Chapter IV: The Infantile Recurrence of Totemism (3)

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.

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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}

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