TOTEM AND TABOO BETWEEN PSYCHOANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the study of Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, as a place of interdisciplinary discussion of the concepts which shaped the historical development of anthropology and psychoanalysis. After explaining the psychoanalytically informed concept of cultural origins, the paper will discuss the most significant anthropological criticism addressed at Freud. At the time of publication of the study, the existence of totemism had already been called into question, and the deconstruction of the totemism was completely formulated by Lévi-Strauss. The paper deals with Alfred Kroeber’s critiques, and then considers Malinowski’s first critique of the universality of the Oedipus complex, based on his research of the matrilineal society of the Trobriand. Freud applied psychoanalytic findings to social phenomena for the first time in this study of totemism. The purpose of this paper is to present the early disagreements between anthropology and psychoanalysis, as well as possible implicit readings of Freud’s work.