Note 85.2 — PSYCHE’S TASK

Mutual avoidance of mother and son, of father and daughter, and of brother and sister among the Battas. That a fear of improper intimacy even between the nearest blood relations is not baseless among races of a lower culture seems proved by the testimony of a Dutch missionary in regard to the Battas or Bataks of Sumatra, a people who have attained to a fairly high degree of barbaric civilization. The Battas “observe certain rules of avoidance in regard to near relations by blood or marriage; and we are informed that such avoidance springs not from the strictness but from the looseness of their moral practice. A Batta, it is said, assumes that a solitary meeting of a man with a woman leads to an improper intimacy between them. But at the same time he believes that incest or the sexual intercourse of near relations excites the anger of the gods and entails calamities of all sorts. Hence near relations are obliged to avoid each other lest they should succumb to temptation. A Batta, for example, would think it shocking were a brother to escort his sister to an evening party. Even in the presence of others a Batta brother and sister feel embarrassed. If one of them comes into the house, the other will go away. Further, a man may never be alone in the house with his daughter, nor a mother with her son. A man may never speak to his mother-in-law nor a woman to her father-in-law. The Dutch missionary who reports these customs adds that he is sorry to say that from what he knows of the Battas he believes the maintenance of most of these rules to be very necessary. For the same reason, he tells us, as soon as Batta lads have reached the age of puberty they are no longer allowed to sleep in the family house but are sent away to pass the night in a separate building (djambon); and similarly as soon as a man loses his wife by death he is excluded from the house.”85.2