Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/33

Rh ness to accept innovation shown by the variety of his funeral rites which exists side by side with this conservatism, let us ask how far there is evidence for the phenomenon of transference to which the psycho-analytic school of modern psychology attaches so great an importance in the case of the individual. I will first consider the possibilities for transference in a Melanesian community in the absence of external influence. We have seen that one feature of authority in Melanesia is its generalised character. We have not to do with the transference of affective dispositions from one individual to another, but it would be necessary to transfer a body of dispositions already directed towards a number of persons, either to some person or persons not included among them or to some special member or members of the community who stand for the group-ideal. When we consider this necessity as it arises in a group presenting relatively few differentiations in social position, we see that there would be few opportunities for transference. If the physician, the priest and the teacher, who are the chief vehicles for transferred affects and dispositions among ourselves, exist at all in Melanesia, they are members of the group of old men who are already the dispensers of authority and the upholders of the group-ideal. In the absence of external influence it is difficult to see any opportunity for transference except through the appearance of some highly exceptional person as a sport. I have evidence from Melanesia that men join the ranks of the ruling class of old men at different ages. A relatively young man who shows superior powers may come to be regarded as one of the elders when he would hardly be classed as an old man in years. But all the evidence is against such acceptance of a relatively young man as the result of reforming tendencies or tendencies in opposition to the general leanings of the elders.

We have no evidence whatever for the view that such sports as might become the recipients of transferred dis-