wax figure

“As the savage seizes upon one link in a chain of events expecting thereby to repossess the whole, as the native of Borneo makes a wax figure of his enemy in the belief that as the image melts, the enemy's body will waste away, as the women of Sumatra when sowing rice let the hair hang loose down their backs in order that the rice may grow luxuriantly and have long stalks, so this woman, this under-self, ignorant of the true law of cause and effect, and unable to form definite concepts, instinctively selects from the innumerable memories and visual images at her disposal those having relation to her unfulfilled function and forms a picture or weaves a tale, expecting through the performance of some remotely associated act the complete result.”

The Journal of Abnormal Psychology