Читать книгу Sex and Repression in Savage Society - Bronislaw 1884-1942 Malinowski - Страница 6

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Psycho-analysis was born from medical practice, and its theories are mainly psychological, but it stands in close relation to two other branches of learning—biology and the science of society. It is perhaps one of its chief merits that it forges another link between these three divisions of the science of man. The psychological views of Freud—his theories of conflict, repression, the unconscious, the formation of complexes—form the best elaborated part of psycho-analysis, and they cover its proper field. The biological doctrine—the treatment of sexuality and of its relation to other instincts, the concept of the ‘libido’ and its various transformations—is a part of the theory which is much less finished, less free from contradictions and lacunæ, and which receives more criticism, partly spurious and partly justified. The sociological aspect, which most interests us here, will deserve more attention. Curiously enough, though sociology and anthropology have contributed most evidence in favour of psycho-analysis, and though the doctrine of the Oedipus complex has obviously a sociological aspect, this aspect has received the least attention.

Psycho-analytic doctrine is essentially a theory of the influence of family life on the human mind. We are shown how the passions, stresses and conflicts of the child in relation to its father, mother, brother and sister result in the formation of certain permanent mental attitudes or sentiments towards them, sentiments which, partly living in memory, partly embedded in the unconscious, influence the later life of the individual in his relations to society. I am using the word sentiment in the technical sense given to it by Mr. A. F. Shand, with all the important implications which it has received in his theory of emotions and instincts.

The sociological nature of this doctrine is obvious—the whole Freudian drama is played out within a definite type of social organization, in the narrow circle of the family, composed of father, mother, and children. Thus the family complex, the most important psychological fact according to Freud, is due to the action of a certain type of social grouping upon the human mind. Again, the mental imprint received by every individual in youth exercises further social influences, in that it predisposes him to the formation of certain ties, and moulds his receptive dispositions and his creative power in the domains of tradition, art, thought, and religion.

Thus the sociologist feels that to the psychological treatment of the complex there should be added two sociological chapters: an introduction with an account of the sociological nature of family influences, and an epilogue containing the analysis of the consequences of the complex for society. Two problems therefore emerge for the sociologist.

First problem. If family life is so fateful for human mentality, its character deserves more attention. For the fact is that the family is not the same in all human societies. Its constitution varies greatly with the level of development and with the character of the civilization of the people, and it is not the same in the different strata of the same society. According to theories current even to-day among anthropologists, the family has changed enormously during the development of humanity, passing from its first promiscuous form, based on sexual and economic communism, through ‘group-family’ based on ‘group-marriage’, ‘consanguineous family’, based on ‘Punalua marriage’, through the Grossfamilie and clan kindred to its final form in our present-day society—the individual family based on monogamous marriage and the patria potestas. But apart from such anthropological constructions which combine some fact with much hypothesis, there is no doubt that from actual observation among present-day savages we can see great variations in the constitution of the family. There are differences depending on the distribution of power which, vested in a varying degree in the father, give the several forms of patriarchy, or vested in the mother, the various sub-divisions of mother-right. There are considerable divergencies in the methods of counting and regarding descent—matriliny based on ignorance of fatherhood and patriliny in spite of this ignorance; patriliny due to power, and patriliny due to economic reasons. Moreover, differences in settlement, housing, sources of food supply, division of labour and so on, alter greatly the constitution of the human family among the various races and peoples of mankind.

The problem therefore emerges: do the conflicts, passions and attachments within the family vary with its constitution, or do they remain the same throughout humanity? If they vary, as in fact they do, then the nuclear complex of the family cannot remain constant in all human races and peoples; it must vary with the constitution of the family. The main task of psycho-analytic theory is, therefore, to study the limits of the variation; to frame the appropriate formula; and finally, to discuss the outstanding types of family constitution and to state the corresponding forms of the nuclear complex.

With perhaps one exception,^[1] this problem has not yet been raised, at least not in an explicit and direct manner. The complex exclusively known to the Freudian School, and assumed by them to be universal, I mean the Oedipus complex, corresponds essentially to our patrilineal Aryan family with the developed patria potestas, buttressed by Roman law and Christian morals, and accentuated by the modern economic conditions of the well-to-do bourgeoisie. Yet this complex is assumed to exist in every savage or barbarous society. This certainly cannot be correct, and a detailed discussion of the first problem will show us how far this assumption is untrue.

The second problem. What is the nature of the influence of the family complex on the formation of myth, legend, and fairy tale, on certain types of savage and barbarous customs, forms of social organization and achievements of material culture? This problem has been clearly recognized by the psycho-analytic writers who have been applying their principles to the study of myth, religion, and culture. But the theory of how the constitution of the family influences culture and society through the forces of the family complex has not been worked out correctly. Most of the views bearing on this second problem need a thorough revision from the sociological point of view. The concrete solutions, on the other hand, offered by Freud, Rank and Jones of the actual mythological problems are much sounder than their general principle that the “myth is the secular dream of the race”.

Psycho-analysis, by emphasizing that the interest of primitive man is centred in himself and in the people around him, and is of a concrete and dynamic nature, has given the right foundation to primitive psychology, hitherto frequently immeshed in a false view of the dispassionate interest of man in nature and of his concern with philosophic speculations about his destiny. But by ignoring the first problem, and by making the tacit assumption that the Oedipus complex exists in all types of society, certain errors have crept into the anthropological work of psycho-analysts. Thus they cannot reach correct results when they try to trace the Oedipus complex, essentially patriarchal in character, in a matrilineal society; or when they play about with the hypotheses of group-marriage or promiscuity, as if no special precautions were necessary when approaching conditions so entirely foreign to the constitution of our own form of family as it is known to psycho-analytic practice. Involved in such contradictions, the anthropologizing psycho-analyst makes a hypothetical assumption about some type of primitive horde, or about a prehistoric prototype of the totemic sacrifice, or about the dream character of the myth, usually quite incompatible with the fundamental principles of psycho-analysis itself.

Part I of the present work is essentially an attempt based on facts observed at first hand among savages, to discuss the first problem—the dependence of the nuclear complex upon the constitution of the family. The treatment of the second problem is reserved for Part II, while in the last two parts the same twin subjects are discussed in a general manner.

[1]

I refer to Mr. J. C. Flügel’s The Psycho-Analytic Study of the Family, which, though written by a psychologist, is throughout orientated in the sociological direction. The later chapters, especially XV and XVII, contain much which is an approach to the present problem, although the writer does not formulate it explicitly.