Totem and Taboo (Routledge Classics) - Softcover

Freud, Sigmund

Softcover

ISBN 10: 041525387X ISBN 13: 9780415253871

Publisher: Routledge, 2004

Synopsis

Widely acknowledged to be one of Freud's greatest cultural works, when Totem and Taboo was first published in 1913, it caused outrage. Thorough and thought-provoking, Totem and Taboo remains the fullest exploration of Freud's most famous themes. Family, society, religion - they're all put on the couch here. Whatever your feelings about psychoanalysis, Freud's theories have influenced every facet of modern life, from film and literature to medicine and art. If you don't know your incest taboo from your Oedipal complex, and you want to understand more about the culture we're living in, then Totem and Taboo is the book to read.

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). The founding father of psychoanalysis, Freud is one of the most influential thinkers of the modern era.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 041525387X
• ISBN 13: 9780415253871
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 224