Totem and taboo : Resemblances between the psychic lives of savages and neurotics

In this bold collection of essays, a pioneering psychologist turns his analytic tools toward the mysteries of culture, asking how the deepest unconscious forces shape the rules we call taboos and the symbols we call totems. Drawing on case studies, mythic narratives, and early‑childhood observations, he suggests that the origins of these social structures lie in primitive psychic conflicts. The work invites listeners to see familiar prohibitions in a new, often unsettling light.

The book is organized around four papers that examine taboo as a lingering, compulsive moral command and totemism as a relic of early communal identity. By linking the rites of distant societies to the development of the modern child’s mind, the author bridges ethnology, folklore, and psychoanalysis, offering a framework that is both provocative and tentative. Listeners will come away with fresh questions about how ancient psychic patterns continue to echo in contemporary life.