Totem and Taboo (Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud)

Psychoanalytic literature can be confounding to clinicians and lay people alike. Good ol' Uncle Sigmund was the exemplar of this tendency towards obtusely wording everything. However, Totem and Taboo eschews this for a (somewhat) easier read, communicating the ideas behind the make up and origins of Neurosis. Freud's work continues to be applicable today as a framework for understanding a wide variety of issues such as anxiety, depression and other related psychiatric problems.

This is the first Freud book I have ever read. I am not a trained psychiatrist, or sociologist, or ethnologist, so I am going to review the book from a layman's standpoint. In this work, Freud draws heavily on observations and theories of ethnology, emphasizing on studies of Australian aborigines and Frazer's work. He draws a parellel with his personal observations from treatment of "neurotic" patients and claims to have found common patterns in these two classes of subjects, which tend to explain certain social and psychological phenomena, as well as the "birth" of religion.He focuses on the concepts of "Totem" and "Taboo". While familiar with taboo (although our understanding of the term is narrower than Freud's), totem is remote to us. Certain aboriginal peoples were grouped in social groupings, centered on the cult of and belief of descent from a certain animal. So, you are the "Kangaroo tribe", we are the "Ostrich tribe" etc. The topic most interesting Freud, to which he devotes the first essay in the book, is "exogamy", i.e. marriage outside one's group. This practice of exogamy seems to be in contradiction to what is pursued by some ethnic groups in America (Jews and Greeks come to mind) i.e. "endogamy" - a push to have children marry within their parents' ethnic group. This practice of exogamy in Australian aborigines is attributed by Freud to fear of incest, with quite convincing arguments. What is challening is to concoct a theory that suggests totemism and exogamy are not orthogonal social institutions that just happenned to coexist, but intricately bound together. Freud accomplishes that through intricate reasoning that draws heavily on religion (in his 4th essay). His argumentation may seem far-fetched to many, but is plausible, although it is hard to get convinced that it is the single, or most probable, theory explaining the issue.Freud makes the analogy that what primitive people are to ethnography, "neurotics" are to psychoanalysis and tries to map patterns from one domain to the other. Another goal is to establish the theory of totemism as the primordial religion from which all known religions and beliefs have spawned over time. The fact that Hinduists rever and never kill cows, seems to me (my example, not Freud's) to support this theory; Hinduists could be considered an outgrowth of a "Cow totem". Also, in modern Judeochristian societies, the totem, for intermarriage avoidance, has been replaced by the blood relatives group. Greek civil law for instance, forbids marrying blood relatives to the 4th degree and relatives through marriage to the 3th degree (i.e. after marriage your also become a member of your spouse's "totem" - for life).His 2nd essay discusses the concept of taboo. He defines it as "a set of limitations that primitive people apply to themselves". He contends that people who do "taboo things" become taboo themselves (certainly prostitutes would fit that profile). In our modern society, one's car is taboo, such

Parricide, guilt, cannibalism--what's not to love?

Totem and Taboo, along with _The Future of an Illusion_, should be necessary reading for any serious student of social science. Of course, there are massive holes in Freud's arguments (such as his tendancy to make sweeping generalizations about other cultures from his armchair in Europe), but people who disagree with him for moral and ethical reasons tend to amplify those holes and simply ridicule Freud the man instead of intelligently approaching his arguments.The fact is, his suppositions about parental relations (as they relate to "totem" cultures), about religion, and about sexuality are extremely relevant and have proven, over the years, to possess an extraordinary predictive power. Even if one disagrees with this literature, one should read it and know exactly what they disagree with.

Draws the age of antiquity up to the present in a way that demonstrates how far away we really are not from the savages. It helps to shed the light on some of the really neurotic impulses we still exhibit today!! we're fast approaching Y2K but we are as primitive in many regards when compared to our ancestors.