Totem and Taboo (Dover Thrift Editions) - Softcover

Freud, Sigmund

Softcover

ISBN 10: 048640434X ISBN 13: 9780486404349

Publisher: Dover Publications Inc., 2011

Synopsis

This landmark collection of essays by the father of psychoanalysis explores the conflict between primitive feelings and the demands of civilization. Freud identifies a strong unconscious inclination as the basis of taboo, a forbidden behavior, and traces its earliest appearance to the childhood development of totemism.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In this brilliant exploratory attempt to extend the analysis of the individual psyche to society and culture, Freud laid the lines for much of his late thought, and made a major contribution to the psychology of religion. Primitive societies and the individual, he found, mutually illuminate each other, and the psychology of primitive races bears marked resemblances to the psychology of neurotics. Basing his investigations on the finding of anthropologists, Freud came to the conclusion that totemism and its accompanying restriction of exogamy derive form the savage's dread of incest, and that taboo customs parallel closely the symptoms of compulsion neurosis. The killing of the 'primal father' and the consequent sense of guilt are seen as determining events both in the misty tribal pre-history of mankind, and in the suppressed wishes of individual men. Both totemism and taboo are thus held to have their roots in the Oedipus complex, which lies at the basis of all neurosis, and, as Freud argues, is also the origin of religion, ethics, society, and art.

About the Author:

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian-born psychiatrist and pioneering founder of psychoanalysis, wrote several significant works, among them The Interpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and The Ego and the Id.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dover Publications Inc.
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 048640434X
• ISBN 13: 9780486404349
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 138