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This paper was read at the 27th International Psycho-Analytical Congress, Vienna, July 1971, and published in 1972 by the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 53: 271–276.
Psychoanalytic investigation has confirmed that incestuous craving is the most constant and universal sexual force in the life of the individual, and the main obstacle in the socialization process is the difficulty in overcoming the Oedipus complex, i.e. the endogamic sexual tie. We wish to stress, however, the importance of incestuous attraction as the most powerful initial sexual tie, which is a vital and indispensable stimulus for the survival of the child and his later sexual development.
When confronted with the fact that the prohibition of incest is present in all sociocultural groups, we wonder what were the irrevocable, persistent procedures by which the most essential of the instinctual drives were deflected.
Side by side with the universal prohibition of incest, there is another generalized institution to be found in every culture: filicide. Primitive myths (Devereux, 1953), (1966); (Rascovsky, 1970a); (Rascovsky & Rascovsky, 1968), initiation rites (Reik, 1931), a study of human sacrifices (Devereux, 1953) and multiple manifestations of the various social systems reveal that slaughter, mutilation and real or symbolic abasement of children, expressed in quite a number of ways, are practices that have been universal since the dawn of culture (Rheingold, 1964).