v

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

THE essays treated here appeared under the
subtitle of this book in the first numbers of the
periodical Imago edited by me. They repre-
sent my first efforts to apply view-points and
results of psychoanalysis to unexplained prob-
lems of racial psychology. In method this
book contrasts with that of W. Wundt and the
works of the Zurich Psychoanalytic School.
The former tries to accomplish the same object
through assumptions and procedures from non-
analytic psychology, while the latter follow
the opposite course and strive to settle prob-
lems of individual pyschology by referring
to material of racial psychology¹. I am
pleased to say that the first stimulus for my own
works came from these two sources.

I am fully aware of the shortcomings in these
essays. I shall not touch upon those which are
characteristic of first efforts at investigation.
The others, however, demand a word of

¹ Jung: Wandlungen and Symbole der Libido (Transformations
and Symbols of the Libido) translated by Dr. Beatrice Hinkle
under the title The Psychology of the Unconscious, and Principles
of Psychoanalysis, Nervous and Mental Diseases.

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AUTHOR’S PREFACE

explanation. The four essays which are here
collected will be of interest to a wide circle of
educated people, but they can only be
thoroughly understood and judged by those
who are really acquainted with psychoanalysis
as such. It is hoped that they may serve as a
bond between students of ethnology, philology,
folklore and of the allied sciences, and psycho-
analysts; they cannot, however, supply both
groups the entire requisites for such co-opera-
tion. They will not furnish the former with
sufficient insight into the new pyschological
technique, nor will the pyschoanalysts acquire
through them an adequate command over the
material to be elaborated. Both groups will
have to content themselves with whatever
attention they can stimulate here and there
and with the hope that frequent meetings be-
tween them will not remain unproductive for
science.

The two principal themes, totem and taboo,
which give the name to this small book are not
treated alike here. The problem of taboo is
presented more exhaustively, and the effort to
solve it is approached with perfect confidence.
The investigation of totemism may be modestly
expressed as: “This is all that psychoanalytic
study can contribute at present to the elucida-
tion of the problem of totemism.” This differ-
 

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AUTHOR’S PREFACE

ence in the treatment of the two subjects is
due to the fact that taboo still exists in our
midst. To be sure, it is negatively conceived
and directed to different contents, but according
to its psychological nature, it is still nothing
else than Kant’s ‘Categorical Imperative’,
which tends to act compulsively and rejects
all conscious motivations. On the other hand,
totemism is a religio-social institution which
is alien to our present feelings; it has long
been abandoned and replaced by new forms
In the religions, morals, and customs of the
civilized races of to-day it has left only slight
traces, and even among those races where it is
still retained, it has had to undergo great
changes. The social and material progress of
the history of mankind could obviously change
taboo much less than totemism.

In this book the attempt is ventured to find
the original meaning of totemism through its
infantile traces, that is, through the indications
in which it reappears in the development of our
own children. The close connection between
totem and taboo indicates the further paths to
the hypothesis maintained here. And although
this hypothesis leads to somewhat improbable
conclusions, there is no reason for rejecting the
possibility that it comes more or less near to
the reality which is so hard to reconstruct.