IT seemed to me a priori probable that the feudal lord’s right to deflower his female serfs was a relic of patriarchal times, when all the women of the household were at the disposal of the head of the family. The equivalence of father-priest-god makes it possible to quote the following religious practices in support of this view: ‘In the neighbourhood of Pondicherry the bride sacrifices her virginity to the idol. In some parts of India priests take the place of God. On the first night of his marriage the King of Calicut leaves his bride to the most respected priest of his kingdom.’ (H. Freimark, Okkultismus und Sexualität, p. 75.) In our immediate neighbourhood, in Croatia, some fathers are said still to preserve the right to sexual intercourse with their daughters-in-law until their sons, who marry very young, grow up. I find a neuropathological parallel to these religious and racial practices in the mostly unconscious fantasies of many neurotics, in which the father is postulated as predecessor in sexual intercourse.
1 German original in Zb. f. Psa. (1913), III, 258. First English translation.