Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 2.djvu/4

 160 G. ROHEIM

to the struggle of life tends to become a permanent type {Dauer- typus) in the course of evolution. Human races as they exist at present are muck less subject to modification than they were in bygone times and thus the idea oj the savages of a period of general change which preceded the present age is substantially corroborated by scietice. The only point where the savage errs very considerably is in the category of time: he lets changes take place in a minute for which science postulates geological periods. However, there is a good reason for this error, which we shall explain below. The animal into which the savage still transforms himself on certain occasions is usually one which, from his point of view, looms forth with special prominence on his geographical horizon, which in itself may represent the immediate neighbourhood of the horde. "One origin frequently assigned by natives to these family names is that they were derived from some vegetable or animal being very common in the district which the family inhabited and that hence the name of this animal or vegetable became applied to the family." ^ In North West Australia as well as in Central Australia every totem has a special cere- monial ground, the prototype at once of the temple and the altar. It would seem that the totemic centre is in a part of the country where the animals of the totem species are plentiful. * The un- conscious mechanism which Freud has called reversal operates in the mind of primitve man especially in relation to the categories of cause and effect,* and it will not surprise us in the least if we see the savage reversing the natural sequence of things and ex- plaining the distribution of an animal species by referring it to a human totem clan. According to the Lillooet Indians, "the Upper Bridge River Country was inhabited by the Deer people who were afterwards transformed into deer; therefore deer are most plentiful in that country at the present day."* The imitative rites mentioned above are circular reactions called forth by stimuli

> G. Grey: Journal of two Expeditions to North West and Western Australia, 1841, p. 229. Idem: Vocabulary of the Dialects of South Western Australia, 1840, p, 4.

» A. K. Brown: "Three Tribes of Western Australia." Journal Anthr. imt. 1913, p. 167,

» Cf. R6heim: "Az ambivalentia ds a megforditas tSrvdnye" (Ambivalency and the Law of Jleversal). Ethiwgraphia, 1918, 1—4.

• J. Teit: The Lillooet Indians, Jesup North Pacific Expedition, V, p. 275.