am avoiding the
SI "Eating the God," p. 51. . . . Nobody familiar with the litera-
ture on this subject will assume that the tracing back of the
Christian communion to the totem feast is an idea of the author
of this book.
»2 Ariel in "The Tempest" :
Full fathom five thy father lies:
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suifer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange. . . .
256 TOTEM AND TABOO
temptation of pointing out these traces in myth-
ology, where they are not hard to find, and am
turning to another field in following a hint of S.
Reinach in his suggestive treatment of the death
of Orpheus.^ ^
There is a situation in the history of Greek art
which is strikingly familiar even if profoundly
divergent, to the scene of a totem feast discov-
ered by Robertson Smith. It is the situation of
the oldest Greek tragedy. A gi^oup of persons,
all of the same name and dressed in the same
way, surround a single figure upon whose words
and actions they are dependent, to represent the
chorus and the original single impersonator of
the hero. Later developments created a second
and a third actor in order to represent opponents
in playing, and off-shoots of the hero, but the
character of the hero as well as his relation to
the chorus remains unchanged. The hero of the
tragedy had to suffer, this is to-day still the essen-
tial content of a tragedy. He had taken upon
himself the so-called "tragic guilt," which is not
always easy to explain; it is often not a guilt in
the ordinary sense. Almost always it consisted
of a rebellion against a divine or human authority
and the chorus accompanied the hero with their
sympathies, trying to restrain and warn him, and
93 La Mort d'Orphee, "Cultes, Mythes, et Religions," Vol. II, p.
100.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 257
lamented his fate after he had met with what was
considered fitting punishment for his daring
attempt.
But why did the hero of the tragedy have to
suffer, and what was the meaning of his "tragic"
guilt? We will cut short the discussion by a
prompt answer. He had to suffer because he
was the primal father, the hero of that primordial
tragedy the repetition of which here serves a cer-
tain tendency, and the tragic guilt is the guilt
which he had to take upon himself in order to
free the chorus of theirs. The scene upon the
stage came into being through purposive distor-
tion of the historical scene or, one is tempted to
say, it was the result of refined hypocrisy. Ac-
tually, in the old situation, it was the members
of the chorus themselves who had caused the suf-
fering of the hero; here, on the other hand, they
exhaust themselves in sympathy and regret, and
the hero himself is to blame for his suffering.
The crime foisted upon him, namely presumption
and rebellion against a great authority, is the
same as that which in the past oppressed the col-
leagues cff the chorus, namely, the band of
brothers. Thus the tragic hero, though still
against his will, is made the redeemer of the
chorus.
"When one bears in mind the suffering of the
divine goat Dionysos in the performance of the
258 TOTEM AND TABOO
Greek tragedy and the lament of the retinue of
goats who identified themselves with him, one can
easily understand how the almost extinct drama
was reviewed in the Middle Ages in the Passion
of Christ.
In closing this study, which has been carried
out in extremely condensed form, I want to state
the conclusion that the beginnings of religion,
ethics, society, and art meet in the Oedipus com-
plex. This is in entire accord with the findings
of psychoanalysis, namely, that the nucleus of
all neuroses as far as our present knowledge of
them goes is the Oedipus complex. It comes as
a great surprise to me that these problems of
racial psychology can also be solved through
a single concrete instance, such as the relation
to the father. Perhaps another psychological
problem must be included here. We have so
frequently had occasion to show the ambivalence
of emotions in its real sense, that is to say the
coincidence of love and hate towards the same
object, at the root of important cultural forma-
tions. We know nothing about the origin of
this ambivalence. It may be assumed to be a
fundamental phenomenon of our emotional life.
But the other possibility seems to me also worthy
of consideration: that ambivalence, originally
foreign to our emotional life, was acquired by
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 259
mankind from the father complex/^ where psy-
choanalytic investigation of the individual to-day
still reveals the strongest expression of it.^^
Before closing we must take into account that
the remarkable convergence reached in these il-
lustrations, pointing to a single inclusive rela-
tion, ought not to blind us to the uncertainties of
our assumptions and to the difficulties of our con-
elusions. Of these difficulties I will point out
only two which must have forced themselves
upon many readers.
In the first place it can hardly have escaped
any one that we base everything upon the as-
sumption of a psyche of the mass in which
psychic processes occur as in the psychic life of
the individual. INIoreover, we let the sense of
guilt for a deed survive for thousands of years,
remaining effective in generations which could
not have known anything of this deed. We
94 That is to say, the parent complex.
95 I am used to being misunderstood and therefore do not think
it superfluous to state clearly that in giving these deductions I
am by no means oblivious of the complex nature of the phenomena
which give rise to them; the only claim made is that a new factor
has been added to the already known or still unrecognized origins
of religion, morality, and society, which was furnished through
psychoanalytic experience. The synthesis of the whole explana-
tion must be left to another. But it is in the nature of this new
contribution that it could play none other than the central roJe
in such a synthesis, although it will be necessary to overcome
great affective resistances before such importance will be con
ceded to it.
260 TOTEM AND TABOO
allow an emotional process such as might have
arisen among generations of sons that had been
ill-treated by their fathers, to continue to new
generations which had escaped such treatment by
the very removal of the father. These seem in-
deed to be weighty objections and any other ex-
planation which can avoid such assumptions
would seem to merit preference.
But further consideration shows that we our-
selves do not have to carry the whole responsi-
bility for such daring. Without the assumption
of a mass psyche, or a continuity in the emo-
tional life of mankind wliich permits us to dis-
regard the interruptions of psychic acts through
the transgression of individuals, social psychol-
ogy could not exist at all. If psychic processes
of one generation did not continue in the next,
if each had to acquire its attitude towards life
afresh, there would be no progress in this field
and almost no development. We are now con-
fronted by two new questions : how much can be
attributed to this psychic continuity within the
series of generations, and what ways and means
does a generation use to transfer its psychic
states to the next generation? I do not claim
that these problems have been sufficiently ex-
plained or that direct communication and tradi-
tion, of which one immediately thinks, are ade-
quate for the task. Social psychology is in gen-
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 261
eral little concerned with the manner in which
the required continuity in the psychic life of
succeeding generations is established. A part
of the task seems to be performed by the inheri-
tance of psychic dispositions which, however,
need certain incentives in the individual life in
order to become effective. This may be the
meaning of the poet's words: Strive to possess
yourself of what you have inherited from your
ancestors. The problem would appear more
difficult if we could admit that there are psychic
impulses which can be so completely suppressed
that they leave no traces whatsoever behind them.
But that does not exist. The greatest suppres-
sion must leave room for distorted substitutions
and their resulting reactions. But in that case
we may assume that no generation is capable of
concealing its more important psychic processes
from the next. For psychoanalysis has taught
us that in his unconscious psychic activity every
person possesses an apparatus which enables him
to interpret the reactions of others, that is to say,
to straighten out the distortions which the other
person has effected in the expression of his feel-
ings. By this method of unconscious under-
standing of all customs, ceremonies, and laws
which the original relation to the primal father
had left behind, later generations may also have
succeeded in taking over this legacy of feelings.
262 TOTEM AND TABOO
There is another objection which the anal}i;ic
method of thought itself might raise.
We have interpreted the first rules of morality
and moral restrictions of primitive society as re-
actions to a deed which gave the authors of it the
conception of crime. They regretted this deed
and decided that it should not be repeated and
that its execution must bring no gain. This cre-
ative sense of guilt has not become extinct with
us. We find its asocial efi'ects in neurotics pro-
ducing new rules of morality and continued
restrictions, in expiation for misdeeds committed,
or as precautions against misdeeds to be com-
mitted.^^ But when we examine these neurotics
for the deeds which have called forth such reac-
tions, we are disappointed. We do not find
deeds, but only impulses and feelings which
sought evil but which were restrained from car-
rying it out. Only psychic realities and not
actual ones are at the basis of the neurotics' sense
of guilt. It is characteristic of the neurosis to
put a psychic reality above an actual one and to
react as seriously to thoughts as the normal per-
son reacts only towards realities.
May it not be true that the case was somewhat
the same with primitive men? We are justified
in ascribing to them an extraordinary over-valu-
ation of their psychic acts as a partial manifesta-
96 Compare Chapter II.
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 263
tion of their narcistic organization.^"^ According
to this the mere impulses of hostility towards the
father and the existence of the wish phantasy to
kill and devour him may have sufficed to bring
about the moral reaction which has created totem-
ism and taboo. We should thus escape the ne-
cessity of tracing back the beginning of our cul-
tural possession, of which we rightly are so proud,
to a horrible crime which wounds all our feelings.
The causal connection, which stretches from that
beginning to the present time, would not be im-
paired, for the psychic reality would be of suffi-
cient importance to account for all these conse-
quences. It may be agreed that a change has
really taken place in the form of society from
the father horde to the brother clan. This is a
strong argument, but it is not conclusive. The
change might have been accomphshed in a less
violent manner and still have conditioned the ap-
pearance of the moral reaction. As long as the
pressure of the primal father was felt the hostile
feelings against him were justified and repent-
ance at these feelings had to wait for another op-
portunity. Of as little validitj^ is the second ob-
jection, that everything derived from the ambiva-
lent relation to the father, namel}" taboos, and
rules of sacrifice, is characterized by the highest
seriousness and by complete reality. The cere-
»7 See Chapter III.
264> TOTEM AND TABOO
monials and inhibitions of compulsion neurotics
exhibit this characteristic too and yet they go back
to a merely psychic reality, to resolution and not
to execution. We must beware of introducing
the contempt for what is merely- thought or
wished which characterizes our sober world where
there are only material values, into the world of
primitive man and the neurotic, which is full of
inner riches only.
We face a decision here which is really not
easy. But let us begin by acknowledging that
the difference which may seem fundamental to
others does not, in our judgment, touch the most
imi)ortant part of the subject. If wishes and
impulses have the full value of fact for primitive
man, it is for us to follow such a conception in-
telligently instead of correcting it according to
our standard. But in that case we must scruti-
nize more closely the prototype of the neurosis
itself which is responsible for having raised this
doubt. It is not true that compulsion neurotics,
who to-day are under the pressure of over-moral-
ity, defend themselves only against the ^Dsychic
reality of temptations and punish themselves for
impulses which the}?- have only felt. A piece of
historic reality is also involved ; in their childhood
these j)ersons had nothing but evil imx)ulses and
as far as their childish impotence permitted they
put them into action. Each of these over-good
INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM 265
persons had a period of badness in his childhood,
and a perverse phase as a fore-runner and a
premise of the later over morality. The anal-
ogy between primitive men and neurotics is there-
fore much more fundamentally established if we
assume that with the former, too, the psychic real-
ity, concerning whose structure there is no doubt,
originally coincided with the actual reality, and
that primitive men really did what according to
all testimony they intended to do.
But we must not let our judgment about prim-
itive men be influenced too far by the analogy
with neurotics. Differences must also be taken
into account. Of course the sharp division be-
tween thinking and doing as we draw it does not
exist either with savages or with neurotics. But
the neurotic is above all inhibited in his actions,
with him the thought is a complete substitute for
the deed. Primitive man is not inhibited, the
thought is directly converted into the deed, the
deed is for him so to speak rather a substitute for
the thought, and for that reason I think we may
well assume in the case we are discussing, though
without vouching for the absolute certainty of
the decision, that, "In the beginning was the
deed."
THE END
