Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/132

 124 REPORTS

mourning action is continued and the intichiuma ceremonies, the funeral rite of the primal father, are repeated year by year in the desert tracts of Central Australia. But if one conceives the most important totemistic ceremonies as a ritual which evolved from the funeral rite, the hypothesis assuming that totemism is a definite form (metempsychosis) of ancestor worship receives new support. In Lidonesia, the species of animal visiting the tomb is regarded as sacred; in Australia the tomb is watched so that the totem- animal of the murderer may be recognised. The days and hours after the murder are determinative as being the psychological moment for the projection into the world of the animals; tortured by the sense of his guilt, the murderer sees the images of his victim everywhere. Thus the animal at the tomb becomes a sym- bol of the father and also the representative of the fraternal horde. For the animals which come to the grave are attracted by the odour of decomposition, they are ghouls, in this respect comrades and helpmates of the brothers, who really also consume the dead father. The Arunta consider the scavenger eagle taboo, in the South-East and in Borneo this bird is the symbol of the highest spirit. If the customs of cannibalism as they prevail to-day are examined, two remarkable prohibitions may be found: among the Dieri the son may not eat of the flesh of the father; in the North, women only may not eat human flesh, for they might then become barren. The conclusion may be drawn from these facts that the prohibition represents the primitive condition. The son consumed the father's flesh and the women as well partook of the meal. For them this meal was as sexual intercourse with the father: after consuming this flesh (as in later times the meat of the totem) they became pregnant Gradually the suppression gained a foothold. First came the prohibition of conception by eating of the flesh of the primal father, later followed also the suppression of the totem meal. Everything, therefore, points to the fact that the intichiuma rites originated in a funeral rite which had also an orgiastic aspect. The attack of the young men on the leader of the horde could only occur in the rutting period, for then only the craving for the female, which was the cause of the struggle, existed. If they succeeded, after many vain attempts, a period of shock, a condition of immobility (sorrow) would follow, to be succeeded immediately by the heat of liberated youth, by sexual intercourse. In con- junction with the funeral rites and intichiuma, the initiation rites