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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.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).<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).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.

# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1912-13a). Totem and taboo. SE, 13: 1-161.

# Lévi-[[Strauss]], Claude. (1964). Totemism. (Rodney Needham, Trans.) [[London]]: Merlin. (Original work published 1962)