Sex and Repression in Savage Society by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781134522026
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A ‘REPRESSED COMPLEX’

My main contention is concisely and adequately summed up by Dr. Jones himself as ‘the view that the nuclear family complex varies according to the particular family structure existing in any community. According to him (i.e. to Malinowski) a matrilineal family system arises, for unknown social and economic reasons, and then the repressed nuclear complex consists of brother and sister attraction, with nephew and uncle hatred; when this system is replaced by a patrilineal one, the nuclear complex becomes the familiar Œdipus one’ (pp. 127 and 128). All this is a perfectly correct interpretation of my views, though Dr. Jones has gone beyond the scope of my previously published conclusions. As a field-worker I have remained throughout my essay on the ‘purely descriptive plane’, but in this Part I shall presently take the opportunity of setting forth my genetic views.

As has been already mentioned, the crux of the difficulty lies in the fact that to Dr. Jones and other psycho-analysts the Œdipus complex is something absolute, the primordial source, in his own words the fons et origo of everything. To me on the other hand the nuclear family complex is a functional formation dependent upon the structure and upon the culture of a society. It is necessarily determined by the manner in which sexual restrictions are moulded in a community and by the manner in which authority is apportioned. I cannot conceive of the complex as the first cause of everything, as the unique source of culture, of organization and belief; as the metaphysical entity, creative, but not created, prior to all things and not caused by anything else.

Let me quote some more significant passages from Dr. Jones's article in order to indicate the obscurities and contradictions to which I have alluded. They illustrate the type of argument which we meet in the orthodox psycho-analytic discussions of savage custom.

Even where they admittedly cannot be found in actual existence, as in the matrilineal societies of Melanesia, the ‘primordial Œdipus tendencies’ are still lurking behind: ‘The forbidden and unconsciously loved sister is only a substitute for the mother, as the uncle plainly is for the father’ (p. 128). In other words the Œdipus complex is merely screened by another one, or painted over by the other complex, in slightly different colours. As a matter of fact, Dr. Jones uses an even stronger terminology and speaks about the ‘repression of the complex’ and about ‘the various complicated devices whereby this repression is brought about and maintained’ (p. 120). And here comes the first obscurity. I have always understood that a complex is an actual configuration of attitudes and sentiments partly overt, partly repressed, but actually existing in the unconscious. Such a complex can always be empirically reached by the practical methods of psycho-analysis, by the study of mythology, folklore and other cultural manifestations of the unconscious. If, however, as Dr. Jones seems fully to admit, the attitudes typical of the Œdipus complex cannot be found either in the conscious or unconscious;

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