Totem and taboo

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Original paperback from the first printing in 1913

Totem and taboo with the subtitle: Some Matches in the Mental Life of the Wild and the Neurotics is a book by Sigmund Freud from 1913. It consists of four essays that were first published in 1912 and 1913 in the Imago magazine.

In these essays Freud tries to answer questions of national psychology with the means of psychoanalysis. According to Freud, primitive societies are at a low level of human development; this stage corresponds to the early stages of development of individuals. Questions about totemism , exogamy , taboo and magic can therefore be answered by referring to the child's psychological development. Exogamy is based on incestuous object relationships, taboo on the ambivalence of prohibition and desire, magic on the narcissistic overcathexis of one's own thoughts, and totemism and exogamy have their common origin in the ambivalent relationship with the father . Another thesis of the book is that of the murder of the brethren of the forefather as a source of culture.

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Overview

In each of the four parts of Totem and Tabu , Freud tries to solve a problem that preoccupied the ethnologists of his time.

How can it be explained that in totemism through exogamy the prohibition of incest is extended far beyond the circle of blood relatives? To put it another way: Why do the “primitive” societies have such a pronounced aversion to incest? (Part I, the fear of incest ) Freud's answer is: Because they are at an early stage of development of the libido , at the stage of incestuous object cathexes.

What are the basics of taboos ? (Part II, The taboo and the ambivalence of emotions ) Freud orients himself in his answer to obsessional neurosis . Prohibitions play a central role in this form of neurosis, which is why Freud sees it as a kind of taboo disease. The obsessional neurotic's prohibitions are based on desire; this leads to the ambivalence between the unconscious wish and the conscious prohibition. So the two main taboos in “primitive” societies, the prohibition of murder and the prohibition of incest, are based on desire. The strongest human cravings are therefore those for murder and incest; they form the basis of taboos.

How is animism to be explained and how is its characteristic technique, magic? (Part III, Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts ) In magic, humans ascribe the ability to change reality through mere thought. In the individual, this corresponds to the earliest phase of development of the libido, the stage of narcissism . Animism is based on the narcissistic overcathexis of one's own thinking.

What is the basis of totemism and how does it relate to exogamy? (Part IV, The Infantile Return of Totemism ) Freud tries to clarify this question by recourse to the animal phobia in children, which he understands as a "negative totemism"; the totem animal is not revered here, but rather feared. The core of the animal phobia is the ambivalent attitude towards the father, the connection between tenderness and aggressiveness. This ambivalence also underlies totemism. At the beginning of the culture stands the murder of the rejected sons of the forefather, who had forbidden them access to the women; The murder leads to a change from one side of the ambivalent relationship with the father to the other, the affectionate tendency gains the upper hand over the aggressive one. This leads the sons to establish totemism in an act of belated obedience: they worship the father in the totem animal, thereby overcoming their rivalry and issuing the two fundamental prohibitions of culture, the prohibition of murder and the prohibition of incest, and thus the commandment of exogamy.

The fear of incest

Freud first explains the fear of incest using the example of the natives of Australia. In place of all the missing religious and social institutions there is totemism . The tribes are divided into a number of clans named after species of animals or plants, and their consumption is prohibited. The eponymous and forbidden animal or plant species form the totem . Freud's main source on totemism is James Frazer , Totemism and Exogamy , 1910.

“Almost everywhere where the totem applies, there is also the law that members of the same totem are not allowed to enter into sexual relationships with one another, that is, they are not allowed to marry one another. That is the exogamy associated with the totem ”(297). Some researchers, according to Freud, consider the coincidence of the totem cult with exogamy as coincidental. Freud notes that there is definitely a connection between totemism and exogamy, and that it is very strong.

The violation of the exogamy command is punished extremely severely, as if the existence of the entire tribe were threatened. The same severe punishment also applies to fleeting love affairs, which, according to Freud, makes the pure restriction to biological functions of the prohibition (avoidance of hereditary diseases) improbable. It is particularly noticeable that the exogamy associated with the totem also prohibits sexual associations between people who are not blood relatives. All persons in a totem clan are treated like blood relatives, even if they are not.

The number of sexually forbidden tribe members is further expanded by the fact that totemism is linked to a system of marriage classes , which means that only a few of the remaining clans supply marriage candidates for a particular totem clan. In addition, there are numerous avoidance bans that are intended to restrict the interaction of relatives with one another, such as speaking bans or rules about the physical distance that must be observed during an encounter.

In the overall interpretation of this area of ​​phenomena, Freud agrees with the view of the ethnologists: "These savages are more sensitive to incest than we are" (302 f.).

But how does the “primitives” develop a strong tendency to avoid incest?

Freud answers the question by comparing it with the psychic life of the neurotic. The Psychoanalysis teaches that the first sexual objects of the boy incestuous nature (mother, sister), and describes how an individual with normal development, exempt. However, the neurotic does not succeed in this. The relationship to the parents, dominated by the desire for incest, forms the "core complex of the neurosis" (310). The neurotic either never detached himself from his incestuous objects (developmental inhibition) or he has returned to them (regression). The strongly developed incest shyness of the "primitives" can be explained by the fact that, as societies as a whole, they are at an early stage of development, at the stage of incestuous object cathexes.

With the incestuous fixation Freud explains in particular the avoidance prohibitions that regulate the relationships between son-in-law and mother-in-law in many “primitives”. These taboos can be cleared up by including their counterpart in our culture, the hostility between son-in-law and mother-in-law. The mother-in-law compensates for her sexual dissatisfaction in the marriage by falling in love with the husband her daughter loves. This love relationship, like all relationships of this kind, is ambivalent: tender and aggressive at the same time. The tenderness towards the son-in-law is frowned upon; it is suppressed by the mother-in-law, namely by giving the son-in-law exclusively the sadistic component of her arousal of love. It is similar with the son-in-law: the encounter with the mother-in-law reactivates his incestuous fixation on the mother, and he, too, uses the aggressive tendency to keep the tenderness in check.

The taboo and the ambivalence of emotions

The oldest unwritten code of laws of mankind are taboos , they form the root of our moral commandments and laws. Freud adopts this thesis from Wilhelm Wundt (Wundt, Elements der Völkerpsychologie , 1912). Taboos are prohibitions

  • the reason for which is unknown, which means, for example, cannot be traced back to an ancestor,
  • to which one submits as a matter of course through an inner compulsion,
  • whose objects can be moved,
  • from which certain ceremonial acts proceed.

Taboos are exercised particularly effectively by chiefs, kings and priests, by people who are themselves subjected to strict taboo regulations - such as a constricting system of ceremonies.

In contrast to totemism, Freud explains that taboo has not disappeared; it still exists today and has only focused on other issues. According to its psychological nature, it is “nothing other than the ' categorical imperative ' of Kant , which wants to act compulsively and rejects any conscious motivation” (292).

Freud sees an obsessional neurosis , which he understands as a kind of "taboo disease" (318), as a psychoanalytic approach to clearing up taboos . Obsessive-compulsive disorder is also about prohibitions, especially prohibitions against contact,

  • whose origin is a mystery to the patient,
  • which are obeyed by the patient without any external threat of punishment, simply because he is convinced that a violation will automatically lead to disaster,
  • which expand to new objects, "move",
  • that are associated with certain ceremonial acts, the "compulsive acts", such as compulsory washing.

Obsessional neurosis is based on the opposition between lust and prohibition. The pleasure, especially the pleasure of touching the genital organs, was countered from the outside by the prohibition to carry out the touch. However, the ban did not succeed in abolishing the instinct; the success of the ban consisted only in suppressing pleasure in the unconscious. The opposition between pleasure and prohibition thus persists, and this leads to the fact that the actions towards the object are ambivalent . A certain action, such as a certain touch, offers the greatest pleasure and should therefore be carried out over and over again; however, because of the prohibition, this act is also abhorred. The prohibition is conscious, but the continued pleasure is unconscious. The prohibition owes its strength - its compulsive character - to its relationship to unconscious pleasure. “Where there is a prohibition, there must be a desire behind it” (360).

In order to avoid being blocked off by the ban, the desire to drive constantly shifts to new objects “and seeks to win surrogates for the forbidden - substitute objects and substitute actions. That is why the prohibition moves and extends to the new goals of the frowned upon impulse. "(322)

The mutual inhibition of instinct and prohibition creates a need for discharge, and this is satisfied in the symptoms, the compulsive acts. They are “compromise actions” (322): on the one hand, they testify to repentance, and to this extent they serve the purpose of prohibition; at the same time they are “substitute acts” (322), forms of substitute satisfaction , and compensate the instinct for what is forbidden.

What does that mean for the taboo rules of the “primitives”? “The basis of the taboo is a forbidden act to which there is a strong inclination in the unconscious.” (323) The oldest and most important prohibitions are the two basic laws of totemism: the totem animal must not be killed and sexual intercourse among the totem members is prohibited . Interpreted psychoanalytically, these should be the two oldest and strongest human desires: murder and incest.

With the ambivalence Freud also explains the bondage of chiefs and priests by the ceremonial. The veneration of these persons is linked to an unconscious hostility; This aggressiveness is based above all on the fact that they are allowed to enjoy things that are forbidden to other members of the tribe. The unconscious aggressive tendency gains satisfaction from the fact that the privileged are constricted by compulsory regulations.

Fear of the ghosts is also an effect of ambivalence. The spirits are originally deceased. Attitudes towards them are ambivalent during lifetime; after their death only the tenderness towards them remains conscious, the hostile attitude becomes latent and the aggressiveness that has become unconscious is projected onto the object of hostility , onto the spirit. For the consciousness it then presents itself in such a way that it is the spirits who threaten the living. The fear of the ghosts is ultimately the fear of one's own desires for destruction.

There are two main differences between obsessive-compulsive disorder and taboo:

  • Obsessional neurosis is an individual education, taboo is a social phenomenon. The asocial nature of the neurosis results from its "most original tendency to flee from an unsatisfactory reality into a more pleasurable fantasy world ." (363)
  • The obsessional neurosis is primarily based on sexual drives, the taboo is based on a mixture of sexually erotic and egoistic-aggressive drives; in addition to the sexual drives, these are the “driving forces of attacking, empowering, asserting oneself” (362).

Animism, magic and the omnipotence of thoughts

From authors of his time, Freud adopts the idea that three world views have developed in the course of history , three systems of thought, all of which attempt to explain the essence of the world completely:

  • the animism , which explains the world by populating it with ghosts,
  • the religion that explains the world by tracing it back to the work of gods,
  • and finally the system of thought prevailing today, the scientific worldview, which explains the world through the action of natural laws.

How can the sequence of the three systems of thought be explained?

Animism goes along with a certain technique: magic . Their basis is wishful thinking; What the "primitive" man magically creates must happen because he wants it to. So the source of magic is belief in the omnipotence of thoughts.

Believing in the omnipotence of thoughts, the primitive resembles the child and the neurotic. According to Freud, the child first tries to satisfy his wishes through hallucinations . The magical act is, in a sense, a motor hallucination.

For neurotics, “only what is intensely thought, what is presented with affect (...) is effective, but its correspondence with external reality is irrelevant” (375). So the hysteric repeats in his symptoms experiences that have only occurred in his phantasy, and the obsessional neurotic's sense of guilt does not relate to real actions, but to mere impulses, to death wishes that are unconsciously directed against his fellow human beings.

The belief in the omnipotence of thoughts has the same basis among the “primitives” and the neurotics: the libidinal overcathexis of thought, the intellectual narcissism . In the case of the “primitives”, this is due to the fact that their thinking is highly sexualized. In the case of the neurotics, part of this primitive attitude has been constitutionally preserved; at the same time, in their case, the processes of thought have been re-sexualized through sexual repression.

This commonality between neurotics and "primitives" - the belief in the omnipotence of thought - makes it possible, according to Freud, to elucidate the historical development of world views by comparing them with individual development.

  • In animism, the subject ascribes the omnipotence of thought to itself; this corresponds to the stage of narcissism in individual development.
  • In the religious worldview, omnipotence is ascribed to the gods; in individual development, this corresponds to the next stage, the object choice phase, the bond with the parents.
  • In the scientific worldview, man renounces belief in the omnipotence of thoughts; he adapts to reality and acknowledges his smallness; this corresponds to the “state of maturity of the individual who has renounced the pleasure principle and, while adapting to reality, seeks his object in the outside world” (378).

Indeed, in the religious worldview man has not completely renounced the omnipotence of his own thoughts; he reserves the right to guide the gods according to his wishes - through sacrifices and prayers. And even in the scientific worldview, the original narcissism is partially preserved: in “the trust in the power of the human spirit, which reckons with the laws of reality, a part of the primitive belief in omnipotence lives on.” (376)

The belief in the omnipotence of thought is still fully in force in our culture in only one area: that of art. Here it happens "that a person consumed by desires does something similar to satisfaction and that this playing - thanks to the artistic illusion - evokes affect effects as if it were something real." (378)

Animism is a system of thought , that is to say: it brings the most diverse ideas into a uniform context. This unification has similarities with the secondary processing in the dream . The secondary process ensures that the incomprehensibility resulting from the dream work is eliminated in favor of a new unified meaning. Where the correct connection cannot be grasped, for the sake of uniformity, a wrong one is established in animism as in secondary dream processing; most noticeable in the case of the paranoid delusional system. The characteristic feature of system formation is that every result has two motivations: a conscious one, which arises from the prerequisites of the system and which is possibly delusional, "and a hidden one, which we must recognize as the actually effective, real one" ( 383). For animism this means that the “superstition” of the “primitives” is not the only motivation; Here, too, the real motive consists in a drive repression - in the defense against hostility towards the dead - that is, in a cultural progress.

The infantile return of totemism

How do you explain totemism , i.e. the creation of solidarity within a clan through the worship of a totem animal that gives it its name, and how is totemism related to exogamy , the prohibition of sexual relationships within the totem clan?

Freud relies on the hypotheses of anthropologists and the results of psychoanalysis for his attempt to answer. His ethnological sources are:

  • Charles Darwin with the assumption of the primal horde, in which the strongest male expels the other males from the horde (Darwin, The Descent of Humans , English 1871, Vol. 2, Chapter 20),
  • JJ Atkinson with the assumption that this is the source of exogamy (Atkinson, Primal Law , 1903),
  • William Robertson Smith with the thesis that totemism can be traced back to a sacrificial meal, with the totem animal as the first sacrificial animal (Smith, The Religion of the Semites , 2nd rev. Ed. 1894)

Freud sees an individual psychological counterpart to totemism - its infantile return - in animal phobia. In this case, however, the animal is not worshiped, but feared; the phobia shows “certain traits of totemism in a negative way” (415). The source of the phobia is the ambivalent attitude towards the father; the conflict of ambivalence is resolved by projecting the aggressive striving towards the father onto the animal as a father substitute . Freud concludes from this that totemism is also based on ambivalence: the totem animal is not only revered, but also hated and feared.

With the help of these explanatory elements, Freud developed his own hypothesis about the connection between totemism and exogamy, the famous speculation about the primordial father murder.

At the beginning of totemism there was a violent, jealous father who kept all women to himself and drove the sons away. The outcast sons were ruled by contradicting feelings: they hated their father, who stood in the way of their needs for power and their sexual demands, but they both loved and admired him at the same time. One day the sons banded together, killed their father and devoured him. After the hatred towards the father was satisfied and, through the cannibalistic act, the identification with him had been carried out, the sons, in the form of repentance, began to feel tender towards the father. Identifying with their father enabled them to identify with one another and thus overcome the rivalry. They became aware of guilt and in an act of "belated obedience" (427) they revoked their act. They declared the killing of the father's substitute, the totem, to be illegal; thus the ban on murder came into being. And they renounced the fruits of their deeds by denying themselves the women who had become free; this resulted in a ban on incest and exogamy. The establishment of these two prohibitions gives rise to totemism; its basis is still the ambivalent relationship with the father. The worship of the totem is an attempt at retrospective reconciliation with the father; the totem meal also serves as a reminder of the triumph over him. The two fundamental taboos of totemism thus arise from the sons' sense of guilt. According to this interpretation, murder is the basis of social organizations, moral restrictions and religion.

In the transition from animism to religion, the foundations on which totemism is based are preserved. The religions are first of all father religions; Like totemism, they are based on the ambivalent relationship to the father: on the father's longing, defiance towards the father and a sense of guilt towards him. Christianity only represents something new by replacing the religion of the father with the religion of the sons. Christianity is most openly committed to the original crime because it found the most extensive atonement for the crime in the sacrificial death of one son. The old totem meal is revived here as communion .

In the ancient tragedy , Freud sees an echo of the primordial father murder. The hero of tragedy must suffer. Why? Because he is the great father who was slain by the choir . This is appropriately distorted on the stage: the hero has caused his suffering himself (translated analogously: the horde of brothers (choir) is no longer seen as guilty towards the forefather (hero), but rather the "guilt" is ascribed to him here, he is presented as "your own fault"). In this way he is made the savior of the choir; the chorus is “freed” from “guilt” - that is, according to Freud, more precisely: from the sense of guilt associated with the original patricide.

background

Freud began preparatory work on Totem and Tabu in 1910. The first essay was completed in 1912 and appeared in the first issue of the newly founded Imago magazine that same year .

The book stands in the tradition of evolutionism , that is, the view that Europe represents the peak of human development and that one has access to the beginnings of human development through the "primitive" peoples. The most cited works are James Frazer's Totemism and Exogamy from 1910 and The Magic Art from 1911, first part of the third edition of Frazer's The Golden Bough . Since the end of the 19th century, leading ethnologists viewed totemism as the central institution of “primitive” societies, including as a pre-form or elementary form of religion. Already in 1910, Alexander A. Goldenweiser had radically criticized the concept of totemism. According to Goldenweiser, this term brings together three phenomena that only happen to have something to do with each other: the clan organization, the assignment of animal and plant names or emblems, and finally the belief in the relationship between a clan and its totem. Goldenweiser's criticism - which Freud knew - stood at the beginning of a development in which the concept of totemism was disintegrated; in today's ethnology it no longer plays a role.

In the foreword, Freud explains that he was primarily inspired by two writings published in 1912:

  • by Wilhelm Wundt's elements of national psychology , in which it is attempted to apply non-psychoanalytic psychology to national psychology, and
  • through CG Jung's changes and symbols of the libido , where the author undertakes to solve problems of individual psychology by using material from the psychology of nations.

With the reference to Jung's book, Freud indicates that totem and taboo should also be understood as a confrontation with CG Jung. The main points of contention were opinions about libido and religion. During the publication of Totem and Tabu , there was a break between Freud and Jung.

Freud himself valued totem and taboo extremely highly, both in terms of content and style.

He wrote his own preface for the Hebrew translation. It says: “None of the readers of this book will be able to put themselves so easily into the emotional state of the author who does not understand the sacred language, is completely alienated from his father's religion - like everyone else -, cannot participate in nationalist ideals and yet does Has never denied belonging to his people, feels his peculiarity to be Jewish and does not want it otherwise. If you asked him: What is still Jewish about you if you have given up all these things you have in common with your fellow citizens? He would answer: A lot more, probably the main thing. But at present he could not express this essential in clear words. "(293)

The work stands at the beginning of a series of more extensive writings by Freud on questions of society and religion. It is continued in mass psychology and ego analysis (1921), The Future of an Illusion (1927), The Uneasiness in Culture (1930) and The Man Moses and the Monotheistic Religion (1939). In these works Freud repeatedly comes back to the totem and taboo .

In 1983, Freud's draft of a metapsychological treatise from 1915 that had previously been lost was found; In the second part it contains a continuation of the hypotheses about the primal horde and the killing of the primal father.

reception

The book was translated into several languages ​​during Freud's lifetime, including English, Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Japanese and Hebrew.

In 1920, the distinguished American ethnologist and psychoanalyst Alfred Kroeber published a critique of the totem and taboo in the American Anthropologist , a leading journal , which was extremely effective. Most of the assumptions on which Freud's argument is based are rejected by Kroeber:

  • the assumption that totemism is a uniform phenomenon,
  • the assumption that there is a necessary connection between totemism and exogamy,
  • Freud's comparison between savages and civilized neurotics and
  • Darwin's hypothesis of the primal horde.

The following views met with Kroeber's approval:

  • the thesis on the connection between ambivalence and taboo
  • and the association of grief with fear of the dead.

After Kroeber's review appeared, the book was out of the question for most ethnologists. Bronisław Malinowski contrasted Freud's theses with the different results of his own field research in his work The Sexual Life of the Wild in Northwest Melanesia (1928).

Thomas Mann assessed the book in the opposite way. In 1929 he declared it a masterpiece of German essay writing, both formally and in terms of content. He was impressed by the fact that these treatises “go far beyond the medical sphere into the general humanities and enlighteningly reveal tremendous perspectives on the spiritual past, the primeval depths of the moral, social, mystical-religious early and prehistory of mankind in front of the reader who is after the question of mankind”.

Totem and taboo stand at the beginning of the encounter between psychoanalysis and ethnology. Ethnopsychoanalysis , among other things, emerged from this relationship . But the structuralist anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss also received strong impulses from Freud.

Mario Erdheim sees the topicality of the work in the fact that it focuses on the connection between violence and domination; however, it should not be understood as a theory about “primitive” societies and about the historical origin of culture, rather it should be interpreted as a contribution to the analysis of our own society.

literature

expenditure

Sigmund Freud: Totem and Taboo. Some similarities in the soul life of savages and neurotics

  • Hugo Heller, Vienna 1913; later International Psychoanalytischer Verlag, Leipzig and Vienna
  • In: Ders .: Collected Works. Ordered chronologically. Vol. 9 . Ed. V. Anna Freud u. a. Imago, London 1940.- 8th edition S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-10-022710-7
  • In: Ders .: Study edition, Vol. 9: Questions of society, origins of religion. Ed. V. Alexander Mitscherlich, Angela Richards, James Strachey. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-10-822709-2 , pp. 287-444 (reprint of the revised new edition from 1989 of the study edition; with preliminary editorial note and notes from the editor on the development of the term; cited above from this edition)
  • With an introduction by Mario Erdheim. Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-10451-3
  • Totem and taboo in Project Gutenberg ( currently not usually available for users from Germany ) Based on 3rd edition. International Psychoanalytischer Verlag, Leipzig 1922
  • Totem and taboo in the Gutenberg-DE project Based on the study edition. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1974

Secondary literature

  • Yigal Blumenberg: 'Father's Longing' and 'Sohnestrotz' - a commentary on Sigmund Freud's 'Totem and Tabu'. In: Psyche. Journal for Psychoanalysis and Its Applications , 56 (2002), pp. 97-136
  • Hartmut Böhme : Of apes and people: To the prehistory of murder. In: Dirk Matejovski, Dietmar Kamper, Gerd-C. Less (ed.): Myth Neanderthal. Origin and turning point. Campus, Frankfurt am Main, New York 2001, ISBN 3-593-36751-3 , pp. 69-86
  • Mario Erdheim : Introduction . In: Sigmund Freud: Totem and Tabu . Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-596-10451-3 , pp. 7-42
  • William Grossman: Freud's Presentation of 'The Psychoanalytic Mode of Thought' in Totem and Taboo and His Technical Papers. In: The International Journal of Psychoanalysis , 79 (1998), pp. 469-486
  • Eberhard Th. Haas (ed.): 100 years of 'totem and taboo'. Freud and the Foundations of Culture. Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8379-2092-5
  • Andreas Hamburger: The motif of the primal horde. Inherited or lived experience in Freud's 'Totem and Taboo'. In: Freiburg literary psychological discussions. Yearbook for Literature and Psychoanalysis , 2 (2005), pp. 45–86
  • Alfred L. Kroeber : Totem and taboo. An ethnologic psychoanalysis . In: American Anthropologist , 22 (1920), pp. 48-55
  • AL Kroeber: Totem and taboo in retrospect . In: American Journal of Sociology , 45 (1939), pp. 446 ff.
    • Both reprinted in: AL Kroeber: The nature of culture . The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1952, pp. 301-305 and 306-309
  • Claude Lévi-Strauss : Le Totémisme aujourd'hui . Presses Universaires de France, Paris 1962 (German: Das Ende des Totemismus . Translated by Hans Naumann. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1965, ISBN 3-518-10128-5 ; with a comprehensive bibliography)
  • Werner Muensterberger (ed.): Man and his culture. Psychoanalytic anthropology after "Totem and taboo" . Rapp & Whiting, London 1969 (German: Man and his culture. Psychoanalytical ethnology based on 'Totem and Tabu'. Kindler, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-463-00592-1 )
  • Wilhelm Reich : The collapse of sexual morality. On the history of the sexual economy. Verlag für Sexualpolitik, Berlin 1932. Second expanded edition 1935. New edition with the title Der Einbruch der Sexuellen Zwangsmoral . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1972, ISBN 3-462-02471-X
  • Sigrid Westphal-Hellbusch: Freud's 'totem and taboo' in today's ethnology. In: Journal for Psychosomatic Medicine , 7 (1960), No. 1, pp. 45-58

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The numbers in round brackets are here and in the following page numbers according to: Freud: Totem and Tabu . In: Ders .: Study edition, Vol. 9 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2000, pp. 287-444.
  2. ^ AA Goldenweiser: Totemism: An Analytical Study . In: Journal of American Folk-Lore , Vol. 23 (1910), pp. 179-293.
  3. ↑ Freud: Overview of the transference neuroses: A previously unknown manuscript . Edited and introduced by Ilse Grubrich-Simitis. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985. ( Freud's draft on-line. )
  4. ↑ Preliminary editorial note on 'Totem and Tabu' . In: Sigmund Freud: Study Edition, Vol. 9 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2000, pp. 288-300
  5. ↑ Thomas Mann: The position of Freud in modern intellectual history . In: Die psychoanalytische Movement , Vol. 1 (1929), Issue 1, May-June, pp. 3-32, cited above. n. Mario Erdheim: Introduction . In: S. Freud: Totem and Tabu . Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 9 f.
  6. ↑ Mario Erdheim: Introduction . In: Sigmund Freud: Totem and Tabu . Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 7–42