psychologically not of equal value. One of them, the sparing of the
totem animal, rests entirely upon emotional motives; the father had been
removed and nothing in reality could make up for this. But the other,
the incest prohibition, had, besides, a strong practical 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 rôle
of the father. Thus there was nothing left for the brothers, if they
wanted to live together, but to erect the incest prohibition--perhaps
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 time of their banishment. Perhaps this situation also formed
the germ of the institution of the mother right discovered by Bachofen,
which was then abrogated by the patriarchal family arrangement.
On the other hand the claim of totemism to be considered the first
attempt at a religion is connected 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
compulsory 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 everything that
the child’s phantasy could expect from him, protection, care, and
forbearance, in return for which the pledge was given to honour his
life, that is to say, not to repeat the act against the totem through
which the real father had perished. 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.
In this connexion some features were formed which henceforth determined
the character of every religion. The totem religion had issued from the
sense of guilt of the sons as an attempt to palliate this feeling and to
conciliate the injured 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 unfavourable to any kind of
settlement of these contradictory feelings. It is certainly 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 father. The
gratification obtained thereby creates the commemorative celebration of
the totem feast at which the restrictions of subsequent obedience are
suspended, 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 properties, threaten to
disappear as a result of the changed influences of life. We shall not be
surprised to find that a part of the son’s defiance also reappears,
often in the most remarkable disguises and inversions, in the formation
of later religions.
If thus far we have followed, in religion and moral precepts--but little
differentiated in totemism--the consequences of the tender impulses
towards the father as they are changed into remorse, we must not
overlook the fact that for the most part the tendencies which have
impelled to parricide have retained the victory. The social and
fraternal feelings on which this great change is based, henceforth for
long periods exercises the greatest influence upon the development of
society. They find expression in the sanctification of the common blood
and in the emphasis 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 against killing the totem, which is based on religious
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 consequent 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 connexion between totemism and exogamy as well as for their
simultaneous origin.
6
I 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[213].
Robertson Smith has shown us that the old totem feast returns in the
original form of sacrifice. The meaning of the rite is the same:
sanctification through participation in the common meal. The sense of
guilt, which can only be allayed through the solidarity of all the
participants, 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 eating 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 everything else that wished to survive, had been
forced to fit itself into the new system. However, psychoanalytic
investigation of the individual teaches with especial emphasis that god
is in every case modelled after the father and that our personal
relation to god is dependent upon our relation to our physical,
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
called the totem their ancestor. If psychoanalysis 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 psychoanalysis can throw no light. But then
the father would be represented twice in primitive sacrifice, first as
god, and secondly as the totem-animalsacrifice, and we must ask, with
all due regard for the limited number of solutions which psychoanalysis
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 animals. 2. In certain,
especially holy, sacrifices, the so-called ‘mystical’ sacrifices, the
very animal which had been sanctified through the god was sacrificed to
him[214]. 3. The god was often revered in the form of an animal, or from
another point of view, animals enjoyed a godlike reverence 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 stage of religious
feeling. But the reflection that the totem itself is nothing but a
substitute 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 evolution, namely, the longing
for the father, might become possible if in the course of time an
essential change had taken place in the relation to the father and
perhaps also to the animal.
Such changes are easily divined even if we disregard the beginning of a
psychic estrangement from the animal as well as the disintegration of
totemism through animal domestication[215]. The situation created by the
removal of the father contained an element which in the course of time
must have brought about an extraordinary increase of longing for the
father. For the brothers 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 pressure which the bonds of
the brother clan exercised upon each member, this wish had to remain
unfulfilled. No one could or was allowed to attain the father’s
perfection of power, which was 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 grew, and an
ideal could arise having as a content the fullness of power and the
freedom from restriction of the conquered 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 distinguished
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 presumption, was
still by no means offensive to the conceptions of classical
antiquity[216]. 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.
In this evolution I am at a loss to indicate the place of the great
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 logically 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
unrestricted primal father was great enough to ensure 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-animal. But in attempting to understand this situation
we must beware of interpretations which superficially seek to translate
it as an allegory, and which forget the historical stages in the
process. The twofold presence of the father corresponds to the two
successive meanings of the 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 highest triumph. The meaning which sacrifice
has quite generally acquired is found in the fact that in the very same
action which continues the memory 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 simple offering to the deity, a self-deprivation in favour 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 culminated 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 himself has demanded and
ordained it. Myths in which the god himself kills the animal that is
sacred to him, which he himself really is, belong to this phase. This is
the greatest possible denial of the great misdeed with which society and
the sense of guilt began. There is an unmistakable second meaning in
this sacrificial demonstration. It expresses satisfaction at the fact
that the earlier father substitute has been abandoned in favour of the
higher conception of god. The superficial allegorical translation of the
scene here roughly corresponds with its psychoanalytic interpretation by
saying that god is represented as overcoming the animal part of his
nature[217].
But it would be erroneous to believe that in this period of renewed
patriarchal authority the hostile impulses which belong to the father
complex 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 energetic expression of that
ambivalence which is characteristic of religion.
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 rôle 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 sacrifice 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 clearest light upon the
meaning of the older forms of sacrifice. It acknowledges with
unsurpassable candour 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.
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 developments of religious
thought which made this return possible 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 celebrated 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 compulsive character, something
that was imposed by the fear of a divine wrath[218]. 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 further development of
religions these two inciting 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 cultural changes, historical events, and inner
psychic transformations.
The endeavour 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 emboldened to give new expression to his incestuous
libido which found symbolic satisfaction in labouring over mother earth.
There came into existence figures of gods like Attis, Adonis, Tammuz,
and others, spirits of vegetation as well as youthful divinities who
enjoyed the favours 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 youthful 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, the sacred
animal of Aphrodite; Attis, the lover of Kybele, died of
castration[219]. The lamentation for these gods and the joy at their
resurrection 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 Mithras
slaying the steers that he represented the son who carried out the
sacrifice of the father by himself and thus released the brothers from
their oppressing complicity in the deed. There was another way of
allaying this sense of guilt and this is the one that Christ took. He
sacrificed 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[220]. 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 Anaximander says that the unity of the
world was destroyed by a primordial crime and everything that issued
from it must carry on the punishment for this crime[221]. Although the
features of banding together, killing, and dismembering as expressed in
the deed of the Titans very clearly recall the totem sacrifice described
by St Nilus--as also many other myths of antiquity, for example, the
death of Orpheus himself--we are nevertheless disturbed here by the
variation according to which a youthful god was murdered.
In the Christian myth man’s original sin is undoubtedly an offence
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 murder can be atoned only by the
sacrifice of another life; the self-sacrifice points to a
blood-guilt[222]. 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 ambivalence 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 religion 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 communion 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 themselves with him and becoming holy
themselves. Thus through the ages we see the identity of the totem
feast with the animal sacrifice, the theanthropic human sacrifice, and
the Christian eucharist, and in all these solemn occasions we recognize
the after-effects of that crime which so oppressed men but of which they
must have been so proud. At bottom, however, the Christian communion is
a new setting aside of the father, a repetition 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”[223].
7
A process like the removal of the primal father by the band of brothers
must have left ineradicable 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.[224] I am avoiding
the temptation of pointing out these traces in mythology, 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[225].
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
discovered by Robertson Smith. It is the situation of the oldest Greek
tragedy. A group 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 essential 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
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
certain 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 distortion of the historical
scene or, one is tempted to say, it was the result of refined hypocrisy.
Actually, in the old situation, it was the members of the chorus
themselves who had caused the suffering 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 colleagues of 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 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 complex. 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 formations. 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 mankind from the father complex[226], where
psychoanalytic investigation of the individual to-day still reveals the
strongest expression of it[227].
Before closing we must take into account that the remarkable convergence
reached in these illustrations, pointing to a single inclusive relation,
ought not to blind us to the uncertainties of our assumptions and to the
difficulties of our conclusions. 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 assumption of a psyche of the mass in which psychic
processes occur as in the psychic life of the individual. Moreover, 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 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 indeed to be weighty objections and
any other explanation which can avoid such assumptions would seem to
merit preference.
But further consideration shows that we ourselves do not have to carry
the whole responsibility for such daring. Without the assumption of a
mass psyche, or a continuity in the emotional life of mankind which
permits us to disregard the interruptions of psychic acts through the
transgression of individuals, social psychology 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 confronted
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
explained or that direct communication and tradition, of which one
immediately thinks, are adequate for the task. Social psychology is in
general 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 inheritance 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 suppression 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 affected in
the expression of his feelings. By this method of unconscious
understanding 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.
There is another objection which the analytic method of thought itself
might raise.
We have interpreted the first rules of morality and moral restrictions
of primitive society as reactions 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
creative sense of guilt has not become extinct with us. We find its
asocial effects in neurotics producing new rules of morality and
continued restrictions, in expiation for misdeeds committed, or as
precautions against misdeeds to be committed[228]. But when we examine
these neurotics for the deeds which have called forth such reactions, we
are disappointed. We do not find deeds, but only impulses and feelings
which sought evil but which were restrained from carrying 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 person 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-valuation of their psychic acts as a partial manifestation of their
narcistic organization[229]. 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 totemism and taboo. We should thus escape the
necessity of tracing back the beginning of our cultural possession, of
which we rightly are so proud, to a horrible crime which wounds all our
feelings. The causal connexion, which stretches from that beginning to
the present time, would not be impaired, for the psychic reality would
be of sufficient importance to account for all those consequences. 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
accomplished in a less violent manner and still have conditioned the
appearance of the moral reaction. As long as the pressure of the primal
father was felt the hostile feelings against him were justified and
repentance at these feelings had to wait for another opportunity. Of as
little validity is the second objection, that everything derived from
the ambivalent relation to the father, namely taboos, and rules of
sacrifice, is characterized by the highest seriousness and by complete
reality. The ceremonials 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 important 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 intelligently instead of
correcting it according to our standard. But in that case we must
scrutinize 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-morality, defend
themselves only against the psychic reality of temptations and punish
themselves for impulses which they have only felt. A piece of historic
reality is also involved; in their childhood these persons had nothing
but evil impulses and as far as their childish impotence permitted they
put them into action. Each of these over-good persons had a period of
badness in his childhood, and a perverse phase as a fore-runner and a
premise of the latter over morality. The analogy between primitive men
and neurotics is therefore much more fundamentally established if we
assume that with the former, too, the psychic reality, 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 primitive men be influenced too
far by the analogy with neurotics. Differences must also be taken into
account. Of course the sharp division between 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
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Jung: _Wandlungen and Symbole der Libido_ (Transformations and
Symbols of the Libido) translated by Dr. Beatrice Hinkle under the title
_The Psychology of the Unconscious_, and _Principles of Psychoanalysis,
Nervous and Mental Diseases_.
[2] _The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement_, translated by A. A.
Brill.
[3] _Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses_, translated
by A. A. Brill.
[4] _The Psychopathology of Everyday Life_, translated by A. A. Brill.
[5] Translated by A. A. Brill.
[6] _Wit and Its Relations to the Unconscious_, translated by A. A.
Brill.
[7] Freud: _Leonardo Da Vinci_, translated by A. A. Brill.
[8] Cf. the works of Abraham, Spielrein, Jung, and Rank.
[9] Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. I, p. 53. “The totem bond is
stronger than the bond of blood or family in the modern sense.”
[10] 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 and articles of Andrew Lang (_The Secret of Totem_,
1905). The credit for having recognized the significance of totemism for
the ancient history of man belongs to the Scotchman, J. Ferguson
MacLennan (_Fortnightly Review_, 1869-70). Exterior to Australia,
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 to interpret lead to the conclusion that
totemism also once existed among the aboriginal Aryan and Semitic races
of Europe, so that many investigators are inclined to recognize in
totemism 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 _Voelkerpsychologie_ (Vol. II:
_Mythus und Religion_).
I promise soon to make the problem of totemism a subject of special
study in which an effort will be made to solve it by applying the
psychoanalytic method. (Cf. The fourth chapter of this work.)
Not only is the theory of totemism controversial, but the very facts
concerning it are hardly to be expressed in such general statements as
were attempted above. There is hardly an assertion to which one would
not have to add exceptions and contradictions. But it must not be
forgotten that even the most primitive and conservative races are, in a
certain sense, old, and have a long period behind them during which
whatsoever was aboriginal with them has undergone much development and
distortion. Thus among those races who still evince it, we find totemism
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 may exist in fixed forms but far removed
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 what is to be
considered as a secondary distortion of it.
[11] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 54.
[12] 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 daughters 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.
[13] Second edition, 1902.
[14] _The Native Tribes of Central Australia_ (London, 1899).
[15] The number of totems is arbitrarily chosen.
[16] Article _Totemism_ in _Encyclopedia Britannica_, eleventh edition,
1911 (A. Lang).
[17] Storfer has recently drawn special attention to this point in his
monograph: _Parricide as a Special Case._ _Papers on Applied Psychic
Investigation_, No. 12 (Vienna, 1911).
[18] R. H. Codrington, _The Melanesians_, also Frazer _Totemism and
Exogamy_, Vol. I, p. 77.
[19] Frazer, _l.c._, II, p. 124, according to Kleintischen: _The
Inhabitants of the Coast of the Gazelle Peninsula_.
[20] Frazer, _l.c._, II, p. 131, according to P. G. Peckel in
_Anthropes_, 1908.
[21] Frazer, _l.c._, II, p. 147, according to the Rev. L. Fison.
[22] Frazer, _l.c._, II. p. 189.
[23] Frazer, _l.c._, II, p. 388, according to Junod.
[24] Frazer, _l.c._, II, p. 424.
[25] Frazer, _l.c._, II, p. 76.
[26] Frazer, _l.c._, II, p. 113, according to C. Ribbe: _Two Years among
the Cannibals of the Solomon Islands_, 1905.
[27] Frazer, _l.c._, II, p. 385.
[28] Frazer, _l.c._, II, p. 461.
[29] _v._ Crawley: _The Mystic Rose_ (London, 1902), p. 405.
[30] Crawley, _l.c._, p. 407.
[31] Crawley, _l.c._, p. 401, according to Leslie: _Among the Zulus and
Amatongas_, 1875.
[32] _Voelkerpsychologie_, II. Band: _Mythus und Religion_, 1906, II, p.
308.
[33] Eleventh Edition; this article also gives the most important
references.
[34] This application of the taboo can be omitted as not originally
belonging in this connection.
[35] _Voelkerpsychologie_, Vol. II: _Religion und Mythus_, p. 300.
[36] _l.c._, p. 237.
[37] Comp. Chapter I.
[38] _l.c._, p. 307.
[39] _l.c._, p. 313.
[40] Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, II: _Taboo and the Perils of the Soul_,
1911, p. 136.
[41] Both the pleasure and the prohibition referred to touching one’s
own genitals.
[42] The relation to beloved persons who impose the prohibition.
[43] To use an excellent term coined by Bleuler.
[44] See Chapter IV; _Totemism, etc._
[45] Third Edition, Part II: _Taboo and the Perils of the Soul_, 1911.
[46] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 166.
[47] Paulitschke, _Ethnography of North-east Africa_.
[48] Frazer, _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, p. 248, 1907. According to Hugh
Low, _Sarawak_ (London, 1848).
[49] J. O. Dorsay, see Frazer, _Taboo_, etc., p. 181.
[50] Frazer, _Taboo_, pp. 166-174. These ceremonies consist of hitting
shields, shouting, bellowing and making noises with various instruments,
etc.
[51] Frazer, _Taboo_, p. 166, according to S. Mueller, _Reisen en
Onderzoekingen in den Indischen Archipel_. (Amsterdam, 1857).
[52] For these examples see Frazer, _Taboo_, p. 165-170, “Manslayers
Tabooed.”
[53] Frazer, _Taboo_, p. 132. “He must not only be guarded, he must also
be guarded against.”
[54] Frazer, _The Magic Art_, I, p. 368.
[55] _Old New Zealand_, by a Pakeha Maori (London, 1884), see Frazer,
_Taboo_, p. 135.
[56] W. Brown, _New Zealand and Its Aborigines_ (London, 1845) _Frazer_,
_l.c._
[57] _Frazer_, _l.c._
[58] Frazer, _Taboo_. _The Burden of Royalty_, p. 7.
[59] _l.c._, p. 7.
[60] Kaempfer, _History of Japan_, see in Frazer, _l.c._, p. 3.
[61] Bastian, _The German Expedition to the Coast of Loango_ (Jena
1874), cited by Frazer, _l.c._, p. 5.
[62] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 13.
[63] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 11.
[64] A. Bastian, _The German Expedition on the Coast of Lonago_, cited
by Frazer, _l.c._, p. 18.
[65] _l.c._, p. 18. According to Zwefel et Monstier, _Voyage aux Sources
du Niger_, 1880.
[66] Frazer, _The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings_, 2 vols., 1911
(_The Golden Bough_).
[67] Frazer, _Taboo_, p. 148, etc.
[68] W. Mariner, _The Natives of the Tonga Islands_, 1818; see _Frazer_,
_l.c._, p. 140.
[69] 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.
[70] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 353.
[71] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 352, etc.
[72] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 357, according to an old Spanish observer 1732.
[73] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 360.
[74] Stekel, _Abraham_.
[75] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 353, cites the Tuaregs of the Sahara as an
example of such an acknowledgment.
[76] Perhaps this condition is to be added: as long as any part of his
physical remains exist. Frazer, _l.c._, p. 372.
[77] _On the Nikobar Islands_, Frazer, _l.c._, p. 382.
[78] Wundt, _Religion and Myth_, Vol. II, p. 49.
[79] _The Origin and Development of Moral Conceptions_, see section
entitled “Attitude Towards the Dead,” Vol. II, p. 424. Both 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 favourites.” The Austral 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 mischievous spirits who frequently hover about the
village to spread illness, death and other evils. (Boas.)
[80] R. Kleinpaul: _The Living and the Dead in Folklore, Religion and
Myth_, 1898.
[81] _l.c._, p. 426.
[82] Cf. Chap. III.
[83] Freud, _The Interpretation of Dreams_.
[84] Freud, _The Interpretation of Dreams_.
[85] The projection creations of primitive man resemble the
personifications through which the poet projects his warring impulses
out of himself, as separated individuals.
[86] _Myth and Religion_, p. 129.
[87] In the psychoanalysis of neurotic persons who suffer, or have
suffered, in their childhood from the fear of ghosts, it is often not
difficult 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.
[88] Compare my article on Abel’s _Gegensinn der Urworte_ in the
_Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen_,
Bd. II, 1910.
[89] It is an interesting parallel that the sense of guilt resulting
from the violation of a taboo is in no way diminished if the violation
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.
[90] The necessary crowding of the material also compels us to dispense
with a thorough bibliography. Instead of this the reader is referred to
the well-known works of Herbert Spencer, J. G. Frazer, A. Lang, E. B.
Tylor and W. Wundt, from which all the statements concerning animism and
magic are taken. The independence of the author can manifest itself only
in the choice of the material and of opinions.
[91] E. B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, Vol. I, p. 425, fourth ed., 1903.
W. Wundt, _Myth and Religion_, Vol. II, p. 173, 1906.
[92] Wundt _l.c._, Chapter IV: _Die Seelenvorstellungen_.
[93] Compare, besides Wundt and H. Spencer and the instructive article
in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 1911 (_Animism, Mythology_, and so
forth).
[94] _l.c._, p. 154.
[95] See Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, Vol. I, p. 477.
[96] _Cultes, Mythes et Religions_, T. II: _Introduction_, p. XV, 1909.
[97] _Année Sociologique_, Seventh Vol, 1904.
[98] 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.
[99] _The Magic Art_, II. p. 67.
[100] 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, _l.c._, p. 87, note.
[101] _The Magic Art_, II, p. 98.
[102] An echo of this is to be found in the _Oedipus Rex_ of Sophocles.
[103] _The Magic Art_, p. 120.
[104] _l.c._, p. 122.
[105] See preceding chapter, p. 92.
[106] Frazer, _The Magic Art_, pp. 201-3.
[107] _The Magic Art_, p. 420.
[108] Compare the article _Magic_ (N. T. W.), in the _Encyclopedia
Britannica_, 11th Ed.
[109] _l.c._, p. 54.
[110] Formulation of two principles of psychic activity, _Jahrb. für
Psychoanalyt. Forschungen_, Vol. III, 1912, p. 2.
[111] The King in _Hamlet_ (Act III, Scene 4):
“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below,
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”
[112] Compare Chapter II.
[113] Remarks upon a case of Compulsion Neurosis, _Jahrb. für
Psychoanalyt. und Psychopath. Forschungen_, Vol. I, 1909.
[114] 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.
[115] The following discussions will yield a further motive for this
displacement upon a trivial action.
[116] _Monograph Series_, 1916.
[117] It is almost an axiom with writers on this subject that a sort of
‘Solipsism or Berkleianism’ (as Professor Sully terms it as 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.
[118] We merely wish to indicate here that the original narcism of the
child is decisive for the interpretation of its character development
and that it precludes the assumption of a primitive feeling of
inferiority for the child.
[119] S. Reinach, _L’Art et la Magie_, in the collection _Cultes, Mythes
et Religions_, Vol. I, pp. 125-136. 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
général, de la magie de l’art. Entendu en sense propre, qui est celui
d’une constrainte mystique exercée par la volonté de l’homme sur
d’autres volontés ou sur les choses, cette expression n’est plus
admissible; mais nous avons vu qu’elle était autrefois rigouresement,
vraie, du moins dans l’opinion des artistes” (p. 136).
[120] Recognized through so-called endopsychic perceptions.
[121] R. R. Marett, _Pre-animistic Religion, Folklore_, Vol. XI, No. 2,
1900.--Comp. Wundt, _Myth and Religion_, Vol. II, p. 171.
[122] We assume that in this early narcistic stage feelings from
libidinous and other sources of excitement are perhaps still
indistinguishably combined with each other.
[123] Schreber, _Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken_, 1903.--Freud,
Psychoanalytic Observations concerning an autobiographically described
case of Paranoia, _Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyt. Forsch._ Vol. III, 1911.
[124] Compare the latest communication about the Schreber case, p. 59.
[125] _Principles of Sociology_, Vol. I.
[126] _l.c._, p. 179.
[127] Compare my short paper: _A Note on the Unconscious in
Psychoanalysis_, in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research_, Part LXVI, Vol. XXVI, 1912.
[128] p. 26.
[129] Frazer, _Taboo and the Perils of the Soul_, p. 158
[130] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 200.
[131] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 237.
[132] Freud, _Psychopathology of Everyday Life_, p. 215, trans. by A. A.
Brill.
[133] p. 139.
[134] _Revue Scientifique_, October, 1900, reprinted in the four volume
work of the author, _Cultes, Mythes et Religions_, 1908, Tome I, p. 17.
[135] 1910.
[136] But it may be well to show the reader beforehand how difficult it
is to establish the facts in this field.
In the first place those who collect the observations are not identical
with those who digest and discuss them; the first are travellers 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-English. Savages are not communicative about the most intimate
affairs of their culture and unburden themselves only to those
foreigners 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 forgotten 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
unhesitatingly 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 inclined to interpret their acts and feelings
according to our own psychic constellations.
[137] _Totemism_ (Edinburgh, 1887), reprinted in the first volume of his
great study, _Totemism and Exogamy_.
[138] Compare the chapter on Taboo.
[139] Just as to-day we still have the wolves in a cage at the steps of
the Capitol in Rome and the bears in the pit at Berne.
[140] Like the legend of the white woman in many noble families.
[141] _l.c._, p. 35.--See the discussion of sacrifice further on.
[142] See Chapter I.
[143] p. 116.
[144] The conclusion which Frazer draws about totemism in his second
work on the subject (_The Origin of Totemism; Fortnightly 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 essentially independent, is a
question which has been variously answered.”
[145] In connexion with such a change of opinion Frazer made this
excellent statement: “That my conclusions on these difficult questions
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 inquirer should shift his colours
with the shifting colours of the ground he treads.” Preface to Vol. I,
_Totemism and Exogamy_, 1910.
[146] “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 absolutely primitive
man, and a totemic system in the making,” p. 29.
[147] At first probably only animals.
[148] _The Worship of Animals and Plants_ (_Fortnightly Review_,
1869-1870). _Primitive Marriage_, 1865; both works reprinted in _Studies
in Ancient History_, 1876; second edition, 1886.
[149] _The Secret of the Totem_, 1905, p. 34.
[150] _Ibid._
[151] _Ibid._
[152] According to Andrew Lang.
[153] Pikler and Somló, _The Origin of Totemism_, 1901. The authors
rightly call their attempt at explanation a “Contribution to the
materialistic theory of History.”
[154] _The Origin of Animal Worship_ (_Fortnightly Review_, 1870).
_Principles of Psychology_, Vol. I, §§ 169 to 176.
[155] _Kamilaroi and Kurmai_, p. 165, 1880 (Lang, _Secret of the Totem_,
etc.).
[156] See the chapter on Taboo, p. 96.
[157] _l.c._, Vol. I, p. 41.
[158] _Address to the Anthropological Section, British Association_,
Belfast, 1902. According to Frazer, _l.c._, Vol. IV, p. 50.
[159] _The Native Tribes of Central Australia_, by Baldwin Spencer and
H. J. Gillen, London, 1891.
[160] There is nothing vague or mystical about it, nothing of that
metaphysical haze which some writers love to conjure up over the
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.)
[161] _l.c._, p. 120.
[162] _L’année Sociologique_, Vol. I, V, VIII, and elsewhere. See
especially the chapter, _Sur le Totémisme_, Vol. V, 1901.
[163] _Social Origins and the Secret of the Totem._
[164] _The Golden Bough_, II, p. 332.
[165] “It is unlikely that a community of savages should deliberately
parcel out the realm of nature into provinces, assign each province to a
particular band of magicians, and bid all the bands to work their magic
and weave their spells for the common good.” _Totemism and Exogamy_,
Vol. IV, p. 57.
[166] _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. II, p. 89, and IV, p. 59.
[167] _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. IV, p. 63.
[168] “That belief is a philosophy far from primitive”, Andrew Lang,
_Secret of the Totem_, p. 192.
[169] Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. IV, p. 45.
[170] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 48.
[171] Wundt, _Elemente der Völker-Psychologie_, p. 190.
[172] _L’année Sociologique_, 1898-1904.
[173] See Frazer’s _Criticism of Durkheim, Totemism and Exogamy_, p.
101.
[174] _Secret_, etc., p. 125.
[175] See Frazer, _l.c._, Vol. IV, p. 75: “The totemic clan is a totally
different social organism from the exogamous class, and we have good
grounds for thinking that it is far older.”
[176] _Primitive Marriage_, 1865.
[177] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 73 to 92.
[178] Compare Chapter I.
[179] Morgan, _Ancient Society_, 1877.--Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_,
Vol. IV, p. 105.
[180] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 106.
[181] _Origin and Development of Moral Conceptions_, Vol. II: Marriage
(1909). See also there the author’s defence against familiar objections.
[182] _l.c._, p. 97.
[183] Compare Durkheim, _La Prohibition de l’Inceste_ (_L’année
Sociologique_, I, 1896-7).
[184] Charles Darwin says about savages: “They are not likely to reflect
on distant evils to their progeny.”
[185] See Chapter I.
[186] “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.
[187] _The Origin of Man_, Vol. II, Chap. 20, pp. 603-4.
[188] _Primal Law_, London, 1903 (with Andrew Lang, _Social Origins_).
[189] _Secret of the Totem_, pp. 114, 143.
[190] “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: ‘No males to touch the females in my
camp,’ with expulsion of adolescent sons. _In efflux of time that rule,
becoming habitual_, would be, ‘No marriages 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 groups 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 subject (_Folklore_, December,
1911), Andrew Lang states, however, that he has given up the derivation
of exogamy out of the “general totemic” taboo.
[A] M. Wulff, _Contributions to Infantile Sexuality_, _Zentralbl. f.
Psychoanalyze_, 1912, II, No. I, p. 15.
[191] _Little Hans_, trans. by A. A. Brill (Moffat, Yard & Co., N.Y.).
[192] _l.c._, p. 41.
[193] ‘The Phantasy of the Giraffe,’ _l.c._, p. 30.
[194] S. Ferenczi, _Contributions to Psychoanalysis_, p. 204, translated
by Ernest Jones (Badger, Boston, 1916).
[195] Compare the communications of Reitler, Ferenczi, Rank, and Eder
about the substitution of blindness in the Oedipus myth for castration.
_Intern. Zeitschrift f. ärtzl. Psychoanalyze_, 1913, I, No. 2.
[196] Ferenczi, _l.c._, p. 209.
[197] Ferenczi, _l.c._, p. 212.
[198] Frazer finds that the essence of totemism is in this
identification: “Totemism is an identification of a man with his totem.”
_Totemism and Exogamy_, IV, p. 5.
[199] 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 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.
[200] _The Religion of the Semites_, Second Edition, London, 1907.
[201] _The Religion of the Semites_, Second Edition, London, 1907.
[202] “The inference is that the domestication to which totemism leads
(when there are any animals capable of domestication) is fatal to
totemism.” Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_, 1911,
fifth edition, p. 120.
[203] _l.c._, p. 313.
[204] _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.”
[205] Frazer, _Totem and Exogamy_, Vol. II, p. 590.
[206] 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.
[207] _Religion of the Semites_, 2nd Edition, 1907, p. 412.
[208] For a recent contribution compare _The Whole House of the
Chilkat_, by G. T. Emmons (_American Museum Journal_, Vol. XVI, No. 7.)
[Translator].
[209] The reader will avoid the erroneous impression which this
exposition may call forth by taking into consideration the concluding
sentence of the subsequent chapter.
[210] 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 polyandrous 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 attacks, renewed again and again, both wife and life from the
paternal tyrant” (_Primal Law_, pp. 220-1). 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
acknowledge the sexual prerogative of the father by the restraint which
they practise towards the mother and towards their sisters.
So much for the very remarkable theory of Atkinson, its essential
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 restraint
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.
[211] This new emotional attitude must also have been responsible for
the fact that the deed could not bring 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 favourable to moral
reaction than success.
[212] “Murder and incest, or offences of like kind against the sacred
law of blood are in primitive society the only crimes of which the
community as such takes cognizance ...” _Religion of the Semites_, p.
419.
[213] Compare _Transformations and Symbols of the Libido_, by C. G.
Jung, in which some dissenting points of view are represented.
[214] Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, Second Edition, 1907.
[215] See above, p. 128.
[216] “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.
[217] It is known that the overcoming of one generation of gods by
another in mythology represents the historical process of the
substitution 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 (_l.c._), presupposes a different
conception of the libido from that hitherto held, and at any rate seems
to me questionable.
[218] _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 connexion with
theanthropic sacrifices, such as the ‘ox-murder at Athens.’”
[219] The fear of castration plays an extraordinarily big rôle 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 identify 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 primordial times among primitive races belongs
to the period of initiation 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
replaced 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.
[220] Reinach, _Cultes, Mythes, et Religions_, II, p. 75.
[221] “Une sorte de péché proethnique,” _l.c._, p. 76.
[222] The suicidal impulses of our neurotics regularly prove to be
self-punishments for death wishes directed against others.
[223] _Eating the God_, p. 51.... Nobody familiar with the literature 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.
[224] 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 suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange....
[225] La Mort d’Orphée, _Cultes, Mythes, et Religions_, Vol. II, p. 100.
[226] That is to say, the parent complex.
[227] 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 explanation must be left to another. But it is in
the nature of this new contribution that it could play none other than
the central rôle in such a synthesis, although it will be necessary to
overcome great affective resistances before such importance will be
conceded to it.
[228] Compare Chapter II.
[229] See Chapter III.
* * * * *
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
new pyschological technique=> new psychological technique {pg vi}
the pyschoanalysts=> the psychoanalysts {pg vi}
subjetced to analysis=> subjected to analysis {pg x}
profound anaylsis=> profound analysis {pg x}
Similiar customs=> Similar customs {pg 17}
made us familar=> made us familiar {pg 48}
expiate and similiar=> expiate and similar {pg 51}
anxious excesss=> anxious excess {pg 84}
originally the world taboo=> originally the world taboo {pg 112}
susperstitious motivation=> susperstitious motivation {pg 162}
exercée par la volunté=> exercée par la volonté {pg 151}
* * * * *