this entry is going to basically be a summary with emphasis of the most important things since i "swallowed" this book within one afternoon and thus my reflections on it are "fresh", but also less detailed. i read it after finishing "beyond the pleasure principle", which i did not journal, and it was my 8th book of freud's i believe. i was very interested in it also because i'm going to appraoch wilhelm reich and his psychoanalysis of fascism, and i wanted to have a proper grasp on societal ideas of freudism before i get down to that.
back to the list here
book started and finished on 08.01.2024.
first of all, i have to start with saying freud's take there is insanely bold - to which i will progress; second of all, i disliked the era-typical racism of identifying tribal peoples as more primitive or behind in terms of evolution, and more akin to children than "civilised" nations are, but i have to give it to freud that he decided europeans often fail to see the subtlety and complexity of societal and spiritual lives of these tribes because of applying the standards of their culture, and also that it's misguided to identify these tribes with the primal states of humanity since they're as old as "civilised" nations and have undergone a comparable amount of changes, therefore totemism identified within their systems of beliefs is not the same totemism as the probable initial stage of human spiritual development, and is either an evolution of totemism or totemism in stage of decay in favour of the system that will follow it. i'll just gather what i consider the most important points to me personally or the points that captured my attention for any subjective reasons.
in general the book is discussing the origins and nature of totemic systems within native tribal populations of austaralia, sometimes other continents, even down to some populations of siberia, and the nature of taboo, which in itself is likely an element of pre-religious systems of beliefs. for the purpose of that discussion freud quotes a variety of sources, including ethnopsychologists and historians of xxth century who wrote on these topics, and for most of the book is consistently referring to and commenting on their arguments and analysis of aforementioned practices from the psychoanalytical pov; this way he successfully avoided writing on something he's incompetent in, as he leaves a lot of the actual descriptions of the practices and the data backing them up to the quoted authors, and himself only conducts the analysis of these in light of what he's good at (he also quotes some native authors who wrote on their own history/practices in a neutral way, which is a positive)
his main thesis - explained in the final part of the book - is that totemism originated from oedipus complex, and so did, in futher development, patriarchal religion and morality.
he believes the connection with the totem happened via subvertion of feelings towards the father onto an animal, who is directly identified as an ancestor by the tribes - his arguments in it are grounded in children's animal phobias mostly, which, upon analysis, turned out to be subverted feelings towards their parents, usually their father; the fear of the father in the oedipus complex is related to infantile sexual impulses towards the mother and perception of the father as a rival, combined with fear that he somehow knows of these feelings or may find out, and will punish the boy via castration or equivalent. castration or equivalent is understood to be punishment for all expressions of sexuality (i.e. masturbation) because the father has unquestioned sexual privilege, which may not be challenged. this reasoning is supposed to be largely subconscious/unconscious, and probably consciously mainly expresses in jealousy and rivalry towards the father and fear of punishment for touching own genitals. oedipus complex is normally resolved by identification with the father, and transforming the desire to replace him as head of the household and the mother's partner with desire to be like him and live up to his standard. identification with the mother instead would result in homosexuality in later life (freud believes all humans are on the most primal level bisexual with a homosexual or heterosexual inclination which one may have natural predispositions for and may gain during early development. these beliefs of freud's were rather progressive for his era, although nowadays "everyone's bi!" provokes cringing more than anything else).
there's various different takes on what the oedipus complex is like in women and how does it resolve; freud's students invented the institution of "electra's complex" which is equivalent sexual desire towards the father in very early childhood, and rivalry towards the mother. freud did not disprove that, but his own idea of sexual development in women was that normally castration complex would happen first, when the little girl witnesses a penis and realises that she doesn't have it, while under impression that she is "supposed to". this leads to developing feelings of inferiority or being lacking due to femaleness, for which the girl would compensate by fixating on her father, who has it, and pursuing identification with him, while harbouring disdain towards the mother as one who doesn't have it and who gave her daughter a "flawed" body. that's when "electra's complex" may occur, and it's supposed to be resolved with the girl consciously or subconsciously realising that femaleness equals ability to birth life, and desiring that instead of having a phallus, it would lead the girl to both identify with her mother, whom she would assume as the role model, and embrace the vision of partnership with a man, as he could give her a baby; according to freud, atypical ending to castration complex results in lesbianism - that happens if the girl assumes identification with her father past the early childhood period, and/or never grows to want a baby; she will instead want to replace the male partner with another woman.
freud's observations on the oedipus complex in this book basically boil down to the thesis that very early humans were organised like gorillas and some other primates, where a male - the father - would live with a group of females and have exclusive access to all the females in the herd, and pubescent sons had to leave. the "original sin" of humanity is supposedly the brothers gathering together to overthrow and murder the father, whom they then probably consumed in an attempt to claim his power, and then established a complex system of rules which would honour his memory and allow them to atone for their crime, and also prevent one of them from taking his place; that would include restrictions unquestionably forbidding incest, since none of them would have the right to the women that used to "belong" to him, which would in this case become the first taboo - i'll progress to freud's understanding of the nature of taboo in this book. he identifies the rules of totemism - which is not to kill/eat the totem animal and not have sex with women of the same totem - to be results of that action, and origin of primitive societal organisation; he rightfully points out that murder and incest are the only things universally immoral in all or nearly all human populations.
deification of the totem animal and projection onto it of paternal attachment was supposed to be both a case of idealised wishful thinking of how the murderers wish their father was towards them, and a justification for their guilt - they wouldn't have murdered him if he had been like the totem they identified with him.
he identifies that totemic religions almost always have the institution of sacrifice, which is the only case where killing the totem animal is allowed - notably, everyone in the tribe is obligated to participate in these, and killing said animals is only allowed in case of the whole community being involved, strictly forbidden for individual - that allows for group responsibility which strengthens bonds between the clan members. he refers multiple traditions which play into that; notably, the element of shared clan guilt is very important, as according to freud the sacrifice originally served unification in sharing the same living substance which was also substance of god-ancestor, and mordern customs of kinship resulting from sharing food would be distant descendents of that. the sacrifice is a crime that calls for participation of all members like execution on a member of the clan had he broken taboo - only shared responsibility justifies spilling blood. that's supposed to also symbolically refer the original sin of patricide, which resulted necessarily in community between the brothers. honestly i believe one needs to read the book to see the full range of his arguments for this theory since i don't have enough time, energy or space, but it is surprisingly convincing.
while at that, freud also believes that derivate, subsequent deification of the father and returning him to the human form - i.e. patriarichal gods - resulted from the fact that none of the men in the "community" got what they really wanted and envied, which is the position of the tyrant they killed; none of them could replace him, so none of them could have what he had, so they developed wishful thinking fantasies where they deified the father further and justified becoming him at least to a level, creating the patriarchy - that's what, according to freud's theories, may have led to replacing matriarchal cults with patriarchal cults upon the agricultural revolution, along with the economic factors.
religion would originate, in short, from cultural guilt for this "original sin", and morality from obligation to atone for it and prevent a situation where it would be necessary again - freud speculates on whether it was a real repeated offence, or only happened in the sons' heads, given a lot of mentally ill people are plagued by very real guilt for things they have only wanted and not actually done (magical thinking - will progress to that), so it may have also been the case with the patricide and frustrated sons, but he leans towards the idea that it actually happened, probably more than once, since there wouldn't be either motor skills or societal principle inhibitions which prevent children and mentally ill people from acting on their desires of similar kind in reality.
the book had multiple sidenotes, including an interesting discussion of near-universal belief that spirits of the newly dead are hostile "vampires", who are upset that death happened to them of all people - pretty interesting, quotes "on the other side" originating from the custom of separating the dead from the living with a body of water, typically a river, so that returning would be more difficult, which in turns reminds me of the eastern european ideas on vampires and running water (slavic vampires would also plague their family members before anyone else - there's a lot of similarties), plus some takes on vampirism on the topic of totemic sacrifice.
very interesting analysis of magical thinking as a whole and neurosis - freud notices that all magical thinking is characterised by mistaking relations between thoughts/concepts/ideas with relations between material objects - if things are connected in one's head then that connection is projected onto reality, ignoring space and time, and that little children who can't satisfy their wishes via motor skills (don't have the agency) satisfy them via vivid fantasies and wish-fulfilling dreams, which also characterises magical thinking overall; he figures initially magic must have been a thing before even the most primitive forms of religion, and it would result from the inclination to believe that that wishing makes things real, which is seen in children and functions as a mechanism to cope with physical inability to achieve a goal, in order to avoid having to resign, which is then ritualised according to similar rules (i.e. association in time and space being processed into logical relation when one isn't there) that constitute dream reality. from me: inclination towards magical thinking in personality disorders could result from certain kinds of "immaturity" due to disordered development.
on topic of that: freud notes that in "neurotics" one interprets things according to what they are in their head and puts data in order according to what feelings and associations it provokes in them rather than according to causation in the material world, which causes illusionary logical relations within their reasoning, which are projection of internal relations onto the external world, and also that said mechanisms seek to achieve the things that are usually only achieved by community and group effort on one's own with only the effort of the individual's brain, indicating that ultimately "neuroticism" and "hysteria" are forms of alienation, where one turns away from the social reality and attempts to recreate on their own what they would derive from the community. this emphasis of the role of alienation in personality disorders (which is basically what "neuroticism" is, along with c-ptsd) is pretty interesting.
also interesting analysis of subversion and the role it plays in obsessive-compulsive disorder, where repressed desires for something are replaced by fear of something related, and repressed sexual desires are replaced by repetitive activities usually neither here nor there, and similarity between that and taboo - speaking of which, i did not elaborate enough on freud's take on taboo; taboo he believes is something that originates from ambivalence and serves to prevent acting on urges which have been deemed immoral, which he believes is the role of repetitive actions in ocd as well as that of various cases of taboo (described and elaborated on in the book) in the native populations of australia, where i.e. envy of position (taboo of power) or incestous desires would lead to developing a custom of avoidance towards objects of these desires and fear of any interaction which would create an opportunity to act on them.
again captivating: he notes that only things that humans naturally have inclinations for bear laws that forbid them, no one has to forbid putting one's hand into fire or eating rotten food; things that are forbidden are things that bear discipline to be prevented, and things that are under taboo are things that need to be isolated and taken from one's life for their own good and good of the community - with that, i had a thought about pedophilia being one of the greatest taboos in the western culture nowadays, but barely a taboo decades ago - not because everyone was a pedophile, but possibly because there were fewer individuals with inclination for it. it would play into the theory that modern culture encourages pedophilia - particularly the pedophilic culture of fetishisation of youth etc - which is why now a taboo against it is necessary.
breaking a taboo results in having to repent for it usually via some sort of sacrifice - similarly as activities taken on to repent oneself in ocd tend to have the nature of sacrifices - likely to "make up for" a breach in discipline. individuals who have broken taboo are often banished or killed - freud believes it has to do with preventing these acts being imitated; the communities believe if they do not do it, the whole community may be punished, so the criminals are these who break rules in ways that can bring revenge towards the community in the magical ways, or harm it by encouraging others to repeating the act - on the origin of morality; freud also notes, again i love this, that oftentimes the community reserves to itself the privilege to do the same things that are forbidden as punishment for breaking the rules - exception and ability to act on usually forbidden desires functions there to both "even out" the unjust the fact someone else got to enjoy them, and discourage imitating the act, not by "scaring off potential offenders", but rather by getting to enjoy the thing once in return for agreeing not to imitiate in uncontrolled ways. watching suffering of someone who hurt you is there them "paying back the debt" - according to freud as well as nietzsche the penalty system is overall, including the western society, based on this idea but rationalised into something else because of moralism. freud there once again agrees with my other babygirl, i love it when they agree. also, he quoted schopenhauer. fangirl scream.
so, for clarity: he does note that it would be foolish to claim he can explain religion with only one factor, all he does is try to draw attention to the role of this factor as likely the original "complex". he quotes multiple examples in mythology and religions where sons would overthrow and/or murder their father, and where the son would seek forgiveness for such sin, christianity being one of multiple - as he believes this motif repeats in culture. freud also notes that he is jewish, and ultimately speaking from the jewish perspective. if i remember anything else i'll add on, either way that was very enriching, as tends to be the case with freud, and i'm satisfied now.