Totem and Taboo - Softcover

Freud, Sigmund; Hatala, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933167920 ISBN 13: 9781933167923

Publisher: Greentop Academic Press, 2011

Synopsis

Originally published in 1913, this classic treatise by Sigmund Freud applies psychoanalytic theory to the anthropological study of "primitive" peoples in order to explain the invention of religion, incest taboos, and civilization itself. As controversial as it has been influential, its impact continues to be felt a century after its initial publication. In a new foreword, the historian Robert Kenny puts the work in context and suggests why it remains iconic. Dr. Kenny in an Australian Research Council fellow at La Trobe University currently researching the relationship between psychology and anthropology. His The Lamb Enters the Dreaming won the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History in 2008.

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: Greentop Academic Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1933167920
• ISBN 13: 9781933167923
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 134