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Some Similarities in the Mental Life of Primitive and Neurotic People—IV. The Infantile Return of Totemism. sigm. freud.
Nakedness in Saga and Poetry—II. otto rank.
1The Infantile Return of Totemism.—Freud here discusses totemism merely as one of the elements entering into the origin of religion. The importance of totemism is shown in the survival of traces of it in many of the observances and usages of modern society. For the understanding of the underlying principles he turns to Frazer's Totemism and Exogamy, although psychoanalytic interpretation may still differ from his presentation. A totem is a material object to whom the savage grants a superstitious reverence and with which there is a mutual relationship of protection toward the man on the part of the totem and a peculiar guardianship and preservation of the totem on the part of the clan to which it belongs. The totem object also binds the members of a clan together as descendants of a common ancestor having common duties and a mutual belief in their totem.
Traces of the religious and social significance of totemism seem to point back to a time when these two elements were inseparable, when the clan organization was dependent upon the common totem. The consideration of the totem as the source of origin of the clan led to the taboos against the use of the totem object as food or other form of enjoyment by the clan to which it belonged. Taboos even against touching it or looking upon it, which were liable to an automatic punishment by sickness or death, reveal the fearful reverence in which it was held. The totem object was mourned and propitiated like a true member of the clan. The totem on its part was supposed to protect its clan and serve as a supernatural power in the affairs of the clan. This relationship