Articles
Malignant Self Love -
Narcissism Revisited
The Offspring of Aeolus
On the Incest Taboo
page 2
One of the main businesses of the family is to teach to its members self
control, self regulation and healthy adaptation. Family members share space and
resources, for instance. Siblings share the mother's emotions and attention.
Similarly, the family educates its young members to master their drives and to
postpone the gratification and satisfaction, which attaches to acting upon
them. The incest taboo teaches children how to control their erotic drive by
abstaining from ingratiating themselves with members of the opposite sex within
the same family. There could be little question that incest constitutes a lack
of control and impedes the proper separation of impulse (or stimulus) from the
response to it. Additionally, it probably interferes with the defensive aspects
of the family's existence. It is through the family that aggression is
legitimately channelled, expressed and externalized. By imposing discipline and
hierarchy on its members, the family is transformed into a cohesive and
efficient war machine. It sucks in economic resources, social status and
members of other families. It forms alliances and fights other alliances over
scarce goods, tangible and intangible. This efficacy is adversely affected by
incest. It is virtually impossible to maintain discipline and hierarchy in an
incestuous family wherein some members assume sexual roles not normally theirs.
Sex is an expression of power – emotional and physical. The members of the
family involved in the incest surrender power and assume it out of the regular
flow patterns that have made the family the formidable apparatus that it is.
This weakens the family, both internally and externally. Internally, emotive
reactions (such as jealousy of other family members) and clashing authorities
and responsibilities are likely to undo the delicate unit. Externally, the
family will be vulnerable to ostracism and more official forms of intervention
and dismantling.
Finally, the family is an identity endowment mechanism. It bestows identity
upon its members. Internally, the members of the family derive meaning from
their position in the family tree (coupled with societal expectations and
maxims). Externally, through exogamy, the family absorbs other identities and
develops its own. Exogamy, as often noted, allows for the creation of extended
alliances. It reduces the solidarity of the nuclear, original family by
extending it to “strangers”. The “identity creep” of the
family is in total opposition to incest. The latter even increases the
solidarity and cohesiveness of the incestuous family – but at the expense
of its ability to digest and absorb other identities of other family units.
Freud said that incest provokes horror because it touches upon our
forbidden, ambivalent emotions towards members of our close family. This
ambivalence covers both aggression towards other members (forbidden and
punishable) and (sexual) attraction to them (doubly forbidden and punishable).
Others had an opposite view (Westermark) that “familiarity breeds
contempt” and that the incest taboo simply reflects emotional reality
rather than fight against inbred instincts.
There is little doubt that incest has nothing to do with genetic
considerations. In today's world incest does not need to result in pregnancy
and the transmission of genetic material. Good contraceptives should,
therefore, encourage bad, incestuous, couples. In many other life forms,
inbreeding or straightforward incest is the norm (chimpanzees, to mention close
relatives). Finally, incest prohibitions apply to non-genetically-related
people in most countries.
The more primitive the society, the more strict and elaborate the set of
incest prohibitions and the fiercer the reactions of society to its violation.
It appears that the less violent the dispute settlement methods in a given
culture – the more lenient the attitude to incest. Incest seems to
interfere with well-established and rigid patterns of inheritance. This
interference led, in all probability, to disputes. In more primitive societies,
arms were resorted to in an effort to resolve conflicts. To prevent recurrent
and costly bloodshed was one of the intentions of the incest taboo.
The incest taboo is, therefore, a cultural trait. Protective of
the efficient mechanism of the family, society sought to minimize disruption to
its activities and to the clear flows of authority, responsibilities, material
wealth and information horizontally and vertically. Incest threatened to
unravel this magnificent creation. Alarmed by the possible consequences
(internal and external feuds, a rise in the level of aggression and violence)
– society introduced the taboo. It came replete with physical and
emotional sanctions: stigmatization, revulsion and horror, imprisonment, the
demolition of the errant and socially mutant family cell. As long as societies
revolve around the relegation of power, its sharing, its acquisition and
dispensation – there will always exist an incest taboo. But in a different
society and culture, it is conceivable not to have such a taboo. This would be
either utopian or dystopian, depending on the reader.
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