120 TABOO AND GENETICS 



case of the woman tabooed because of the 

 strength of the sex instinct. As Freud has 

 very justly said, the tabooed object is very often 

 in itself the object of supreme desire. This is 

 very obvious in the case of the food and sex 

 taboos, which attempt to inhibit two of the 

 most powerful impulses of human nature. The 

 two conflicting streams of consciousness called 

 ambivalence by the psychologist may be observed 

 in the attitude of the savage toward many of his 

 taboos. As the Austrian alienist cannily re- 

 marks, unless the thing were desired there would 

 be no necessity to impose taboo restrictions 

 concerning it. 



It is by a knowledge of the mana concept and 

 the behef in sympathetic magic, clarified by 

 recognition of the ambivalent element in the 

 emotional reaction to the thing tabooed, that 

 we can hope to understand the almost universal 

 custom of the " woman shunned " and the sex 

 taboos of primitive peoples. This duahsm 

 appears most strongly in the attitude toward 

 woman ; for while she was the natural object 

 of the powerful sexual instinct she was quite 

 as much the source of fear because she was 

 generally supposed to be endowed with spiritistic 

 forces and in league with supernatural powers. 

 During the long period when the fact of paternity 

 was unrecognized, the power of reproduction 

 which was thus ascribed to woman alone made 



