INCEST
The family romance has been presented by the Freudians as complicated
by actual incestuous entanglements. Adler on the other hand has shown
that the incestuous situation is rather an "as if" introduced by the
neurotic as a part of his absurd life plan.
Barring a few exceptions, the small boy does not desire his mother
sexually nor does the small girl feel erotic at the thought of her
father.
That such incestuous desires arise at the time of puberty cannot
be doubted. But they are observed mostly in neurotics to whom the
incestuous situation suggests, as I pointed out in the previous
chapter, to the boy, food, comfort, the mother's easily won love, to
the girl, the protection and the attentions of the strong father. In
many cases too, homosexual and incestuous practices among the children
in one family mean nothing but the neurotic search for the line of
least effort.
Freud seeks at times very far fetched explanations for very simple
phenomena in order to show the sexual motive at the bottom of them. He
states in his _Introduction to Psychoanalysis_ that a girl may show
great affection for a younger sister "as a substitute for the child she
vainly wished from the father." The truth is that the older daughter,
in her close imitation of her mother, also starts "mothering" a child.
"A boy," Freud states in the same book, "may take his sister as the
object of his love to replace his _faithless_ mother." He rather
imitates his father and starts to protect and order about a little
female of his age, which at times, when both have witnessed the
parental embraces, may lead to actual incest.
=The Incest Fear.= Incest is at the present day the form of sexual
relation which provokes the most powerful expression of disapproval
on the part of civilised and uncivilised races alike. In fact the
primitive races seem obsessed by a panicky fear of incest. In many
tribes, brothers and sisters are not allowed to meet or speak to each
other and, in certain cases, they must even avoid the sight of each
other and eschew every mention of each other's names.
In the Fiji Islands, where the rules against incest are especially
rigorous, there are, on the other hand, special holidays on which
orgies are held in which incest becomes permissible.
In other words, the natives of those islands, while recognising the
irresistible nature of the incest temptation and taking all sorts of
measures in order to prevent the commission of that sin, supply at
stated intervals an outlet for incestuous cravings.
Innumerable details of primitive legislation separate the son-in-law
from the mother-in-law, the father-in-law from his son's bride.
The Basogas of the Upper Nile loathe incest to such a degree that they
punish it even in animals whenever it can be observed among them.
=Incest in Ancient Times.= The horror of incest, however, is a
relatively recent development in human psychology and ethics. The
ancient dynasties of Egypt and Peru practiced incest. Incest was
indulged in by all the archaic gods. The authors of the book of Genesis
must have accepted the idea of incest as the sole means of explaining
Adam's and Eve's descendants.
The horror of incest which we all feel or pretend to feel, is indeed an
acquired feeling. Since every race has adopted stern legal measures to
prevent incest, it can only be because a desire for incest is one of
the cravings which mankind is constantly struggling against.
As Frazer says: "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 hands out of the fire instinctively."
If men and women avoided incest instinctively no legislation would be
needed compelling them to avoid it.
Indeed the confessions received by psychoanalysts reveal that the
first sexual desires of the young are directed toward children of the
opposite sex within the family circle. The many slight or serious
indiscretions of an incestuous nature in which neurotic brothers and
sisters indulge in infancy and childhood are generally "forgotten,"
that is, repressed, in later years, but analytic probing brings a great
amount of such repressed material to the surface.
Since neither animals nor human beings experience any natural fear of
incest, why is it that all races are officially so afraid of it?
=Inbreeding.= It cannot be due to the fear of race deterioration
consequent upon inbreeding. Inbreeding is not necessarily a harmful
process of reproduction as East and Jones have shown in their book on
"Inbreeding and Outbreeding." It seems to have, at times, for instance
in Athens during the classic age, led to the production of many very
superior individuals.
Furthermore the primitive savages who punish incest even among domestic
animals have no conception of such eugenic theories. Some of them,
incredible as it may sound, do not even realise the relation of cause
to effect which exists between intercourse and pregnancy.
Freud offers an explanation based upon the Darwinian hypothesis of the
primal horde in which the old father kept all the females for himself
and drove away the growing sons.
This state of affairs has been observed among herds of wild cattle
and horses. It generally leads to the killing of the oldest bull or
stallion by the younger males.
=The Primal Horde.= Freud assumes that this must have been the usual
occurrence in the primal horde. One day the sons joined hands and
killed the father.
"Though the brothers had joined forces in order to overcome the father,
each was the others' rival among the women. Each one wanted to have
them all to himself like the father, and in the fight of each against
the others 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 to do, if they wished to live together, but to erect incest
prohibitions, perhaps after many difficult experiments, in the course
of which they may all have renounced the women whom they desired."
In other words, the incest taboo was adopted to assure peace within the
family circle, a convenience measure dictated by jealousy.
=Repressed Incestuous Feelings= may at times drive one into a most
objectional form of behavior. A brother who in childhood was too fond
of his sister (or vice versa) may, from an unconscious desire for
self-protection, adopt a hostile attitude to his sister. The more
attracted he was to her the more sadistic he will appear in later years.
He may even avoid all the women who would in any way suggest his sister
and in that way never feel satisfied in love, for the women who cannot
possibly suggest to him his sister, lack all the fetishes which would
vouchsafe him safety and eroticism.
Such a man should be analysed and made to realise the incestuous
cravings which he has repressed into his unconscious. His hatred would
then change into affection and in his search of a mate he would
logically seek the sister image which alone would insure him sexual
happiness.
I have reconciled in that way several groups of brothers and sisters
who had never been able to get along after puberty, altho most of them
had developed a dangerous fondness for each other before puberty.
Repressed sister fixation like repressed mother fixation has been found
on several occasions as one of the components of homosexualism in the
man, father or brother fixation as one of the causes of frigidity in
the woman.
=Blood Relations.= Mother or sister fixation is frequently the cause of
marriage between blood relations. This sort of union has been unjustly
suspected of breeding mental inferiors. We should rather say that it
is the mental inferiors who seek their mate within the family circle.
Unable to secure the mother or the sister as a mate, they select a
woman who has as many of the family traits as possible, that they may
feel more secure in her company. If a defective child is bred of such
unions, it is not due to the close relationship of the parents but to
the fact that too often one of the mates was deficient physically or
mentally.
In this respect as in many others, self-knowledge and acceptance
of one's personality, coupled with a courageous understanding of
unavoidable biological facts, are the necessary conditions for perfect
mental health and freedom.
The man with a mother or sister fixation, the woman with a father or
brother fixation should be made aware of it, however slight or severe
the fixation may be.
They must be made to realise that incestuous cravings are biological
phenomena which for reasons of convenience have been made unlawful but
which do not brand the individual experiencing them as a degenerate or
a vicious person.
They must also be made to realise that their incestuous craving
may be one of the symptoms of the neurotic search for the line of
least effort, knowledge of which weakens the craving to the point of
insignificance.
The individual with a biologically real incestuous fixation should
accept it and seek its substitute gratification thru association with a
suitable mate presenting in his or her person the fetishes of the loved
parent or brother or sister.
The individual whose fixation is purely neurotic should be freed of
it by analysis and allowed to seek a mate without being inhibited by
ghosts.