Incest taboo

“ Whereas all observers have interpreted the purpose and meaning of the avoidances between near relatives as protective measures against incest, different interpretations have been given for those prohibitions which concern the relationship with the mother-in-law. It was quite incomprehensible why all these races should manifest such great fear of temptation on the part of the man for an elderly woman, old enough to be his mother. ”

“ The evils of inbreeding are so probable as to justify strong prejudice against consanguine marriages. If primitive men set up the taboo on incest without knowing this, they acted more wisely than they knew. We who have inherited the taboo now have knowledge which gives a rational and expedient reason for it. The mores, therefore, still have a field of useful action to strengthen and reaffirm the taboo. There is also a practical question still unsettled,—whether the marriage of first cousins should be included in the taboo. ”

“ It is of interest to point out that the first restrictions which the introduction of marriage classes brought about affected the sexual freedom of the younger generation, in other words, incest between brothers and sisters and between sons and mothers, while incest between father and daughter was only abrogated by more sweeping measures. ”

“ An added mixture of irritability and animosity in his feelings leads us to suspect that the mother-in-law actually represents an incest temptation for the son-in-law, just as it not infrequently happens that a man falls in love with his subsequent mother-in-law before his inclination is transferred to her daughter. ”

“ He insists that neither incest nor promiscuity was "ever anything but the rarest exception in any stage of human culture, even the earliest; the former being prevented by the psychological difficulty with which love comes into play between persons either closely associated or strictly separated before the age of puberty, a difficulty enhanced by the ideas of sexual taboo, which are intensified in the closeness of the family circle, where practical as well as religious considerations cause parents to prevent any dangerous connections." ”

“ He supposes that a real incestuous desire has led the primitive man to the invention of a protective law; while to me it looks as if the incest-taboo is one among numerous taboos of all sorts, and due to the typical superstitious fear of primitive man, a fear existing independently of incest and its interdiction. ”

“ The interpretation of incest dread as an innate instinct must therefore be abandoned. The same holds true of another derivation of the incest prohibition which counts many supporters, namely the assumption that primitive races very soon observed the dangers with which inbreeding threatened their race and that they therefore had decreed the incest prohibition with a conscious purpose. ”

“ We have gone so far as to declare that the relation to the parents instigated by incestuous longings, is the central complex of the neurosis. This discovery of the significance of incest for the neurosis naturally meets with the most general incredulity on the part of the grown-up, normal man; a similar rejection will also meet the researches of Otto Rank, which show in even larger scope to what extent the incest theme stands in the center of poetical interest and how it forms the material of poetry in countless variations and distortions. ”

“ The taboo on incest works less powerfully in regard to the feelings towards the new parent than it did in regard to those towards the old. The new parent is, as a rule, no relative by blood, nor is the surviving real parent felt to have the same exclusive rights over his or her new partner as over the old; therefore the step-parent, when of the opposite sex to that of the child, is often made the object of a displacement of those feelings of tenderness and love which were formerly directed to the real parent of this sex ”

“ Instead of assuming therefore, from the legal prohibition of incest, that there is a natural aversion to incest we ought rather to assume that there is a natural instinct in favor of it, and that if the law represses it, it does so because civilized men have come to the conclusion that the satisfaction of these natural instincts is detrimental to the general interests of society. ”

“ What we can add to the further appreciation of incest dread is the statement that it is a subtle infantile trait and is in striking agreement with the psychic life of the neurotic. Psychoanalysis has taught us that the first object selection of the boy is of an incestuous nature and that it is directed to the forbidden objects, the mother and the sister; psychoanalysis has taught us also the methods through which the maturing individual frees himself from these incestuous attractions. The neurotic, however, regularly presents to us a piece of psychic infantilism ”

“ They are entirely different in theory under the mother family and the father family. They are now very different in different states of our Union.1659 If the taboo on marriage is not defined in terms of "blood" or assumed kinship, violation of it is not incest. For instance, in the mediæval church, two persons who had been sponsors in baptism to the same child might not marry. Also, if two persons are debarred 480by affinity, violation is not incest. In England a man may not marry his deceased wife's sister. If he does it, his marriage is unlawful, but it is not incest. ”

“ In the further development of the classification of the marriage system there seems to be a tendency to go beyond the prevention of natural and group incest, and to prohibit marriage between more distant group relations, in a manner similar to the Catholic church, which extended the marriage prohibitions always in force for brother and sisters, to cousins, and invented for them the grades of spiritual kinship. ”

“ Who cannot recall in his own experience love marriages of schoolmates or of cousins living in intimate association from their childhood? To say that such bringing up together creates "indifference" is obviously incorrect; to say that it leads to "aversion" is altogether unwarranted; and to trace to it such a feeling as our horror at the thought of marrying a sister, or mother, is simply preposterous.
The real source of the horror of incest in civilized communities was indicated more than two thousand years ago by Plato. ”

“ She at once complied with his request, and he sat by her side watching with glaring eye the rise and fall of her lovely bosom as she sang him a charming little song, full of simple natural tenderness. He was, in fact, lusting madly for his own sister, and why not?
In the earliest history of our own race incest was no sin; why should we now consider it as such? On the other hand what can be more intensely exciting than the knowledge that one is indulging every feeling of lasciviousness conjointly with one united so nearly by ties of blood and kindred. ”

“ Thus delightfully ended the first lesson in love taught to my sister, and such was my first triumph over a maidenhead, double enhanced by the idea of the close ties of parentage between us. In after-life, I have always found the nearer we are related, the more this idea of incest stimulates our passions and stiffens our pricks, so that if even we be in the wane of life, fresh vigour is imparted by reason of the very fact of our evasion of conventional laws. ”

“ Incest with thy daughter-in-law thou shalt not commit: she is thy son's wife; thou shalt not commit incest with her. 16. Incest with thy brother's wife thou shalt not commit: it is incest with thy brother.
17. Incest thou shalt not commit with a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son's daughter, or her daughter's daughter, to commit incest with her: for they are her near kinswomen: it is wickedness.
18. Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, even though one after the other, to commit incest with her, to vex her in her life. ”

“ It may be that the reason for this is that with the laws and social sentiments now prevailing in all civilized communities, only degenerates ever contract incestuous alliances. Desirable as it may be from a social point of view that this strong sentiment against incest should continue, it is not yet proven that even the closest blood relationship between the parents is directly injurious to the offspring. ”

“ When, on the contrary, brothers and sisters or near relatives have been separated from each other since an early age, they often fall in love with each other when they meet later on. There is, therefore, no innate or instinctive repugnance to incest in itself, but only against sexual union between individuals who have lived together since childhood. ”

“ Finally, our conclusion that the Legislature did not intend minors to be criminally liable for incestuous relations with adults is consistent with public policies we believe the Legislature intended to advance. The heavy social stigma associated with incest and the love, respect, and (in some cases) fear minors have of adult relatives already work to discourage minors from reporting incest. ”

“ Experience has taught even these primitive men that the offspring of consanguineous marriages were often deficient and degenerate. The prohibition of intermarriage in the same clan excluded own brothers and sisters from the marriage relations, or, in other words, incest is now considered immoral. ”

“ The crime of incest hath so much prevailed, not only among the higher, but among the lower orders of this people, that, not having the fear of God before their eyes, they are not ashamed of intermarrying with their relations, even in the third degree of consanguinity. ”

“ Amidst the savage races, although rare, it is by no means unknown. It is not a crime by the laws of totem kinship with female descent, the daughter in such a case being always of the same totem as her mother, and thus theoretically eligible. The only bar is the classificatory system which, based on sequence in birth, forbids all connection between those of different generations. Thus this form of incest, when it does occur, in no way creates the utter horror which we find universal at any union between brother and sister. ”

“ Only an exaggerated sexual desire, coupled with the absence of understanding for laws and morals, could nowadays lead to incest in any civilized country. Even in the crowded tenements where all members of the family of both sexes live and sleep in one room, incest is still a great rarity, and when such a case happens, it deeply wounds the feelings of the entire community. Such incestuous immoral attacks are, as a251 rule, made by low, brutal men in a state of intoxication or by those who suffer from weak-mindedness, by epileptics and by paranoiacs. ”

“ The "instinctive horror of incest" is a myth, for although a horror of incest does very properly exist in civilized, and in some tribal societies, it is purely a matter of custom and education, and not at all a universal law. ”

“ Compare the views of the bishop of Exeter, in the same Tracts, I, 19, who predicts an orgy of incest if the law be changed: "At the present, no doubt, there is a strong natural instinct against the marriage of a man with his own mother. ”

“ It must be admitted that a profound horror of incest is now "an almost universal characteristic of mankind, the cases which seem to indicate a perfect absence of this feeling being so exceedingly rare that they must be regarded merely as anomalous aberrations from a general rule." ”

“ But these few examples were the exceptions, generally, for the last three thousand years incest has been considered an abomination in the eyes of God and men. Its practice was constantly inveighed against by Church and State. It has, therefore, because of these constant suggestions, become the second nature of man to abhor such practices. ”

“ Sexual union between near relations nearly always causes a feeling of repugnance in man, and has been stigmatized by the term incest. Coitus between mother and son especially excites disgust. Sexual connection between parents and children, as well as between brothers and sisters is, however, common among certain tribes. Many other races allow marriage between brothers and sisters, but this is elsewhere generally condemned. ”

“ If a man betroth a girl to his son, but his son has not known her, and if then he defile her, he shall pay her half a gold mina, and compensate her for all that she brought out of her father's house. She may marry the man of her heart.
157. If any one be guilty of incest with his mother after his father, both shall be burned.
158. If any one be surprised after his father with his chief wife, who has borne children, he shall be driven out of his father's house. ”

“ Now, when the whole passage, as it stands in Selden, is read, how apparent is it, that the Puritan's quotation fails in presenting the true meaning of this oriental scholar. Selden here certainly considered the 6th verse of Lev. 18, a part of which he recites, as referring to incest. What is incest? The crime of cohabiting or of sexual intercourse between those who, on account of near relationship, are interdicted marriage. If a man have commerce with a female to whom he does not sustain such a relation, his sin may be fornication or adultery; but it cannot be incest. ”

“ Here the love is between brother and sister. When the self is broken, and the mystery of the recognition of otherness fails, then the longing for identification with the beloved becomes a lust. And it is this longing for identification, utter merging, which is at the base of the incest problem. In psychoanalysis almost every trouble in the psyche is traced to an incest-desire. ”