Note 76.1 — PSYCHE’S TASK

The custom of avoiding a mother-in-law and other relations by marriage among the Boloki of the Congo. Speaking of the Boloki, a Bantu tribe of the Upper Congo, an experienced missionary, the Rev. John H. Weeks, writes as follows: “Perhaps this will be the best place in which to make a few remarks on the mother-in-law. She and her son-in-law may never look on each other’s face. I have often heard a man say, ‘So-and-so, your mother-in-law is coming,’ and the person addressed would run into my house and hide himself until his wife’s mother had gone by. They can sit at a little distance from each other, with their backs to one another, and talk over affairs when necessary. Bokilo means mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, father-in-law, sister of mother-in-law, brother of father-in-law, wife of wife’s brother, and in fact any relation-in-law. Bokilo, the noun, is derived from kila = to forbid, prohibit, taboo, and indicates that all bearing the relationship of bokilo can have no intimate relationship with one another, for it is regarded as incestuous; and it is according to native ideas just as wrong for a daughter-in-law to speak or look at her husband’s father, as for the son-in-law to speak or look at his wife’s mother. Some have told me that this was to guard against all possibility of cohabitation, ‘For a person you never look at you never desire.’ Others have said, ‘Well, don’t you see, my wife came from her womb.’ I am strongly inclined to the opinion that the former is the real reason.”76.1