Note 103.1 — PSYCHE’S TASK

Sexual immorality is thought by many savages to injure the delinquents themselves, their offspring, and their innocent spouses. In the opinion of many savages the effect of sexual immorality is not merely to disturb, directly or indirectly, the course of nature by blighting the crops, causing the earth to quake, volcanoes to vomit fire, and so forth: the delinquents themselves, their offspring, or their innocent spouses are supposed to suffer in their own persons for the sin that has been committed. Thus among the Baganda of Central Africa “adultery was also regarded as a danger to children; it was thought that women who were guilty of it during pregnancy caused the child to die, either prior to birth, or at the time of birth. Sometimes the guilty woman would herself die in childbed; or, if she was safely delivered, she would have a tendency to devour her child, and would have to be guarded lest she should kill it.”103.1 “When there was a case of retarded delivery, the relatives attributed it to adultery; they made the woman confess the name of the man with whom she had had intercourse, and if she died, her husband was fined by the members of her clan, for they said: ‘We did not give our daughter to you for the purpose of adultery, and you should have guarded her.’ In most cases, however, the medicine-men were able to save the woman’s life, and upon recovery she was upbraided, and the man whom she accused was heavily fined.”103.2 The Baganda thought that the infidelity of the father as well as of the mother endangered the life of the child. For “it was also supposed that a man who had sexual intercourse with any woman not his wife, during the time that any one of his wives was nursing a child, would cause the child to fall ill, and that unless he confessed his guilt and obtained from the medicine-man the necessary remedies to cancel the evil results, the child would die.”103.3 The common childish ailment which was thought to be caused by the adultery of the father or mother was called amakiro, and its symptoms were well recognized: they consisted of nausea and general debility, and the only cure for them was a frank confession by the guilty parent and the performance of a magical ceremony by the medicine-man.103.4