Totem And Taboo
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few works have so audaciously redrawn the boundaries between psychology and anthropology as Sigmund Freud's Totem and Taboo, a landmark study that applies the tools of psychoanalysis to the origins of human civilization itself. First published in 1913, this provocative work presents four interconnected essays that argue a striking thesis: that the psychological conflicts at the heart of the Oedipus complex — desire, guilt, and the murder of the primal father — are not merely personal dramas but the very founding traumas of religion, morality, and social order. Drawing on the ethnographic scholarship of his era, Freud chronicles the ritual life of so-called primitive peoples to uncover deep structural parallels with the neuroses he observed in his clinical patients, weaving together the incest taboo, totemic religion, and the laws of exogamy into a single, sweeping psychological narrative. Freud's style here is characteristically bold — erudite and relentless in its argumentative drive — positioning psychoanalysis not just as a therapeutic method but as a universal key to human prehistory. Totem and Taboo stands as one of the most debated texts in the history of ideas, fiercely contested by anthropologists yet endlessly generative for thinkers in philosophy, literary theory, and cultural studies. Whether one accepts or refutes its central claims, it remains an indispensable provocation: a reminder that the distance between the consulting room and the campfire may be far shorter than we dare to imagine.
Author: Sigmund Freud
Format: Paperback
Genre: Anthropology
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few works have so audaciously redrawn the boundaries between psychology and anthropology as Sigmund Freud's Totem and Taboo, a landmark study that applies the tools of psychoanalysis to the origins of human civilization itself. First published in 1913, this provocative work presents four interconnected essays that argue a striking thesis: that the psychological conflicts at the heart of the Oedipus complex — desire, guilt, and the murder of the primal father — are not merely personal dramas but the very founding traumas of religion, morality, and social order. Drawing on the ethnographic scholarship of his era, Freud chronicles the ritual life of so-called primitive peoples to uncover deep structural parallels with the neuroses he observed in his clinical patients, weaving together the incest taboo, totemic religion, and the laws of exogamy into a single, sweeping psychological narrative. Freud's style here is characteristically bold — erudite and relentless in its argumentative drive — positioning psychoanalysis not just as a therapeutic method but as a universal key to human prehistory. Totem and Taboo stands as one of the most debated texts in the history of ideas, fiercely contested by anthropologists yet endlessly generative for thinkers in philosophy, literary theory, and cultural studies. Whether one accepts or refutes its central claims, it remains an indispensable provocation: a reminder that the distance between the consulting room and the campfire may be far shorter than we dare to imagine.