Ever since the topic of incest came up in my first cultural anthropology class in college, I've wondered whether its almost universal prohibition wasn't just a cultural expression of a natural disinclination towards mating with members of an individual's immediate family. Then, I recalled historical and mythological references to times and cultures that occasionally suspended the enforcement of their incest taboos. In those specific instances, the reality of an incestuous union didn't seem to generate any of the disgust associated with the idea when applied generally. This made me curious because it didn't fit in with my own symplistic opinion concerning the basis for an incest taboo. My feeling was that there must be some aspect of incest and its taboo that might account for this discrepancy in attitude.

If the reader has any doubts about current attitudes towards this topic, just try casually mentioning the subject in conversation. Your listener will probably stare at you goggle-eyed for an instant and then react as if you had just picked your nose or offered them a dish of obviously spoiled food. The most common verbal response I received when asked what I was researching was, "Oh, yuk!" These reactions made me reflect on my own attitude towards the concept of incest. How, for instance, would I feel if I found out that an ancestor had been the product of (or a participant in) an incestuous relationship? How many generations back would it have to be in order to make it innocuous to me? The answers I gave myself revealed an unreasoned abhorrence of contamination through incestuous means.

The Illustrated Contemporary Dictionary defines incest as a noun which denotes "sexual intercourse between persons too closely related for legal marriage," from the Latin words "in" (not) and "castus" (chaste). In Roger M. Keesing's Cultural Anthropology A Contemporary Perspective, the author states more specifically that incest means "... matings between siblings, and between parents and children..." (1981, p. 262) More conventional usage tends to broaden the term to include any sexual activity that takes place between blood-kin. Every culture includes at least one of these definitions with some local amendments (according to how they map kinship relations) in its restrictions against incest.

At this point, we know what incest is and that is is overwhelmingly forbidden. So, why is it necessary to ban this type of activity so specifically? Is there something within every human being that drives them to commit such a socially unacceptable act?

Sigmund Freud believed there was. He proposed that at first, the infant desires only to be big like his or her parents. As it grows older, s/he is less dependent upon the mother and recognizes that her affections have another target: the father. The boy-child is then inclined towards feeling hostility for his father for having a position in his mother's life that should (he thinks, the little Freudian egoist) be his. By the same process, the female child may feel that she should become the recipient of the lion's share of her father's attention. According to Freud, either way, it is a short leap in the child's imagination to the desire to be the sexual equal (and subsequent replacement) of the parent of the child's gender. However, Freud also suggested that these feelings are eventually replaced in the healthy person by the child's first cognitive awareness of his or her own physical being. As soon as a young male notices the lack of a penis in the opposite sex, he becomes fearful of the loss of his own through any sexual activity. The young female may believe she will have one later, but as this idea proves fallible, she accepts her role of being like her mother. By comparison, the boy is thus quickly "cured" of the Oedipus complex, while the girl more gradually outgrows her constantly unsatisfied desire to take her mother's place by bearing her father a child.

Whether Freud is right or not is actually of little consequence here. It should stand as simply one theory to support the idea that incestuous drives do exist and may have their roots in newborn thought processes. There is even more testimony, however, to support the verity of some kind of inclination towards incest in historical, mythological, and literary traditions as well as more recent clinical studies.

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So, in our present time and culture, incest is seen as a weapon too often used against trusting children by sick or malicious adults. This is quite a divergence from the archaic attitude that bestowed incest upon its ruling or heroic classes as some sort of gift. Without a doubt, we've come a long way towards understanding more than "they" did about the origins of incestuous desire and the prohibition against fulfilling it. But those elder societies did have a working taboo and non-adherance was just as punishable a crime; so why was it not only allowed, but enforced for some classes of people?

The answer lies in the rituals of most societies and, most notably, in societies that practice some form of puberty ritual. As part of every ceremonial observance, there is a time when the celebrant (or his/her instructor) is separated from the rest of the population via some device. During this time, the celebrant is considered "liminal" (outside the normal categorization of status or being) and is, therefore, dangerous, powerful, and magical. Through withholding the most universally common constraints of an incest taboo from a ruler (hero, god, etc.), the recipient moves from the ordinary to the extraordinary and liminal. This imparts to them a mystical superhuman quality that can even serve to make it easier for the population to abide misrule.

So, now all my questions about incest and its active taboo have been answered. I know what it is, where it comes from, who does it, how its prohibition works and doesn't work, where the taboo comes from, what people think the taboo prevents, who gets hurt when the taboo is broken, whether or not the prohibition should ever be changed, and (most importantly) why it's okay for Pharoahs and Emperors to bed their sisters. In short, I know more about incest than I can ever hope to work into a conversation... especially since no one wants to hear about it.