Science tells us why its gross to kiss your sister - did we need a study 4 this?

Source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers who wanted to find out why it is not only taboo to kiss your sister, but also disgusting, said on Wednesday they have discovered why in a discovery that challenges some basic tenets of Freudian theory.

The instinct evolved naturally and cannot be taught, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides of the University of California Santa Barbara wrote in their report in the journal Nature.

Spending time in the same household and watching your mother care for your brother or sister is all it takes. This is all subconscious, of course, reported the researchers, who worked with Debra Lieberman of the University of Hawaii.

...

The study contradicts the teachings of Sigmund Freud, who described Oedipal urges and conflicts, Cosmides said.

Read the How Article

And I wonder if they went to some states to find study subjects

Apparently nobody was told this in the deep south. To them its as american as apple pie

No one told the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, and many monarchs throughout Europe. It was somewhat problematic in Europe, at least as far as anemia was concerned, but those other rather significant empires (one of which lasted the longest of any - 1000 years) didn't seem to have many problems as a result.

Don't think I'm advocating incest, because I'm not. I will say that "gross" is cultural rather than biological.

Originally posted by Don Wahn
Apparently nobody was told this in the deep south. To them its as american as apple pie

We DO NOT kiss our sisters down here, just our cousins. Well...most of the time we don't kiss our sisters...if we have other options. OK... we got caught.

You might be a redneck if your family tree doesn't fork.

[edit on 14-2-2007 by MBF]

Beastilality in America is very common.A documentary showed a man having a sexual relationship with a donkey and a mare i think...did anyone else see it?

another man married a donkey i think...can anyone remember it?

as sexual taboos are almost over it's inevitable that this will increase.


incest.

incest is very common in America such that 46 million people
are effected by it.

incest is becoming very common nowadays due to genetics material being passed around.

i heard a man married his mother without knowing as she was an egg donor.

in America incest is common in the bible belt and within kkk
communities in an attempt to preserve the "white master race"...whatever that is.

Recorded cases exist where son's are marrying their mothers and daughters their daddies even after knowing they are related.

For more information about this you can check at www.geneticsexualattraction.com

in another case a daughter married her daddy as he was a sperm donor.


genetic material being swapped and passed around nowadays by doctor and surgeon's and added to test tube babies and cloning and surrogate mothers and so on.

in another case a mother had her dead son's sperm inseminated privately so the family could have a heir.

in the future this would only increase so much that it's normal.

Seriously did they need to do the study on this? that is beyond eww.

Now I am going to demand the money from the government for my research project if these guys can get funding for this load of Deleted then my worthwile project should get funding

theres probably websites out there that have already done the research on this for them

kissing your sister is okay, but please no tongue.

Originally posted by esecallum


in America incest is common in the bible belt and within kkk
communities in an attempt to preserve the "white master race"...whatever that is.

It's funny how everybody thinks that people from the south is this way. I'm 48 and lived here my entire life and have never seen a klansman. The only place I have ever seen one is on TV. There will be a half dozen of them with 10,000 people protesting against them. They crave attention, ignore them and they will go away.

Well, I for one am glad we actually understand why, even if it was sort
of obvious.

Personally, as long as there are no children born, if you want to have
(a consenting) relationship that is incestuous in nature, than I don't
have a problem with it.


I personally would never have such a relationship, but still.

There is a recent case in germany of a brother and sister who didn't grow up together and later ended up in a relationship, actually spawning some kids as well...

news.bbc.co.uk...

Inherited functions work better in some individuals than in others. I, for example, have very bad eyesight compared with the human average, but appear to be unusually resistant to chicken-pox, which I have never contracted in spite of numerous exposures to the virus.

I expect it's the same with the kin detection system that was the real subject of the paper on which that Reuters article was reporting. Maybe the system isn't properly developed among southern American whites (see discussion above). Perhaps rednecks lost the relevant genes through inbreeding. As a result, they don't feel the normal revulsion against sibling incest.

But to address the OP's question: yes, I think we did need a study to establish this.

Here's why.

Sigmund Freud, as we all know, was into incest. He theorized that all of us harbour naughty desires towards our parents and siblings, and that such desires, repressed, sublimated, socialized or what have you, are the basic drivers of our behaviour.

This study casts strong doubt -- in fact, prima facie disproves -- that theory. One of the keystones of Freudian psychology just crumbled.

Put that fact together with this one: psychiatrists and other clinicians working with sufferers of what is called post-traumatic stress disorder have developed an empirical model of human response to highly stressful (traumatic) events. According to this model, people who have had a stressful experience re-live that experience endlessly and obsessively. They are unable to prevent thoughts and images of what happened to them from entering their minds and causing them distress. They can't sleep, they get the shakes. The one thing they don't do is forget what happened to them. With the passage of time, assisted by therapy or beneficial life experience, they slowly overcome the trauma and live normal lives again -- but they don't forget what happened to them, no matter how much they may want to.

This, of course, is the direct opposite of how Freud believed people cope with traumatic events. He thought there was a mechanism called 'repression' -- an unconscious, involuntary process in which the troublesome, traumatic memories are thrust deep into the subconscious, covered over, hidden away and 'forgotten'. This concept of repression has embedded itself in popular culture to the point where people believe they were sexually abused as children, or kidnapped by aliens, or forced to participate in Satanic rituals, only they've lost all memory of these traumas as a result of repression.

But it seems that repression, just like desire for one's siblings, is a Freudian myth.

So with the main source of affective energy in Freudian theory debunked and its key operating mechanism demolished, what's left of Freudian psychology?

Not a lot, I'd say.

And this I find remarkably liberating. The world has been in thrall to Uncle Ziggy's pervy ideas for far too long. From pampered, unhappy women whose expensive shrinks tell them their misery is due to their secret desires for Daddy, to trailer-park astral travellers who think aliens are sodomizing them in the cause of extraterrestrial science but they can't recall it happening because they were too traumatized, the effect of Freud's ideas on society and culture have probably caused more mental illness than they ever cured.

Take the post above in which someone claims that 46 million Americans (roughly one-fifth of the population!) is 'affected' by incest. Such claims are based on the assumption that repression is real -- otherwise one in every five Americans would actually remember an episode of incest they were somehow 'affected' by. Such absurd claims are based in part on the proportion of people who report memories of incestuous abuse recalled under hypnosis by 'therapists' who have a vested interest in making people believe they've been abused and traumatized. They are nonsense, but people who don't know better -- people whose light is still blocked by the long shadow Freud has thrown over western culture -- believe them.

That is why I think we needed this study.

Adam & Eve should be a perfect example. Cane more than likely married his sister to carry on the generations. Don't make more of it than it is. It is what it is. I wouldn't recommend having children with your direct family, as it is a possibility of birth defects.

Originally posted by infinite8
Adam & Eve should be a perfect example.

Of what? Incest? Is that what you call having sex with your own rib?

Originally posted by stumason
There is a recent case in germany of a brother and sister who didn't grow up together and later ended up in a relationship, actually spawning some kids as well...

news.bbc.co.uk...

Weird! Think about it:

Their dad is also their Uncle, and their mom is their Aunt! It doesn't sould right, but it's technically correct. You uncle is any male sibling of eirther of your parents. Since their dad is their mom's brother, he's technically also their Uncle. On the same note, an Aunt is any Female sibling of either parent. Since their mom is the sister of their father, she is also technically their Aunt.

Now if that isn't really screwed up, what it?

Tim

[edit on 2/23/2007 by Ghost01]

Originally posted by Ghost01

Originally posted by stumason
There is a recent case in germany of a brother and sister who didn't grow up together and later ended up in a relationship, actually spawning some kids as well...

news.bbc.co.uk...

Weird! Think about it:

Their dad is also their Uncle, and their mom is their Aunt! It doesn't sould right, but it's technically correct. You uncle is any male sibling of eirther of your parents. Since their dad is their mom's brother, he's technically also their Uncle. On the same note, an Aunt is any Female sibling of either parent. Since their mom is the sister of their father, she is also technically their Aunt.

Now if that isn't really screwed up, what it?

You forgot to mention that the siblings are also each others cousins.

Originally posted by Astyanax
Maybe the system isn't properly developed among southern American whites (see discussion above). Perhaps rednecks lost the relevant genes through inbreeding. As a result, they don't feel the normal revulsion against sibling incest.

Here we go again. Everybody thinks that if you are from the south you are inbred. That's like me saying that all people that are not from the south have their heads up their a$$.

Sigmund Freud, as we all know, was into incest. He theorized that all of us harbour naughty desires towards our parents and siblings, and that such desires, repressed, sublimated, socialized or what have you, are the basic drivers of our behaviour.

Freud was not from the U.S., much less the south so why do we southerners have to take all the crap?

I have relatives that live in the Chicago area. A few years ago a cousin got married and I was the best man. His fiancee sent him all the way down here to see if I had a suit suitable to be wore in her wedding. Just like I was going to show up wearing a pair of overalls and a straw hat( I just know I had a liesure suit packed up somewhere though:lol. After the wedding, she sent me an e-mail to try to apologize for her opinion she had of me. She said that she realized that I am "not some inbred hick that shoots squirrels, rabbits and possums and eats them." My response was that I do shoot squirrels, rabbits and possums and I do eat squirrels and rabbits, but I will not eat a possum because they eat dead stuff.

She has even contacted since they have been divorced asking for my help. Today Lisa and her entire family have a different opinion of people from the south.

Relax man, most of them are just poking fun at you.

I don't take Freud completley serious. His theories may be well planned, but some of them just don't hold up to everyone.

For example, according to him, you look for your mother in your spouse... now, none of my girlfriends, nor my fiancee have had anything in common with my mother at all, alot of my girlfriends were totally different races... so some of his theories fall flat on their face.

Originally posted by Astyanax

Originally posted by infinite8
Adam & Eve should be a perfect example.

Of what? Incest? Is that what you call having sex with your own rib?

You obviously didn't read the rest of the post. Adam and Eve are believed to be the first man and woman, by many Christians and Jews alike. This means that their children would have had to have sex amongst each other to populate the earth. That is incest.

Having sex with your own rib, haha, I don't know what that would be called, but certainly not incest.

Originally posted by infinite8

Originally posted by Astyanax
Incest? Is that what you call having sex with your own rib?

Adam and Eve are believed to be the first man and woman. This means that their children would have had to have sex amongst each other to populate the earth.

Gracious me, so they would.

That is incest.

And so it is. Odd, isn't it, God allowing Cain to sleep with his own sister and then coming over so thoushaltnotty about it a few generations later that people weren't even allowed to do it with their half-sisters... Anyway, better hope Cain and Abel and Seth had more than one sister between them, eh, otherwise all those wonderful Biblical geneaologies might have got all tangled up and funny...

Having sex with your own rib, haha, I don't know what that would be called...

I don't know either, but apparently, that's what Adam did. It's a kinky old book, the Bible.