Totem and Taboo

Totem and Taboo

Cover of the first edition
Author	Sigmund Freud
Original title	Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker
Translator	Abraham Brill James Strachey
Language	German
Subject	Totemism
Publisher	Beacon Press
Publication date	1913
Media type	Print

Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics, or Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics, (German: Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker) is a 1913 book by Sigmund Freud, in which Freud applies psychoanalysis to the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and the study of religion. It is a collection of four essays inspired by the work of Wilhelm Wundt and Carl Jung and first published in the journal Imago (1912–13): "The Horror of Incest", "Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence", "Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts", and "The Return of Totemism in Childhood". Though Totem and Taboo has been seen as one of the classics of anthropology, comparable to Edward Burnett Tylor's Primitive Culture (1871) and Sir James George Frazer's The Golden Bough (1890), the work is now regarded as discredited by anthropologists. Cultural anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber was an early critic of Totem and Taboo, publishing a critique of the work in 1920. Some authors have seen redeeming value in the work.

Freud, who had a longstanding interest in social anthropology and was devoted to the study of archaeology and prehistory, wrote that the work of Wilhelm Wundt and Carl Jung provided him with his "first stimulus" to write the essays included in Totem and Taboo. The work was translated twice into English, first by Abraham Brill and later by James Strachey.