Freud’s “Totem and Taboo”

Like mathematics, every field of knowledge would love to pride itself on being peerless and free from any other influential sphere of study. Anthropology was heading in that direction when it encountered Freud, or when Freud went out of his way to encounter it. Of course, most fields owe something, directly or indirectly, to the exact science of mathematics and or to the more subjective sphere of philosophy, but can still voice their adopted independence. Freud changed all that for anthropology. Although he was specifically studying the human psyche, he was also examining all the developmental and cultural aspects of humans, thus stepping into the realm of anthropology and creating psychoanalytic anthropology.

While “Totem and Taboo is the keystone of Freud’s anthropology” (Wallace 1), one can argue that Freud is fundamental for any study of Homo sapiens. From The Interpretation of Dreams to Moses and Monotheism, Freud elucidated, mostly intuitively, the evolutionary pattern of the human psyche. He was often criticized (still is) for lacking scientific methodology, but his ideas were (still are) so heroically captivating that goose bumps were often just one side effect of their grasping. It is still maintained in some Freudian circles that whoever vehemently disagrees with Freud is basically in a state of denial.

Freud begins Totem and Taboo by telling us that “a comparison between the psychology of primitive peoples, as it is taught by social anthropologists, and the psychology of neurotics, as it has been revealed by psychoanalysis” (Freud 53) would uncover more about our origins as a species. He ends Totem and Taboo by declaring that “the beginnings of religion, morals, society and art converge in the Oedipus complex” (Freud 219), thus rendering oedipality universal. These hypotheses (especially the second) are monumental. In the first one, Freud proposes that the combined data obtained from various clans and numerous neurotics would reveal more than the data acquired exclusively from the different tribes. Neurotics would show us what is impossible to see otherwise: the realm of the unconscious, the primitive id. Thus, we could study primordial beings within and without. The second hypothesis ties all human primal undertakings to that initial brush with incest, to patricide*, to the oedipal wish. The killing of the father has been internalized beyond the unconscious into a sequence in our genes.

*Had I heard or read this word while beginning to learn English, I might have thought it to mean the murder of all individuals named Patrick.

Psychology, including psychoanalysis, was initially rejected by anthropology, especially by structural anthropologists. According to Fox, they believed that rules were more stable than emotions. “This is patently not so. Rules and customs can be changed overnight — and will be if they fail to meet felt needs — but motives, and especially unconscious motives, are not so readily changeable” (Fox 176). However, other anthropologists began to appreciate Totem and Taboo from 1920 onward. Wallace gives a partial list of these anthropologists: “Boas, Kroeber, Lowie, Goldenweiser, Sapir, Mead, Herskovitz, Radin, Rivers, Seligman, Malinowski, Marett, Schmidt, Murdock, Kluckhohn, White, Lévi-Strauss” (Wallace 169). In fact, anthropology was the field most responsive to Freud’s Totem and Taboo.

A few early anthropologists acknowledged the seemingly inherent relationship between primitives and neurotics. Deeming many faculties intrinsic to the civilized man as lacking in the uncivilized, they were already primed to accept the possibility of the neurotic sharing some common traits. While savages could be tamed, so neurotics could be cured. However, when empirical knowledge gained more favour than intuitive or common understanding, any similarity between the two disappeared. Anthropology began to speak of different cultures and aboriginals, while psychology started to treat clinically depressed and or hysteric, obsessive, and compulsive individuals.

Still, there are a few conceptions conceived by Freud that need to be mentioned. He remarks that “the horror of incest displayed by savages … is essentially an infantile feature and that it reveals a striking agreement with the mental life of neurotic patients” (Freud 69-70). He also argues that “obsessional neurotics behave exactly like savages in relation to names” (Freud 112). Moreover, “Man’s first theoretical achievement — the creation of spirits — seems to have arisen from the same source as the first moral restrictions to which he was subjected — the observances of taboo” (Freud 151). Spirits, in the case of neurotics, are replaced by ghosts. Finally, Freud contends that we cannot ask the savages the real reasons for their taboos since they must be unconscious. That is, unless we psychoanalyze them like we do with neurotics. It is also interesting to note that obsession can be regarded as a taboo sickness, and taboo as a touching phobia.

Global “oedipality,” Freud’s second hypothesis, remains his most controversial concept. Fox explains that in Totem and Taboo “Freud is not concerned … with recurrent psychic events, but with the transmission of motives down the generations. These motives were learned once and for all at a certain stage of human evolution” (Fox 168-69). In other words, the act of patricide, the incest taboo, and the totem representing the father, are all passed on from generation to generation through our genes. However, patricide does not seem to be the first primal act. A lesser event, a command by the father, may have precipitated his demise: exogamy. Suddenly, the picture becomes somewhat clearer. The sons not only resented their father’s monopoly of the women (mother and sisters) but also the fact that they had to go elsewhere to get what was already there. Each son, perhaps helped by the others, needed to defeat another man in order to get his wife and daughters, or settle for one daughter whom, most probably, he had to kidnap and tame.

Freud also claims that “while the totem may be the first form of father-surrogate, the god will be a later one, in which the father has regained his human shape” (Freud 210). Totemic religion, according to Freud, grew out of the sons’ guilt, in an effort to soothe that feeling and to pacify the father by this delayed submission to him. “The totem meal was a symbolic repetition (celebration) of the primal crime” (Wallace 99). Freud’s idea of patricide as the original crime is further reinforced when Wallace mentions Rieff’s major criticism of Freud’s primary crime: “The father-murder story is but one motif in world mythology. Among the themes Freud ignored are the fratricidal (Cain and Abel) and filicidal (Abraham and Isaac) ones” (Wallace 163). Firstly, the Cain and Abel and Abraham and Isaac stories are not world mythologies but regional ones. Secondly, fratricide is not as important as patricide: there is only one father and the motive may not be the same. Thirdly, Abraham may have intended to kill Isaac, but never did. Thus, filicide never occurred (in this case). Ingham reminds us that Freud goes even further: “Christ … sacrificed his own life and so redeemed the company of brothers from original sin” (Ingham 155). Thus, Jesus also becomes a totem. Devout Christians symbolically eat and drink parts of him on many religious occasions.

Spain formulates eight statements to counter Freud’s notion of universal oedipality. One wonders why Spain did not come up with ten: the New Ten Commandments. Nevertheless, Spain argues that oedipality is not a universal because it is not uniform and therefore not a constant. Although oedipality has been demonstrated in countless cultures, there are those who still search for the one lacking it. Until we create or find a new species of individuals who come into the world without any needs whatsoever, who are self-sufficient at birth, oedipality will remain a global reality. Spain also compares oedipality to crime and poverty: they all ought to be eliminated for being sources of anxiety and melancholy. It is like comparing death with the weather. While the weather changes and could eventually be changed, death is a constant. When (and if) we dispose of crime and poverty, I bet the Oedipus complex will still be part of our essence. Moreover, Spain groups two of his statements under the heading: “Millions discovered with no oedipal complexes” (Spain 204). It may be difficult to prove universal oedipality, but it is even harder to disprove it, since having parents or caregivers necessarily warrants the emergence of conflict, hence oedipality.

“In Totem and Taboo (1913), Freud wrote in two distinct voices, that of the tentative clinical observer attempting interpretations of exotic customs and that of the confident theorist offering a comprehensive account of human nature” (LeVine 37). Freud probably envisioned himself in the latter role. Wallace’s Freud is bolder still, having made “a collective, a social event (the patricide) the ultimate basis for a personal, psychological one (the Oedipus complex). Furthermore, by depicting each neurotic as carrying the layers of his culture’s past within him, like an archaeological site, Freud has declared that psychology is at the same time anthropology” (Wallace 101).

Freud will never cease to amaze, be it positively or negatively. In Totem and Taboo, he has presented us with a history of humanity’s passage from nature to culture through the consequences of the primal crime: totem and taboo. He also stressed the extreme importance of the Oedipal complex and the ways in which neurotics and aboriginals are alike. The development of our understanding of the world was treated as well:

If we are prepared to accept the account given above of the evolution of human views of the universe — an animistic phase followed by a religious phase and this in turn by a scientific one — it will not be difficult to follow the vicissitudes of the “omnipotence of thoughts” through these different phases. At the animistic stage men ascribe omnipotence to themselves. At the religious stage they transfer it to the gods but do not seriously abandon it themselves, for they reserve the power of influencing the gods in a variety of ways according to their wishes. The scientific view of the universe no longer affords any room for human omnipotence; men have acknowledged their smallness and submitted resignedly to death and to the other necessities of nature. None the less some of the primitive belief in omnipotence still survives in men’s faith in the power of the human mind, which grapples with the laws of reality. (Freud 146)

The significance to anthropology of Totem and Taboo in particular and of Freud in general is immeasurable. His advent did not bring to anthropology what Darwin had brought to biology or what Einstein had brought to physics. However, through his astute analysis of and his remarkable thoughts about the anthropology of his day, he gave it a richer focus and a more colourful disposition. Whether his input will last remains to be seen. But I cannot stop foreseeing a poorer anthropology without Freud.

References

Fox, R. 1967. ”Totem and Taboo Reconsidered.” In E. Leach, ed., The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism. London: Tavistock Publications.

Freud, S. 1913. ”Totem and Taboo.” In A. Dickson, ed., The Origins of Religion: Totem and Taboo, Moses and Monotheism, and Other Works. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.

Ingham, J. M. 1992. “Freud in a Forest of Symbols: The Religious Background of Psychoanalytic Anthropology.” In D. H. Spain, ed., Psychoanalytic Anthropology After Freud: Essays Marking the Fiftieth Anniversary of Freud’s Death. New York: Psych Press.

LeVine, R. A. 1992. “The Self in an African Culture.” In D. H. Spain, ed., Psychoanalytic Anthropology After Freud: Essays Marking the Fiftieth Anniversary of Freud’s Death. New York: Psych Press.

Spain, D. H., ed. 1992. Psychoanalytic Anthropology After Freud: Essays Marking the Fiftieth Anniversary of Freud’s Death. New York: Psych Press.

Wallace, E. R. 1983. Freud and Anthropology: A History and Reappraisal. New York: International Universities Press.