The Westermarck Effect: The History Of Human Marriage

516 Words2 Pages

Kyra Myles
Dr. Sayers
Biopsychology 4-5:15 TT
November 7, 2017

The Westermarck Effect The Westermarck effect is “a psychological effect through which people who live in close domestic proximity during the first few years of their lives become desensitized to sexual attraction.” The phenomenon was first hypothesized by Edvard Westermarck – a anthropologist – In his book The History of Human Marriage as one explanation for the incest taboo. There are 5 key points in relation to the Westermarck Effect:
• Proximity: The effect applies to children raised in close contact
• Age: The critical period for “reverse sexual imprinting” ends by 6-7 years of age
• Age difference: If more than 8 years apart the effect is made significantly …show more content…

Amongst these being the kibbutz model. In the Israeli kibbutzim (which are collective farms). Children were reared together in peer groups based not on biological relation but on age. Later, when these children got married, out of 3000 marriages that occurred across the kibbutz system only 14 were between children from the same peer group and of that 14 none grew up together in the first 6 years of their life. This is the result that brought about the fact that the critical period for reverse sexual imprinting ends by 6-7 years of age (as mentioned above). When children are not grown together – for example a brother and sister - during this critical period and meet as adults or adolescents, they may find one another highly sexually …show more content…

The term comes from the Theban hero Oedipus of Greek Legend. This complex refers to “a child’s unconscious desire for the opposite sex and it is thought of as a natural stage of psychosexual development. The idea is that the child identifying with the same sex parent Is the answer to the complex and if it does not occur, this can lead to neurosis, pedophilia and homosexuality. Feminists argue with Freud’s theory calling it heteronormative (promoting heterosexuality as the norm).

Works Cited

“Westermarck Effect / Useful Notes.” TV Tropes, tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/WestermarckEffect.

Brook, Marisa. “Too Close for Comfort.” • Damn Interesting, Damn Interesting, 22 Mar. 2016, www.damninteresting.com/too-close-for-comfort

Revolvy, LLC. “‘Oedipus+Complex’ on Revolvy.com.” Revolvy, www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Oedipus%2Bcomplex&item_type=topic.

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Oedipus Complex.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 11 Sept. 2015,

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