CHAPTER X
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PARENT SUBSTITUTES
Our last two chapters have again been something in the nature of a digression—a digression however which, we will hope, has not been altogether unprofitable, inasmuch as it has opened to our view some of the wider aspects of our problem, and afforded us a glimpse of the extent to which the aspects of family life which are forcing themselves on the attention of psychologists at the present day, are the same as those which have exercised the greatest influence upon mankind in all places and of all degrees of culture, and have manifested themselves everywhere in human beliefs and institutions. It is now time, however, to resume our previous problem—the study of the influence of the family upon the development of the individual in its more remote, indirect and abnormal aspects.
In the failures and abnormalities of development with which Varieties and abnormalities as regards the displacement of parent-regarding tendencies we were concerned in Chapters VI and VII, the principal characteristic was the persistence of, or return to, an infantile or childlike relationship towards the parents. In normal development, as we have seen, this relationship is outgrown largely by the help of the mechanism of Displacement, in virtue of which the emotional attitude towards the parents is transferred to other persons, who (at any rate in the early stages of the process) are connected with the parents by some associative link. Supposing development to have proceeded normally along these lines for a certain period, it is still possible for an arrest or regression to occur, as a result of which any of these later stages may become permanent instead of transitory, in precisely the same manner as in the case of the earlier stages in which the emotions and feelings are still directly related to the parents themselves.
From one point of view abnormalities occurring in these later stages are perhaps less serious than those which we considered in the earlier chapters, inasmuch as the regression is less complete; some degree of psychical emancipation from the parents being still preserved. Nevertheless these abnormalities may constitute a very grave hindrance to the general development and mental health of the individual and, in the case of the displacement of very intense affects, may give rise to consequences of a distinctly pathological order; while, on their more sublimated side, they have contributed much to some of the most important aspects of social life and culture.
We have already in Chapter III studied some of the ways in Insufficient Displacement which the displacement of the original love from parents to other persons takes place. If the displacement remains at a stage in which the associative link between the original and the later object of love is a very firm or close one, we may say that the development is incomplete, inasmuch as the individual's love is still to an undue extent on an infantile fixation. Of the various associative links which we have enumerated as being those of most frequent occurrence—mental or physical characteristics, age, circumstances of life, past history, family relationship etc., the last named is apt to play an especially important part in cases of arrested or regressive development. The displacement of love from parent to brother or sister may probably, as we have seen, be regarded as a Displacement depending on family relationship
Brother and sister normal transitory phase. The intensity of the attachment frequently aroused and the sexual nature which it often retains in the Unconscious right on into adolescent and adult life are vouched for, on the negative side, by the strength of the repressions raised against incestuous tendencies of this kind—repressions which are scarcely less severe than those directed against parent incest. Similarly, on the positive side, the true nature of the brother-sister relationship is often startlingly revealed by the process of psycho-analysis and is also shown by the study of legend, of literature and of the habits and customs of primitive peoples.
We have already seen (p. 86) that on occasions of special licence connection between brother and sister, though otherwise strictly tabooed, may be temporarily permitted. It seems to be Cases where brother-sister incest has been permitted pretty generally agreed among anthropologists that these occasions are of the nature of reversions to a condition of affairs that was once comparatively frequent, if not indeed quite general[86]. There are in fact numerous indications that such brother-sister connections were, among certain peoples at any rate, the rule rather than the exception. H. L. Morgan, to whose credit lies the discovery of the so-called classificatory system of relationship, thinks indeed that a group marriage between own brothers and sisters was the earliest kind of restriction upon absolute promiscuity and constituted the basis of the oldest form of the human family[87]. The evidence for the really primitive character of any such family has been seriously disputed in more recent writings[88]; but the frequent occurrence of temporary or permanent brother-sister unions among both primitive and more advanced peoples would seem to be beyond dispute. Thus the incest of brother and sister is said to be, or to have been, common among the Antambahoaka of South East Madagascar[89], among many tribes of Brazil[90], in Cali[91] (Colombia), Tenasserim[92] (Burma), Mexico[93] and many other places. The ancient Persians seem to have permitted incest of this kind, though Herodotus remarks with reference to the marriage of Cambyses to his sister that this was not a usual procedure[94]. In Egypt, however, such connections were not only admitted but approved, marriage between brother and sister being there regarded as the "best of marriages" and acquiring "an ineffable degree of sanctity when the brother and sister who contracted it were themselves born of a brother and sister, who had in their turn also sprung from a union of the same sort"[95]. Even in Greece a similar practice does not seem to have been unusual, for, if we may believe Cornelius Nepos[96], no disgrace attached to Cimon's marriage with his sister Elpinice, since his fellow-citizens had the same custom. Among the Jews too, the prophet Ezekiel[97] complains of the occurrence of this form of incest. Primitive customs, it is now generally agreed, are apt to persist in the case of royal families long after they have ceased to be observed by the common people; and the persistent brother and sister marriages among the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Incas of Peru, as well as the existence of similar practices among reigning families in primitive peoples of recent times[98], afford further evidence of the former widespread occurrence of brother-sister unions.
On the negative side too, there is evidence to be gained Repression of, and desire for such incest from the nature of the taboos and institutions erected against incest. According to Frazer[99] the exogamous systems of the Australian aborigines seem to have originated in the first place as a means of preventing connections between brother and sister, the prohibition of marriage between other relatives having been brought about by subsequent developments and elaborations of the primitive two class system, instituted for the purpose of avoiding brother-sister marriages. The abhorrence of brother-sister incest is indeed very marked in many primitive communities, and that this abhorrence represents the repression of a genuine desire for incest of this kind is shown by the remarks of travellers that the "avoidances" and other methods of enforcing the prohibitions are often "very necessary"[100] and by the fact, already referred to, that as soon as the customary restrictions are relaxed, the otherwise forbidden connections are freely indulged in. To this evidence from anthropology there might be added the scarcely less convincing data from mythology and literature, which has been studied in such detail by Rank[101] and which perhaps, for this reason, we need not stop to dwell on here; it being sufficient to remind the reader in passing of such well known mythological cases as the unions of Zeus and Hera and of Osiris and Isis, or, as regards literature, to refer him to such recent examples as Artzibasheff's "Sanine" or d'Annunzio's "City of the Dead" where the existence of erotic feeling between brother and sister is treated in an open manner.
As a further stage of development the original parent Displacement of parent—regarding tendencies on to more distant relatives love may be displaced, not on to a brother or sister, but on to some more distant relative, such as a cousin (a brother or sister substitute) or an uncle or aunt (more directly parent substitutes)[102]. Cousin marriage is, among ourselves, passing through the stage of being legally permissible though still regarded with some degree of moral disapproval or suspicion. In other times and places it has, like brother-sister marriage, been the object both of sternest prohibition[103] and of warm approval[104]. Any kind of sexual relationship between nephews and aunts or between nieces and uncles seems to have been, too, reminiscent of the repressed tendencies to parent-incest to have received sanction either legally or morally, but unions of this kind have nevertheless sometimes been found among primitive peoples[105], and are not infrequently present as objects of desire in the unconscious mind of those who live in civilised communities to-day.