By Madison S. Hughes (09.09.2009)

Between 1912 and 1913 Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939) wrote four essays, later compiled in the book (Totem and Taboo (TT), W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1950) in an attempt to apply psychoanalysis—which he founded—to discover the origins of civilized life. Initially it was not well received from the anthropological community, but in later years it came to be more accepted.   

In the Preface of TT Freud acknowledges that his two sources for TT were Wilhelm Wundt and the Zurich school of psychoanalysis. Wilhelm Wundt’s work focuses on non-analytic psychology, while the Zurich school utilizes material derived from social psychology. This provides an acceptable contrast from which to work.

     The first essay in TT, The Horror of Incest concerns the incest taboos of the Australian Aborigines.  Freud chose the Aborigines for two main reasons. They believed in totemism (usually an animal considered an ancestor of the clan) and, were considered the most primitive of active tribes. One problem with this approach is that there are far more totemic races than the Aborigines, but Freud admits that his studies are a “fragmentary extract from the copious material (13).” Freud asserts that the purpose of totemism is the prevention of incest, and concludes that the “incestuous fixation of the libido continue to play … the principal part in his unconscious mental life (22).” This assertion was “received with universal skepticism by adults and normal people. Similar expressions of disbelief … [were] expressed by Otto Rank (22-23).”

     Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence discusses taboo as it relates to totemism.  Freud describes ambivalence as containing two parts, love and hate. He claims that while we express the love part on the conscious level; hate is suppressed in the unconscious level, and projected on the conscious level. This, he says, is related to the mother/child love/hate relationship. When a clan member acts out on the hate part through projection he shirks responsibility by blaming it on the totem. Many psychologists have disregarded Freud’s Oedipus complex theories.

     In Animism Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts Freud claims that it is “perfectly natural … that primitive man should have reacted to phenomena which aroused his speculations by forming the idea of the soul and then of extending it to objects in the external world (96).” He asserts that these ideas derive from dreams that are then projected to the natural world through instinctual repression. Freud based many of his theories on the subject of dreams.

     In The Return of Totemism in Childhood Freud synthesizes a theory of sacrifice from William Robertson Smith with Charles Darwin’s theories of primal societies. He begins to speak of the Oedipus complex—the killing of the father figure—and claimed that religion was a form of guilt used to cope with the Oedipus complex. The problem with this theory is that Darwin’s theory of primal societies was considered incomplete.

     In his 1927 book (The Future of Illusion (FI), W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1961) Freud, “the convinced, consistent, aggressive atheist (FI xxiii),” through a psychoanalytic lens, argued that the coexistence of religion and sciences where irreconcilable. Where one may expect more of a confusing scholarly writing, Freud’s essays are written in an easily read conversational tone. In FI this becomes literally true starting in chapter IV where he employs an imaginary opponent to address his arguments.

     In 1895 Freud and Josef Breuer published Studies in Hysteria. After studying the “founding patient of psychoanalysis,” Anna O, Freud concluded, “that hysteria originates in sexual malfunctioning, and that symptoms can be talked away.” According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, hysteria is defined as “exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement, esp. among a group of people … [historically] regarded as a disease specific to women.” Hysteria is no longer considered specific to women invalidating his assertion.

     Freud rightfully argued, “Bridging the gap between [religion and science] is bound to be futile (xxiii).” He believed that with the advance in science belief in God would be replaced by reason. Freud believed, like existentialist theorized, that belief was way of coping with life’s uncertainties. Freud believed that religion leads to oppression, violence and intolerance. His belief that reason will replace religion did not see fruition in his time, or in present day.