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Another translation of Dr. Brill's of one of Professor Freud's works. The work originally appeared in a series of papers in Imago and subsequently was published in booklet form. It now for the first time appears in English.
The book consists of four essays, namely (1) The Savage's Dread of Incest, (2) Taboo and the Ambivalence of Emotions, (3) Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thought, (4) The Infantile Recurrence of Totemism. In these essays Professor Freud approaches the exceedingly obscure anthropoloical problems of totemism, taboo, and of exogamy from the psychoanalytic viewpoint. He briefly reviews the best opinion upon these subjects and then undertakes the application of psychoanalytic principles. Unfortunately he has very little psychoanalytic experience which casts any direct light upon the problem of totemism. He quotes only one analyzed case in the literature, namely the case reported by Ferenczi. The conclusion which he comes to, however, is that the totem is a father image.
The conclusion that the totem is a father image to anyone who is not familiar with psychoanalytic interpretations would not seem to have been very well substantiated by the material brought forward. Professor Freud, however, develops this conception and in a fascinating way shows how if it be accepted a whole host of conclusions follow which fit in with great nicety to the actual conditions so far as they are known. Of particular interest and importance are W. Robertson Smith's investigations of the totem feast in his “Religion of the Semites,” the suggestions of Darwin as to the nature of the earliest human group, and the extraordinary conclusions of Atkinson, which fit in absolutely with the psychoanalytic interpretations of Professor Freud.
The work is an exceedingly interesting and valuable contribution to the probelm of mass psychology in its developmental and evolutional aspects, particularly is it valuable from the psychoanalytic point of view as a contribution to what Jellif