Atkinson[188] seems to have been the first to recognize that these
conditions of the Darwinian primal horde would in practice bring about
the exogamy of the young men. Each one of those driven away could found
a similar horde in which, thanks to jealousy of the chief, the same
prohibition as to sexual intercourse obtained, and in the course of time
these conditions would have brought about the rule which is now known as
law: no sexual intercourse with the members of the horde. After the
advent of totemism the rule would have changed into a different form: no
sexual intercourse within the totem.
Andrew Lang[189] declared himself in agreement with this explanation of
exogamy. But in the same book he advocates the other theory of Durkheim
which explains exogamy as a consequence of the totem laws. It is not
altogether easy to combine the two interpretations; in the first case
exogamy would have existed before totemism; in the second case it would
be a consequence of it[190].
3
Into this darkness psychoanalytic experience throws one single ray of
light.
The relation of the child to animals has much in common with that of
primitive man. The child does not yet show any trace of the pride which
afterwards moves the adult civilized man to set a sharp dividing line
between his own nature and that of all other animals. The child
unhesitatingly attributes full equality to animals; he probably feels
himself more closely related to the animal than to the undoubtedly
mysterious adult, in the freedom with which he acknowledges his needs.
Not infrequently a curious disturbance manifests itself in this
excellent understanding between child and animal. The child suddenly
begins to fear a certain animal species and to protect himself against
seeing or touching any individual of this species. There results the
clinical picture of _animal phobia_, which is one of the most frequent
among the psychoneurotic diseases of this age and perhaps the earliest
form of such an ailment. The phobia is as a rule in regard to animals
for which the child has until then shown the liveliest interest and has
nothing to do with the individual animal. In cities the choice of
animals which can become the object of phobia is not great. They are
horses, dogs, cats, more seldom birds, and strikingly often very small
animals like bugs and butterflies. Sometimes animals which are known to
the child only from picture books and fairy stories become objects of
the senseless and inordinate anxiety which is manifested with these
phobias; it is seldom possible to learn the manner in which such an
unusual choice of anxiety has been brought about. I am indebted to Dr
Karl Abraham for the report of a case in which the child itself
explained its fear of wasps by saying that the colour and the stripes of
the body of the wasp had made it think of the tiger of which, from all
that it had heard, it might well be afraid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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