Totem and Taboo : Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics

2009 reprint of 1919 edition. Totem and Taboo is a collection of four essays first published in the journal Imago (1912-13) employing the application of psychoanalysis to the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and the study of religion. The four essays are entitled: The Horror of Incest; Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence; Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts; and The Return of Totemism in Childhood. The English translation was published in 1918; it met with an initially chilly reception from the anthropological community, reflective of a change in scholarship towards ethnography and away from the more speculative "theoretical anthropology." However in later years, Freud's approach, if not the specific theory advanced, would become much more prominent within anthropological literature as incorporated into the post-structuralist approach.