On Prohibition Against Incest By No Marriage Within The Same Family Name

There was a specific law in Chinese ancient marriage system, which prohibits people of the same family name from marrying. Because family name, as a symbol of family system, can definite consanguinities and differentiate marriage in Chinese traditional society. As the evolution of family name, this law was replaced by other qualifications about marriage. However, the rule of No marriage within the same family name and the rule of No marriage within direct relative and within collateral relative in three generations are important representations of prohibition against incest in China.Prohibition against incest, which is the focal point in theoretical and clinical research of psychoanalysis, is a constant social law of human being. In discovery of Oedipus complex, Freud expounded the desire of killing father and marrying mother of individuals, and expounded its effects in the course of formation of personality. In Totem and Taboo, he described the Oedipal tragedy of the murder of the primal father and discussed the beginnings of totemism. Thus, he educed the origin of prohibition against incest and its function of maintaining social existence. On the basis of linguistics and from the view of structural anthropology, Lévi-Strauss researched elementary structures of kinship in which prohibition against incest is the nucleus. He regarded prohibition against incest as the universal phenomenon and put it on the intersection of nature and culture, arguing that the social system was come...