Totem and Taboo (Annotated)

In Totem and Taboo, Sigmund Freud extends psychoanalytic interpretation beyond the clinic to the origins of religion, morality, and social order. Combining speculative anthropology, comparative mythology, and clinical analogy, he reads taboo prohibitions, animism, and totemic rituals as expressions of repressed desire and ambivalent feeling. Its prose is argumentative and audacious, situated withi...