Difference between revisions of "Totemism"

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In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud defines civilization as follows: "The word 'civilization' [Kultur] describes the whole sum of the achievements and regulations which distinguish our lives from those of our animal ancestors and which serve two purposes—namely to protect men against nature and to adjust their mutual relations" (1930a, p. 89). In The Future of an Illusion Freud provided a more extended definition of civilization: "Human civilization, by which I mean all those respects in which human life has raised itself above its animal status and differs from the life of the beasts—and I scorn to distinguish between culture and civilization—presents, as we know, two aspects to the observer. It includes, on the one hand, all the knowledge and capacity that men have acquired in order to control the forces of nature and extract its wealth for the satisfaction of human needs and, on the other hand, all the regulations necessary in order to adjust the relations of men to one another and especially the distribution of the available wealth" (1927c, p. 5-6).
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The word <i>totem</i> is derived from the Ojibwa language of North America, where it refers to kinship relations between siblings and the exogamous clan. In the nineteenth century, British anthropologists suggested that totemism, characterized by the existence of a fetish, exogamy, and matrilineal descent, was the fundamental institution of primitive societies and the essential basis of their beliefs, as distinct from the religious and scientific thought of western culture. This universalizing, comparative, and evolutionist attitude reached its apogee in James G. Frazer. It disappeared for methodological reasons. Ethnologists abandoned universalism to conduct local research, emphasizing the differences between cultures.
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In Freud's work the word <i>totem</i> appears in a supplement (1912a), prepared for the Weimar Congress, September 21 and 22, 1911, describing his analysis of Justice Schreber's book (1911). After working for four months on <i>Totem and Taboo</i> (1912-13a), Freud announced his intentions as follows: "The assumption underlying these trials [proving the authenticity of childrens lineage from a clan's totem] leads us deep into the <i>totemic</i> habits of thought of primitive peoples. The totem . . . spares the members of the tribe as being its own children, just as it itself is honoured by them as being their ancestor and is spared by them. We have here arrived at the considerations of matters which, as it seems to me, may make it possible to arrive at a psycho-analytic explanation of the origins of religion" (1911c, p. 81).
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<i>Totem and Taboo</i> advanced the thesis that Freud developed in all his writing on group psychology, through <i>Moses and Monotheism</i> (1939a [1934-38])—and he indicates that he is aware of the criticism of the literature on totemism and undisturbed by it. Initially there was agreement between the two taboo prohibitions of totemism—killing the totem and marrying within the clan—were found to coincide with the two oedipal wishes—killing the father and marrying the mother. Psychoanalysis provided two other findings: childhood phobias showing the animal could function as a paternal substitute, and Ferenczi's observation of a child who identified with a cock (1913), which Freud associated with an "infantile return of totemism." He went on to describe the murder of the archaic father as the nucleus of totemism and point of departure for the formation of religion. The work of William Robertson Smith (1889) analyzing the "totemic meal" confirmed the hypothesis: Once a year the totem animal was sacrificed and consumed by the members of the tribe. This was followed by a period of mourning and feasting. By adding the Darwinian assumption of primitive hordes, each under the domination of a single male who was powerful, violent, and jealous, the following scientific hypothesis or myth was set forth. The all-powerful and "absolutely narcissistic" father of the primal horde seized all the women and killed, subjugated, or chased away the sons. "One day, however, the sons came together and united to overwhelm, kill, and devour their father, who had been their enemy but also their ideal" (1925d [1924], p. 68). Afterward, none of the sons could take the place of the father. "Under the influence of failure and regret . . . they banded themselves into a clan of brothers by the help of the ordinances of totemism, which aimed at preventing a repetition of such a deed, and they jointly undertook to forego the possession of the women on whose account they had killed their father.... this was the origin of the exogamy which is so closely bound up with totemism. The totem-feast was the commemoration of the fearful dead from which sprang man's sense of guilt (or 'original sin') and which was the beginning at once of social organization, of religion, and of ethical restrictions. Now whether we suppose that such a possibility was a historical event or not, it brings the formation of religion within the circle of the father-complex and bases it upon the ambivalence which dominates that complex" (p. 60).
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By assigning a collective prehistory to the Oedipus complex, while making an intrinsic connection between individual and collective psychology via the family, the totem hypothesis also bases the possibility of human thought on the murder of the father of the horde. The fulfillment of this act (i.e., murder of the father), studied throughout Freud's work on group psychology, is what leads to the formation of distinct psychic agencies—ego, ego ideal, and superego—along with the development of ambivalence and the appearance of the feeling of guilt, including unconscious guilt. The concept of the taboo depends on the thesis of totemism. Freud also attributed the susceptibility to hypnotism to the phylogenetic memory traces of the horde. Likewise, group psychology and religion are based on the premise of totemism. From this Freud deduced three paradigmatic forms and dynamics of group existence: the horde, matriarchy, and the totemic clan, and three paradigmatic forms of religion that are related to them: the worship of mother-goddesses, of the son-hero, and of the father. The latter reveals the return of the repressed created by the murder of the father.
 +
Modern ethnology has challenged the universality of Freud's claim and that of the Oedipus complex. The transmission of phylogenetic traces that are valid for the entire human species is problematic, even if Freud defends this idea with a form of Lamarckism. Nonetheless, Freud's arguments have continued to generate interest (Juillerat, 1991). In <i>Totem and Taboo</i> and <i>Moses and Monotheism</i>, Freud explicitly analyzed the libidinal forms and dynamics of western culture, with its monotheistic religions, its customs, its morality, its science, and its social and state institutions.
  
These definitions, however, leave out many aspects of the concept of civilization that Freud had mentioned in other works, including "Civilized Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness" (1908d). These themes include the relationship of civilization to the superego and to sublimation, its consequences for neurosis, the origin of civilization, and the different attitudes of individuals toward civilization, especially as a function of their sex.
 
  
Freud's conflation of civilization and culture here is surprising, especially when we consider that the distinction is clearly present when he discusses the force deployed by civilization (Kultur), on the one hand, and the "spiritual heritage of culture" used to "reconcile mankind" with that civilization, on the other, namely, the "spiritual heritage of culture" (1927c). Le Rider (1993) has pointed out that this opposition between culture and civilization had behind it a philosophical tradition of which Freud was a part. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) saw civilization as a ceremonial aspect of culture, and saw culture as achieved by means of a sustained effort (Bildung) and as culminating in the great achievements of art and thought. In a more radical perspective, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) saw civilization as subjugation and saw culture, in contrast, as the artistic and intellectual flowering of intact natures. The period between 1920 and 1939 saw the rise and spread of the idea of popular culture and the notion that culture is a means of fulfilling human life (Le Rider, 1993).
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==See Also==
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* [[Animistic thought]]
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* [[Erotogenic masochism]]
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* [[Ethics]]
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* [[Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego]]
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* [[Group psychotherapies]]
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* [[Identification]]
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* [[Myth of origins]]
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* [[Mythology and psychoanalysis]]
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* [[Oral-sadistic stage]]
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* [[Orality]]
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* [[Primitive]]
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* [[Primitive horde]]
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* [[Rite and ritual]]
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* [[Róheim, Géza]]
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* [[Substitute]]/[[substitutive formation]]
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* [[Taboo]]
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* [[Totem and Taboo]]
  
It is also arguable that Freud rejected this tradition and deliberately ignored the distinction between culture and civilization because of his theory of the birth of civilization and its link with sexuality. His theory might be considered an example of the cunning of civilization, in the dialectical sense in which G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) speaks of the "cunning of Reason" (Mijolla-Mellor, 1992). The cunning lies in the fact that humanity creates civilization by transforming and sublimating individuals' instinctual aims and objects and sublimation simultaneously enables individuals to realize those aims and attain those objects in another form. Yet in doing this, humanity consolidates a cultural edifice that weighs upon individuals and imposes restrictions on them by dint of suppression. "There will be brought home to you with irresistible forces the many developments, repressions, sublimations, and reaction-formations by means of which a child with a quite other innate endowment grows into what we call a normal man, the bearer, and in part the victim, of the civilization that has been so painfully acquired" (Freud, 1910a, p. 36). Freud thus found himself once more in thrall to his concept of sublimation, whose shortcomings led him to confuse the coercion of institutionalized education with the process of individual learning (Bildung), a creative force and source of pleasure (intellectual pleasure) for the subject. The dialectic in which the sublimation of one group can become the source of suppression for another group that does not participate in the process of self-education without doubt constitutes a cunning of civilization, whereby a devitalized culture dons the mantle of civilizing norms.
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==References==
 
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<references/>
Civilization appears as an entity in and of itself, a given for the subject on whom it is imposed: "The development of civilization appears to us as a peculiar process which mankind undergoes, and in which several things strike us as familiar. We may characterize this process with reference to the changes which it brings about in the familiar instinctual dispositions of human beings, to satisfy which is, after all, the economic task of our lives" (Freud, 1930a, p. 96).
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# Freud, Sigmund. (1912-13a). Totem and taboo. SE, 13: 1-161.
 
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# ——. (1925d [1924]). An autobiographical study. SE, 20: 1-74.
As Freud pointed out in "Civilized Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness" (1908d), civilization, by imposing sexual frustration, has a direct effect on the genesis of neuroses. Freud repeatedly claimed that sublimation should not be a norm, since it is possible only for some people: "Mastering it by sublimation, by deflecting the sexual instinctual forces away from their sexual aim to higher cultural aims, can be achieved by a minority and then only intermittently, and least easily during the period of ardent and vigorous youth" (1908d, p. 192). For the others, submission, especially to sexual morality, has negative consequences ranging from neurosis to a degradation of sexual objects (1908d). Of those who sublimate, some are heroes, like Prometheus, whom Freud analyzes in "The Acquisition and Control of Fire" (1932a), or Hercules, about whom he writes, "The prevention of erotic satisfaction calls up a piece of aggressiveness against the person who has interfered with the satisfaction, and that this aggressiveness has itself to be suppressed in turn. But if this is so, it is after all only the aggressiveness which is transformed into a sense of guilt, by being suppressed and made over to the superego" (1930a, p. 138).
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# Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1964). Totemism. (Rodney Needham, Trans.) London: Merlin. (Original work published 1962)
 
 
The process of civilizing is divided among ideals: coercion from the superego, cultural creation, and the resulting admiration from the ego ideal. "The satisfaction which the ideal offers to the participants in the culture is thus of a narcissistic nature; it rests on their pride in what has already been successfully achieved" (Freud, 1927c, p. 13). Here too the civilizing process reveals its unstable nature, for by reinforcing nationalism, the "narcissism of minor differences," and the cultural ideals of a people, it can become a pretext for a return to the most savage form of struggle: war.
 
 
 
Civilization appears as a separate entity, albeit one produced by humankind. It is necessary, though it is always excessive in its demands and premature in its anticipation: "It is an ineradicable and innate defect of our and every other civilization, that it imposes on children, who are driven by instinct and weak in intellect, decisions which only the mature intelligence of adults can vindicate" (Freud, 1927c, p. 51-52).
 
 
 
Alongside the writings in which Freud directly addresses the question of civilization, there are a number of anthropological texts in which, starting from the primitive horde and the murder of the father, he retraces the genesis of the matriarchy, the band of brothers, and the return to patriarchy. Yet these two perspectives are relatively dissociated in Freud's work to the extent that his ideas on civilization, with a few digressions to discuss ancient Rome or Louis XIV, the Sun King, in France, are for the most part related to the twentieth century. Abram Kardiner (1977) and Ruth Benedict (1935), writers on culture and psychoanalysis, would later make use of Freud's interest in anthropology.
 
 
 
Freud's views on the genesis of matriarchy, however, are totally dissociated from his writings about women. Women, Freud wrote, "come into opposition to civilization and display their retarding and restraining influence" (1930a, p. 103). Here too the cunning of civilization is on display: Women form the basis of civilization, "represent[ing] the interests of the family and sexual life." They are betrayed, however, by the fact that men sublimate to their detriment. "The woman," Freud concludes, "finds herself forced into the background by the claims of civilization, and she adopts a hostile attitude toward it" (1930a, p. 104).
 
 
 
SOPHIE DE MIJOLLA-MELLOR
 
 
 
See also: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia; Applied psychoanalysis and the interactions of psychoanalysis; Civilization and its Discontents; "Claims of Psychoanalysis to Scientific Interest"; Cultural transmission; Darwin, Darwinism, and psychoanalysis; Future of an Illusion, The; Incest; Law and psychoanalysis; Marxism and psychoanalysis; Moses and Monotheism; Organic repression; Phylogenetic Fantasy, A: Overview of the Transference Neuroses; Politics and psychoanalysis; Primitive horde; Religion and psychoanalysis; Rolland, Romain Edme Paul-Emile; Smell, sense of; Sociology and psychoanalysis, sociopsychoanalysis; Sublimation; Superego; Transgression; "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death."
 
Bibliography
 
 
 
    * Benedict, Ruth. (1935). Patterns of culture. London: Routledge.
 
    * Freud, Sigmund. (1908d). Civilized sexual morality and modern nervous illness. SE, 9: 181-204.
 
    * ——. (1910a). Five lectures on psycho-analysis. SE, 11: 7-55.
 
    * ——. (1927c). The future of an illusion. SE, 21: 5-56.
 
    * ——. (1930a). Civilization and its discontents. SE, 21: 64-145.
 
    * ——. (1932a). The acquisition and control of fire. SE, 22: 183-193.
 
    * Kardiner, Abram. (1977). My analysis with Freud. Reminiscences. New York: W. W. Norton.
 
    * Le Rider, Jacques. (1993). Kultur contre civilisation. Topique, 52, 273-287.
 
    * Mijolla-Mellor, Sophie de. (1992). Le plaisir de pensée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
 
  
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[[Category:New]]
  
  
 
[[Category:Freudian psychology]]
 
[[Category:Freudian psychology]]
 
[[Category:Sigmund Freud]]
 
[[Category:Sigmund Freud]]

Revision as of 05:29, 10 June 2006

The word totem is derived from the Ojibwa language of North America, where it refers to kinship relations between siblings and the exogamous clan. In the nineteenth century, British anthropologists suggested that totemism, characterized by the existence of a fetish, exogamy, and matrilineal descent, was the fundamental institution of primitive societies and the essential basis of their beliefs, as distinct from the religious and scientific thought of western culture. This universalizing, comparative, and evolutionist attitude reached its apogee in James G. Frazer. It disappeared for methodological reasons. Ethnologists abandoned universalism to conduct local research, emphasizing the differences between cultures. In Freud's work the word totem appears in a supplement (1912a), prepared for the Weimar Congress, September 21 and 22, 1911, describing his analysis of Justice Schreber's book (1911). After working for four months on Totem and Taboo (1912-13a), Freud announced his intentions as follows: "The assumption underlying these trials [proving the authenticity of childrens lineage from a clan's totem] leads us deep into the totemic habits of thought of primitive peoples. The totem . . . spares the members of the tribe as being its own children, just as it itself is honoured by them as being their ancestor and is spared by them. We have here arrived at the considerations of matters which, as it seems to me, may make it possible to arrive at a psycho-analytic explanation of the origins of religion" (1911c, p. 81). Totem and Taboo advanced the thesis that Freud developed in all his writing on group psychology, through Moses and Monotheism (1939a [1934-38])—and he indicates that he is aware of the criticism of the literature on totemism and undisturbed by it. Initially there was agreement between the two taboo prohibitions of totemism—killing the totem and marrying within the clan—were found to coincide with the two oedipal wishes—killing the father and marrying the mother. Psychoanalysis provided two other findings: childhood phobias showing the animal could function as a paternal substitute, and Ferenczi's observation of a child who identified with a cock (1913), which Freud associated with an "infantile return of totemism." He went on to describe the murder of the archaic father as the nucleus of totemism and point of departure for the formation of religion. The work of William Robertson Smith (1889) analyzing the "totemic meal" confirmed the hypothesis: Once a year the totem animal was sacrificed and consumed by the members of the tribe. This was followed by a period of mourning and feasting. By adding the Darwinian assumption of primitive hordes, each under the domination of a single male who was powerful, violent, and jealous, the following scientific hypothesis or myth was set forth. The all-powerful and "absolutely narcissistic" father of the primal horde seized all the women and killed, subjugated, or chased away the sons. "One day, however, the sons came together and united to overwhelm, kill, and devour their father, who had been their enemy but also their ideal" (1925d [1924], p. 68). Afterward, none of the sons could take the place of the father. "Under the influence of failure and regret . . . they banded themselves into a clan of brothers by the help of the ordinances of totemism, which aimed at preventing a repetition of such a deed, and they jointly undertook to forego the possession of the women on whose account they had killed their father.... this was the origin of the exogamy which is so closely bound up with totemism. The totem-feast was the commemoration of the fearful dead from which sprang man's sense of guilt (or 'original sin') and which was the beginning at once of social organization, of religion, and of ethical restrictions. Now whether we suppose that such a possibility was a historical event or not, it brings the formation of religion within the circle of the father-complex and bases it upon the ambivalence which dominates that complex" (p. 60). By assigning a collective prehistory to the Oedipus complex, while making an intrinsic connection between individual and collective psychology via the family, the totem hypothesis also bases the possibility of human thought on the murder of the father of the horde. The fulfillment of this act (i.e., murder of the father), studied throughout Freud's work on group psychology, is what leads to the formation of distinct psychic agencies—ego, ego ideal, and superego—along with the development of ambivalence and the appearance of the feeling of guilt, including unconscious guilt. The concept of the taboo depends on the thesis of totemism. Freud also attributed the susceptibility to hypnotism to the phylogenetic memory traces of the horde. Likewise, group psychology and religion are based on the premise of totemism. From this Freud deduced three paradigmatic forms and dynamics of group existence: the horde, matriarchy, and the totemic clan, and three paradigmatic forms of religion that are related to them: the worship of mother-goddesses, of the son-hero, and of the father. The latter reveals the return of the repressed created by the murder of the father. Modern ethnology has challenged the universality of Freud's claim and that of the Oedipus complex. The transmission of phylogenetic traces that are valid for the entire human species is problematic, even if Freud defends this idea with a form of Lamarckism. Nonetheless, Freud's arguments have continued to generate interest (Juillerat, 1991). In Totem and Taboo and Moses and Monotheism, Freud explicitly analyzed the libidinal forms and dynamics of western culture, with its monotheistic religions, its customs, its morality, its science, and its social and state institutions.


See Also

References

  1. Freud, Sigmund. (1912-13a). Totem and taboo. SE, 13: 1-161.
  2. ——. (1925d [1924]). An autobiographical study. SE, 20: 1-74.
  3. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. (1964). Totemism. (Rodney Needham, Trans.) London: Merlin. (Original work published 1962)