"The horror[of incest] is there, because all societies that lack it have died out."

There is understanding here. Not that of Freud, of course, nor that of Darwin, not of Marx, but of Spencer. It is folkways which are in competition, and the successful drive out the unsuccessful as quickly as the tanks roll forward against Baghdad.

The result of social competition may in some cases be gross physical extermintion, but that is only incidential to the competion of ways of thinking and doing.

Thank you VERY MUCH for linking to this gem, Peter!

I find the discussion of incest muddled, at best. While it is (almost) universally the case that enduring groups ("societies") reject incest, it is nonetheless true that individuals are often tempted by it. The resistance to that temptation would seem to be cultural, not natural.

Ghost:

Well now, there is a show-stopper. How about a few cites to show us incest is natural.

I thought there was some research on the kibbutzim that showed that children raised together, even if they had no genetic relationship, ended up having little to no sexual attraction.

I think the incest discussion was muddled as well. We all feel revulsion at murder and I would posit murder is natural. We all feel revulsion at rape, likewise I would posit that rape is natural. All of these if allowed by society would result in serious damage and perhaps destruction.

Moreover, stories of incest abound in literature and history. The Greek Gods, Native American Legends, Lot and his daughters, the Pharaohs, Caligula, China Town, the beginning of the Invisible Man etc.

If man is fallen, why is he not capable of incest?

Pepys:

So not engaging in murder, rape and incest is unnatural?

He did provide one useful metaphor though:

Id as your basest urges.

Ego as your own soul's capacity to control them to some extent.

Superego as the societal constraints on the id you internalize.

Of course, he wouldn't have stated it that way and everything else was nonsense.

So ghost, you got any sisters?

Peter B: Yes. (my best OJ impersonation)

Yeah, I think that in a "state of nature" or extra-societal situation, man would murder, rape and commit incest. The first generation may refrain from incest because of the severity of the taboo, but the second and third would probably not.

Think of Nietzsche's "Great Blond Beast", the master ideology, or Lion, feels no constraint with respect to behavior once it is removed from its culture or pride. However, once it returns, it shows a remarkable sensitivity and is very courteous. Incest is forbidden because it could only take place within the pride or culture.

This very behavior has been remarked in all colonizers of whatever race. They quickly throw off the restraints of their culture and do what they will to the natives.

Joe -

Two of my half-sisters were raped by my father, and one of them saved a third half-sister from the same fate.

IS that responsive to your question?

I am also personally aware of numerous cases of incest in the small, poor Vermont town I grew up in.

Peter -

Absolutely. Refraining from murder and mayhem is unnatural. But for culture, we'd be a mess. Of course, we wouldn't survive very long.

I gotta say I really disagree with this article. His description of Freud is ok as far as it goes, but his conception of what a scientist would do is goofy. It is more like what a Darwinist or evolutionary biologist would think, not a real scientist.

Freud got everything right except for Jesus. He offers a way out of human sin.

I disagree. Freud was wrong to confuse the creative impulse with sexuality. The latter is a subset of the former, not the other way around.

He also overplayed the significance and misunderstood the meaning of dreams. And he utterly misapprehended the nature and significance of spirituality.

Jung's apostasy on all those thing really torqued him off. But Jung had a better grasp of them.

Responsive mostly to your own confusion. You don't distinguish rape from incest, nor should you, so a cheer and a half for that.

Peter, it's rather inconsistent of you to post an article that attacks Freud from a largely Darwinian perspective, and then shrug off both Freud and Darwin.

As to incest, I believe there's a natural instinct against it. It's called the Westermarck Effect, and has been observed in, I think, all mammals at least. In short, the theory claims that children who spend their infancy together will not have sexual desire for each other, even if they are not relatives (e.g. the kibbutzim study referred to above).

Even if you reject the idea that the Westermarck effect applies to humans, you must admit that it applies to animals, who generally aren't incestuous, even though they don't have cultures to speak of and thus no cultural incest taboos.

Is not the problem that we are using the word "natural" in two different senses here? Given the "Hey, what's your problem, man? It's natural." ethos that pervades our society and Freud's clear idea that stifling the natural is the source of mental illness, one can rightly object to calling incest and other mayhem natural on grounds of communication alone. But even allowing for the stalwart 17th century Protestant ethos we are seeing here (boy, it's good to be alive some days), surely there is a difference between saying generally that it is in man's fallen nature to sin and saying that any particular sin is a innate biological drive to be reined in by constant prayer, sublimation and (in tough cases) self-flagellation. Incest is out there, for sure, as are murder and other assorted dicey pastimes, but to suggest we are all walking around with constant urges to commit them that only our culture protects us from strikes me as both unscientific and anti-historical.

As to the Westermarck effect, I believe something similar can be observed in modern co-ed residences, where Victorian propriety often prevails within a residence and postmodern abandon between them.

[..] Freud's clear idea that stifling the natural is the source of mental illness [..]

I don't think Freud said that. I think he argued that to overcome mental illness one must be able to identify the underlying reasons for the illness, and then intellectually overcome them. While Freud argued that parent-child incest in natural, he did not urge anyone to practise it. Instead, he said that overcoming such base instincts is an essential part of growing up.

The Westermarck effect affects infants, so I think the reasons for the supposed puritanism in co-ed residences are elsewhere.

Otherwise I agree with you, if I understood your post correctly.

No, Freud didn't say that, anymore than Marx urged that Kulaks be slaughtered or Darwin that people abandon objective morality. He just stood back and let others say it for him. At some point intellectuals have to be called to account for the reasonably forseeable consequences of their theories. Freud had all kinds of interesting insights, but his attempt to fashion a comprehensive theory of personality from them was noxious.

Peter, I'm not a Freudian, I'm just trying to set the facts straight. Freud had an almost Victorian sense of morality, he thought that homosexuality is an abnormality to be overcome, that women are inferior to men, etc. His followers may have had different preferences. Who is to blame?

Incidentally, Jesus did not call for religious wars, race-based slavery, crusades, pogroms, inquisition, witch hunts, or various other Christian atrocities, either. Who is to blame, Jesus or his followers? (I'd say Jesus, at least to an extent, because he did not provide his followers with instructions on just government and righteous warfare.)

I suspect the 'lure' of incest is a lot more of the Woody Allen variety (when desiring a non-blood relation).

Note that the Westermarck Effect demonstrates the impact of social experience ... culture, writ loose ... not natural impulse.

Here's where you lose me:

"As with his spiritual cohorts, Marx and Darwin, Freud was a superb conjurer."

Despite their pretensions, Marx and Freud were pseudo-scientists. Darwin, in contrast was the real McCoy. Both Marx and Freud have been repeatedly debunked - Darwin has been repeatedly validated. Lumping Darwin in with Marx and Freud makes about as much sense and lumping Newton in with Mesmer and L. Ron Hubbard.

I suspect denigrating Darwin emanates from the common misconception among some Christians that the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is incompatible with the idea of God, a topic I address in Idiotic Design versus Theistic Evolution

Paul:

Thank-you, but you may not be aware that just about every "theist" here is on record as either rejecting ID outright or expressing serious misgivings. We are also on record for agreeing that evolution (small "e", not big "E") is not only plausible but obviously a rational basis of much modern science. Our problems stem from the insistence that it (the modern synthesis) is a self-contained and exclusive explanation for all of natural history. In reviewing the link to your site, it is hard not to conclude that your reaction to criticisms of darwinism, like those of most darwinists, is to mock and mis-state the objections of your critics rather than to respond to the challenge directly.

Since this thread is still breathing, I'll respond to Joe's 1:54 am comment.

Siggie's fixation (!) was parent/child incest, not sibling incest. All parent/child incest is rape. End of confusion?