A synthetic theory of human incest avoidance

Diggs, S. M. (2000). A synthetic theory of human incest avoidance. (Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2000). UMI no. 9987380

Synthetic method, which combines and integrates research and theory from different disciplines, was used to bring together several seemingly contradictory theories of human incest avoidance (HIA) and knowledge from biology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and analytical psychology. Biology's concept of four levels of explanation (ultimate, proximate, phylogenetic, and ontogenetic) was used to structure the synthesis and to piece together the disparate perspectives into a unified theory. Incest avoidance was defined as the avoidance of sexual activity with an individual according to the perceived family relationship with the individual. Both too close and too distant relationships are innately avoided. The complexes of phenotypic characteristics that constitute HIA include the childhood association aversion, the caregiving aversion, kin recognition, dispersal, female resistance, pair bond, philopatry, xenophobia, male sexual proprietariness, opportunistic out-mating, defense mechanisms, laws, and prohibitions. The phylogenetic explanation finds the origins of sexual aversion and desire in the reproductive (family) and erotic (sexual) responses of our unicell ancestors. The conscious awareness of the father relationship is a phylogenetic event that makes HIA different from incest avoidance in other animals. The ultimate explanation proposes these species-wide benefits of HIA: it lowers the rate of inbreeding and outbreeding anomalies, and it promotes family and clan harmony, loyalty, and individual and family psychological integrity. The proximate explanation demonstrates how ERA complexes function as mechanisms through imprinting and the identification of the complexes with environmental objects. It is proposed that complexes integrate into generalized states which produce proximate action in a flexible manner. The ontogenetic explanation proposes these developmental tasks as key to HIA: bonding and attachment, and separation and individuation (early childhood); splitting the maternal object into familial and erotic aspects, and repression (middle childhood); repression and sublimation, and introjection of the cultural taboo (late childhood); puberty and dispersal (adolescence); identification with the familial aspect of the maternal object and bonding (adulthood).