II: TABOO AND EMOTIONAL AMBIVALENCE

Freud devotes the next few pages to an exposition of Wilhelm Wundt's attempt to trace the roots of taboo prohibitions among Australian aborigines [Myths and Religion, 1906,; Teil II (Volkerpsycholige, Band II), Leipzig]. Wundt asserts that taboos "have their origin in the source of the most primitive and at the same time most lasting of human instincts - in fear of 'demonic powers"'. All taboo prohibitions then are reduced to nothing more than injunction 'beware of the wrath of the demons'. As society developed, so Wundt alleges, the overt demonic connections were severed, leaving taboo customs in place. But as Freud points out the analyst cannot regard demons as the cause of the taboo, since demons themselves are constructs or projections of the human mind. They are caused effects which serve some defensive purpose. Wundt has simply replaced one level of problem by an unanalysable uncaused cause. This is essentially a religious compensation for ignorance rather than a scientific procedure. Freud comments, "Neither fear nor demons can be regarded by psychology as 'earliest' things, impervious to any attempt at discovering their antecedents". So Freud turns disappointed from Wundt's analysis and has to seek the causal origin of the phenomena of totem and taboo elsewhere.

His own approach is beautifully summarised in the words:

"Anyone approaching the problem of taboo from the angle of psychoanalysis, that is to say, of the investigation of the unconscious portion of the individual mind, will recognize, after a moment's reflection, that these phenomena are far from unfamiliar to him. He has come across people who have created for themselves individual taboo prohibitions of this very kind and who obey them just as strictly as savages obey the communal taboos of their tribe or society. If he were not already accustomed to describing such people as 'obsessional' patients, he would find 'taboo sickness' a most appropriate name for their condition. Having learnt so much, however, about this obsessional sickness from psycho-analytic examination - its clinical aetiology and the essence of its psychical mechanism - he can scarcely refrain from applying the knowledge he has thus acquired to the parallel sociological phenomenon." [op. cit. p.26]

Freud is, however, acutely aware that the occurrence of parallel phenomena does not necessarily imply common causal dynamic. He therefore seeks to probe below the surface of the two behaviours to see whether or not the similarities break down at depth.

"The most obvious and striking point of agreement between the obsessional prohibitions of neurotics and taboos is that these prohibitions are equally lacking in motive and equally puzzling in their origin. Having made their appearance at some unspecified moment, they are forcibly maintained by an irresistible fear. No external threat of punishment is required, for there is an internal certainty, a moral conviction, that any violation will lead to intolerable disaster." [op. cit. p.26]

The second similarity he draws out concerns the tendency of both taboo and obsessional prohibitions to accrete secondary prohibitions around them. The obsessional energy is displaced from one prohibition to another, since the actual conscious foci of prohibition are not causal, but simply carriers of the unconscious energy vested in them. The point is supported by evidence from customs in the life of the Maoris and from clinical analysis of Freud's own patients. He summarises the four main points of agreement:

"(1) the fact that the prohibitions lack any assignable motive; (2) the fact that they are maintained by an internal necessity; (3) the fact that they are easily displaceable and that there is a risk of infection from the prohibited object; and (4) the fact that they give rise to injunctions for the performance of ceremonial acts." [op. cit. p.28]