iii

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 re-
sults of psychoanalysis to unexplained problems
of racial psychology. In method this book con-
trasts with that of W. Wundt and the works of
the Zurich Psychoanalytic School. The former
tries to accomplish the same object through as-
sumptions and procedures from non-analytic
psychology, while the latter follow the opposite
course and strive to settle problems of individual
psychology by referring to material of racial
psychology.¹ 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 explana-
tion.

¹Jung: Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Transformations
and Symbols of the Libido) translated by Dr. Beatrice Hinkle
under the title “The Psychology of the Unconscious,” Moffat,
Yard & Co., and “Principles of Psychoanalysis, Nervous and Men-
tal Diseases,” Monograph Series.

iv

PREFACE

tion. The four essays which are here collected
will be of interest to a wide circle of educated peo-
ple, 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 psychoanalysts; they cannot, how-
ever, supply both groups the entire requisites for
such coöperation. They will not furnish the
former with sufficient insight into the new
psychological technique, nor will the psycho-
analysts acquire through them an adequate com-
mand over the material to be elaborated. Both
groups will have to content themselves with what-
ever attention they can stimulate here and there
and with the hope that frequent meetings be-
tween them will not remain unproductive for sci-
ence.

The two principle themes, totem and taboo,
which gave the name to this small book are not
treated alike here. The problem of taboo is pre-
sented more exhaustively, and the effort to solve
it is approached with perfect confidence. The
investigation of totemism may be modestly ex-
pressed as: “This is all that psychoanalytic study
can contribute at present to the elucida-
tion of
the problem of totemism.” This difference in
the treatment of the two subjects is due to the fact

v

PREFACE

that taboo still exists in our midst. To be sure,
it is negatively conceived and directed to different
contents, but according to its psychological na-
ture, it is still nothing else than Kant’s “Cate-
gorical Imperative,” which tends to act compul-
sively and rejects all conscious motivations. On
the other hand, totemism is a religio-social insti-
tution 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 today 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 infan-
tile 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 con-
clusions, there is no reason for rejecting the pos-
sibility that it comes more or less near to the
reality which is so hard to reconstruct.